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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Riley37" data-source="post: 7476800" data-attributes="member: 6786839">The reason isn't a good reason. Because comparing the actions of all the people who came to the Americas from Europe, from Leif Erikson onwards, with all the actions of all the people who came to the Americas from Asia via the Bering Straits, from the Taino to the Inuit, is such a large scale. No two points adequately represent the whole.The summary I found on Tlaloc didn't put the child sacrifice up front, but I looked for it and found it.Would you care to speculate on whether life among the subject peoples was worse under the Aztecs, or worse under Spanish encomienda? Neither is a place to find moral high ground. One can also debate the Third Reich versus the USSR under Stalin, and the arguments there are well-worn.Perhaps I should retract any attempt to answer the question about moral superiority. The asker has already drawn his conclusions, and won't benefit from any response I give. I had a point about Thomas telling Gradine "if you studied this ancient period..." and whether Thomas had accurately summarized Gradine's position, or was knocking down a straw man. That point stands independently.On another hand, here's an even wider re-framing of the question: is it possible, among humans, for group A to encounter group B, where group A have the technology to travel to location B but not vice versa, and for group A to *not* conquer and enslave group B?</blockquote>