Wow, this map fucking sucks at describing native american regions.
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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In the bottom left it shows the current year in the Aztec calendar, presumably cut off and the "current year" in the Gregorian calendar at 2015 AD. I'm 95% sure this is just some guy's alt history map, especially considering how many wack ass names some of these places have
It's definitely an alternate history map, and I hope it's an accurate potential map of an uncolonized North America if it's cultures grew to nation state sizes.
I'm European so I'm not meaning to offend, but there's something very interesting to me try to visualise how America could have grown without colonisation, and perhaps this is through my European lense but I'd imagine borders would move and groups would swallow eachother up. The scale of countries on this map is pretty comparable to what we see in Europe and Asia, but I don't know enough about America to know if this is respectful to the placement and potential of Native American groups (e.g I think I've read before the the Comanche are a successful seperation from the Shoshone that was largely due to their expansion due to horses, which would have happened very differently sans colonisation), and I'm not even sure if this map follows natural borders like mountains and rivers, largely because I'm just not that familiar with America.
this map is complete nonsense because some of these groups only exist as a result of interactions with europeans, and even some of the other ones are from completely different places before europeans came in.
The Aztec empire being the dominant force on the continent could be a very unfortunate situation for everyone living there.
They were so unpopular with every surrounding nation (because of all the murdering and kidnapping and human sacrificing) that when the Spanish showed up, the vast vast majority of the soldiers that fought against the Aztecs were from the local peoples.
Could you point me to where I could better learn about these regions then? No offense, I'm just actually curious now.
This one seems most accurate: https://native-land.ca/
OP's map relies a lot more on Western notions of nations and land ownership than you would have found for many indigenous tribes.
Very interesting, thank you! They also have an app which is nice.
This is an incredible map!
Nice. Very responsive on mobile too which is nice.
It does, but it's also like 1000x more info than the average person knows
The First Peoples of North America definitely didn't have such sharp, well defined border lines. It's not as of they had a bunch of written treaties establishing hard borders.
This is a conceptual alternate history map of modern day North America without colonisation. It's still reasonably inaccurate of course but it's not meant to accurately portray the borders of a pre-colonised North America.
Sioux is a name given by the colonizers. It's not just the borders.
iirc its a word for enemy, IE the colonists encountered a rival tribe, and never cared to correct their mistake.
The Wikipedia says it comes from a French misspelling of an indigenous word that could be used to describe the people. So it might be a little less offensive than that, but still not great.
In English we use Norse meaning northern people, unsurprisingly it is the word originally used to describe them by people south of them. Those people now called Germans get their name from ceaser when he invaded from Italy, named by the Greeks, who in turn derive their modern name from the Romans because they called themselves Hellanes... Spain gets it's name probably because it was located near a rabbit on a Roman coin... They also named Britain of course and all of them would be the ones going to the new world and naming things there
It's weird but it's pretty common
If they'd endured as independent groups into the 21st century without being colonised by Europeans, as the map shows, they would almost certainly have developed defined borders.
Why? Europe had firm (occasionally changing) boarders for centuries before the sixteenth century, do you think they were simply behind on an inevitable development or that contact with the rest of the world would necessitate their development?
I think it's interesting to try and imagine situations where firm boarders aren't established. In such a situation it's interesting to consider what rules could or would exist regarding immigration and outsider communities.
am i missing something or is there no meme?
I think they are referring to the British settlements that led to modern America..?
The illegal immigrants in this case would be European settlers and the added text makes the meme, I think. I had to double take on this one as well.
yeah, but i just dont really understand the map. is it just a map showing where the native population lived before colonization or is there an actual joke in there?
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Reject national identities, return to soft border cultural cliques
Huron Supremacy? The Jason Bourne series really went off track after the 3rd movie.
The British Colombia part of the map is very inaccurate. Not sure about the rest. Appreciate the sentiment though.
Also Sioux isn't a native name, it was given to the Lakota people and others by the French colonizers.
Haida Gwaii taking up the entire coast and interior yet isn't even in the map gave me a chuckle.
Yeah honestly there was something like 500+ tribes before the colonization, and I think most of them migratory, so there would definitely be a much rougher appearance to a more accurate map.
Blatant coast Salish erasure!
Why are the Hopi drawn in Texas? They were/are in current northern Arizona. Texas had Tawakoni, Wichita, Kickapoo and Comanche tribes.
Pretty sure North America looked different in 2015 AD.
Obviously this is 2015 AD meaning as 2015 years After Diogenes which is closer to 1500 CE or Century of Erasmus.
https://i.imgur.com/j7GOV1F.jpeg Not all NA, but some visualization of smaller areas. Not sure why most maps want to throw in modern states when we want to look at indigenous maps.
It's interesting how these lines are still pretty accurate for cultural divisions in colonial NA. At least at at quick glance.
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