Fun in the jungle.

Writers like Eduardo Galeano (whose book Hugo Chavez gave to Obama), became popular blaming Europe for the fall of the aboriginal empires and the poverty that today prevails in Latin America. But iron was not known in the whole American continent before the Europeans arrived. Aboriginal Americans didn't know the use of the wheel !!! Most of their children died young. This is not to condone the cruelty of the conquistadores, but we must avoid thinking that aboriginal cultures were a bunch of ecologists having fun in the jungle.

Comment by Ariel Barbero on "How Europe Lost Faith in Its Own Civilization." By Frits Bolkestein. Wall Street Journal, 6/4/11.