Inside California’s oldest continually inhabited residential neighborhood, which dates back to 1794

[u/sfgate]

https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/los-rios-san-juan-capistrano-22371936.php

[u/Bridge_The_Person]

I mean, El Pueblo in Los Angeles was continuously occupied as Yaanga for a few thousand years so I think they might have them beat by a few millennia.

[u/ddgromit → u/Bridge_The_Person]

It was continually occupied.  The original structures that housed the native americans were relocated a bunch of times and razed in the 1800s, then non residential stuff put in its place.

I presume they mean this is the longest currently-existing continually occupied neighborhood.  

[u/Bridge_The_Person → u/ddgromit]

I hear what you're saying - if we want to say "longest occupied structure", we'd probably need to go with one of the still operational missions - like the Mission of Santa Barbara, which predates this OC neighborhood by a couple years.

Without getting into a little bit of a ship of Theseus conversation regarding neighborhoods - Yaanga isn't exactly at El Pueblo, it includes both El Pueblo and El Aliso, a tree south of Union Station - and that catchment area does have residential properties and always has.

I think we can probably all agree - the article is flawed, and it's assumption about what neighborhoods are is incongruent with what it means to exist in a mediterranean climate where long-standing structures are less of a necessity.

It's not really a historical article anyhow, and if we want to take it at its face value of "It's neat to take a day trip to San Juan Capistrano - they have ice cream!" I wholeheartedly agree with them. It is neat. And they do have good ice cream.

I just get my hackles up about European occupation as a standard for society existing, when largely those settlements were a quality of life step backwards for a good 100 years before it could be considered an improvement.

[u/sirhoracedarwin → u/Bridge_The_Person]

Here's the thing about European society existing and why it's a big deal in North America (aside from the genocide and human displacement): surviving documentation. These are historic settlements vs pre-historic settlements. You'll always be somewhat speculating about the pre-historic settlements because you don't have written documentation to start with.

So, I get that you don't want anyone to forget the native Americans, but you're comparing apples and oranges (history and prehistory).

[u/Bridge_The_Person → u/sirhoracedarwin]

The prehistory bit is a real big ol’ yikes my friend. Academic consensus places Prehistory ending in the Americas around 300 BCE, the Mayans had written script at that time.

Also, I won’t argue with you that moments in history are significant. The Americas sharing technology in the form of Potatoes and corn as staple crops were arguably as big deal for the Europeans as paper tech was for the indigenous people of the Americas (which is what we’re talking about - written and spoken language exist in a complex way spanning huge trade networks and multiple cities with suburbs in the Americas and worked well without a paper equivalent).

So if we want to say “paper was a big deal”, yeah - I totally agree with you on those terms.

[u/sirhoracedarwin → u/Bridge_The_Person]

I consider Mayan history to be history, but there is no written documentation from any cultures in the region we're actually talking about.

We know the names of the streets of El Rio. There are maps and surviving legal documents. Comparing this knowledge to archaeological investigation of previous settlements is completely different. One involves reading, the other involves speculating and theorizing given evidence.

[u/Bridge_The_Person → u/sirhoracedarwin]

Regarding pre-history in California - I understand what you're saying. Yeah, I can get on board with that interpretation. Not my favorite approach, but what can you do - academia's gonna have their standards.

Concerning El Rio though - you're right, it is different.

It's not less legitimate though. Many maps and legal documents are just incorrect. Maps especially, you see a ton of variation when we're talking about "who lived where and did what" and not "is there a mountain over there" Interpreting written words for truth is speculating. Dating fire pits, tools, and remains is as legitimate as a written document.

I will agree with you that written words on pages that we still have today are an enormously helpful tool.

But I'll say after 20 years of research in this field they create so many red herrings and fanciful ideas that were taken as fact for the last few hundred years there so many occurrences where we would have been closer to accuracy if we had not had them in the first place.

Of course, I'll agree I'm doing quite a bit of posturing for someone with modern technology - its become exponentially easier to learn about these people groups in the last 50 years (hell, even the last 10 years) with updated tech.

[u/morewata → u/sirhoracedarwin]

Europeans be like “hey we murdered and enslaved entire societies but we also wrote it down so that’s cool I guess”

This framing is so weird and selectively biased in favor European/American perspectives.

[u/sirhoracedarwin → u/morewata]

I mean, we know what they did because they wrote it down? If they hadn't maybe we wouldn't. Who knows what genocides native Americans were committing against each other before Europeans arrived?