An erotic pre-Columbian figurine from the Tairona culture, made using the Tumbaga technique

Time Travel Question 39: Medievalish and Earlier 6

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct earlier time grouping. Basically, I'd already moved on to human history, but I'd periodically get a pre-homin suggestion, hence the occasional random item waaay out of it's time period, rather than reopen the category.

In some cases a culture lasted a really long time and I grouped them by whether it was likely the later or earlier grouping made the most sense with the information I had. (Invention ofs tend to fall in an earlier grouping if it's still open. Ones that imply height of or just before something tend to get grouped later, but not always. Sometimes I'll split two different things from the same culture into different polls because they involve separate research goals or the like).

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration. All cultures and time periods welcome.

Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz (Spanish, 1815-1894) Elizabeth Wethered Barringer, 1852 Ackland Art Museum, North Carolina

River basin map of the Americas. Colours represent different catchment areas.

Read more and buy prints here. Ko-fi | RedBubble | Etsy (digital prints)

The Yanks are at it again

I love it when Americans act like you're ignorant, racist, or both when you don't know wtf historic event they're talking about when they literally only give you the year to go off of.

By which I mean there's no context about which country is being talked about. They're just like "Conservatives want to talk about sin dating back to Adam but not 1619" and if you ask "What happened in 1619?" they're like

Because how could you not know details about American history?

And respond with things like "Is this a joke or is it a genuine question?" and passive-aggressive answers like

Which, by the way, is wrong. The first enslaved Africans in the Americas arrived in Jamaica in 1513.

But according to Americans, their country is made up of two wholeass continents.

Map of Carolina and the Western Sea, 1709, from the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library

Woe(and NOT the fun kind |:T)

So I managed to push myself through the first episode of Wednesday, and then watched the next two eps, and my take on the series is: DEEPLY uneven.

Spoilers for the first 3 eps under the Cut, though I didn’t watch the whole series and probably wont

The first 20ish minutes of the first episode(effectively the Pilot) is REALLY BAD, cliched and over-done, with a meager handful of dark spots(the car ride, LURCH :>, the color allergy, “everyone will know I didn’t finish the job”) to make up for it. However, at the therapy scene the True Strength(one of three) of the series is finally allowed to shine in Jenna Ortega’s performance as Wednesday Addams. The Rose Lalonde energy here shatters the scale; her Cruel Wit, Knifely Cunning, and icy REFUSAL of sufferance and Compromise irradiated the scene and all around it; cutting through -Bright and Cancer-Green-  the fetid tissue it was buried within.

Unfortunately there simply is So MUCH of the latter, and it ultimately smothers that brilliance. There IS Charisma to be found here aside from Ortega(Riki Lindhome as the therapist of course giving what Ortega needs, Joy Sunday positively CHEWING her way through some of the WORST material here as Wednesday’s rival[the LOATHING, Dear Readers, the Loathing it BUUUURNS so PITCH and HOT >:> >:>], Christie of course is as solid as she always is with on-point delivery and an artisan’s command of her GENERATIONAL physicality, Victor Dorobantu is a positive JOY as Thing, Zeta-Jones and Guzman are a Delight, and Christina Ricci does so much with so little in a surprise supporting role), but with everyone BUT Wednesday and Thing, the material is simply too great a weight, and most of the cast simply does not have the chops or time to act through both the awful writing AND Burton’s banal influence as producer and director.

All Burton’s old failings are here to their worst display: an over-wrought “normies” and “outcasts” dividing of the world which is, simultaneously!, forced and not truly committed to; Weirdness, disemboweled of its Queerness and transgressiveness, then stretched crepe-thin over Convention(WEDNESDAY ADDAMS working with the COPS?!!?!); a desire for things TO be weird without any desire to truly UNDERSTAND Them OR their Weirdness in the first place(would it have killed these writers to actl READ SOMETHING about bees instead of just making shit up for lame dick-jokes?); characters too smart for their writers pummeled with the idiot-ball through lazily convenient plots; Goth aesthetics emptied UTTERLY of their ethos and cultural relevance(What. The Hell! Is even the POINT of an Addams that hears “You’re father’s a Murderer!” and doesn’t respond, with Pride and an unsettling smile?); attempts to write Teenaged and Current so dated, so clearly in the voice of a too-long too-comfortable Boomer who doesn’t understand the issues and hasn’t cared to try in near-on 30 years, that even rolling one’s eyes at them seems more than they deserve. Even Ortega’s Wednesday drags under this; how do you feed her a line like “what; are you a girl scout now?” and NOT have her answer with “Well, you ARE what you eat...”??? A story which sets Wednesday Addams to STOP a brutal cannibalistic monster; to PREVENT a moribund institution shattering under the Night-bourne reckoning of its ancient sins, consumed in Fire and Blood; A story which depicts WEDNESDAY FUCKING ADDAMS WORKING WITH THE FUCKING COPS TO CATCH AND PUNISH(?????) A MURDERER does NOT! Understand!! Wednesday Addams!!! Or the Addams family in general. Also the Addams snap doesn’t NEED a backstory! PERSEPHONE AVENGE ME!!!

