Holmbergs Mistake

HISTORY 5 ESSAY EXAM #1 
How did “Holmberg’s Mistake” help shape or influence the judgments and perceptions about native peoples of the Americas?  Using your chapter readings, the films and the articles from our class so far, explain how the civilizations of CARAL and the OLMEC challenge Holmberg’s Mistake through evidence of their ancient origins, their cultures/civilizations, and their ecology (reshaping of the environment).

5 paragraphs minimum (see below for possible way to organize your work)
You must DEFINE Holmberg’s mistake early in your essay
This is NOT a research paper. Use the sources from our class and you will be fine.
You must use specific examples from the civilizations of CARAL and the OLMECS
You must use our readings in your essay (reference or quote) from Mann’s book 1491, class articles and films
This is an informal essay, so you will not need a Works Cited page.
Due by midnight SUNDAY October 3rd before midnight on Canvas.

From Mann’s 1491:
The Sirionó, Holmberg reported, were “among the most culturally backward
peoples of the world.” Living in constant want and hunger, he said, they had no clothes,
no domestic animals, no musical instruments (not even rattles and drums), no art or
design (except necklaces of animal teeth), and almost no religion (the Sirionó
“conception of the universe” was “almost completely uncrystallized”). Incredibly, they
could not count beyond three or make fire (they carried it, he wrote, “from camp to camp
in a [burning] brand”). Their poor lean-tos, made of haphazardly heaped palm fronds,
were so ineffective against rain and insects that the typical band member “undergoes
many a sleepless night during the year.” Crouched over meager campfires during the wet,
buggy nights, the Sirionó were living exemplars of primitive humankind—the
“quintessence” of “man in the raw state of nature,” as Holmberg put it. For millennia, he
thought, they had existed almost without change in a landscape unmarked by their
presence. Then they encountered European society and for the first time their history
acquired a narrative flow. … For almost five centuries, Holmberg’s Mistake—the supposition that Native Americans lived in an eternal, unhistoried state—held sway in scholarly work, and from there fanned out to high school textbooks, Hollywood movies, newspaper articles, environmental campaigns, romantic adventure books, and silk-screened T-shirts. It existed in many forms and was embraced both by those who hated Indians and those who admired them. Holmberg’s Mistake explained the colonists’ view of most Indians as incurably vicious barbarians; its mirror image was the dreamy stereotype of the Indian as a Noble Savage. Positive or negative, in both images Indians lacked what social scientists call agency—they were not actors in their own right, but passive recipients of whatever windfalls or disasters happenstance put in their way.
 
Possible organization of this essay:
Paragraph 1: Introduction (introduce your thesis/response to the prompt)
Paragraph 2: Identify Holmberg, explain what Mann means by “Holmberg’s Mistake,” and analyze Holmberg’s influence on how Native Americans have been viewed in US culture.
Paragraph 3: Discuss Caral and how its ancient origins, civilization, and ecology challenge Holmberg’s mistake.  Provide examples of each item from your readings.
Paragraph 4: Discuss Olmec society and how its ancient origins, civilization, and ecology challenge Holmberg’s mistake.  Provide examples of each item from your readings/film.
Paragraph 5: Conclusion – Summarize; include your own commentary