Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: Hi'm Tracy Wilson and I'm Holly fry So. We mentioned
Speaker 1: in our recent episode on Marie and tal Teeth that
Speaker 1: I had been looking for some Native American history to
Speaker 1: do for the podcast. It had been a while since
Speaker 1: we had talked about any Native American history, and in
Speaker 1: that looking around process, I stumbled across an article on
Speaker 1: ka Hokio, which is the Mississippian city that was, in
Speaker 1: the words of Unesco, the largest and earliest pre Columbian
Speaker 1: city north of Mexico. So naturally I got really excited.
Speaker 1: I found almost instantly two problems with doing an episode
Speaker 1: on coki At. One is that Sarah and Bablina did
Speaker 1: one already in and the other is that there is
Speaker 1: some debate about whether we should really call Cohokia America's
Speaker 1: first city. And one of the reasons for that debate
Speaker 1: is the subject of today's episode, um which is Poverty Point.
Speaker 1: And so to get this out of the way right
Speaker 1: at the beginning, Poverty Point is named for a nineteenth
Speaker 1: century plantation in the area. The name has nothing to
Speaker 1: do at all with the Native people who live there,
Speaker 1: or their culture or the site itself. Um, it's just
Speaker 1: sort of wound up with that name over the years,
Speaker 1: and occasionally they talk about changing the name to something
Speaker 1: that's more appropriate for what is actually being studied there. Uh,
Speaker 1: but that's where we are. So Poverty Point has a
Speaker 1: few things in common with Cohokia. They're both situated in
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River Valley. Cahokia is a lot farther north
Speaker 1: and also much closer to the river. So Cahokia is
Speaker 1: in what's now Illinois, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri,
Speaker 1: and Poverty Point is in the northeast corner of Louisiana,
Speaker 1: adjacent to Bayou Mason, and both of them are known
Speaker 1: for their earthworks. Those are large mounds that were created
Speaker 1: by moving baskets of soil from one place to another.
Speaker 1: But Poverty Point is much much older than Kahokia, and
Speaker 1: it's also less clear exactly how people used the site
Speaker 1: at Poverty Point, but some things about it are really
Speaker 1: unique among Native American sites. So that is what we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about today. So Poverty Point, as
Speaker 1: Tracy just mentioned, is a collection of earthwork mounds and
Speaker 1: ridges situated next to Baioux Masson. These were built between
Speaker 1: three thousand, six hundred and three thousand, one hundred years
Speaker 1: ago during North America's Archaic period, and some of the
Speaker 1: site's earthworks were built over generations, whereas others were built
Speaker 1: by a large group of laborers over a short period
Speaker 1: of time. They also incorporate some of the mound structures
Speaker 1: and measurement techniques of older civilizations that actually lived in
Speaker 1: the area before the arrival of the Poverty Point culture.
Speaker 1: It's estimated that it took about five million hours of
Speaker 1: labor to build all of Poverty Points earthworks. This required
Speaker 1: people to move fifty three million cubic feet of soil,
Speaker 1: which would have been carried from one place to another
Speaker 1: in baskets that would have weighed about fifty pounds apiece winfull.
Speaker 1: The site has six ridges, which are divided by five
Speaker 1: roads into six sections, as well as six mounds. The
Speaker 1: ridges form a pattern of concentric seas which are only
Speaker 1: visible from the air. They're taller than a grown adult,
Speaker 1: and their peaks are between fifty and ninety paces apart.
Speaker 1: The longest of the ridges is three quarters of a
Speaker 1: mile long between the ridges are troughs where at least
Speaker 1: some of the dirt came from that built them. These
Speaker 1: ridges curve away from a bend in the Buyou and
Speaker 1: they end at the bluff that drops down to the bayou.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty steep drop. The aisles that divide the
Speaker 1: ridges into sections were made either by digging trenches through
Speaker 1: some of the spots or by leaving gaps during their
Speaker 1: construction and others and these uh these sort of paths
Speaker 1: lead out from a central plaza like spokes from a hub.
