(This article is for a research project in Vietnam I am currently working on. The project is titled Vishnu in the Land of the Blue Dragon and examines the survival of Hindu temples in the country following the end of the Vietnam War and reunification of North and South Vietnam. If you would like to donate to the project, please click here.)

Looking at Vietnam on a map juxtaposed against the other countries of Southeast Asia gives one an impression of a country hard-won through determination and tenacity. Indeed, in many ways it looks as though the country is clinging to mainland Southeast Asia anchored on both ends with a narrow tether holding the two population centers of the north and south together. And in many ways the country’s history reflects its people’s tenacious grip on territory carved out through centuries of fighting, occupation, and resistance to outside powers.

 The Chinese have always had a significant influence over Vietnam both culturally and demographically. In the second century BC, the Ch’in dynasty united China and succeeded in pacifying its other smaller states (Buttinger 1958:78). However, the kingdom was not to last long and within its wake various military commanders sought to establish their own kingdoms within their sphere of military influence. The kingdom of Nam Viêt (‘southern country of the Viet’) was one such kingdom originally founded by the Chinese warlord Triêu Đa in 207 BC but was eventually consumed by conquering armies of the new Han dynasty in China by 111 BC (Tucker 1999:6). Over the next thousand years Nam Viêt would reflect China in its political institutions while the Chinese language and Confucianism became the official means of public expression (ibid 6-7).

The Viet people, long known for their resistance to outside influence, attempted to establish their sovereignty in the famous revolt by the Trung sisters in 39 AD (Tucker 1999:7). An independent state was short-lived, however, as it was quickly reconquered by returning Chinese armies. Over the next millennium revolts would occur challenging Chinese hegemony and by 938 AD Ngô Quyên, son-in-law of Dúóng Đinh Nghê (a powerful ruler in the southern area of present-day Hà Trung and Thanh Hóa provinces), successfully threw off the yoke of domination establishing an independent Vietnamese state once again (ibid 9-10). Over the next century civil strife remained until the founding of the Ly dynasty, the first of the great Vietnamese dynasties, which maintained its rule until the beginning of the thirteenth century. While Chinese cultural influence remained ingrained in both politics and Confucian oriented education the Viet people on the local level still reflected their own traditions distinct from its northern neighbor.

The next major challenge for Vietnam came from the Mongols. The Tran dynasty, successor to the Ly, successfully repelled the invaders in the thirteenth century driving Kublai Khan’s forces back across the northern border (SarDesai 1992:22-23). Yet, in 1407 as China once again grew in strength under the Ming dynasty it began reconquering Vietnamese territory in the north just as Vietnam was gaining territory in the south. China’s conquest was short lived, however, and within two decades they were defeated after a rebellion led by the rebel leader Le Loi ushering in the Le dynasty (ibid 25).

The decline of the great Angkor Empire in Cambodia at this time coincided with Vietnam’s rise to power. The Vietnamese continued their territorial expansion first by defeating the kingdom of Champa in what is today central Vietnam in the fifteenth century. The Chams had long been a source of conflict for both the Vietnamese and Khmers but after the fall of their capital in Da Nang the kingdom slowly disappeared amid the growth of Vietnam and slow decline of Angkor (SarDesai 1992:6, 25).

While still fending off China to the north, by the sixteenth century the Le royal court was split between two factions, the Trinh and Nguyen clans in the north and south respectively. After reaching a military stalemate a peace was negotiated by the Chinese resulting in what has been called the ‘Small Wall of Vietnam’ constructed across the Annam Mountains to the ocean near Dung Hoi close to the 17th parallel; the same dividing line eventually reached under the Geneva Agreement of 1954 that created North and South Vietnam (ibid 27-28).

What followed for Vietnam was its slow march towards the territories south of Da Nang dubbed Cochin-China by the French, part of the historic lands of Cambodia still referred to as “Kampuchea Krom” or “Southern Cambodia” by Khmers today. Its slow occupation by the Vietnamese through the seventeenth century and its transfer to Vietnam by France in 1949 is still a source of contempt for Cambodians. Ethnic Khmers living within Kampuchea Krom still lack minority recognition by the Vietnamese government and continue to undergo intimidation and oppression.

