Native Americans knew something that is blind to society.

Right, but DNA disagrees with you. For someone to say they are taino would be the same as an African american saying he was Cherokee because his g,g,g,g,g,g grandmother was Cherokee...

www.theventureonline.com...

Yes there is lineage there, but pure taino people have not existed for some time.

P.S. I'm actually interested because my wife I PR and claims Taino ancestry. Is there some other DNA info that shows modern taino heritage?

a reply to:
Kashai

Edit: I'll take this to PM.

a reply to: raymundoko

Juan Carlos Martínez Cruzado is Professor of Genetics at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus. We invited him to talk to us about hisresearch project, funded by the National Science Foundation, to determine the continental origin of the mtDNA of Puerto Ricans--a project spurred by the surprise finding of a much larger-than-expected number of Puerto Ricans testing positive for Amerindian ancestry.

This link is from the web site. Look for "Document 7" about half way down the site.

Beyond that of course are the traditions, accounts and cultural education. Specific to the tribe and going back quite a while.

I wrote a long reply and lost it

In short there never was a 10 commandments among Native Americans (at least not until someone wrote them and put them on a web page). First Nations people fought wars, committed crimes, misused the environment, practiced slavery and torture and they even had disease.

While what you wrote is true to some degree I feel it's romanticizing the Native Americans.
My point being putting them on a pedestal isn't learning, but idolizing.
Who they really were and are is plenty good enough, worth learning from even emulating the better parts of.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

They "misused" the environment did they? I assume you're going to verify that....

a reply to: SpeakerofTruth

Isn't it common knowledge?

smithsonianscience.org...

They also pit mined for copper.

I wouldn't say Native American werent the most virtuous of peoples, but then again who is? They are probably up there when it comes to affecting as little as possible and respecting it.

From what I recall, they heavily believed in conservation of the gifts that the wildlife would offer them. Any animal that got hunted not only had it meats taken and eaten. They used everything from the animals they hunted, from the bones to be used as tools or ornaments, to the fats from the animals. Also, they probably careful to only hunt certain amount of the animals so that they would be allowed to breed and reproduce more.

If anything, they probably were better practitioners of the laws of conservation then most scientists. It all physics really, every action has an opposite reaction.
Wether its the next moment, or a thousand year down the road.

a reply to: Specimen

Not true about only killing what they needed. A common hunting practice was to herd animals off cliffs and basically mass kill them. Then they would go and carry what they could. They'd return for skins but most of the meat would rot.

Note that natives relied more on an agrarian method than hunter/gatherer methods well before anyone "discovered" the new world.