Speaker 1: The central plaza is circular, and it's flat, and it's
Speaker 1: marked with a lot of post holes of varying sizes,
Speaker 1: although nobody has really worked out if there's a pattern
Speaker 1: to them or not. It was probably used as a
Speaker 1: gathering place as well as for ceremonial purposes. In addition
Speaker 1: to the ridges and the plaza, there are six mounds
Speaker 1: at the site, and it's not completely clear what they
Speaker 1: were all used for, but unlike many of the other
Speaker 1: mounds in North America, they were not used for burials.
Speaker 1: Based on the artifacts left behind, some of them probably
Speaker 1: did have more religious or our spiritual ceremonial purposes. Though
Speaker 1: the area's first occupants at least during the period that
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss, Uh probably lived at Owned B.
Speaker 1: This is a mound that was created, used for a while,
Speaker 1: and then covered over with a new top, and this
Speaker 1: happened repeatedly. A final cap of earth was placed over
Speaker 1: the mound about three thousand, four hundred years ago, after
Speaker 1: which point the mound appears not to have been used anymore.
Speaker 1: Poverty points ridges were started at about the same time
Speaker 1: as Mound B was capped off. The largest of the mounds,
Speaker 1: known as Mound A, was built last, and it was
Speaker 1: built in what was at the time basically a swamp.
Speaker 1: But about three thousand, three hundred years ago people started
Speaker 1: burning off all the vegetation and burying what was left
Speaker 1: under a layer of silt, and then the mound is
Speaker 1: built on top of that silt layer. And Mound A
Speaker 1: is twenty two high at its highest point, so that's
Speaker 1: about seventy two ft or roughly seven stories. At its longest,
Speaker 1: it's about two long or six d and eighty nine ft.
Speaker 1: Mound A is shaped roughly like a he and some
Speaker 1: archaeologists believe it was meant to be representative of a bird.
Speaker 1: It would have taken more than ten million baskets of
Speaker 1: earth to make that mound, and you have to be
Speaker 1: more than one thousand feet in the air to actually
Speaker 1: see it all. All of these numbers sound just huge,
Speaker 1: and they really are. Mound Tea alone contains almost two
Speaker 1: hundred and forty thousand cubic meters of earth, and the
Speaker 1: only earthworks in the Eastern United States that that's larger
Speaker 1: than Mound A is Monks Mound and Khokia, which you
Speaker 1: can hear about in Sarah and Deeblina's Old episode. Mound
Speaker 1: A is more than twice as big as the next
Speaker 1: biggest mound that was built at about the same time,
Speaker 1: and it's fifty times bigger than the average earthworks from
Speaker 1: the period. What makes this even more stunning is that,
Speaker 1: based on how the bottom layers of earth and Mound
Speaker 1: A settled, it's likely that it was built really quickly,
Speaker 1: especially compared to the others which took generations. Based on
Speaker 1: an estimate of ninety days to build it, the labor
Speaker 1: force needed to build Mound A was more than one
Speaker 1: thousand people. Logically, the laborers would have had children and
Speaker 1: people on the site who were doing other work besides
Speaker 1: the building, so the overall population there for that estimated
Speaker 1: ninety days was maybe roughly four thousand. There's no sign
Speaker 1: of homes on mound, a people didn't live on it,
Speaker 1: and it's generally thought to have been more ceremonial. It's
Speaker 1: definitely possible that the entire complex had religious or magical significance,
Speaker 1: given the way different parts of it line up with
Speaker 1: one another, and the repetitions of the number six, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the various artifacts um that uh that
Speaker 1: people have found around the site, and those are what
Speaker 1: we were going to talk about. After a brief word
Speaker 1: from a sponsor. That sounds like a capital idea, So
Speaker 1: to get back to poverty Point. People have found all
Speaker 1: kinds of artifacts at Poverty Point. The first mention of
Speaker 1: the place in writing is from the eighteen thirties, and
Speaker 1: this is when a settler had heard that there was
Speaker 1: lead in the area and he went looking for a
Speaker 1: lead mine. He was thinking he was going to open
Speaker 1: up the mind mine a bunch of lead, that was
Speaker 1: how he was going to make his fortune. What he
Speaker 1: actually found was, in his words, an Indian village, and
Speaker 1: there were artifacts that scattered all over the ground. And
Speaker 1: this lead was really galeno, which is a type of
Speaker 1: lead ore and that had been shaped into adornments, so
Speaker 1: there was no mind there. He was extremely disappointed. When
Speaker 1: the first real archaeological study of Poverty Points started in
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, people found an abundance of artifacts. The overwhelming
Speaker 1: majority of them were on the ground, with many more
Speaker 1: just under the surface. Local people had also been finding
Speaker 1: and collecting these artifacts, some of which have now been
Speaker 1: turned over for study. The most common object found at
Speaker 1: Poverty Point has been named the Poverty Point object, and
Speaker 1: these are baked earthenware balls that were used as cooking stones.
