Brazil. 500 years ago.
Amerigo Vespucci explored the coast of Brazil and wrote his observations of the people he lived with for 27 days. He saw their long homes for communal living, ate with them, and drew a few conclusions. He says they had no religious faith and that they lived “according to nature.” No one, he claimed, had any private property, and they had no need of laws as a consequence. Then he reports the consequences of running afoul of social mores. A man who had ten wives, for example, was “jealous of them” and if one of them was “guilty” of something, he punished her and sent her away. Had Amerigo submitted his observations and subsequent conclusions to a dissertation committee, he would have no doctorate. However, we might take some of his observations and draw our own conclusion.
Amerigo related that the people waged savage war, ending in cannibalism and slavery of the conquered. The practice perplexed him: “That which made me the more astonished at their wars and cruelty was that I could not understand from them why they made war upon each other, considering that they held no private property or sovereignty of empire and kingdoms and did not know any such thing as lust for possession, that is, pillaging or a desire to rule, which appear to me to be the causes of wars and of every disorderly act. When we requested them to state the cause, they did not know how to give any other cause than that this curse upon them began in ancient times and they sought to avenge the deaths of their forefathers”* (italics mine).
The world. Today.
*John Carey, Ed. Eyewitness to History. Avon Books. 1987. (Originally published in Great Britain as The Faber Book of Reportage)
Amerigo Vespucci explored the coast of Brazil and wrote his observations of the people he lived with for 27 days. He saw their long homes for communal living, ate with them, and drew a few conclusions. He says they had no religious faith and that they lived “according to nature.” No one, he claimed, had any private property, and they had no need of laws as a consequence. Then he reports the consequences of running afoul of social mores. A man who had ten wives, for example, was “jealous of them” and if one of them was “guilty” of something, he punished her and sent her away. Had Amerigo submitted his observations and subsequent conclusions to a dissertation committee, he would have no doctorate. However, we might take some of his observations and draw our own conclusion.
Amerigo related that the people waged savage war, ending in cannibalism and slavery of the conquered. The practice perplexed him: “That which made me the more astonished at their wars and cruelty was that I could not understand from them why they made war upon each other, considering that they held no private property or sovereignty of empire and kingdoms and did not know any such thing as lust for possession, that is, pillaging or a desire to rule, which appear to me to be the causes of wars and of every disorderly act. When we requested them to state the cause, they did not know how to give any other cause than that this curse upon them began in ancient times and they sought to avenge the deaths of their forefathers”* (italics mine).
The world. Today.
*John Carey, Ed. Eyewitness to History. Avon Books. 1987. (Originally published in Great Britain as The Faber Book of Reportage)
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