IGNORANCE: THE TRIBES AND ALIEN ANTHROPOLOGY

The Ignorance of the Tribes: Visitors Arrive (W3:D2) (search bold words at huntthepast.com to know more)

You are going about your normal tasks, hunting or harvesting food for your family, when you look upon the horizon over the vast sea and spot clouds low upon the water, coming your way. These are not like any other clouds, but very solid and bright white clouds as the sun beats off them. As they come closer, you see a large canoe traveling underneath them and it is slowly coming closer. As they come close to the island, the clouds begin to shrink, and you see large trees on top of the canoe where the clouds have been put away. It takes hours, but soon the visitors from the canoes board smaller canoes, and begin to paddle into shore. You are fascinated at this view, and as the visitors come closer, you see two distinct things about them. First, their dress is very strange to you - almost every part of their bodies is covered; and second, the visitors are all men. They beach their canoes and step out of them with clothing on their feet. Your chief greets them, trying to communicate with them, though it is difficult. They use hand gestures and your chief understands a little from their movements. You feel fear of these new people, and at the same time, fascination to learn more of them; so, when they want to talk to you, you struggle to communicate with them. As a gesture of friendship, you share some of your crops and crafts. You know they are different, and until now, you see no danger from them, though you are cautious. You have seen tribes from other islands come and attack, kill, and enslave the people of your tribes and wonder, will these visitors do the same? They come in and ask for land, where they can set up a few huts, and this seems acceptable to your chief. How long they will stay is unknown to you, but to keep good will, when they ask for help building their huts, you decide to volunteer. They offer trades as payment: clear beads that sparkle in the light, along with other supplies that did not come from nature. This seems to be a good relationship, so when the next visitors, much like the first, come to visit, you desire to help and trade with them. Yet, they are not as friendly as the first, and they - like the other tribes - begin to enslave your people. Activity: How would you feel? – Now tell us your experience from the Taino’s eyes? If they were to tell their story, what do you think they would have said? _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ You are Now a Young Archaeologist - Imagine you are an Archeologist. You have just come to the island of what was Hispaniola. You have read the records of the explorers, different friars who were there at the time, and those that came afterwards. Some wrote their story, others learned the native language and wrote their stories. What are you to expect, looking into these accounts? Where would you begin to look for more information, for further studies? You could find ruins of old forts or villages; ancient weapons that may have lasted, such as spear heads - if they even used heads on their wooden staffs; you could talk with those who still live today, but you know there would be an increased bias to one side. The Taino and Caribs were all extinct by that point. There is always going to be an ignorance of the past when there are competing records, and no written language from the Taino, who experienced it. The best you can do is try to put all the pieces together, but as you go through the adventures of the Spanish through this new world, you will need to keep an open mind, that it is extremely hard to know what truly happened. It is said that in war, history is written by the victor, but there are always two sides of the story. Our task, as young archeologists (that’s you), is to keep an open mind, and while learning these things, try to open your perspective to what happened, according to records, and what could have happened. If no one knows for certain, then an open mind is much more valuable than someone who says, “this is what happened and that is the only way.” Do not trust that a human can recall anything exactly how it occurred. Activity: Aliens Anthropologists - Since there are few places left to be explored on the earth, we will have to use our imagination for this experiment. Imagine you are an alien, coming to earth for the first time. You stumble upon your house, to find a perfectly preserved sample of what life was like here on earth when humans inhabited the planet (humans are now extinct). You are to act as an archeologist, to discover what life was like on this planet. Example: You enter this inhabitation, and walk into a large gathering area. You see moderately sized structures in the middle of the room. Due to the indentations in the materials, it could only be places the inhabitants would have sat. These structures are encircling a box at the far end of the room, as if that was an object of worship. They must sit there every day and worship the box, for every house in the vicinity has one. All around the box, there are remnants of food scattered among these structures, even on top and within the crevices around where they would have sat. It must be accurate, from the wear on the cushions and the variety of food that has collected, that this was a common area of gathering and worship, maybe even sacrificing the food to the box at the focus of the room. Now, what items would you have found around your house? And what would you have assumed, as an archeologist, if you would have found them hundreds of years in the future? Item #1 (describe the item) _______________________ and it must have been used for (make up a possible use) _____________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________ Item #2 _______________________ and it must have been used for _________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________ Item #3 _______________________ and it must have been used for __________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________ Item #4 _______________________ and it must have been used for _________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ What would this have told you about the people who lived in your house? _________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________