William wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:32:25 -0500, Tom Bri <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> On the other hand, I have never seen any evidence, besides Jarred 
>> Diamond's
>> claims, that modern hunter-gatherers are any great shakes in the brains
>> department.
>
> I'm told that these great words in the preamble to the constitution 
> for the United States of America were invented by the Six Nations 
> people of aboriginal America (from their constitution). "We hold this 
> truth to be self-evident; that all men are created equal..."
> IMHO that took brains.
>
> William
>
>
> .
>
IIRC it's the "We the people... to form a union..." part that has been 
attributed to the Six (Iroquois) Nations (But no one has been able to 
prove this since they didn't write it down.) The "all men are created 
equal" bit is, first of all, in the Declaration of Independence not the 
Constitution, and secondly is attributed to George Mason. Mason wrote an 
earlier document called "the Virginia Declaration of Rights" which is 
part of the constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia dated to 1776. 
He was highly regarded, and his words were adapted with permission by 
Thomas Jefferson. Mason is also largely responsible for the drafting of 
the Bill of Rights. He and the rest of the Virginia delegation would not 
ratify the Constitution without it. Much of the wording in the Bill of 
Rights is also directly adapted from his earlier document.

Furthermore, Native Americans at the time of the Founders were a 
semi-sedentary people who had agriculture and other modern trappings. 
They had these things before the arrival of Europeans. So, while their 
lifestyle was more traditional than the European settlers it was far 
removed from Paleo.