Khmer Krom that fled to Cambodia prior to the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975 were often murdered by Khmer Rouge forces as they were viewed as ‘impure’ through their association with the Vietnamese summed up in the phrase “Khmer bodies with Vietnamese minds” (Kiernan 1996:3; see also Greenfield and Chirot 1994:121; Andreopoulos, ed. 1994:193, 198). The loss of the territory is particularly poignant for Cambodia given that the first of its three great kingdoms, Funan, was situated within the region near the Mekong Delta. Cambodia was almost nothing more than a vassal state at this point and by the nineteenth century it briefly came under Vietnamese occupation before driving the them out only to become a protectorate of the French in 1863 (Chandler 2000:99,140).

Many historians and Southeast Asian experts agree that if it were not for French intervention within the Cambodian royal court and establishment of a protectorate, Cambodia would not likely exist today. Instead it would have gone the way of the extinguished kingdom of Champa with Thailand and Vietnam occupying the annexed lands of a once mighty empire. The French mission in Cambodia was not so much for the occupation of new territories as it was for creating a buffer against an expanding Thailand and British influence in the region. While European colonization is viewed with disdain by many today, it is an ironic twist of history that France’s half-hearted colonization of Cambodia (compared to the substantial efforts they employed in Vietnam) actually pulled the kingdom back from the brink of extinction and even regained territories previously lost to the Thais.

Although the Le dynasty experienced peasant revolts and challenges to its power by feudal lords, it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that Vietnam would be briefly reunited again by a revolt led by the Tay Son brothers (Buttinger 1958:175-176). The Nguyen clan in the south seized upon the opportunity to establish its own dynasty. After defeating the Tay Son armies at the turn of the nineteenth century the Nguyen dynasty was formed with the help of the French missionary Pierre Pigneau de Behaine (ibid 233-238). However, any hope by the French of exerting influence over the court failed to materialize and after reports of persecution of Catholic converts and missionaries a French force was sent to colonize the kingdom.

By 1862 the French had secured parts of Cochin China in the south surrounding the Mekong Delta where they would later attack the north and force the Vietnamese to accept its own protectorate (ibid 349-351). The colonial experiences of Cambodia and Vietnam differed dramatically in many ways the most notable of which was the massive funding for infrastructure and industry Vietnam received compared to its northern neighbor. Even so, French investment in the country failed to take into account the dramatic changes colonial administrations were bringing to Vietnamese society.

Unlike the Khmers, the Vietnamese traditionally lived in defined communes with distinct borders, each of which had councils of notables and hierarchical social systems defining one’s – and one’s family – place in it. A key to this social system was the role of mandarins. Powerful, well-educated, and sanctified by the Vietnamese royal court, mandarins were charged with everything from judging cases to overseeing taxation. The dismantling of the mandarinal system and the retreat of mandarins from participation in the French colonial administration created a social vacuum and an end to a system of traditions and standards while disrupting the bonds which held much of Vietnamese society together (Osborne 1997).

While the prohibitively high taxes and working conditions in factories instituted by the French colonial administration early on may have catalyzed resistance among Vietnamese nationalists, it was not until the 1920s that the movement became particularly strong. By 1930 a former teacher, cook, and laborer named Ho Chi Minh formed the revolutionary Indochinese Communist Party (Duiker 1995:42). Yet, it was not until WWII and Japan’s own military expansion that the Communists were able build enough support to launch future uprisings (ibid 44). The Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh, commonly known as the Vietminh, did so in August of 1945 establishing a republic in Hanoi. After being driven out by the French and failing to reach a settlement, war broke out between the two sides in December of the following year (ibid 48).

