"What about a new name for Pre-Columbian?" Topic

Not wanting to sound too-PC but should this slice of history be named after the incomer whose fellows almost destroyed native culture?

I'd go for 'Early American' & take it from pre-Clovis to just before Jenkin's Ear.

How about "The Guys Who Were Here First" era?

How about Pre-Columbian?

'Early American' so they called themselves Americans did they?

They guys who were there when Columbus arrived weren't necessicarily the "Guys Who Were Here First" … more the "Guys Who Were Here Right Before".

How about "Pre-Small Pox Importation to Two Continents"? Or, if you are a fan of That Mitchell and Webb Look, "Pre-Event".

:)

Or you could call it Pre-contact like some folks do.

ancestral indigenous peoples

How about "492 years after Lief Ericson and before"?

No.
Change is bad.

Early American is a furniture style, very common in the Northeast.

The Revisionists and Apologists have been working on this one for years. Obviously, they haven't found anything better.

How about Injun Times?

No?

How about "The time after Beaver piled mud on the Turtle's back"
but that only refers to North America east of the Mississippi.

But "Pre-Columbian" is simply an easy way to refer to vastly different cultures stretched over two continents for at least 12,000 years. Let's not go crazy and have a seperate board for every period and geographic subset: Andean, Great Lakes, Mississpian, Meso-American, Amazonian…….you would get one message every 6 months on each one.

Christobal Colon wasn't a very-PC guy anyways, so why change it?

"Pre-Columbian"

Before coffee ?

Aboriginal American? There is some merit to politically correct terminology. It helps us wrap our minds around trivial little facts like a whole hell of a lot of people survived the Little Big Horn but we don't think of them as people. Unfortunately, anal retentives use it as a substitute for meaningfull action. For example, aboriginal suggests a stone age economy. The PC types object to that as if a stone age economy is something to be ashamed of. Sooner or later, other PC types will point out the ethnocentrism in this bias and the rest of the PC types will misinterpret that to mean that stone age economies are superior to modern ones.

I don't like the term American, it is Eurocentric, it also implies the "United States" alienating the rest of the two continents political units. But I am stuck with it.

Aboriginal American or Indigenous American gets my vote.

American is almost as bad as Columbian, from a PC point of view. After all, Americo Vespucci was a cartographer at the service of the European colonialists, wasn't he?

I think that a better solution is to use the terms "Mayan", "Aztec", "Pueblo", "Zuni", "Incan" or whatever cultures/empires/ecc.

Before coffee might work if anybody were awake enough.

I don't like the term American, it is Eurocentric, it also implies the "United States" alienating the rest of the two continents political units. But I am stuck with it.

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Hey, how many Dawghouses will there be for all the political/racist comments here, slamming European explorers who colonized the New World and began the greatest age of human advancement in history after the indigenous population spent at least 10,000 years in the same place without even bothering to utilize the wheel?

Let's not ignore the evidence depicting other "indigenous races" that were wiped out – violently – by the cultures which were themselves later "victimized" by the Europeans.

In fact, that's my nomination for an alternative title in place of "Pre-Columbian": "Gaming in the era before European explorers colonized the New World and began the greatest age of human advancement in history after the indigenous population spent at least 10,000 years in the same place without even bothering to utilize the wheel."

I think it has a ring to it…

@ Dasher.

BC? Before Columbus? I like it.

….and the use of the word "before" has a very different connotation to "pre".

"…European explorers who colonized the New World and began the greatest age of human advancement in history after the indigenous population spent at least 10,000 years in the same place without even bothering to utilize the wheel?".

Shhh, you're not supposed to remind people of facts like that, in polite company. It ruins the whole PC (no, not an acronym for Pre-Columbian, or Pre-Columbus) crowd's bias.

Given that it was 500+ years ago, I guess it is safe for me to mention that.

I'm fine with Pre-Columbian too.

Besides, I imagine even if it was re-named, we'd probably be ignoring all of the cultures from time immemorial, that destroyed other cultures, in the battles for supremacy that have occurred throughout history between various civilizations, and/or uncivilizations.

There is a lot of touchy feelings with this topic.

To keep harmony is it best we don't mention the war?

You started it.

He invaded Poland?

You started it.

Hardly. I wasn't yet born. But Great-Uncle Hermann (who we don't speak about) seems to have played a part.

The "greatest age in human advancement" started in the Renaissance, and was not really dependant on the USA. Furthermore, it would have a lot more going for it if moral advances kept pace with technological ones. The 19th and 20th centuries saw a lot of enslaved and exploited people who didn't really partake in much of this vaunted advancement.

I would also be a little happier with the term "American" if it included the Canadian TMPers who have complained about it elsewhere.

Pre-Cabral or pre-Pinzón, if you prefer. In case you hadn't noticed the hemisphere isn't just confined to it's northern portion.

"I think that a better solution is to use the terms "Mayan", "Aztec", "Pueblo", "Zuni", "Incan" or whatever cultures/empires/ecc."

Sterling idea.