Speaker 1: And there's all kinds of variety and exactly how Poverty
Speaker 1: Point objects are shaped and in what kind of designs
Speaker 1: were etched onto them before they were baked and hardened.
Speaker 1: But they fall into three main categories, which are balls, ropes,
Speaker 1: and bicones. So to use them, people would heat these
Speaker 1: objects in a fire and then they would transfer them
Speaker 1: into earthen ovens for cooking. Different shapes and sizes of
Speaker 1: the balls definitely hold heat at different temperatures and for
Speaker 1: different lengths of time, so this was most likely used
Speaker 1: deliberately to control the time and temperature of cooking. Also,
Speaker 1: in the realm of cooking. There is some pottery at
Speaker 1: Poverty Point, but overwhelmingly the vessels there are made from stone.
Speaker 1: One cache of broken vessels at the site contained almost
Speaker 1: three thousand pieces, which probably came from between two hundred
Speaker 1: and three hundred stone vessels. So shifting away from the
Speaker 1: cooking and edables arena, next up, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about weapons and their parts. There are lots of projectile
Speaker 1: points and darts made from stone. Darts and spears were
Speaker 1: thrown using a tool called an addle addle. There are
Speaker 1: also lots of stone weights to give the addle addle
Speaker 1: more heft so the projectiles would go farther. Also in
Speaker 1: the category of weights, Poverty Point is full of plummets,
Speaker 1: and these are stones that were carved into drop like
Speaker 1: shapes which were used as weights on fishing nets. There
Speaker 1: are also tools all over Poverty Points, so we're talking
Speaker 1: about axes, ads, as, drills and the like, and a
Speaker 1: lot of these are stone tools made for working with stone,
Speaker 1: both to make more tools and a shape stone into
Speaker 1: more ceremonial and ornamental objects. These objects include beads, a
Speaker 1: lot of little potbellied owl figurines, which are my favorite.
Speaker 1: They're they're very charming. They're super charming. Um. There are
Speaker 1: human figurines which are mostly kind of androgynous. There are
Speaker 1: also tubes that are made of a substance called less
Speaker 1: as well as one's made from stone. It's not completely
Speaker 1: clear whether these were used as pipes for smoking things
Speaker 1: or whether they were used in ceremonies in some way,
Speaker 1: but there are a number of them from around the site.
Speaker 1: We have talked about stone so much already in this podcast. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in addition to all these tools, weapons, vessels, and ornaments,
Speaker 1: there's also stone along the tops of the ridges, more
Speaker 1: than seventy metric tons of it. But here's the thing,
Speaker 1: there's literally no natural stone existing at Poverty Point. To
Speaker 1: find stone locally, people at Poverty Point would have had
Speaker 1: to travel at least fifty kilometers and that would have
Speaker 1: been a two day trip. Even if people had been
Speaker 1: traveling along the water at that point. Between half and
Speaker 1: three quarters of the stone at Poverty Point actually isn't local.