After a protracted guerilla campaign the French were finally defeated at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The battle was a decisive defeat for the French who up until that time had made successful advances against the Communists. The French were heavily supplied with US military and economic support during the war effort in fear of a ‘domino effect’ within the region with one country after another falling to Communist rule (Chomsky 1989:84, 87). The immediate effect, however, was to bring an end to France’s colonies. In 1954 Vietnam was split along the seventeenth parallel with the Vietminh to the north and France and its Vietnamese allies to the south.

The battle had a further result: the Vietminh had proven to be a viable fighting force and gained legitimacy in the eyes of fellow Communists in neighboring countries. They also demonstrated to the West that traditional tactics learned during WWII would need to be altered to fight an enemy that could remain faceless and exist within towns and villages as fifth columnists or hidden within the rugged jungles where they had honed their fighting techniques. The lessons of the battle, indeed, the eight year struggle, would be critical to the Communists in future conflicts with the US and its allies.

The US led war against North Vietnam and Viet Cong guerilla forces in South Vietnam would become a truly regional war dragging Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and China by proxy into the conflict. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s the Sangkum government of Prince Sihanouk acquiesced while the Republic of Cambodia government of General Lon Nol authorized and aided the US bombing campaign in the eastern and southern provinces of Cambodia against Vietnamese Communists as well as Cambodia’s own internal enemies (Kirk 1974; Hanhimäki 2004:71; Kimball 1998:132; Shawcross 1979:28, 33).

One of the sadder chapters of the Vietnam War, the bombing campaign by the US is often blamed for creating support for the Khmer Rouge as well as killing tens of thousands of people (but nowhere near the hundreds of thousands of people erroneously reported by guidebooks and would-be commentators). While it did undoubtedly drive some to join the Khmer Rouge, what is generally not considered by many critics of the US is the major role successive Cambodian governments played in the bombings as well as the fact that Khmer Communists had been routinely rounded up and summarily executed even prior to Independence from France in 1953. Indeed, the real catalyst for many joining the Khmer Rouge was not necessarily out of hatred for the so-called US imperialists but out of decades, if not centuries, of political and economic oppression culminating in the heavy-handed tactics late 20^th century governments.

After overthrowing Prince Sihanouk in 1970, General Lon Nol’s government continued its fight against Khmer and Vietnamese Communists eventually invoking Theravada Buddhism as a rallying point in his ‘holy war’ against the latter which also led to the widespread massacre of ethnic Vietnamese (Ayers 2000:73; Chandler 1991:198). By 1975 Lon Nol’s government was overthrown leading to almost four years of concentration-like conditions under the Khmer Rouge.

In 1975 the North Vietnamese, after reaching a ceasefire with South Vietnam, resumed fighting eventually toppling the South Vietnamese government and reuniting the country once again under the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year (Tucker 1999:191). Although the Khmer Rouge were aided by the North Vietnamese Communists, the ancient tensions between Khmers and the Vietnamese would eventually surface and sever any ideological ties they may have shared. By late 1978 the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, after rising tensions between the two Communist regimes, gave the Vietnamese an ultimatum to remove all of their troops from Cambodian territory within 24 hours or risk an all-out war. The Khmer Communists also sought their own territorial ambitions invading and briefly occupying parts of southern Vietnam in an attempt to reclaim Kampuchea Krom, a stated ambition earlier on for the Khmer Rouge (Kiernan 1996:104-105).

The entropic nature of Democratic Kampuchea and the pathological military actions within and without the country eventually led to the defection of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy and thousands of ordinary Khmers escaping from the country’s concentration-like conditions. They were formed by the Vietnamese into a fighting force which invaded alongside the Vietnamese military on Christmas day, 1978. The eventual collapse of Democratic Kampuchea occurred shortly thereafter on January seventh, 1979, as conquering Vietnamese and the Khmer liberation force entered Phnom Penh (Etcheson 1984:190-196).

