The Myth of the Virgin Wilderness
“When I went to high school in the 1970s,” wrote historian, Charles. C. Mann in his classic book 1491, “I was taught that Indians came to the Americas across the Bering Strait about thirteen thousand years ago, that they lived for the most part in small, isolated groups, and that they had so little impact on their environment that even after millennia of habitation the continents remained mostly wilderness.” (Mann 2005)
This myth of the virgin wilderness has permeated the Western World for over 500 years. In the U.S. it is woven into the fabric of our culture and is ingrained in our national identity. It has, wrote Charles C. Mann, “held sway in scholarly work, and from there fanned out to high school textbooks, Hollywood movies, newspaper articles, environmental campaigns, romantic adventure books, and silk-screened T-shirts.” (Mann 2005)
If you view the history of the Americas with this understanding, it becomes easier to accept the idea that the superior Europeans carved great towns, ports, and cities out of this pristine environment, and yes, swept aside the Paleolithic tribes who stood in their way. These men of the modern Iron Age arrived on massive ships and amazed the simple natives with their giant horses and gleaming steel swords. Some of them wore long robes, carried thick, black books, and brandished strange crosses. These men spoke of their God as the one true God, and their God didn’t tolerate competition.
In this context, the sparsely populated and scattered tribes of the Americas were doomed to submit to the vastly superior civilization that would arrive on its shores in wave after relentless wave for generations to come. It was inevitable. It was Manifest Destiny. And that allows us, modern people, to feel good about our ancestors and sleep better at night. If only it were true.
Unfortunately, our cultural view of who we are and where we came from is distorted by persistent illusions. In order to demythologize history and really understand the clash of cultures that Columbus embodied, we are forced to begin at the beginning.
Therefore, in this first chapter, “Unraveling Eve”, let’s travel back to the origin of the earth, our place in the geological timeline, and the conflict of Creationism vs. Scientific Evolution which has shaped much of American history. Hopefully, we will emerge from this brief exploration with what the great German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, called “Immaculate Perception”.
(to be continued in the next post)
