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From: ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Building a brain
Message-ID: <2569@munnari.oz.au>
Date: 29 Oct 89 08:19:24 GMT
References: <14079@well.UUCP> <10175@venera.isi.edu> <246@carmine9.UUCP> <659@visdc.UUCP>
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In article <659@visdc.UUCP>, jiii@visdc.UUCP (John E Van Deusen III) writes:
> Contact with vastly superior cultures, take
> for instance the landing of Cortez in Mexico, has always had the effect
> of destroying certain central societal myths held by the inferior
> culture.

This is a tired old legend.  It happens not to be true.
It wasn't contact with a superior culture that did the damage in Mexico,
it was contact with new DISEASES.
It wasn't contact with a superior culture that did the Tasmanians in,
it was contact with BULLETS.

If I recall the figures correctly, the native population of Central and
South America went from a couple of hundred million to a few tens of
millions in less than a century.  It's hard to keep _any_ aspect of a
culture going when people are dying off like that.  Contact with an
obviously inferior culture will destroy a superior culture if the
people from the inferior culture bring the right diseases.