Later that same year, Vietnam would enter into yet another war with China along its northern border resulting in the death of over 50,000 troops on both sides within as little as four weeks. The war was the result of deteriorating relations and a split ideologically over their respective relationships with the US and then USSR and the abolishment of special status recognition for Vietnamese-Chinese and Vietnam’s joining COMECON (the Communist equivalent of the European Common Market) as well as China’s support which it had been providing to the Khmer Rouge (SarDesai 1992:128, 130-131).

Vietnam would eventually establish around 140,000 troops in Cambodia and another 40,000 in Laos during the 1980’s but after the collapse of the Soviet Union it could no longer maintain its troops within its neighbor’s borders. Vietnam began to reform its agricultural policies while seeking to improve its image on the world stage through its policy of  After withdrawing its troops from Laos in 1988 and Cambodia in 1989 and experiencing postwar social and economic problems at home, (Tucker 1999:201-202). After establishing diplomatic relations with Europe in 1990, a peace agreement with Cambodia and China, and taking the first steps to entrance into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Vietnam began re-establishing relations with US (Morely and Nishihara 1997:5, 108, 155).

The Socialist revolution so long fought for once achieved proved to be an economic disaster. Following several years of economic dearth, in the 1980s Vietnam began to take steps towards market and political reforms. These reforms known as “Doi Moi” (literally meaning “change and newness” but generally translated as “renewal”) ushered in dynamic changes to the country and set the country on the path towards Capitalist reforms and greater global economic integration. After disengaging from military occupations in Cambodia and Laos, Vietnam began the slow process of normalizing ties with the US, Europe, and countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Since 2000 Vietnam’s economy and tourism sector have seen dramatic growth. The end of the US trade embargo in 1994 and Bilateral Trade Agreement in 2001 put Vietnam on the fast-track towards entrance into the WTO in 2007. Although today the country’s economy is still dominated by state-owned enterprises, industry continues to grow while the agricultural sector shrinks and urbanization climbs at 3% annually. As modern Vietnam moves forward into the 21^st century it steps farther away in time from the social upheavals which marked much of its history. And while the country found its final unified form under the hammer and sickle, its continuing transformation from revolutionary Socialism, to reformed Socialism, to hybrid Social-Capitalism is reshaping the foundations on which that unification was built and transforming new generations of Vietnamese separated from the antagonisms of years past.

1994    Andreopoulos, G. J., ed. Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. 

2000    Ayers, D. M. Anatomy of a Crisis: Education, Development, and the State in Cambodia, 1953-1998.University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu.

1958    Buttinger, J. The Smaller Dragon: The Political History of Vietnam. Praeger, New York.

1991 [1984]    Chandler, D. Normative Poems (Chhbab) and Precolonial Cambodian Society, in, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 15. Southeast Asia Publications, DeKalb.

2000    Chandler, D. A History of Cambodia. Westview Press, Boulder.

1989    Chomsky, N. The United States and Indochina: Far from an Aberration, in, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 21, no. 2-4, pg. 76-94. Washington, D. C.

1995    Duiker, W. J. Vietnam: Revolution in Transition. Westview Press, Boulder.

1984    Etcheson, C. The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea. Westview Press, Boulder.

1994    Greenfield, L. and D. Chirot. Nationalism and Aggression, in, Theory and Society, Feb., vol. 23, no. 1, pg. 79-130. Springer, New York.

2004.   Hanhimäki, J. M. The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

1979    Heder, S. Kampuchea’s Armed Struggle the Origins of an Independent Revolution, in, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 11, no. 1, pg. 2-23. Series of articles on World Bank and IMF, Washington, D. C.

1996    Kiernan, B. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79. 1997 Thailand and Indochina ed. Silkworm Books, Chang Mai.

1998    Kimball, J. Nixon’s Vietnam War. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence.

1974    Kirk, D. Cambodia 1973: The Year of the ‘Bomb Halt’, in, Asian Survey, Jan., vol. 14, no. 1, A Survey of Asia in 1973: Part 1, 1974, pg. 89-100. University of California Press, Berkeley.

