New Worlds for Old

We know that the arrival of Europeans in the Americas had significant impacts, many of them negative, on the peoples of the New World. Encounters with Amerindians were also highly influential in shaping ideas about human development and universal history. It was not a one-way street, however, reports from missionaries, trappers, explorers, soldiers, and settlers about what they saw in the New World served to challenge and shape the thinking of Europe’s intellectual elite, especially concerning Native American ideas about freedom, equality, and community. Thirty-five years after the publication of this book, Graeber and Wengrow returned to the idea of… show more.