Speaker 1: It's from way more than fifty kilometers away. A big
Speaker 1: portion of it is from more than a thousand kilometers away.
Speaker 1: And that's might have you scratching your head if this
Speaker 1: is the first you've heard of it. It is one
Speaker 1: of those revelations that will give pause. And we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about how that all uh came to be
Speaker 1: after our own pause for a quick word from a sponsor,
Speaker 1: so to return to all the stone at Poverty Point,
Speaker 1: all these axes and adornments and at Lattlewits, and all
Speaker 1: of all of the stuff they were made from stone
Speaker 1: and other materials that was not native to the Poverty
Speaker 1: Point site. All these various types of stone and flint
Speaker 1: and ore that were used to craft things that Poverty
Speaker 1: Point came from all over the Mississippi River Valley all
Speaker 1: the way up to the Great Lakes, and some of
Speaker 1: the sources for stone and or were from much farther
Speaker 1: east and west. The cash of vessel fragments we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier came mostly from the Appalachian Mountains. They also got
Speaker 1: soap stone from what's now Georgia and quart site from
Speaker 1: what's now Alabama. At the same time, the goods that
Speaker 1: were made at Poverty Point made their way out into
Speaker 1: the rest of the Mississippi River vaal y and the
Speaker 1: southeast as well. Poverty Point objects are found in archaeological
Speaker 1: sites all over this region. There are also six different
Speaker 1: styles of weapon points and knives found at Poverty Point.
Speaker 1: These are also distributed around the surrounding area at various
Speaker 1: archaeological sites, but unlike at Poverty Point, these sites tend
Speaker 1: to have just one or two styles, not the vast array.
Speaker 1: All of this collected together points to the idea that
Speaker 1: Poverty Point was a gathering place for lots of people
Speaker 1: and a vibrantly active trading ground. People brought stone and
Speaker 1: lots of it from very far away and then returns
Speaker 1: to where they had came from with with items from
Speaker 1: Poverty Point. It's entirely possible that food was also part
Speaker 1: of Poverty Points trade, but that's a little bit more
Speaker 1: difficult to document. They definitely had an abundance of fish, deer,
Speaker 1: and nuts to hunt and gather, and we do know
Speaker 1: that these foods were staples in the diet at Poverty
Speaker 1: Point itself. It's a lot harder to track whether somebody
Speaker 1: got some fish and took it back with them and
Speaker 1: then ate it. Yeah, not not as easy to maintain
Speaker 1: those historical records. So here's where things really move into
Speaker 1: the weird not sure territory. At Poverty Point, we know
Speaker 1: lots of people came to the site to trade that
Speaker 1: there's this clear documentation in the archaeological record of massive
Speaker 1: amounts of trading from very far away, but we're really
Speaker 1: not sure how many people, if any, lived there permanently.
Speaker 1: For example, archaeologists suspect that people lived along the ridges,
Speaker 1: but no archaeological evidence has turned up yet for homes there.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible that homes were made from materials that
Speaker 1: decayed over time, and the site was repeatedly plowed and
Speaker 1: used for farming for at least a century, so that
Speaker 1: could have easily destroyed some evidence. Even so, the presence
Speaker 1: the presence of zero evidence of houses is a bit
Speaker 1: the head scratcher. Uh. The idea that people lived along
Speaker 1: the ridges comes from the presence of middens basically trash
Speaker 1: deposits along the slopes of the ridges, along with the
Speaker 1: type and number of artifacts that are found along the
Speaker 1: ridges themselves. There's also no evidence of any burials at
Speaker 1: Poverty Point, which is something you would expect if people
Speaker 1: were living there full time. The only exception is that
Speaker 1: Mound B was built over the remains of a fire,
Speaker 1: and at least one body had been burned in that fire,
Speaker 1: but it's not entirely clear who that person was, or
Speaker 1: when it happened, or how that was related to other
Speaker 1: events at Poverty Point. Basically, there is too much trash
Speaker 1: on the site for it to have just been a
Speaker 1: seasonal trading ground that would have been left vacant for
Speaker 1: long stretches of the year, and the lack of burial
Speaker 1: sites makes it unlikely that it was a year round
Speaker 1: home for as many people as the size of the
Speaker 1: site would be able to support, So it remains a
Speaker 1: bit of a mystery. These two things kind of leave
Speaker 1: a lot of question mark. It seems like maybe there
Speaker 1: are some people who were there all the time and
Speaker 1: uh many many others who came to trade, But that's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of theory and not a lot of
Speaker 1: clear evidence for which might be the right one. It's
Speaker 1: also a bit of a mystery exactly who these people were.
