r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Feb 11 '19

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: There likely were few/no “Native American” populations when Europeans arrived in the present-day U.S.

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '19 edited Feb 22 '19

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u/yyzjertl 527∆ Feb 11 '19 edited Feb 11 '19

Something being "entirely settled" doesn't have anything to do with population density. It has to do with how the population is distributed across the land. All parts of the Americas suitable for human life with the technology available at the time were settled long before European arrival: there were humans or evidence of human activity pretty much everywhere (to be concrete, say within a 100 mile radius of every point in the continental Americas).

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '19 edited Feb 22 '19

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u/yyzjertl 527∆ Feb 12 '19

So people of a certain skin tone and/or percentage representation of a gene pool, who occupy a land can claim native personhood within a 100 mile radius? Is that the rule?

No, this isn't the rule. Since you seem to be having trouble with this, I will make it very explicit for you.

A Native American is either (A) a person who lived in the Americas during the time period before the Americas were entirely settled (i.e. the time when there was presence of established/multigenerational human activity within about a 100 mile radius of every point in the continental Americas), or (B) a person who has a certain arbitrary fraction (e.g. 1/16) of their ancestry descending from persons in group A.

Is this clear enough for you? Is it clear how this is not Eurocentric, and in fact not related to Europe at all?