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A lot of cities in North America have been continuously inhabited for thousands of years. Spanish Missions are a pretty good proxy for native American population centers in the southwest. They were built next to existing settlements as their only purpose was to convert the locals. These native American settlements were never abandoned or conquered. They were integrated into the Spanish Empire, then Mexico, then the US. |
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Fair point, I hadn't really considered the former Spanish-controlled parts of the US when I wrote that. But yes, Spanish settlements were much more commonly built upon existing pre-Colombian ones; versus the British & French who preferred to build their own towns & forts separate from those of the natives'. The lasting effects of those competing forms of colonization can also be seen in other ways - the most visible today probably being the legacy of largely Mestizo populations of Central America versus the mostly European/generally single-race populations of North America. |
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I don't know what the history of every last settlement is but to say that Spain didn't conquer North American cities is just wrong revisionist history. They absolutely took over and raped Mexico City for example. |
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No doubt the Spanish were brutal in Central and South America, but I'm not aware of anything on that scale happening in North America in the southwest, nothing even close to it. Maybe they deliberately took a softer approach up north after the bloody Aztec conquest? Or maybe these natives were more chill compared to their hotheaded Aztec counterparts? For whatever reason the Spanish led with their missionaries up north. |
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No, Mexico City was quite literally built on the ruins of the city the Spanish had just conquered. It's early inhabitants as well were a mix of Spaniards and Aztecs (obviously the latter being a largely subservient class). Tenochtitlan became Mexico City. New Amsterdam was a brand new city built around a fort, populated by European settlers. That there were Lenape towns nearby (which I believe would have all been vacated upon the Dutch purchase of the island?) does not make them the precursor to New York City. Pretty well all of the populated regions of North America have been continually inhabited for tens of thousands of years, and having modern roads taking the route of indigenous trails & trading routes are not an uncommon feature in our cities. That however, is still a separate thing from when the actual present-day cities were founded. It's no different from the cities of antiquity we're talking about here. The Damascus region for example had been inhabited for thousands of years before the city was founded sometime around 2000 BCE. But we consider the continuous timeline of the city as having began 4000-5000 years ago; not upon the arrival of agricultural settlements to its general vicinity 11,000 years ago. |
One of the main reasons why the Spanish tended to build on former Indigenous cities and the English didn't is the Spanish occupied their territory prior to or concurrently to the plagues which wiped out 90%+ of the native population. In contrast the British and other groups didn't really start settling eastern North America until well after the population collapse. Indeed, earlier attempts to settle North America (where Europeans had been fishing for generations) arguably largely failed because native populations were large enough to forcibly relocate any Europeans, and the land wasn't valuable enough for the Europeans to send a full-on occupying army.
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There's a continuity in the urban history between Tenochtitlan and Mexico City. The Spaniards first arrived in the Aztec city, and attempted to occupy and gain influence over it through the existing ruler. They then lay siege to it, conquered it, renamed it Mexico and started building their own buildings on the ruins of those that were destroyed. The street grid in the centre of the city was established by the Aztec, Catholic churches were built to replace temples, etc. It's been continuously inhabited as a city, in the exact same location since 1325. In the case of Manhattan, or other North American cities that were built on or near the sites of former indigenous settlements, they lack that same sense of continuity. The Iroquois towns of Teiaiagon and Ganatsekwyagon aren't what became Toronto, for example - nor was the French-founded Fort Rouillé. Today's Toronto was founded as the town of York, by the British. They were completely separate settlements who's long-abandoned sites were eventually swallowed up by Toronto's sprawl. |
the palatine hill in rome has probably been inhabited since the ice ages. 10,000 years ago you would have found neolithic huts with ppl making pottery and venus figurines
same for the acropolis in athens, and the cademiea in thebes and yes, mexico city was the site of the capital of a large empire (albeit one that lacked true writing and the wheel, 5000 years after these had been invented inthe middle east), not a bunch of primitive huts like Manhattan pre-settlement or whereever else in North America. Tenochtitlan https://www.so-rummet.se/sites/defau...an_marknad.jpg Manhattan http://i.imgur.com/koZqhIC.jpg?2 |
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It does happen in Miami that highrise construction projects get held up do to archeological finds/digs.. If you ever stay at the Marriott Marquis in Downtown, you are on top of a large Indian burial ground that was built over https://www.foxnews.com/story/indian...vered-in-miami |
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The Clovis Culture built significant structures all over America. Most of it was bulldozed down, cleared out for agriculture. Imagine all of the settlements that we have no knowledge of and that are now submerged from rapid sea level rise from Global Warming thousands of years ago. |
I would count Mexico City as a continuation of Aztec Tenochtitlan. The ruling class changed completely, but a lot of the background culture remained.
Would you consider the current Alexandria in Egypt as dating only to the Arab Conquest? Or does Ancient Greek Alexandria flow into Arabic Alexandria? There too you had a huge change of religion and language, and a replacement of the ruling elite. Not quite as instantaneous as in Mexico City, but still. |
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I think in South America it's a little different, and somewhere between the U.S. and Mexico, depending on the level of indigenous background. Argentina, Chile and Uruguay would be most like U.S./Canada "clean slate" with "history" begun with European exploration. |
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heraklion/Knossos , Greece is probably the oldest continously inhabited city in europe
100,000 people in 1700 BC Quote:
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