Yes, sorry, you're right. The model under discussion assumes people weren't moved, the way, say, the American Cherokee were forced to move. However, I'd say being overrun by a force of superior warriors and reduced to second class citizens who were half-starved almost into oblivion--as the model seems to me to describe--could be described as being "displaced," although that's not the best choice of word.

Tolerance and respect are perhaps two different things. If by "tolerance" you mean "allowed to continue" that may well have obtained. The Romans allowed Jewish people to continue worshipping in their Temple in Jerusalem, for a while. Until the Jews staged a revolution, and then what "respect," in the sense of "high or special regard," did the Romans show? Intolerance didn't begin with the Christians. (warning: unprovable assertion alert...) It's been driven by political expedience for ever. When it's in the elite's interest, they'll be tolerant. But they don't respect the conquered, as in believe them to have worth.

You ask why upset the local gods? This assumes the Anglos accepted the local gods as gods, in other words, it assumes respect to demonstrate the possibility of respect. It's quite possible the conquerors didn't at all recognize the validity of local beliefs. Which brings us to...

I use the word specifically to invoke the feelings people here on this board have for those they don't respect, just the way I imagine the Anglos didn't "respect" the Celts or Britons or Welisc they had conquered. When someone today goes to the trouble to go to an ancient site and leave an offering, of course the leaver feels that offering has some worth. Just as the conquered Welisc would have. And just as the people here call the modern day offerings trash, so would have the Anglos. If for no other reason than to enforce their "superior" position in their own minds and the minds of their conquered subjects.

I really, really doubt the conquered Welisc saw their situation as a "glorious amalgam" with the Anglo-saxons. Only we, at a far and impersonal remove, could possibly see it so.

I have a slightly disrespectful attitude toward the ancient stone arrangers (whether pushers, pullers, rowers, draggers or any combination of such) just the same way you have a slightly disrespectful attitude toward we poor benighted historyless Americans. As far as I can see--and yes, it's true, I haven't lived among the ancient places, I've only visited and read about them--they weren't anybody special. They cut down the trees, killed the wolves and the elk, and just generally tore up the land as fast as they could. Being few in number and limited in technology, the damage they did was perforce small compared to what we can do today. But they were doing their best to whack Nature as they found it.

Now, it's quite possible I exaggerate in my mind what I see as the "unnatural" trend of Neolithic belief. What seems to me a vast difference in art from the painted caves to the banded ceramics might, if the new "adolescent fantasy" theory of the European Paleolithic art [http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1614422.htm among others] is true, be a red herring. Maybe the impulse to control nature--implying a fundamental disrespect of it, as it is in its own right--is inherent in being human. Yet, as you've pointed out, not all stone-age peoples became rabid technologists.

You impute the idealistic worship of nature as epitomised in the Chief Seattle kind-of-quote to the European Neolithic. I see the same period as the beginning of what's ended up as modern America. In other words, your society's ancestors were MY society's philosophical ancestors, too. Awful thought, eh?

Thanks very much for continuing to respond. I rant so awfully about this stuff because I think it's important. If the group or the moderators feels I'm too far off base, or personally offfensive (which I am not trying to be, but the foam in my mouth makes it difficult to express myself clearly) please cut me off and delete these posts. Thanks again and again to all and especially you, Littlestone.