“We’re a network of ethnic groups, kingdoms, confederacies, and warrior clans. We transcend even being ‘a’ culture. We are a legion of diverse groups. Our people arrived when this land was empty, and we have dominated it - half a continent - comfortably, for 15,000 generations.”
“So, uh… What’s that big thing over there?”
“Well, we found that creating massive, highly engineered earthworks helps us with both agricultural and security tasks. And it’s some high value real estate, we do get huge floods occasionally, so our libraries are uusually higher up, also.”
“So, just mounds of dirt?”
“Mou- What? No, these require years of planning, and -”
“Mounds! Mounds! You’re all Mound People! Mound People! Mound People!”
Tale as old as (no idea wtf autocorrect did there) time with exonyms. Ex: Anasazi vs Ancestral Puebloans. In the early 1900s when archaeologists started getting interested in Ancestral Puebloan sites, they misapplied the Navajo name for them, which basically means ‘ancestors of our enemies.’ Obviously not what most people want to be referred to as!
“We’re a network of ethnic groups, kingdoms, confederacies, and warrior clans. We transcend even being ‘a’ culture. We are a legion of diverse groups. Our people arrived when this land was empty, and we have dominated it - half a continent - comfortably, for 15,000 generations.”
“So, uh… What’s that big thing over there?”
“Well, we found that creating massive, highly engineered earthworks helps us with both agricultural and security tasks. And it’s some high value real estate, we do get huge floods occasionally, so our libraries are uusually higher up, also.”
“So, just mounds of dirt?”
“Mou- What? No, these require years of planning, and -”
“Mounds! Mounds! You’re all Mound People! Mound People! Mound People!”
“Ugh…”
Tale as old as (no idea wtf autocorrect did there) time with exonyms. Ex: Anasazi vs Ancestral Puebloans. In the early 1900s when archaeologists started getting interested in Ancestral Puebloan sites, they misapplied the Navajo name for them, which basically means ‘ancestors of our enemies.’ Obviously not what most people want to be referred to as!