
Once dismissed as fake, Maya calendar is Americas’ oldest manuscript - clarkevans
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/09/08/once-dismissed-as-fake-maya-calendar-is-americas-oldest-manuscript-say-brown-university-scientists/
======
nl
For those who aren't aware, the Catholic Bishop Diego de Landa burnt almost
the entire written history of the Maya in 1562.

[http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=1896](http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=1896)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_de_Landa#Suppression_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_de_Landa#Suppression_of_Maya)

~~~
contingencies
ISIS and Taliban eat your heart out... the Catholics perfected religious
extremism centuries ago.

~~~
berntb
Lots of things disappeared around Christianity -- the Dionysos cult and all
the Roman/Greek worship, the druids, the Asa religion, Catharism, etc, etc.

The Christians stopped supporting that type of thing after they lost most of
their worldly power.

Now it is just the rest of the murderous and intolerant religions and
ideologies left...

~~~
fit2rule
Christians are still calling, regularly, for the blood of their enemies. Don't
kid yourself that there aren't Christians who believe the society and its
powers that they created shouldn't be used to perpetuate their religion.
States all over the world have to deal with this extremism..

~~~
berntb
News to me, despite that I think Dawkins is soft on religion. :-)

Which Christians -- and where -- are calling for the blood of their enemy
_because of_ Christianity?

How many are killed? Google tells me it was eight people in total regarding
abortion clinics in the US. Over decades.

(Edit: I can tell you that the main Swedish church refuses to criticise the
people oppressing, murdering and expelling Christians from Gaza and Egypt.
They criticize Israel literally thousands of times more. This seems to be more
because they were pirated by left wing extremists than by nazi influence.)

~~~
nl
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/tens-of-
thousand...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/tens-of-thousands-of-
muslims-flee-christian-militias-in-central-african-
republic/2014/02/07/5a1adbb2-9032-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html)

We could talk about the Balkans wars too if you'd like. Or the NLFT in India.
Sadly I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.

~~~
berntb
Those are rounding errors if you compare with the 30 year war, the Huguenots
or what Cromwell did on Ireland...

Or that the total non Muslim population is being forced out of the Middle East
_right now_!

The Central African Republic was revenge for what a Muslim militia did --
"Those evil groups are taking revenge in the same way we did to them!"
Seriously... that is the worst you have? :-)

From your own article: "... the former Muslim rebels, known as Seleka, who
carried out deadly attacks on Christians after they grabbed power in March,
prompting the birth of Christian militias called the anti-balaka, or “anti-
machete” in the local Sango language. The armed vigilantes have used the power
vacuum to step up assaults on Muslims."

And civil wars have always been incredibly horrible and dirty. The Balkans
were also more ethnic than anything else -- and not exactly one sided either.
:-(

According to Wikipedia, that Indian group had less than a thousand members. In
total. That is a joke, compared to European history. (Or what goes on in
Pakistan and Afghanistan today, for that matter. Check percentage Hindu of the
population of Pakistan and Bangladesh over the last 50 years; it is not only
the Middle East.)

~~~
nl
I'm confused what point you think you are making? Religion = bad, yes I agree.
Some magical quality of Christianity makes it better somehow? I disagree.

~~~
berntb
Sorry, being a day late -- the point I'm trying to make is that we pulled the
claws and fangs out of our priests in the west. It was not a nice experience,
but now it is done.

Globally, at least the Catholics are heavily influenced by the West, too.

We just need to guard against a recurrence of the bad old days and the
Islamists.

My point, to put it another way, isn't that Christianity is nice -- my point
is that those clowns are relatively harmless today, compared to history and
the Islamists.

~~~
fit2rule
And you are incorrect. There are insane Christians who want more than ever to
usher in the 'new era of Christ' by bringing their Armageddon down upon us
all. Those people should not be part of the US Military-Industrial complex,
nor should these extremists be allowed access to power.

However, they are in power today.

~~~
berntb
There are crazies of all religions. But to go from that to your claims about
US (I assume?) need really good references.

