I am reading a very interesting book entitled
Heretics and Heroes. . .
How Renaissance Artists and Reformation
Priests Created Our World.
I'm at a part right now, where Columbus has discovered the new world, and is writing back to the king and queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, and describing to them the indigenous people that he has encountered at the islands he has landed on. He wrote,
"They traded with us and gave us everything they had with great Goodwill. They took great delight in pleasing us. They are very gentle, without knowledge of what is evil. Nor do they murder or steal. Your highnesses can believe that in all the world, there can be no better people."
My Question: what on earth happened???? I guess I might ask, figuratively and literally, "what in God's Name have we created?"
Is Civilization the corrupting influence? How is it possible to go from that description to what we have today?
There is left no genetic trace of that people today in the Bahamas. Among the "sporting activities" of the new Spanish arrivals were "baby throwing for headsmashing" (sort of bowling with infants) and also "body slicing" (seeing who could cut a person in half with only one swing of the blade). Both sports, along with others, didn't seem to work out well for population propagation of the natives.
Heretics and Heroes. . .
How Renaissance Artists and Reformation
Priests Created Our World.
I'm at a part right now, where Columbus has discovered the new world, and is writing back to the king and queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, and describing to them the indigenous people that he has encountered at the islands he has landed on. He wrote,
"They traded with us and gave us everything they had with great Goodwill. They took great delight in pleasing us. They are very gentle, without knowledge of what is evil. Nor do they murder or steal. Your highnesses can believe that in all the world, there can be no better people."
My Question: what on earth happened???? I guess I might ask, figuratively and literally, "what in God's Name have we created?"
Is Civilization the corrupting influence? How is it possible to go from that description to what we have today?
There is left no genetic trace of that people today in the Bahamas. Among the "sporting activities" of the new Spanish arrivals were "baby throwing for headsmashing" (sort of bowling with infants) and also "body slicing" (seeing who could cut a person in half with only one swing of the blade). Both sports, along with others, didn't seem to work out well for population propagation of the natives.
"A man who is warm, cannot feel the pain of a man who
is cold" Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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