1997    Osborne, M. E. The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia. White Lotus Press, Bangkok.

1979    Shawcross, W. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia. Simon and Schuster, New York.

1992    Tucker, S. C. Vietnam. UCL Press, London.

Pyramids are found throughout the world and have been built at various times over the past 4,500 years by disparate cultures. Some, such as the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, took decades and tens of thousands of laborers to construct. Pyramids represent a major engineering advance in the construction of monumental architecture and the eventual creation of even more complex structures.

Every now and then I am asked by someone what I think of the fact that pyramids around the world were built at the same time while many other numerous ancient sites also built simultaneously are focused on the constellations and far off galaxies. Surely it cannot be by coincidence that vastly different peoples and cultures could come up with the exact same architectural plans. Surely there most be something (or someone) else at play. 

I am referring to, of course, the idea that extraterrestrial intelligent life built many of the ancient structures around the world, catapulting societies into technological advancement. If there is a founder of such modern conspiracy theories it certainly must be Erich von Daniken whose book Chariots of the Gods?Unsolved Mysteries of the Past in 1968 suggested that ancient technologies and religions are from ancient astronauts who were seen as gods.

Since Chariots a whole genre has been created and with it, vast conspiracies which have called into question the very foundations of human civilizations around the globe. Why are such ‘ancient alien’ ideas so prominent and what about them draws otherwise ordinary, reasonable people away from sound and historically factual bases for human progress? Below is a checklist of some of the more prominent conspiracies and basic, rational rebuttals to them.

Ancient pyramids arose simultaneously around the world.

Well, not really – unless you consider structures built hundreds, sometimes thousands of years apart ‘simultaneously’. This is one of the most common misconceptions people have regarding pyramids. The notion that all pyramidal structures around the world just sprang up one day is so common that most take for granted the wide disparity in time periods and rates of development found throughout the world. Some pyramids, such as in ancient Egypt, were built more than 4500 years ago while others, such as in Indonesia, were built in the 9^th century CE.

The technology to build pyramids/monumental architecture was discovered quickly.

This is essentially another aspect of the first point. Many in the ET camp would have people believe that the engineering skills required for monumental architecture occurred in a relatively short period of time – too short, in fact, to be the result of human discovery. Their argument states that the intellectual wherewithal had to have come from outside and disseminated to other cultures around the world.

How true is this? Modern Homo sapiens have been around for around 200,000 years. Agriculture was invented 10,000 years ago. There were approximately 190,000 years between the rise of modern human beings and the beginnings of settled societies which in turn was the catalyst for technological advancement. I will not go into the importance of the invention of agriculture for the development of human societies here (entire tomes have been written on the subject), but it goes without saying that without agriculture large societies would never have been formed, social stratification would never have occurred on the scale that it did, and the spark of human discovery would never have been, well, sparked. It took the discovery of agriculture to put a man on the moon – and the detonation of the first atomic bomb, for that matter.

My point is there was a long stretch before humans invented agriculture which led to settled and increasingly large populations which in turn began to construct monumental architectural projects such as pyramids which reflected socio-religious hierarchies and belief systems. And in the end that is what large engineering projects need – large populations. Small tribes of hunter-gatherers do not build large pyramids because, a) they are small in number, and b) they spend their time hunting and gathering (i.e. looking for food).

Without a steady food supply populations will not grow, they will not need structures built to house them, and they will not need political entities to govern increasing populations as well as the social stratification required to efficiently keep settlements running and prevent their collapse. Far from aliens providing the technology to build pyramids and other monumental architectural works, it was the invention of a stable food supply which allowed for small nomadic tribes to become large settled societies.

The fact that every society built pyramids is evidence of a larger force at work.

The answer to this question is likewise pretty straightforward. Not every ancient civilization did build pyramids. Some built large earthen mounds, for example. On this point some may ask why it is even mounds were built. Why not build a tall, rectangular structure, for example?

Yet, to ask this is to assume a great deal of ancient peoples. First we need to consider the most basic building methods. If you wanted to build a permanent structure but all you had were simple tools (such as hammers, chisels, and simple shovels), how would you go about getting your materials? One of the easiest strategies (and let’s remember we are talking about using physical labor) would be to collect rocks and earth and putting them into a pile or arranging them as a base.

