https://blog.georgefabish.com/tags/david_stannard/ Recent content in David_stannard on George's Blog Hugo en-US Sun, 25 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.georgefabish.com/reviews/american-holocaust-the-conquest-of-the-new-world/ Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:12 -0500 https://blog.georgefabish.com/reviews/american-holocaust-the-conquest-of-the-new-world/ <p>In this book David Stannard sets out to explain how the conquest of the Americas was the worst genocide in history. This book tells the story of pre-America in a much different light than how our history book explained it. Full of new information and insights overturning old, preconceived notions. For example, many thought that the population of both north and south America was around 20ish million pre-Columbus. New figures put that number at closer to 100 million. In addition, the common theory is that homo sapiens crossed into America via a now submerged land bridge that connects Asia and Alaska. Initially thinking was that this would put people in the Americas around 12,000BC, but newer evidence dates some artifacts in Mexico to 20,000 years prior to that. Which means there were already civilizations in place prior to the agricultural revolution. This and many more interesting facts are found in this overall depressing book. I will say the author is high atop his horse as he lays out all the atrocities committed by the conquistadors and early American settlers. Overall seeming to show a complete lack of understanding of human nature in a given context. This led to the writing style being unnecessarily preachy at times. The overall value and interest of the book made up for this though so I would still recommend it. It is easy to judge the past instead of learning from it.</p>