* Plenty of structures were built prior to 1100CE. You can't build a freeway in Tucson without digging up an late archaic (~2300-1500 BCE) pithouse, as an example.
* Plenty of indigenous structures have centuries of continuous inhabitation. Taos is a good example, having a single structure that's been inhabited since the 13th century. Other communities are older (e.g. Oraibi dates from ~1150), but don't have extant usable structures from those early days.
* Indigenous structures were not abandoned prior to European contact, let alone because of deforestation. Did you autocorrect from "disease" (which would also be mistaken, but less so)? Very simplified statement here because this is a topic that could fill a library. Happy to talk more on it.
Can you give me an example of a "medieval-era houses in the US" that somebody lives in today? The ones you mentioned were built after the middle ages, your dates are not right and describe the time the settlement was created, not the time the structures were built.
Which Taos structure has been inhabited since the 13th century? The Taos pueblo structures standing today were built around 1400, not the middle ages, not the 13th century.
The Oraibi _settlement_ has been inhabited for centuries. The structures were built in the 17th century, not the middle ages, not 1150.
The 13th century when the earliest kivas and walls at Taos Pueblo are well-agreed to be dated. Oral histories date it rather earlier, but I'm being conservative. I have pretty terrible internet access right now, so I can't link anything on those dates, but I'm fairly sure that's how the UN filings date it at least, though I couldn't tell you whether those apply to the north or south houses specifically.
Re: oraibi, I tried to make it clear that I was talking about the town itself rather than specific structures within it. The earliest structures are below the cliff, not above where the modern town is. That move happened in the 17th and 18th centuries to make it more defensible. As far as I'm aware, most of the extant buildings are 20th century at the earliest.
As for "structure", a pithouse is a structure and a primarily aboveground one at that. The name refers to the fact that they're dug into the ground for thermal and flooring reasons. The late archaic ones in the Tucson area along the Santa Cruz river were often built alongside small irrigation canals and house groups often had low walls around them. Again, can't link, but there are experimental reconstructions of Pueblo I era pithouses that you can look at pictures of. They're "similar enough" to be worth looking at, even though there are meaningful reasons they're part of different archeological periods.
I think the claim "There are still people living in medieval-era houses in the US " is misleading and possibly wrong. A more accurate claim would be "It is possible but unconfirmed that there are a handful of occupied houses in one location in the US with walls that were originally built in the late medieval era. These are extremely far from population centers, so it's unsurprising most people don't think about them the way Europeans think about older structures".
The argument was that in many places in Europe it’s literally unremarkable that people live in houses significantly older than the mentioned 1910 specimen in DC (my completely unremarkable apartment building in Berlin was built around the same time and nobody thinks of it as significant in any way & I know multiple people in Austria and Germany living in houses built in the 1800s and earlier).
While Native Americans built structures before colonizations the number of Americans currently living in such is negligibly small.
Some of the pueblos that were built around 1000 years ago are still used (e.g. Taos Pueblo, although most of the buildings have been retrofitted with modern conveniences like doors)
The Taos Pueblo structures were built ~1400. Can you give an example of a "medieval-era structure" that somebody is living in today?
Both these phrases are true:
"There are still people living in medieval-era houses in the US"
[There are] "ruins that make Rome look young"
The Mediaeval period in Europe extends from the 5th to the late 15th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages
The Taos Pueblo has been continuously inhabited since the 13th century, if not before. This qualifies to satisfy the truth criteria of the first phrase.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taos_Pueblo
Note that the second claim refers to ruins and not continuous inhabitation.
I'm not a specialist in North American indigenous cultures, but am aware that there are signs of human inhabitation at sites such as Bandelier (NM) dating to 10kya, and elsehwere cliff and/or pueblo dwellings dating to several thousand years BCE.
Both would make Rome look old.
Heading further south, the earliest Mayan villages date to 2,000 BCE, again pre-dating Rome. Cities emerged in the period 750--500 BCE, roughly contemporaneously with the agreed origins of Rome (753 BCE), and well before the rise of the Roman Republic (509--27 BCE) or Empire (27 BCE -- ~480 CE (Western)).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_of_Rome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire
Cholula, Mexico dates to 2000 BCE.
The reason Americans don't think about old buildings the way Europeans do is that there aren't any anywhere close to where most Americans live, and anything older than 600 years requires an extensive intentional search to find. It's not a lack of awareness, as the GP implies.
You're countering with opinion.
Just sayin'.
In Europe, most people see buildings built before 1500 every day. Many people live in them.
Those are both facts. My belief/opinion is that these facts explain the difference in attitude between Americans and Europeans. It has nothing to do with whether "most Americans simply don't identify with or think about history prior to British/American colonization"
Also I'd like to point out that both of my paragraphs are facts, not opinions. The difference is that I could be wrong if for example there was evidence that the Taos pueblo structures were built in the 13th century, but there isn't.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32120884
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Given your unwillingness to acknowledge any other of your multiple refuted statements, engagement has been rather futile for some time.
Cheers, mate.
I am quoting it directly so having difficulty understanding the discrepancy.
> It's a cultural thing that most Americans simply don't identify with or think about history prior to British/American colonization.
That is the claim
> There are still people living in medieval-era houses in the US and ruins that make Rome look young
This is technically true but highly misleading. There is one site in the US where oral tradition maintains that some parts of two of the structures were built prior to 1400. There has been no radiocarbon dating of the structures. The closest contemporaneous account is from 1540 and doesn't describe the structures in detail, only the settlement.
The ruins are not visible to most Americans,
> but they don't occupy anyone's mindspace when it comes to how they think of age.
The claim here is that despite the existence of medieval-era home and ancient ruins, Americans don't identify with history prior to colonization.
My counter argument is that the evidence for any medieval era homes is weak, and at most there are two, both located at one site. The ruins are extremely rare and far from population centers, which explains the lack of awareness.
It's true that most Americans don't identify with history prior to European colonization, but it's true _because of_ the lack of ruins and ancient homes, not in spite of their existence.
This is all in contrast to Europe where people see and interact with medieval era homes and buildings all the time.
Disclaimer: I am not a mod. I just wish we could all get along better.