You could continue putting the material in a pile until you had a large mound. Some examples of this type of architecture can be seen in northern Europe and northeastern North America where a central wooden structure is covered by earth with a frontal entrance leading inside. Essentially man-made caves, such structures provided excellent protection against the elements and animals (as well as other human tribes). Many tombs around the world have been built this way such as the legendary mountainous tomb of the first emperor of China.

However, building large earthen mounds is the first step towards larger monumental engineering works. Thus, stone pyramids in many ways can be seen as mounds essentially made of rocks. Earthen mounds continued to be built, though, for the simple reason that dirt is much more available (and easier to transport) than rocks, thus, the size of the mound/temple/tomb was up to those building it.

The most basic and oldest type of pyramid is the step pyramid. Essentially, a step pyramid is a four-sided staircase. I am not belittling ancient civilizations by such a statement; far from it – these were bases from which all other large engineering projects flowed.

Think about it. Laying a base of stones and then placing others on top of them ascending to a central peak is not only the easiest way to build a structure, it is also the sturdiest. A tall rectangular structure would not only be more difficult to build, it would also be more prone to collapse. And as monumental structures were/are built for ceremonial and religious purposes, longevity, size, and strength are paramount.

Is it any wonder pyramids are found all over the world? No, not at all. Pyramids represent the first step towards more complex engineering feats. It is completely reasonable that populations around the globe would at some point stumble upon this fact just as people stumbled upon the wheel, control of fire, or the concept of zero. For those who would look at tens of thousands of years of development and time needed to come upon the most basic of designs for large scale structures – step pyramids – I can only say this: monumental architecture begins with structures like pyramids, not the Empire State Building. Show me an ancient society that begins with the latter and then you will have my attention.

Historical caste systems with corresponding monikers such as the one above from Mexico in the late 1700s were standard throughout Latin America and helped shape cultural perceptions of identity just as the ‘black/white’ racial dichotomy shaped perceptions in the US. A 1976 a study conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) asked people to self-identify their own skin color; 134 terms were recorded.

In the April 9^th, 1990 issue of Time magazine, the cover read “America’s Changing Colors” and asked the question “What will the US be like when whites are no longer the majority?” Over the previous 10 years immigration from Latin America had exploded following the amnesty granted by the Republican president, Ronald Reagan. Indeed, what would America look like in the future?

Yet, something has happened in the interim 20 years since Time’s cover story which has taken some by surprise. However, a closer examination of American history should make it clear that it was inevitable.

In 2007 the US Census Bureau’s interim household study found for the first time that a majority of Latinos in the US self-identified as ‘white’. And in 2010 the national census saw that number increasing. In other words, Latin American immigration has increased the so-called ‘white’ population.

Although this may come as a surprise to some, in reality it reflects the experiences of many immigrant groups whose differences were more cultural than physical in nature. Indeed, many who are considered ‘white’ today would not have been considered ‘white’ in the past. As seen in the last article, the ‘non-white’ Irish who were initially brought to the Americas as slaves by the English and Spanish slowly became ‘white’ in the eyes of others through cultural and linguistic adaptation. Once people breech the cultural gap between themselves and the majority fallacious social barriers such as ‘race’ inevitably fall.   

And so it is with Latin American immigration. Although many in the US erroneously think that Latin Americans are the product of intermarriages between Europeans and Native Americans, the reality is that the loss of life due to disease and warfare brought on by the Spanish Conquest means that any notion of a harmonious comingling of the two peoples is more fiction than fact. And while many did intermarry, many did not. Further, given the high admixture rates among so-called ‘white’ and ‘non-white’ peoples in the US, the idea that America was ever ‘white’ to begin with is far from realistic.

