Posted on 10/09/2015 1:45:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
In 1520, a Spanish-led supply convoy that may have consisted of as many as 550 people, including Cubans of African and Indian descent, women, and Indian allies of the Spaniards, was captured and taken to a town inhabited by the Aztec-allied Texcocanos, or Acolhuas. The town is now known as Zultepec-Tecoaque, an archaeological site east of Mexico City. Excavations have uncovered carved clay figurines of the invaders that the Texcocanos had symbolically decapitated. Human and animal bones with cut marks have also been found, indicating that the members of the convoy and their horses were actually sacrificed and eaten. The pigs, however, were killed and left whole. The townspeople hid the remains of the convoy in shallow wells and abandoned the town. "They heard that [Cortes] was coming for them, and what they did was hide everything. If they hadn't done that, we wouldn't have found these things," government archaeologist Enrique Martinez told the Associated Press. Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes conquered the Aztecs the following year.
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
I’d believe that; the isolation would get to most people. Today people want their space/privacy, but automobiles and communication technology have changed the dynamic of that.
A friend described how Canada saw a general improvement in mental health with color television; the winters were just too bleak.
Don’t know if there is any way to make population estimates, but people found “lots” of arrow heads in blowouts - areas where the soil had been blown away - in the Dust Bowl country of the Oklahoma pan handle, Dalhart, Texas.
Eat them?
Ha! I live close to that sod house. It is located near Cleo Springs, which is about 20 miles NE of my Great Grandparents old place. My granddad later moved to the panhandle of Texas where he used an old sod house for a chicken coup.
Yeah. Think “blood brother”. And from the movies, picture the two warriors, each slicing his own palm and then shaking hands with each other. Where they looking for the blood to react in a certain way? Or maybe they were exchanging gravy recipes. “Is such a thing possible?” “Why yes, yes it is.”
Worst case o’ cabin fever I e’er did see was Jack Nickolson in “The Shining”. Then again the was the guy who sat watching soap operas out at the lake house in “Fargo”.
Sociologists still talk about how they think kids today are so much more mature than kids were in earlier generations. What a load of nonsense. Kids today may know more about the perversions of this world than kids did back then, but they know today almost nothing about hard work, responsibility, and sacrifice.
Isn’t it amazing that the sod house survived? Anyone who is passing through your area should take the time to see it.
How the people of that time period in that area survived the dust storms amazes me. I was in a small dust storm and I got bronchitis that nearly killed me. They were tough people.
Nicholson was great in the role.
Interesting though, was the supernatural aspect in the haunted hotel.
I guess too much dwelling on the departed allegedly dwelling there, a writer's imagination, alcohol, plus an already off kilter psyche were enough to launch him into the abyss (as a character).
Some have challenged those pioneers as unimaginative (without taking into account their problem solving skills for dealing with day to day survival).
Some did lose it, but the majority toughed it out.
Amen....I would love to hear from someone in the know as to why our youth suffer from so many anxiety disorders when life is so easy for them????
They've been bombarded with so much sexual material by the time they exit 8th grade, there isn't much room for them to imagine anything they haven't already seen or heard about.
Of course those sociologists taught from the same trough will call that 'advanced'.
Sadly, a lot of kids have lost significant conversational skills, work ethic, and a sense of reality. But then, people and their expectations have a way of shaping reality, for good or ill, and I think that train is headed down the wrong track, too.
With the exception of where urbane ideas have been imposed by regulation or otherwise on rural areas, though, the kids are not so bad. Unfortunately, television and the internet have been used to spread the paradigm far into areas where it will not work, where you still just might have to skin dinner before it is ready to cook. As long as society can exist within its constructs, the urbane will do okay, possibly even better than rural kids, but once outside that--as in natural disasters, the 'zombie apocalypse', or other situations where nature takes over, the rural kids are more likely to come out on top.
Not so in a system of artificial constructs which can be engineered to be a consistent no-win environment with moving targets and artificial biases, and entire rules of engagement based on arbitrary and capricious factors.
I'll take the former environment over the latter any day. It is simpler, the challenges are clear-cut, and success becomes a matter of personal (or group) ability, not someone else' alleged judgement.
To add to your post - The few hundred Spanish soldiers were not invulnerable in battle. Aztec weaponry was strong enough to pierce the armor the Spanish wore. The decisive advantage was the thousands of Indian allies.
“European disease” turned out not to be the biggest culprit in the native die off at that time. A few years ago the pathogen was ID’d as a hantavirus causing Hemorrhagic fever which is native to the New World. The same pathogen had caused a population crash before.
In New England the first colonists saw many native villages depopulated because of disease.
“I’m a convoy / on a Spanish horse I ride / I’m wanted / dead or alive....”
LOL
The later die offs north of Mexico were localized. They'd have to find some bodies and do a case by case analysis to find a cause. I haven't seen any studies that’ve been done for New England natives. Abandoned camps were the norm for New England tribes, they didn't maintain settlements.
I forgot to add that Cortes did have a few canons that were taken from his ships that he had burnt along the coast. Imagine landing in a strange land, marching inland, and burning your ships behind you so your men would have less temptation to mutiny. Talk about commitment and courage!
I am not sure, but maybe we don’t keep today’s kids busy enough. They have too much time to think about the crap they hear on TV and in the classroom. The way the media and education focus so much on the dysfunctional aspects of humanity, kids may think they are expected to have some disease, syndrome, or disorder. Plus, being sick is a great way to gain attention and sympathy. If survival were more of a challenge, many of the kids would learn the value of work and excel. Maybe the Amish, and I mean the real Amish, have something figured out.
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