Geoff,
I'll respond between the lines of your post to make my life a little easier

Geoffrey Purcell wrote:
> There was no ethnic slur intended, as should have been rather obvious. 
Obvious only to you. You said that the Inuit "stagnated" while others 
made rapid advances and you called them "savages". But your greater 
error is that you can only see advancement in such a narrow way.
> I merely made it clear that no hunter-gatherer societies of any kind  have advanced at the same rapid pace as other settled societies in terms of technology. 
If advancement can only be measured by invention of writing systems and 
building gargantuan structures, then I'd have to agree. However, 
cultural advancement takes many forms and is often the result of local 
environmental and political conditions.  
> That is self-evident. 
No, it is only self evident if you can only see advancement through a 
very narrow lens.
> In other words, one needs an agrarian civilisation for truly rapid technological progress(
Again, if you ignore all the amazing technological advances wrought by 
the Inuit, then your argument begins to look defensible.
> which of course is a two-edged sword as agrarian diets create ill-health). A palaeolithic society would never have advanced to the point of building spaceships, at any rate, regardless of their "inventiveness/brain-power"
This is a sweeping generalization that just doesn't make any sense at 
all. Several Paleolithic societies did advance to the point of building 
spaceships - in the USA and in the former USSR. How much or little the 
construction of Egyptian pyramids contributed to that is difficult to 
say, but I'd have to guess it was somewhere close to zero. The larger 
question is whether the construction of spaceships is really the nadir 
of technological advancement. Perhaps an Inuit might view space travel 
as unacceptably damaging to the source of all food, water, and other 
valuable resources.
> (indeed it is ironic that palaeolithic man had c.8% larger brains than Neolithic-era man). I guess we simply have a quite different view of what "stagnation" really means, that's all.
>   
No, I think we have a different view of what arrogance is. You imagine 
that terms such as "stagnation" and "savage" when applied to the Inuit 
are fair and reasonable. I disagree.. I consider the use of such terms 
to reflect ignorance. It is the same sort of ignorance that has many 
folks of your ilk saying that Columbus "discovered" the Americas when 
about 100 million people were already here. You seem to imagine that 
western culture is the only meaningful culture and that cultural 
development can only occur when it is congruent with western culture.
> As far as the term "noble savage", that was not meant as a slur, either, it merely refers to a common myth among settled peoples which is called the "noble-savage" theory which has a lot of inherent flaws in its assumptions. 
I don't recall commenting on any moral view of the Inuit, so why did you 
mention the "noble savage" concept when it does not apply to 
technological advancement? I suggest to you that you used it as a subtle 
device for getting the term "savage" into the conversation.
> The irony is that proponents of this theory, such as William, 
I don't recall William mentioning the "noble savage theory" so how do 
you know he is a proponent of it?
> like to use it to cite hunter-gatherers as living in a higher state of existence than humans from settled societies, 
I don't recall anyone mentioning a "higher state of existence" for 
hunter-gatherers, but I'm not at all sure that issue can ever be 
decided. It seems to me that any level of consciousness is difficult to 
judge or compare.
> which is elitist in its own right. 
The only elitist I've noticed is you, with your superior statements on a 
number of issues.
> I'm a big opponent of such a theory and am a big fan of 1 or 2 Middle-Eastern civilisations(notably ancient Persia) which is why I perhaps overreacted. 
>   
You  admit to overreacting? When? Where? What issue are you conceding 
anything on?  This is the first mention I've seen of it.
> Just to make absolutely clear, I have personally benefitted from some things the Inuit have created. I'm a big fan of their "high-meat" for example, so I'm not denying their contributions.
>   
Actually, while their high fat diet has long been seen as an anomaly, it 
continues to raise questions about current conventional dietary wisdom. 
But that is just one of their many contributions to modern technology. 
Because of paradigms like yours, indigenous peoples are given little 
recognition for their contributions.

Ron Hoggan

-- 
PK