White Guilt Meets the Aztecs

As a vacation from the Middle East, this sample of Europe’s historical self-hatred is taken from an interview conducted by the leftish French weeklyLe nouvel observateurwith novelist and world traveler J.M.G. Le Clézio. See if you can detect what is missing in this picture (hint: obsidian knife):N.O. – At the time of the conquest of Mexico, in what areas were the Amerindian civilizations ahead of Europe?JL – Except for the practice of total war (firearms, cavalry, but above all the practice of terror: burned villages, women and children sold into slavery or massacred, the use of bacteriological weapons), the Amerindian civilizations were ahead of Europe in just about all areas: hydraulic agriculture, exact sciences, astronomy, medicine, zoology, anatomy. It is difficult to evaluate the domain of Aztec and Inca philosophy, but the first Spanish chroniclers, who arrived when almost everything had been destroyed, speak with admiration of the moral discourses, literary contests, and metaphysical discussions that enlivened these societies, of which the testimony of the few survivors (the final battle of Mexico-Tenochtitlan left 260,000 dead, most of whom belonged to the city’s elite) gives only an approximate idea.Le nouvel observateurJuly 13, 2006 p. 51-eric gans