Re: GSoC 2018 Interest and Information Request

[David Kastrup]

Kieren MacMillan <address@hidden> writes:

> On Feb 18, 2018, at 3:37 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Ah, the States.  I sang the Mass in B minor in the room that Charlemagne
>> used as chapel and where he was crowned emperor half a dozen of
>> centuries before Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas.  Many
>> cities in the Old World are easily older than one or two thousand years.
>
> Ah, Europe. When I lived in British Columbia, I visited an indigenous
> village that was estimated to be about 10,000 years old.

Well, the Ruhrgebiet area where I am living has the Neandertal where
Neanderthal fossils from about 40000 years ago have been found.  But
that's sort of a distraction: the point of Charlemagne is more that he
is likely a seminal part of the history of your and my ancestors whereas
the people in that indigenous village more likely aren't and I have my
doubts many buildings are recognizably related to their original state
(the original Charlemagne chapel in Aachen is nowadays just the middle
part of the Aachen cathedral, but its principal structure is preserved
and it has been used in its principal function for quite more than a
thousand years and still is).

In that respect, local history for the large (white) majority of
U.S. citizens starts with the first settlements in the Americas, with
background for other citizens provided by slave trade coming in
comparatively shortly afterwards.  Canada has a slightly more diverse
ethnic background, Mexico significantly more so, and things vary as you
go further South.

-- 
David Kastrup