This series and these characters are not NEARLY morbid enough. There is no Gothic Romance here; no Accursed Hero to Spit in the face of God and Shank the Devil. Much worse, Burton’s desire to be Society’s victim without, you know, knowing anything AT ALL about  the people our society ACTUALLY VICTIMIZES, or Caring to know them, or even SIDING with them, or having any history of personal or historical victimization, does the series real harm.

**SERIOUSLY! SPOILERS!!**

Maybe the rest of the series somehow fixes this(I really don’t care to find out at this point) but, through his conceit of “normie” and “outcast” societies, Burton LITERALLY makes white people the REAL victims of native American genocide, in just three episodes no less!, and I honestly don’t see how you can walk that back. The “Corrupt” mayor of the town and owner of its local themepark(only a well-to-do who grew up in LA would think themeparks are something EVERYONE has a ‘local’ of) is black. The Head Bully of this town, his son, is black. The “Queen Bee” Mean Girl of the BOARDING SCHOOL the whole series takes place in, is black(tho again: Sunday does a gr8 job with this material, as exceedingly limited as it is. The kismestic-tension btwn her and Ortega in some of these scenes is *Chef’s Kiss* Delicious :3 :3 :3). For decades people have been complaining about Burton’s refusal to include black people in his work and this is his response: a series were MOST OF THE ANTAGONISTS are black?! At least BIANCA is allowed to be COMPETENT!

Anyway: I love Ortega, I love Sunday at her most Imperious and Manipulative and Bloodthirstily Competitive, and Moosa Mostafa’s immediate lovability as a bee-nerd is ruthlessly wasted by awful writing. Give me a full season of, In Treatment like, Ortega and Lindhome sparring through therapy sessions. Give me a full season of Christie’s meancing, barely-contained Violence and simmering languor. Give me a full season of Wednesday and Thing committing Shenanigans upon assholes who deserve gruesome death. But SPARE Me This.

“Spain doesn’t want non-Spanish Canadians buying up all their houses” oh no does Spain have a pwoblem with people entering their country and stealing their stuff?????

Winged runner on an ear ornament, Moche culture, modern day Peru, 3rd-7th century

Time Travel Poll Winner Second Round Match Up 7:

These Questions are the winners from the previous iteration.

Please add new suggestions below, if you have them, for future consideration.

Antonio Rodríguez Beltrán, attributed (Spanish, 1636-1691) María Luisa de Toledo e indígena, 1670 Museo Nacional del Prado

Doña María Luisa de Toledo y Carreto, Marquesa de Melgar de Fernamental, was the only daughter of Don Antonio Sebastián de Toledo Molina y Salazar, II Marquis de la Mancera and Viceroy of New Spain -between 1664 and 1673-, and of his first woman, D. Leonor de Carreto. And, therefore, she was also the granddaughter of another viceroy, in this case of Peru, D. Pedro de Toledo y Leiva, who held that position between 1639 and 1648. And also, she was the sister-in-law of a third viceroy, D. Gaspar de la Cerda y Sandoval, Count of Galve, her husband's brother, who held office in New Spain between 1688 and 1696. She was a great-great-granddaughter of the first Duke of Alba de Tormes, one of the leading noble houses in Spain, and her husband was the son of the Dukes of Pastrana and the Infantado, another of the main noble families. So, in her person, María Luisa combined an entire noble inheritance linked to some of the great Spanish aristocratic families and to the main positions in the American viceroyalties. She lived part of her childhood and adolescence in the city of Mexico, where, around 1670, she must have made this portrait of her. She returned to Spain, together with her father, in 1674.

She married Joseph de Silva, linking in this way with one of the most powerful houses in the Peninsula, which held the dukedoms of Pastrana, Infantado and Lerma among many other titles, although all of them were part of the inheritance of the eldest son, for which reason None of the consorts had, at the time of the marriage, a noble title. The title enjoyed by María Luisa and her husband, Marquises of Melgar de Fernamental, was granted as a marriage dowry by the Queen herself, Mariana of Austria, in the name of King Carlos II.

The dwarf woman who accompanies her would come from the Chichimeca area, due to the tattoos that adorn her. She has been represented wearing a long and straight huipil, which is superimposed over a green skirt or dress whose lower part protrudes from the previous one. The huipil has been arranged "a la española", that is to say, it seems to be cinched at the waist and has wide added sleeves and a bottom edge with an ova-shaped lace band. The presence of this small indigenous woman was highlighting the uniqueness and exoticism, and therefore the power and prestige of her family. The color of the complexion, the tattoo and even the type of clothing that the little woman wears reveal her connection with American places and the access that the protagonist of the canvas exhibited in relation to some networks of circulation of transoceanic goods and products. New Spain (modern day Mexico) came to be called Mexico in 1821, after the Mexican War of Independence. The viceroyalty was dissolved and the Mexican Empire was established.

Why is Columbus so important? He didn’t discover anything, there already were people in the Americas. He was supposed to go to India, but accidentaly ended up in America. He wasn’t even the first European in the Americas, so why is he credited for ”discovering” it?

Ottoman map of the Americas in late 1800s

And a cleaned up version.

Are We Living on Stolen Land?