April 21st 2024: Earth Day Commemoration

Earth Day Commemoration to Our 
Western Hemisphere Indigenous

MEET DAVE PATTERSON
Dave Patterson shatters myths surrounding pre-1492 Western Hemisphere Indigenous. He inspires by retelling actual histories: Europeans who did not bathe, had poor health, disease & poor diet; Western Hemisphere healthy and eating well; the first true democracy; a 700-year-old transportation system with 225,000 kilometers of roadway; gifts of 75% of our world’s foods; the genesis of women’s rights; 1000+ pyramids; they had large populations and the land was taken already; bigger cities than Europe; our concepts of freedom and liberty – there’s hundreds of these well-documented accounts. We can look at our own day today, and recognize the extraordinary number of WH Indigenous gifts to the world. We may feel challenged to transform some worldviews and attitudes.

On Sunday Dave will commemorate Earth Day by selecting some examples of sustainable living before 1492, and contrasting how we get ourselves into trouble by insisting on progress at any cost.

.READINGS - April 21, 2024

first reading

The road system in the Andes was very intriguing and engineers still study it today. It's a fascinating story and a wonderful accomplishment. Yet even though it is interesting, the basics are not generally known and not taught to any of our children in school. It’s not taught to anybody, yet it’s difficult to understand why that is.

The Andes' road system was started around AD 800 to 1200 by the Wari, Tiwanaku, and Chimor cultures but it wasn't finished by the Inca until 600 or 700 years ago. Either of the two main roadways, if placed in Canada, would stretch from Newfoundland to Vancouver. If stretched across the U.S., each roadway would extend from New York to Los Angeles. The Incas inherited most of this infrastructure from previous civilizations, but used the road system to keep their empire as one. Of the two main highways, one was along the coast and one was in the mountains, and both were similar in length. The roads averaged anywhere from 9 to 15 feet across. A few places were as small as 5 feet across and other areas were as wide as 82 feet across.

There were many subsidiary roads and routes joining different areas, including the two main roads. At one point we taught that there were 40,000 kilometres (25,000 mi.) of roadway and we would say, “What does 40,000 kilometres sound like? That's the distance around the earth.” It was an impressive number. But …. satellite technology has allowed researchers to discover the total amount of roadway within the entire road system isn’t 40,000 km, but 225,000 km (140,000 mi.) of all routes plus highway. This road system is still in use today after 650 years.

Dave Patterson

Second Reading

At the time of Columbus, Europe’s largest city was Paris. The Western Hemisphere’s largest city had a larger population than Paris. By the 1300s and 1400s this area of Tenochtitlan, in modern day Mexico, had aqueducts sophisticated enough to supply year-round water to households for personal use. By building causeways over swamps and combining this with a transportation grid, the government could provide water, as well as waste removal, operated by a thriving local merchant class. The government hired over 1000 workers to keep the city clean, at a time when all European cities were using their streets as open sewers for waste.

The urban cleanliness was coupled in this case with public health measures. Personal hygiene and clean water made the work of their hospitals easier. In Mesoamerica, Aztec public hospitals meant the poor could be cared for by specialist doctors, midwives, and nurses. The existence of prenatal care, early sex education, and mental health physicians shows the breadth of that example. It was the world’s first publicly funded healthcare system.

Disability rights laws also protected all blind and disabled citizens, providing them with special work provisions, encouragement to marry and participate in mainstream activities and having basic needs met when they could not entirely furnish a livelihood for themselves. The elderly and those with chronic diseases were also taken care of in their health care system. This setup was in stark contrast to Europe. Rulers normally ignored the disabled who were typically homeless and living on the streets. The Inquisition of the 1400s meant the killing of disabled throughout Europe. They were thought to be possessed by demons. England’s debtor prison system came to include these same handicapped and poor individuals, a concept moved overseas to North America with the implementation of “poor farms” and “county farms”.

Dave Patterson