Speaker 1: There's not a specific known Native American tribe that's been
Speaker 1: tied to the construction of the mounds at Poverty Point
Speaker 1: or to all of the things that went on there. Instead,
Speaker 1: archaeologists have come up with a set of hallmarks that
Speaker 1: they used to define what's called Poverty Point culture, and
Speaker 1: this includes Poverty Point objects, projectile points and knives, lots
Speaker 1: of raw materials being used from really far away uh,
Speaker 1: creating of beads and plummets, and an overall hunter gatherer
Speaker 1: type of existence, especially relying on fish, deer, and nuts.
Speaker 1: And so this culture stretched roughly from Memphis to the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico along the Mississippi River valley. However, some
Speaker 1: of these hallmarks, such as the Poverty Point objects, travel
Speaker 1: well and the last a very long time, So it's
Speaker 1: important not to just suppose that every hunter gatherer society
Speaker 1: that hunted with projectiles and used Poverty Point objects was
Speaker 1: necessarily part of Poverty Point culture. On the last kind
Speaker 1: of mind blowing thing that I feel like there are
Speaker 1: many mind blowing things, or at least things that blew
Speaker 1: my mind in this episode. Um archaeologists used to think
Speaker 1: that because of the huge complexity and engineering scale of
Speaker 1: the mounds and ridges, and because of all that non
Speaker 1: local sourcing of the stone that they needed, but the
Speaker 1: Poverty Point people must have been an agricultural society sort of.
Speaker 1: The society would have had to develop to the point
Speaker 1: of being able to sustain agriculture before being able to
Speaker 1: do all of these other things. But more recent research
Speaker 1: really undoes that idea. We just don't have the archaeological
Speaker 1: evidence of agriculture going on at the site, and the
Speaker 1: amount of labor and time that it would have taken
Speaker 1: to raise all of these mounds couldn't really have happened
Speaker 1: if the you know, the same or more amount of
Speaker 1: labor was also required to raise crops and take care
Speaker 1: of domestic animals. So, basically, based on the evidence we have,
Speaker 1: and contrary to what people supposed about what hunter gatherer
Speaker 1: societies were capable of doing, the people at Poverty Point
Speaker 1: or hunter gatherers who built these massively large and complex
Speaker 1: engineering feats, which are actually unique in the Native American world.
Speaker 1: There's no other ridge structure like the one at Poverty
Speaker 1: Point that's been found anywhere else. They also appear to
Speaker 1: have been a really egalitarian culture, so they shared their
Speaker 1: labor and their resources, even though the site where they
Speaker 1: lived was the biggest in the region. They don't seem
Speaker 1: to have been wealthier than the surrounding communities. There doesn't
Speaker 1: even appear to have been any kind of wealth disparity
Speaker 1: among the people who lived in or visited Poverty Point.
Speaker 1: There has to have been some kind of leadership or
Speaker 1: at least management, because that would have been necessary to
Speaker 1: plan and manage all of the building of these ridges
Speaker 1: and mounds, especially the ones that went The construction went
Speaker 1: on for years and years um. But we have no
Speaker 1: textiles surviving from the site and definitely no written records.
