Sublime

The Spaniards pursued the Indians with bloodhounds, like wild beasts; they sacked the New World with no more temper or compassion than a city taken by storm; but destruction must cease, and frenzy be stayed; the remnant of the Indian population which had escaped the massacre mixed with its conquerors, and adopted in the end their religion and their

Le langage de l’Homo sapiens, qui s’est développé il y a 70 000 ans, se distingue par la quantité et la qualité des informations qu’il permet de partager. Son trait le plus remarquable est que, contrairement aux autres animaux, il nous permet de dire non seulement « Attention au lion ! » mais, de plus, « Le lion est l’emblème de notre tribu ». Nous

The perception that the European settlers simply overwhelmed helpless and spiritual people, or that weak savages were brushed aside, is untrue. In fact, the Europeans defeated capable and sophisticated empire builders, as well as weaker nations. The Comanche and the Iroquois, along with the Aztecs and the Incas, had themselves built significant emp

Eventually I would become adept, like all children raised with more than one language, at code-switching, knowing instinctively when to use Gujarati and when to use English. Meanwhile Mrs. Maclean acquired pani, bhukh, haa, naa.

It’s frustrating to think of the difference that language would make. The millennia crawl by pretty bloody slowly while natural selection sifts its way obliviously through generation after generation, favouring the odd aberrant kakapo that’s a little twitchier than its contemporaries till the species as a whole finally gets the idea. It would all b

they stumbled upon a crucial detail—Indo-European

This was a significant accomplishment, as the dogs could now speak of the primates without speaking of mastery.

A coletividade humana conhece, hoje, muito mais do que os bandos antigos. Mas, no nível individual, os antigos caçadores-coletores foram o povo mais conhecedor e habilidoso da história.

Almost everyone who isn’t a Pleistocene archaeologist – that is, who is not forced to confront the evidence – simply ignores it and carries on exactly as they had before, writing as if hunter-gatherers can be assumed to have lived in a state of primordial innocence. As Christopher Boehm puts it, we seem doomed to play out an endless recycling of th