There was no ethnic slur intended, as should have been rather obvious. 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. That is self-evident. In other words, one needs an agrarian civilisation for truly rapid technological progress(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"(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.

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. The irony is that proponents of this theory, such as William, like to use it to cite hunter-gatherers as living in a higher state of existence than humans from settled societies, which is elitist in its own right. 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. 

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.


Geoff


 		 	   		  
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