Speaker 1: So all of that goes back into the realm of
Speaker 1: theory and conclusions drawn from the archaeological evidence that we have.
Speaker 1: In addition to all these other question marks about some
Speaker 1: of the specifics of the people's in the life at
Speaker 1: Poverty Point, we also don't know why people eventually left
Speaker 1: Poverty Point. One possible explanation is that when Poverty Point
Speaker 1: was in use, there may have been a lake adjacent
Speaker 1: to the site which was used for fishing. Uh. We
Speaker 1: know that fish are definitely abundant in those parts of
Speaker 1: the waterways, and that they were a dietary staple, so
Speaker 1: if the lake had dried up, there would not have
Speaker 1: been enough to feed anybody anymore, and that could have
Speaker 1: caused them to exit. The State of Louisiana bought four
Speaker 1: hundred acres of the site in two I'm sure when
Speaker 1: we put this on our Facebook page, someone will put
Speaker 1: the Aliens guy from the History Channel ship on there. Um. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: because there's just a whole lot of This was a
Speaker 1: massively impressive archaeological feat, and we are not sure exactly
Speaker 1: who built it or why Aliens. I don't actually think
Speaker 1: it was Aliens. I always think it's really cool when
Speaker 1: researchers have an idea in their minds about how society
Speaker 1: functioned and then they find something that undoes that whole idea. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, societies must have progressed to being able to
Speaker 1: farm things agriculturally before they are sophisticated enough to do
Speaker 1: these other things. Oh, actually, no, that seems not to
Speaker 1: be the case. This brings back um such fond memories
Speaker 1: of when I was a kid in school and I
Speaker 1: grew up part of the time in northwest Florida, and
Speaker 1: we visited uh An Indian Mound as one of our
Speaker 1: field trip. Yes, we had, but it was nothing comparable.
Speaker 1: We had. We had a mound where we visited near
Speaker 1: where I grew up that was called Town Creek Indian Mound,
Speaker 1: and that is still what it is called today because
Speaker 1: I looked it up. Uh And that is a place
Speaker 1: that some of the mounds were used as burial sites.
Speaker 1: And then nearer ish to Atlanta is Ottawa Mounds, which
Speaker 1: I think also some of them were used as burial sites.
Speaker 1: So having had these normally enormous mounds that were not
Speaker 1: burial sites was another thing. Um, it was sort of
Speaker 1: foreign to me. And this whole idea, along with the
Speaker 1: idea of living somewhere where there's no stone everywhere I
Speaker 1: have ever lived as very rocky, and so I was like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean there is no stone in the
Speaker 1: Stone Age Society's home. It does, uh sort of cause
Speaker 1: you to have to shift your thinking of out how
Speaker 1: that could exist and be a thing, because I, like you,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what what? What? No stone at all? Are
Speaker 1: you sure that? I've been wondering if it was hyperbole?
Speaker 1: But you know, all of these respectable archaeologists were saying
Speaker 1: over and over that there was no stone. They would
Speaker 1: have had to go fifty kilometers to get stone. Really okay?
Speaker 1: So Uh, I also have some listener mail. We got
Speaker 1: several listener mail slash tweet slash Facebook messages after our
Speaker 1: series on China under Chairman Mao Um of people asking uh,
Speaker 1: how people in China now think about these events or
Speaker 1: more personal stories about UM, what people experienced who were
Speaker 1: living in China at the time, and we have gotten
Speaker 1: the other listener mail that answers some of those questions.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to read from one of them today,
Speaker 1: and this is from Coco Um and Coco says, most
Speaker 1: of my not ledge of the Cultural Revolution comes from
Speaker 1: my parents, who were born in the fifties. I grew
Speaker 1: up in China during the nineties, and while the Cultural
Speaker 1: Revolution was in the textbooks, all the blame were placed
Speaker 1: on the Gang of Four. My dad's father was imprisoned
Speaker 1: during that time. I don't know the details because it's
Speaker 1: still a very sensitive topic with my dad. He was
Speaker 1: horribly bullied as a child because his father was a
Speaker 1: counter revolutionary. From what I've been able to gather, my
Speaker 1: grandfather worked as a professor. Together with some of his colleagues,
Speaker 1: he participated in the one hundred Flowers campaign and was
Speaker 1: subsequently labeled a rightist and counter revolutionary. According to my grandmother,
Speaker 1: one of his students was also imprisoned at the same place.
