Apparently this is, like, a whole controversy?

  • JohnBrownsBussy2 [she/her, they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Most historical migrations/invasions in Europe & West Asia did not involve significant replacements of the population. For example, despite the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain, your average white British person is still basically a descendant of the ancient Britons. In cases like the Germanic and Arab invasions, the conquered populations were much larger than the invading body, and while in some cases the invading language dominated (like in Britain and North Africa), in many other cases the invaders were effectively absorbed into the native population (like in Gaul/Francia/France).

    It was the development of (early) modern settler-colonialism that shifted the paradigm towards extermination of the local populations.

    • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It was the development of (early) modern settler-colonialism that shifted the paradigm towards extermination of the local populations.

      This is wrong, otherwise Indians Africans and East Asians wouldn't be around today. The level of white ancestry in these colonized territories is zero (like, not even a rounding error).

      We can divide recently colonized territories into two groups:

      white settlement:

      • North America
      • South America
      • Siberia
      • South Africa
      • Oceania

      white extraction:

      • Africa
      • India
      • Southeast Asia
      • The Middle East

      So why didn't whites settle places like India or Myanmar? Because they couldn't, because there were literally too many people around.

      The extraction of wealth was the BEGINNING of white settlement: once enough wealth was extracted from India&others, and enough Indians/Burmese/etc had died, then they would have started settling it. But anti-colonialism became too popular by then, and the mayos got kicked out so never happened.

      So then the question becomes, why were whites SUCCESSFUL at settling the Americas, Australia, etc.

      And the answer to that is just sparse populations, caused by lack of exposure to bronze age tools. This lack of exposure is obviously due to geography.

      Metal allows people to make "forever" tools, which makes farming and agriculture turbo-productive, which rockets population numbers.

      Ever since the bronze age, populations have become demographically "unconquerable". If you look at the genetics of India, Europe, all of East Asia, Africa, the Middle East, they've all been basically unchanged for 4000 years (longer in East Asia and MENA)

      The only places that got changed by mayo-colonialism were unexposed to the Asian bronze age, and still had population densities reminiscent of Hunter gatherers. Native North Americans, MOST South Americans, Australian Natives, Khoisan Hunters of South Africa.

      The only major exceptions to this rule are Siberia and the agricultural civilizations of Central-South America. Siberia was just sparse due to climate, and South America while "civilized" and with metal technology, was still at an early stage of it, and would be more analogous to European farmers from 5000 years ago (who also got conquered and highly mixed with by Indoeuropeans)

      • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        There's actually one more major exception to this rule, which is Central Asia, where Indoeuropean-Iranian related people were conquered by East Asian Turkic and Mongol conquerors, and were highly mixed with (which is why those areas look fairly "Asian" today)

        But this exception follows the same basic rule of having a lower population density.

        The higher a population, and the more recent the invasion happens, the less settlement occurs (because it literally can't).