I'd say the Obama time contradicts your claims.

The intervention in Syria for example, was just symbolical -- despite
systematic torture, bombing of civilians and repeated chemical attacks that
resulted in hundreds of thousands dead.

The problem wasn't exactly too much spoiling for trouble...

As I noted above, 8 dead in total over decades from the abortion clinic
violence. That is a slow Tuesday morning in the muslim world. :-) :-(

------
jordigh
Americas'? America's.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
_the_ Americas: North, Central, and South.

~~~
jordigh
Not if you ask someone from Mexico like myself. And since this is a Mexican
heritage thing we're talking about here...

The whole America-means-US thing didn't happen until well into the 19th
century.

~~~
ocb
This has always been puzzling to me. Is it not just more-or-less a linguistic
thing? In the Anglosphere, "America" refers to the US. Nothing about it is
malicious or in contempt of Mexico or any other states in the Western
Hemisphere, that's just how the terminology evolved.

~~~
jordigh
> Nothing about it is malicious or in contempt of Mexico or any other states
> in the Western Hemisphere

It _is_ malicious, but so ingrained into the psyche that the malice is
forgotten by those into whom it was perpetuated. It is saying that the rest of
the continent isn't American, somehow, that when you talk about American
dreams and American ideals and the promise of freedom that America once meant
to Europeans, you are definitely not extending those promises, dreams, and
aspirations to the rest of America. Even the Lebanese diaspora that arrived in
Mexico and Colombia (Salma Hayek, Shakira Mebarak, Carlos Slim, Demian Bíchir)
were travellers aiming for America and her promises.

"America" is a very loaded term, even when used to refer to the United States.
People use it differently. United States is more formal, America more
aspirational. Well, the rest of America also has these aspirations. Like
Morelos wrote, "That prohibit slavery forever, as the distinction of caste,
being all equal and only vice and virtue distinguish an American from the
other."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentimientos_de_la_Naci%C3%B3n](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentimientos_de_la_Naci%C3%B3n)

A whole immense garden, this is America:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL3u7qU_09w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL3u7qU_09w)

~~~
ocb
None of that changes the fact that, in English, "America" typically denotes
the US and not the Western Hemisphere as a whole. You're splitting hairs over
people using a word differently in English than they do in Spanish.

~~~
jordigh
But you can't forget where the meaning comes from. I'm sure lots of people use
"nigger", confederate flags, or "banana republic" without any malice too, but
it doesn't mean that the people who hear it don't hear the malice.

It's not about English vs Spanish. It's not just a false cognate like
"compromise" vs "compromiso" or "preservative" vs "preservativo". It's a term
loaded with political meaning. It's about US vs America. Sure, the US is
powerful and has managed to convince most of the world, even the parts that
don't speak English, that the US is the only America worth talking about. On
the other hand, Canada isn't entirely happy about not being America either:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29g57XTYgLE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29g57XTYgLE)

~~~
ocb
You don't get it. Singular "America" in its common usage in English to refer
to the US is absolutely not a politically loaded term, at least not in the
sense that you are saying. Your assertion to the contrary because you were
taught differently in a non-Anglophone country does not change that. Language
cannot be divorced from culture.

~~~
jordigh
It is politically loaded to many people who hear it. Testament to the fact:
"Murica" is used as a joke word to refer to things such as giant hot dogs, big
guns, or invading other countries. Further testament to the fact: the song
America the Beautiful, the saying "God bless America", America, land of the
free.

Using "United States" in any of these would sound awkward and wrong, right?
"United States the beautiful"? That is because "America" is overwhelmingly
used with positive connotations, but _only_ for the US, and _that_ is what I'm
protesting. The rest of America also wants these positive connotations, but
instead we get not-quite-America such as _Latin_ America, _South_ America, or
some other-adjective-America.

~~~
ocb
It has political connotations in those specific contexts (and "Murica" is
ironic critique of those political connotations).

Now:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism)

You're essentially arguing that it's a _bad_ thing that this outdated
nationalistic concept is not widely attributed to non-US states in the
Americas.

