Long Before the Time of Jesus, People were Doing Well in the Americas

Christianity has always been sort of stuck in the Middle East. It's as if the only important thinking, visions, dreams and written work for the entire world came from there. That thinking has such a powerful, if erroneous, power over western white people they can't let go of it.

I remember a brief conversation decades ago with a retired preacher. He traveled frequently to the Middle East and gave lectures about what he learned. In our brief conversation I must have brought up my grad school interest in the sophisticated societies in the Incas of South/Central America and my hope to travel there and learn more. He dismissed South America as an important part of human history. 

I think the preacher's dismissal of the Americas was a cultural bias influenced by his religion. Because he was taught much detail about the Middle East of the Bible he thought it was the only important place. 

We are learning more about the people who first settled the Americas--though it is more difficult because  the damp climate has destroyed most artifacts, written work and skeletons of the early periods. Stone has preserved histories, tools and some evidence. What appears is evidence of complex societies and complex religions. Their religions have been dismissed and replaced by ones, or THE one, which had more guns and spread disease. In my humble opinion, more guns/diseases does not make any religion more "right." It does make it larger.

The newest developments are indications groups of humans came to the Americas earlier that thought previously. The prevailing theory is people came here from the north after humans crossed a frozen bridge from Russia to Alaska then moved south. While originally it was thought they moved slowly to the south, eventually to what is now South America, new evidence is suggesting they moved quite rapidly.

As I have discussed here before, the success of Europeans in the Americas was not due to a superior religion, warfare techniques or organization. Had the invasion of the Americas been less successful the invading forces might have been dominated by the locals. Europeans would have come to worship the gods of natives instead of forcing natives to accept a European god. 

The biggest asset of the conquerors was disease. Native did not have resistance and Europeans did. When you see a Christian church, remember it is there because of a pandemic hit the natives.