“Wow,” Sandra exclaimed. “This was built before our country was even discovered.”
“Yes it was,” answered Sandra’s mother. “A lot of structures in England were built long before America was discovered. But did you know that America existed before it was discovered by Europeans?”
“But how can something exist before it’s been discovered?” Sandra asked.
“That’s an excellent question,” Sandra’s mother said. “The land existed and people who we now call ‘Native Americans’ lived there. But the Europeans thought they were uncivilized and primitive, so they didn’t really count, and then the white descendants of the Europeans nearly wiped them out.”
(100 words)
Written for the Friday Fictioneers prompt by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.
This, That, and the Other 
An impressive take.
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Thanks. I just read and commented on your take as well. Both are sad reflections on what we call “humanity.”
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So true.
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Does a place exist before people live there? The Americas were populated for tens of thousands of years before the Europeans arrived. I often wonder what would have happened if some sort of mid-Atlantic barrier prevented their arrival here. It would make an interesting premise for an alternate-history fiction story.
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It would. I’m looking forward to reading your alt-history story.
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I’ll have to find the time to write it. 😉
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And to make things worse, the Europeans wrote all the history (I’ll call it fake history)
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The victors write history, don’t they?
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If history tells us anything, yes.
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Have to disagree with you on that one Sensei. The buildings, the monuments, the archeology all write history, only if one reads.
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True, but how those buildings and monuments are interpreted is colored by the victors. Just look at what is happening today with statues commemorating the “heroes” of the Confederacy. Just imagine what you would have learned in history class had the South won the Civil War or how the Germans prevailed in World War II.
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I remember the same thing happening with European centric version of history. How many in the free world still do not know that the first flag to be flown in Nazi Germany after they were defeated, was that of the Soviets and not of Brits or the stars and the stripes.
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Count me as one who did not know that!
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That’s pretty much what happened, and it’s still the source of a lot of problems to this day.
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Yes it is. Just ask the members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North Dakota.
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Sheesh… it was so long ago, but that doesn’t detract from the notion that man was terrible then and sometimes even now… I honestly cannot comprehend how people of any era can be so cold. Even how some people are further victimizing people who have already lost so much because of Hurricane Harvey… it’s sad.
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Napoleon said, ‘History is what people have decided to agree upon.’
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And these days a lot of people don’t seem able to agree on too many things, which is why some states (red ones) tend to rewrite their history books to accommodate a very conservative view of history.
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Nice bit of history. It sounds like Sandra needs a little help with more than just history, though. Everything in this world existed before it was “discovered.” I.e., who discovered music? ☺
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Well, as they say, if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?
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This is such a interesting take on the prompt. It would start a real debate over coffee.
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Thanks. Yes, it would be interesting to discuss man’s inhumanity to his fellow man…maybe even over a few beers!
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I really enjoyed this take. It is so true. Man seems to feel the need to conquer. Makes you wonder… they say all the natives from all over come from the same main genes… who went where first?
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Thanks. Yes, it’s a sad commentary that there is such a driving need to dominate others that it takes away our humanity.
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Nicely remembered. So it’s all the Europeans’ fault. I never think of Americans as really just Europeans.
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Today, the US is a melting pot with people from all over the globe. But back then, America was “discovered” by, and settled by, Europeans. Most of those involved in the slaughter of Native Americans were those original European settlers or their direct descendants.
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Very true, and yet, many Americans say that our nation has never practiced genocide. Right. Thank you for this excellent window into reality. Aho!
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Americans don’t believe that we were guilty of genocide because that’s what our history books and teachers taught us. The “Indians” were savages and uncivilized and didn’t really count as people. Between the slaughter of Native Americans and slavery (and the internment of Japanese Americans during WW-II), America has a rather checkered past.
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Nice take on the picture.
Click Here to see what Mrs. Dash Says
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Thank you.
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And so goes the history of nations and civilizations. The record of man’s inhumanity to man.
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Indeed.
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Sadly, that has happened all over the world, and religion played a major part in it, too. Good, thought-provoking story.
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Yes, countless deaths have been perpetrated by the so called religious purists in the name of God.
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