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Summary Of Anthony Grafton's New World, Ancient Text

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In the book New World, Ancient Text, Anthony Grafton thoroughly looks at the first meetings between the Ancient World and the New World. What Grafton shows is that the meeting between these two worlds is nothing, but kind. As he states “In the realms of history and cosmography, then not that of science, ancient wisdom first came to seem outmoded” You can see here Grafton is saying that at first introduction the Europeans thought to themselves that everything that they had believed in was outdated. Because of the ways that the Natives of America were living without any harm or any care in the world. He goes on finishing his statement by saying “The discovery of the non-European world and the discovery that the ancients were not wiser than …show more content…

As the simpleton that I usually allude to, I had to verify what these two words actually meant and I would have to say that the meeting between them seem to have a little bit of both continuities. As surprising as that sounds, Grafton shows this in numerous occasions in his book. In one that I see these two being discontinuity between each other was on Page 132 in Chapter 3, when Grafton depicts the way the Spaniards acted towards the Aztecs by destroying the ways of life of this native tribe. Grafton states well when he says “They overthrew the great temples, prohibiting the public exercise of the traditional religions and, above all, the Aztecs’ massive human sacrifices. And they carried out a massive human sacrifice of their own, deliberately killing and subjugating native peoples and inadvertently using the microbes they carried to depopulate the new lands.” As you can see here that Grafton paints the picture that maybe the Europeans should take a deep look into the mirror at themselves and maybe they could see that the way they say isn’t right, is exactly what they are doing. This first meeting between the Spainards and that Aztecs would be the last meeting between any other societies for the Aztecs, in which they would be eventually be wiped out

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