However, the increase of Latinos self-identifying as ‘white’ also raises questions which will need to be addressed at some point in the future. If the majority of Latinos self-identify as ‘white’, for example, can they also be a ‘minority-majority’? What will this mean for diversity programs such affirmative action and financial aid for college students? This is an issue that has yet to be resolved in the United States and will likely have far-reaching consequences for groups of African and Asian descent.

Latin American immigration is just the latest example of how the definition of ‘white’ in the US has become more expansive over time and not less. My prediction is that at some point in the near future – perhaps within the next 10 years – ‘race’ will be removed from US government forms as was done in Italy, in favor of linguistic categories as is the standard for self-identification in Mexico. Such a step forward is inevitable given the increasingly shaky ground on which racial classification schemes in the US are built and will likely prove to be more productive in promoting the acceptance and acculturation of disparate immigrant groups.

Although left out of many American history school textbooks, the Irish were long considered ‘non-white’ people and were originally enslaved by the hundreds of thousands throughout the Americas. Throughout the 1800s they were second-class citizens in the US and seen as uncivilized, savage, and prone to drinking and violence. They were often used for the most dangerous of jobs as they were viewed as having little value for society.

From its very inception the colonization of the Americas and the differences between the fair-skinned Europeans and dark-skinned natives drew a line that has been the bane of the New World ever since: The line defining who was and was not ‘white’.

This question is not as straightforward as many think. ‘Race’, it must be understood, is not a biological definition as it is applied throughout societies around the world. Biologically speaking, races are genetically distinct sub-species incapable of interbreeding. All human beings can interbreed so as far as science is concerned, all humans belong to the same race. Yet we still speak of race as if it were a real biological category as it relates to humans. Its perpetuation is due to scientific ignorance more than anything else.

Which people were historically considered ‘white’ in the Americas (for the term has different meanings throughout the world) really depends on the time and the sociolinguistic traditions one is speaking of. For example, the Irish were not considered ‘white’ people by the European colonial powers which instead enslaved them by the hundreds of thousands throughout the Americas; even Mexico had Irish slaves. In fact, the first slaves to the Americas were Irish and not Africans. Eventually their rebellious nature and inability to cope with the tropical environments they found themselves in made them less attractive to European colonists who opted for African slaves who could better handle hot and humid climates.

Their ‘non-white’ racial status in reality had nothing to do with their skin color but the perception by the ‘civilized’ European powers of Irish barbarity and even of a lesser evolved state. Late 19th century British anthropologists even employed the term ‘Africanoid’ to distinguish the Irish from so-called ‘white’ people insisting that they were closer in nature to Africans than Europeans. This was not a designation of any real physical difference but a social one – for if the savage Irish were also ‘white’, what would that say about the self-described enlightened colonizing powers?

So how did the Irish go from enslaved ‘non-white’ to ‘white’? The answer is rather simple and is something that has happened throughout the world for a variety of peoples: they closed the cultural gap between themselves and the ‘Other’. It was not so much that the Irish became ‘white’ as they began to assimilate into the ‘white’ world of the Spanish, English, French and others.

Once they closed that cultural gap and began to perceive – and be perceived – as similar to the majority, they became part of that majority. Their ‘race’, therefore, was dependent on their ability to engage and display competency in the cultures and traditions of the so-called civilized ‘white’ colonists. Once they and others made that cultural breach and social transformation thereby closing that cultural gap they became accepted as part of the majority.

And this stands true for any outside group when coming into contact with a majority whose cultural traditions stand them apart. Once that gap is closed their acceptance as part of that majority will likely continue for generations to come and solidify as future generations shed the traditions of their forbearers and take on those of the majority.

The Spanish Conquest, known as ‘Contact’ or the meeting of the New and Old Worlds, was one of the greatest catastrophes to befall humanity. More than 70% of Native Americans in Central America, 90% in South America, and nearly 100% in the Caribbean perished through disease and war.

‘Contact’, or the meeting of New and Old World peoples in 1519 and Spain’s defeat of the Aztecs, initiated what was arguably the bloodiest and most catastrophic period in human history. It is estimated that the Spanish Conquest and the disease and wars that followed wiped out more than 70% of the native peoples in Central America, 90% in South America, and nearly 100% in the Caribbean.

