the main problem i have with america is that nothings old as hell there. i cant be so far away from a castle it damages my aura
man people really just say stuff on here huh
Noooo haha don’t spread racist ideals and colonizer propaganda by idolizing white european aesthetics above all else and denying the life and accomplishments of native peoples on their own lands
I work in postcolonial USAmerican history (museums in New England, Revolutionary through Victorian) and I constantly find myself correcting tourists who say we “don’t have anything as old as in Europe here”
they don’t usually mean anything by it; they’re just not thinking and often get a bit embarrassed when I gently say “nothing EUROPEAN that’s that old.” but I will keep saying it until I run out of breath, if necessary
(also some pueblos are still occupied! Acoma Pueblo has been continuously occupied for 2000 years! which is incredibly cool!)
Listen, okay. (I would like to note that what I am about to say was permissible when I did it in 2000; the site has now been cordoned off because too many damn people couldn’t behave themselves when presented such a treasure.)
I have literally SAT IN THE REMAINS OF A 900-YEAR-OLD MULTIFAMILY DWELLING RIGHT HERE IN ARIZONA. It’s called Castle “A,” (yes, with the quotes, no idea why) and is part of the Montezuma Castle cliff dwellings, which actually had nothing to do with Montezuma and were occupied by the Sinagua nation between 1050 and 1400 CE.
You can’t go in anymore because of course dipshit tourists mean we can’t have nice things and people kept stealing rocks (which destabilizes the whole structure, if you’re wondering why that matters), but when I first visited the site, as long as you were being careful and respectful there were still two rooms (well—the outlines of rooms, there’s not much left but the floor and walls a brick or two high) where you could walk in, and a ranger did in fact let me do just that. So there’s a picture of me, somewhere on a CD-ROM and probably lost forever at this point because the early 2000s were Like That, sitting on the floor of Castle “A” next to a stone used for grinding masa flour. In Arizona. In America.
And it’s not even the oldest Native structure in America. It’s not even the oldest in Arizona. It’s not even the oldest IN THAT SPECIFIC STATE PARK. The oldest Native structure in the Montezuma Castle National Monument park is an irrigation canal that flows out of Montezuma Well and was built circa 700 CE, and while parts have had to be reinforced due to, you know, 1300 years of flowing water, it is indeed still fully functional today.
Incidentally, the oldest Native-made structure in the United States is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It’s a ceremonial (we think) mound called Mound B, which was built up over a couple of millennia and is (depending which part of the mound we’re talking about) 11,000 to 8200 years old. Its companion mound, Mound A, is about 7500 years old.
Stonehenge has an oldest-possible date of about five thousand years ago.
The Step Pyramid is about 4700 years old.
The Parthenon is 2500 years old.
The oldest known town ruins in Europe are a site called Solnitsata, in Bulgaria, and they’re about 7500 years old.
The oldest-known “we think it was a temple probably, we’re not really sure” in all of Eurasia is Göbekli Tepe, in Turkey, which is believed to have been built over the course of several centuries sometime between 9500 and 7500 BCE.
In other words, Native American ceremonial architecture by a tribe so old we don’t actually know who they were IS OLDER THAN ANY STRUCTURE IN EUROPE.
I feel like practicing any skill would be way more fun if I could have a lil level increase thing that pops up in front of me every time I do good like in Skyrim
“Push ups increased to level 5”
“Writing dialogue increased to level 37”
“Coping mechanisms (healthy) increased to level 18”
- already owns $200 sewing machine, $100 dress form, full supply of thread/haberdashery
“You can recreate your favorite fast food menu items at home for less money and more flavor,” says the person with $3k in Le Creuset cookware, six professional kitchen appliances, living in the heart of a large city with ample grocery selection, sponsored by Hello Fresh and Skillshare.
“You can cook this full course meal for less than five dollars!” says the person who acts like you can buy $0.001 worth of salt, $0.05 worth of flour, and $1.27 worth of pork.
I’m sorry @chigrima but this just passed peer review:
fun fact about me: When I was 6 years old I sent so much hate mail to the president (the second Bush) that the mail carrier had to tell my mom I needed to stop before we got FBI’d
I was COMPLETELY unaware of the US political scene or why the adults in my life hated Bush, but I knew I hated him because he let people shoot wolves from helicopters and that’s mean and shitty
I also had a poor grasp on how stamps worked, so given that I wasn’t allowed to continually throw money away by putting stamps on my presidential hate mail, a lot of the times I just drew squares with little pictures inside on the corner.
Love, love, love reading more proof that everyone should encourage the children in their lives to write to elected officials–it teaches them about citizenship and can also be very funny.
When I taught second grade, one of the options for students who had finished their work was to write a letter to the president. I would send all of the letters in a big envelope at the end of every month.
Watching my students get more and more frustrated with him (and concerned about his wellbeing) was not the result I’d hoped for when I came up with the idea, but it was kind of hilarious.
See, Obama had a standard packet with information and activities about his dog he’d send in response to letters from very young citizens…and of course his office sent one back to our class every single time we sent mail.
So eventually all of the letters looked something like this:
Dear President Obama,
I am writing about the environment. I am sad that the Great Barrier Reef is hurt. Also the Amazon Rainforest. Can you help? PLEASE DON’T WRITE BACK TO TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DOG AGAIN. WE ALREADY KNOW ALL ABOUT BO. WE COMPLETED THE MAZE AND COLORED HIM IN. It is good that you love your pet a lot. But try to remember the environment. It is also important.
Loving this post, not least because it reminded me of this email and attachment that my kid’s 5th grade teacher sent us last November.
Context: we are Canadian, our provincial government is currently conservative and the CUPE strike was for teachers and support staff at an adjacent school board that didn’t affect my kid’s school but was talked about with them in the current events/being active in your community sense.
This is the email I opened:
and this was the attachment:
I haven’t thought about this for months, so thank you for inadvertently reminding me it existed so I could lose my shit laughing about it all over again!
And Texas has made these fantastic letters illegal in school.
