\n\n\n\n\nCambridge University is older than the Easter Island statues. Source
\nThis reminds me: something that always shocked me was how New Zealand got reached by the Polynesians/Proto-Maori only in like 1250-1300AD or so.
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Yeah, New Zealand’s one of the only places in the world that’s never really seen violent ethnic conflict, the Europeans showed up before the Maori had time to max out carrying capacity and they managed to set up a symbiosis where the Maori fished and gathered along the coast while the Euros farmed and herded in the highlands, both trading with each other.
\nThere’s been some tension - the foreshore and seabed stuff as recently as last decade, where the government controversially established “no, the Maori don’t literally own the entire coast, jfc”, but that rose to vandalism at most.
\nFor all that, I have never run across people so bleeding-heart anguished about the treatment of indigenous peoples as Kiwi liberals (for example), it’s like they’re ashamed of their history and aghast at the Canadians, who are ashamed of their First Nations history and aghast at the Americans, who mostly shrug and say “yeah, what’re you gonna do”.
\nIt’s like a heirarchy structured in reverse order of how bad they’ve actually been about these things. ‘course, as an American I can just roll my eyes and say to both of them that you’ve only been so nice because you’re such latecomers that there was still enough land and resources to go around with room to spare, as your countries expand - you see this NZ with that foreshore stuff and now in Canada where they’re realizing indigenous claims are getting in the way of their new petro-export economy - you’ll do the same thing.
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