Who were these Native Americans and how different were they from the Europeans they encountered? There has been great interest over this question since the first Europeans landed in the Americas and much has been learned – and revised – over the years. However, there is one thing we can say with certainty: the Americas were a far more cosmopolitan place than previously believed.

The general hypothesis is that humans first arrived via a land-bridge that expanded and contracted during the last Ice Age roughly 40,000 years ago with subsequent populations making their way through a corridor in the North American ice shelf. While this theory is still accepted, it may turn out to be only one way in which peoples populated the New World. For example, there is archaeological evidence from South America demonstrating that human societies existed during the same time of the Clovis tool industry – the oldest in North America.

Further, many researchers over the past several decades have asked whether or not humans could have also come from what is today modern Europe given the fact that remains of ancient peoples such as Kennewick Man in the US state of Washington have been found with Caucasian features. ‘Caucasian’ is a technical term referring to facial skeletal features, not skin tone. For example, the majority of people from South Asia – including India – have Caucasian features yet many also have fair to very dark skin.

There are three things that we can say with certainty about the Americas: First, they underwent a catastrophic depopulating through the colonization of the hemisphere; second, that depopulating was primarily the result of disease arriving with Europeans, specifically the Spanish during the Conquest; and third, the native population was a phenotypically diverse and multicultural one.

The amount of native peoples present prior to the arrival of Europeans varied greatly depending on which part of the hemisphere one is speaking of. The great civilization centers of Central and South America were far more populated than the widespread peoples of present-day US and Canada, although there were large civilizations in the southeast.

A larger population has a larger gene pool to draw from and, therefore, greater genetic diversity. the more genetically homogenous a given population, the less resilience they will have to a disease should it prove fatal; and disease was the main killer of Native Americans. In what became the US, the initial encounters with the Spanish had a drastic toll due to the genetic homogenization of smaller groups of people. While the Aztecs undoubtedly witnessed some of the worst barbarity, with large numbers of people they had a genetic statistical advantage over their northern counterparts.

Further, the death toll in what became the US did not stop with the founding of Jamestown as a new wave of peoples came ashore with their own viral baggage. This already small population was thus hit twice: first by encounters with the Spanish and later by the English and other European, Middle Eastern, African, and Asian groups.

What must also be taken into account is that different tribes saw these newcomers differently. Some fought, others joined, while still others were, in effect, genetically ‘swamped’. That is, the process whereby a smaller number of people intermix with a larger number. Over time as this process continues subsequent generations will resemble the majority with little physical resemblance of the minority remaining. (For example, in 2005 a group of microbiological anthropologists found that roughly 1/3 of all US ‘whites’ have recent African ancestry.  Or in other words, one out of three ‘white’ people in the US is part ‘black’.)

Intermarriage in the US between Native Americans and Europeans as well as other non-New World peoples such as Africans and Asians did occur, particularly the further west colonists traveled. It was common practice in the US and Canada as it was throughout the Americas to take native companions given that those who risked their lives traveling into the frontier were generally men, and more often than not, single men.

The populating, depopulating, and repopulating of the Americas was and is a complicated and multifaceted history. Yet, there also needs to be a balanced understanding regarding this history and a greater understanding of the interactions between groups from the New and Old Worlds. Too often it seems a rendering of this period has been outsourced to big-budget films which do little more than perpetuate stereotypes or give a reading of history which reflects the views of their producers as opposed to the objective work of historians. A deeper investigation into the relationships individuals and groups established with one another, though, demonstrates that the creation of identity in the Americas has been fluid and dynamic while adjusting to the social and environmental realities of the time.

Is this a statue of the Buddha with an ancient symbol on his chest representing samsara, the wheel of life – birth, death, and rebirth?

Or is this a statue of the Buddha with a 20th century symbol on his chest representing the former National Socialist Party of Germany?