INSTEAD OF 1619, TEACH 33

 

INSTEAD OF 1619, TEACH 33. The Americas in 33AD was all hunter-gathers except for a few in Peru experimenting with potatoes and llamas agriculture.  Agriculture allows division of labor, diversified food and food storage.  Hunter societies attain less than 4 people per square mile.  Ag allows hundreds. But America had no cereal grains or lowland animals.  In 33 AD China, the Han Chinese had found wheat and rice culture 2000 years before with chickens and hogs, and swept over most of eastern Asia, genociding the hunters, as is often the case. Ancestor worship and philosophies were the religious practice.  People have unknowns—disease, crop failure, weather, war, death—that leads them to superstitious beliefs in gods, trolls, spells, as a way to explain the unexplainable. India, by 33AD had a pantheon of gods and agriculture.  West African Bantus had just discovered agriculture, were spreading all over the continent killing off most of the other 5 indigenous races. But their only carbs came from sugar cane.  Syrupy cane fields were thick with birds and insects, especially mosquitos bearing deadly disease. Life expectancy for cane workers was only early twenties.  So they were engaged in constant warfare and slave capture to get someone to do the dirty work. Rome & Egypt had lots of slavery and gods, in the following 300 years the slaves got free--not by revolt but by Christian faith.

            Christianity is simple. The Living God comes to you in your miserable life.  Trust Him and Grace grabs you.  Then you are surprised to find God’s Spirit working around you, even within you.  And it dawns on you that you have something nobody can take from you. Slave you may still be, but free as a child of the Almighty God.  This is the simple thing that is being lost in modern America and Europe.  It is why politics, science and government are being sought to fill the unknowns. Which works about as well as the Post Office and 18^th century bleeding therapy of “bad blood”. 

            By 400 AD Western Roman Empire had been overrun by barbaric tribes, lost most education, cities destroyed, familes destroyed. The Tang Dynasty in China had run its course.  251 rulers in 400+ years and some of the bloodiest successions in history.  Then warlords. In the Americas, Mayas were emerging who had periodic famines and so had to perform lots of human sacrifices to placate angry gods.  

            By 1500, Europe had come through a long Dark Age, then the Back Death.  Rulers were seldom good family men, almost all had numerous mistresses and numerous bastard heirs vying for succession. But monks had by this time done practical experiments in a fledgling science/engineering.  Banking, accounting, mathematics had arisen.  And moveable type had been invented to print on paper.  But the Christian church had fallen into bad practices and doctrines and was ripe for Reformation. Sanitation was horrid. Life span was 30 years, less than when Rome ruled. Europeans were backwards compared to the Middle East, India or China.  Islam had nearly conquered Europe, turned back by “not worth it” as much as battles.  India had invented algebra and “Arabic” numbering and was half Muslim.  China’s Ming Dynasty was easily the strongest kingdom on earth. Native Ameicans in Mexico had cornered the market on obsidian, used to make super knives, and rode their success to establish the Aztec empire.  Incas had just conquered and gathered together kingdoms of the Andes. Yet Europe was doing things the others weren't.  Monastic women were being educated.  Universities were established. The town clock became common. And everywhere were free peasants.

            But the Reformation and Arab-Turkish blockage of trade to India, and fear that the Turks would conquer all of Europe caused tiny Portugal to sail the seas looking for safe islands to colonize ahead of the onslaught of Islam. Their success, even in going to India, caused Spain to compete.  Columbus found America and like the rest of the Spanish was a terrible governor.  They enticed the natives into serfdom with beef, demanded they convert, destroyed native culture.  Meanwhile, France and England fished the Grand Banks and France was quick to find fur trading and trapping good in Quebec. Trouble was, few wanted to emigrate to that cold country and the colony languished. Arcadia was equally poor.  As the Spanish encroached in Florida, the English wanted colonies but the crown had no money. So they relied on proprietors to fund fortune-hunters. Finally Jamestown was founded and tobacco found as a cash crop.  But it was the Protestant controversy forcing out Calvinists that caused the Pilgrims to sail.  Storms got them off course and they landed in Massachusetts.  Peacefully trading furs and fishing, this group of redneck farmers founded the first truly successful, self-governing colony.  In 1620 they were a tiny minority.  Their guns were no match for rapid-firing bows and arrows. But a revolution had begun in Northern Europe.  The Protestant system on belief spawned eagerness for discovery in nature.  Astronomy, microscopes, anatomy and blood circulation, mining, farming techniques, weaving, chemistry and physics all exploded in this new thing called science.  The industrial revolution stormed England. Stiff keel-hulled vessels provided transport on the high seas. From 1571, when Brahe disproved the old medieval solar system until the early 1700s flintlock rifles, technology exploded. 

            And then there was free land.  The longing of serfs in England to have their own plot of land and be free was overwhelming.  If the Pilgrims could do it, anyone could.  And since New England had barely 1 person per square mile, the land looked empty and free for the taking.  Here are best demographic historian numbers.  Continental USA area had about 1.5 million natives over 3 million square miles in 1750. Pre-Colombian population, prior to Eurasian diseases, was about 5 million. 2/3 of the 1.5 million lived in what we call the Deep South where 3 Sisters agriculture had taken hold—corn, beans, squash all raised along with weeds together.

            The ship that brought slaves to Jamestown in 1619 was unwanted. It was storm damaged and badly in need of repair.  The boat dumped most of sick slaves when it left and Jamestown residents wrote contracts for indentured servitude with most of the Africans.  But the cold weather took an extreme toll on the Africans and by 3 years later, they had all died out except perhaps for a couple house girls.  Virginians had by that time concluded that Irish would make better tobacco workers and began immigrating them.  When Carolina colony began it had a no-slavery charter, but some Barbados slave owners invaded the low country along with slaves.  Georgia also had a no-slave charter but Carolina slave owners got Georgia land near Savannah.  Remember, people were scattered and governments were loose, so people got away with things. 

            And then George Whitefield came to Charleston and began to preach like Billy Graham.  He traveled up the east coast with his tent and in the aftermath, church attendance tripled by 1742.  Each colony had its own state church, but people were so stunned that their neighbors in another state had reacted the same way to his sermons, they began to think, “We’re one people!” and the phrase United States of America came into use. John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government  was published, and his principles--tolerance, equality, natural law, property rights, liberty, God-given rights, separation of church and state—became the ideas that Americans wanted. And where did Locke get this?  From the guy who died and rose again in 33AD.