Columbus Day will be celebrated soon. Let’s stop for a minute and admit we are all guilty of societal snobbery. 
We think we are the pinnacle of history. At this moment we are riding the crest of the wave of advancement. All previous civilizations pale in comparison to our own. They weren’t as technologically savvy, as populous, didn’t have our standard of living, weren’t as educated, smart or healthy. For those reasons, they have little to contribute to our lives. Why bother learning from them when we have evolved so far past them? What can we learn from illiterate predecessors, altho our inner city schools are producing students 93% of whom are “not proficient in reading”?1 We dismiss others because they were killers of their own, offering up human sacrifices by the thousands to fuel the sun god so life on earth would continue.2 We are far too humane to engage in such practices . . . unless a fetus inconveniences us. So we kill 21% of the babies conceived in the U.S.3 And a leading nation becomes so proficient in forcibly preventing or ending its pregnancies that it now faces a demographic crisis.4
After all, if Europeans took for their own a continent sparsely populated with primitive, warring hunters and gatherers, who could fault them? They populated the continent with progressive, educated, peace-loving people, right?
But what if our picture of pre-European inhabitants is skewed? What if they weren’t as backward as we assume? What if we aren’t as progressive as we imagine? What if they had large, populous, and advanced cultures before the arrival of Columbus? What if European-borne disease ravaged their cities and reduced them to little more than refugees in their own land immediately before Conquistadores and Pilgrims arrived to easily take over? What if the most centralized and advanced of the cultures were the easiest targets for pandemics? What if Europeans gained the upper hand more by ‘luck’ than brains?
I’m not going to attempt a scholarly dissertation here. I’m just trying to stimulate us to reconsider our arrogant attitude about our own culture and time. We aren’t the ‘end all’ of world history. (Or maybe we are.) We aren’t immune from a sudden catastrophe that could put an end to our civilization as we know it.
I want to walk in humility, lauding the accomplishments of those who have gone before and learning to avoid their mistakes, keeping in mind that my privileged life isn’t guaranteed. I admire the genius of the Inka in inventing the zero but eschew their habit of killing their siblings who may be rivals for the throne. As I do the many European royals who did the same. I marvel at the great city of the Mexica peoples which received clean water from the mountains via aqueducts and was built on artificial islands in a lake. But I recoil from their 3,000-4,000 yearly human sacrifices. Yet their advanced civilization of possibly 25 million souls was reduced to 1 million in 85 years by epidemics of smallpox, measles, and viruses. Advancement doesn’t guarantee safety. Sigh.
“Human pride will be brought down, and human arrogance will be humbled. Only the Lord will be exalted on that day of judgment.” Isaiah 2:11
“For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world.” I John 2:16
For further reading:
“1491” by Charles Mann. Random House, 2006
Footnotes
2. Mann, Charles. 1491, pg 133 “3,000-4,000 human sacrifices per year”. But the population of the Mexica may have been 30 million at the time.
3. http://www.operationrescue.org/about-abortion/abortions-in-america/ We kill 21% of our conceptions.
4. http://cnsnews.com/commentary/eric-metaxas/chinas-looming-demographic-crisis-guns-or-canes-0