Speaker 1: The student later died in prison of a possible suicide.
Speaker 1: About the one hundred Flowers campaign, there are a few
Speaker 1: Chinese articles that mentioned my grandfather and according to one
Speaker 1: of them, the campaign was really a trap to lure
Speaker 1: dissenters into exposing themselves. Given how things turned out, I'm
Speaker 1: inclined to believe in this conspiracy theory this one time.
Speaker 1: My grandmother also told me stories of the famine. Still,
Speaker 1: there were times when the food shortage was so bad
Speaker 1: that people resorted to eating tree barks. The university that
Speaker 1: my grandmother worked at had a lot of trees along
Speaker 1: at streets, and I think during one winter when food
Speaker 1: was particularly scarce, people would stripe one type of tree
Speaker 1: in particular because it's barks tasted the least bitter. My
Speaker 1: mother's family had a slightly easier time during the Cultural Revolution.
Speaker 1: They lived in the south, where there was more food.
Speaker 1: They also lived in a more rural area where they
Speaker 1: had a small plot of land where they planted food.
Speaker 1: They were also more well off to begin with. And
Speaker 1: how the Cultural Revolution is viewed there does seem to
Speaker 1: be an urban slash world divide. Since people most likely
Speaker 1: to write about history in China are the urbanite intellectuals,
Speaker 1: the general impression is overwhelmingly negative. However, I have Chinese
Speaker 1: friends with parents from rural areas who tend to have
Speaker 1: much rosier views of the events. One of my parents
Speaker 1: friends was sent to the countryside as an educated youth
Speaker 1: and became an elementary cool teacher while he was there.
Speaker 1: He said that without the down to the countryside movement,
Speaker 1: the children in the rural areas during that time would
Speaker 1: have had a much worse education, simply because without the
Speaker 1: government mandate, educated young people would not be in the
Speaker 1: countryside teaching first graders. I do have the Cultural Revolution
Speaker 1: to thank for my existence. Though my parents met while
Speaker 1: they were in university. My dad's three years older than
Speaker 1: my mom, and the reason they went to the university
Speaker 1: at the same time was that because during the Cultural Revolution,
Speaker 1: post secondary education was inaccessible for most people, they basically
Speaker 1: both took their exams in the same year, even though
Speaker 1: he was older than she was, and that's how they
Speaker 1: wound up in school together. And one last thing, I
Speaker 1: have a pet theory that the current brain drain that
Speaker 1: China is experiencing were many highly educated or wealthy Chinese
Speaker 1: are immigrating, is at least in part a legacy of
Speaker 1: the Cultural Revolution. From my own very formal and very
Speaker 1: unscientific survey of my Chinese Canadian friends, the majority of
Speaker 1: us come from families that are of the five black categories.
Speaker 1: I think many of us emigrated not just for the
Speaker 1: usual reasons seeking a better at life, etceter, but also
Speaker 1: because even though we did have a good life in China,
Speaker 1: we don't trust that it will last. UM. So thank
Speaker 1: you Coco for sending us that personal story about how
Speaker 1: the cultural Revolution affected your family. We got several of those, um,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of spreading them out to read them.
Speaker 1: There are some others that I hope to read one day,
Speaker 1: but that a lot of them are very tragic, and
Speaker 1: so I don't want to love them all together. If
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us, we're at History
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