Why did Native american Populations, in both the north and in south, not build cities, kingdoms...

Why is that? As others said they controlled other tribes, had an emperor, and had imperialistic conquest.

IT was more a confederation, the aztecs didn't control the politics in other citie states, they were allied with them, the weaker ones had to contriboot soldiers or logistical aid in times of war and that's it, for the rest of the time they were free to do what they wanted.

They did
Cahokia

there is a CGP Grey video on this.

the only animal big enough to do work with was the American Bison and the Llama. Llamas were chill enough but not available in north america. The Buffalo is a 7 foot tall, 1000 pound, engine of destruction. That can jump a fence just as high as it is tall. If it just doesn't knock it over.

What about the elk and other big venisons? Also they had horses until they eat them all.

Moose and Elk are huge assholes. Seriously they are more dangerous than bears.

Like aurouchs or boars, and they were domesticated.

This. Where I live, in Western Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma, they had a ritual complex at the Spiro mounds, and they made the rounds of bluff-dwellings in the Ozarks during the year. Artifacts from the bluff dwellings indicate that the cultures connected to the Spiro mounds had far-reaching trade networks.

Nigga if they didn't pay tribute the Aztecs would steamroll their ass. It's not like a state could secede from the confederation. They were conquered and made obediant to the Aztec. By your logic, all city states that surrendered to the Mongolians had an equal say. Alexander the Great conquered stuff and then left it to administrate itself. Did that make his conquered land a confederation? No.

Tenochitlan was a city with 1 million people at the height of the Aztec reign.
>inb4 Tenochitlan was not as developed as European and Asian cities
It had a market economies, various districts, good agricultural setup and it was literally built on a giant lake.

>no empires
Olmecs, Zapotecs, Incans, Aztecs and Mayans don't count?

The aztecs literally named themselves the Triple Alliance, though. Three city-states collecting taxes from other city-states are not what most people would call an empire.

>Mayans
>Empire

>Olmecs
There is no conclusive evidence that Olmecs had an empire.

Ugh, why modern scholars have to paste empire on every american civilization...

Three city-states collecting taxes from other city-states are not what most people would call an empire.
Most people would identify plenty of classical states as Empires.

WE WUZ EMPIRE BUILDERS AN SHEEEEEEIIIIT

Why are mexicans so apologist and annoying about their cultures, Veeky Forums?
They are worse than blacks.

I wonder why the different order of tech development.They had great architecture, writing, gold and silver working, but not copper, bronze, iron working.
Even the prehistoric Alp Glacier man had a copper ax.

...

Not sure why bison weren't domesticated. Its possible they had a social element that could be controlled like with cattle but perhaps not. Elks are way too skittish and hard to control though.

Horses were wiped out mostly due to environmental factors by the way. The potential for domestication has to already be there, you can tame most animals but long term breeding resulting in behavioral changes is a complicated art today. Much moreso in the stone age.

the natives in North America were at a technological state roughly equivalent (in the case of metallurgy) to the Levant and old Europe at around 5000 bc. so late chalcolithic, though just as the Spanish were coming in you were getting to see some weak bronze alloys

Do people actually realize how fuck huge North America is?

The people who arrived in North America were most certainly hunter/gatherers, the immense space and abundance of hunt, did not force them to advance to an agricultural city state level, like in Mesopotamia, China or Mesoamerica.

As far as I know Northern Natives did have agriculture, in the form of corn cultivation, but they did not wholly depend on it like the Mayas or Aztecs. If corn was exhausted they could just move into another empty territory and hunt,forage or fish there. Also if I seem to remember correctly the natives the first settlers encountered in Jonestown where part of a larger confederation of tribes, so maybe some kind of empire could have have formed there if they never contacted the Europeans.

Every single answer other than "because they didn't" is wrong. Civilisation isn't the magical goal inborn to every human who has to try to find it. It only develops when an extremely specific set of circumstances are met, which were not met, and that is why. The same reason it took humanity 240,000 years to do it.

They call it an empire because Tenochtitlan was calling all the shots, and the Aztecs were having some form of ethnogenesis before the Spanish arrived. The king of Tenochtitlan was teh most powerfull person, and the surrounding Mexica populated city states gathered under his authority. Also it makes sense to call it an empire due to it's imperial ambitions against the Tarascans and other neighbors.

Technological development doesn't occur in any "order". Civilization isn't a computer game. Societies develop according to their needs.

No domesticable animals for transport means you have to carry everything on your back, it also limits the exchange of goods and ideas with your neighbors if walking everywhere is literally the only option (while carrying all your shit with you). Human history is one long story of one group taking ideas from another group, improving on it, having it stolen from them etc. Thanks to animals like horses, donkeys and camels, the people of the mediterreran had been exchaning ideas with people in China via the trade routes for thousands of years.

Also El Nino, El Nina is a bitch and tend to wipe out civilizations. Mesoamerica was full of civilizations being built on the ruins of another who got the shit end of natures stick

They had domesticated dogs which they used as their transport.

Because they aren't white.

Are you really comparing the carrying capacity of a dog to something like a camel or a mule?

Bison are hard as fuck to control compared to cattle afaik, also way bigger.

Natives are genetically inferior and couldn't figure out how to make use of what was around them

Thanks for bumping this thread /pol/. Like others said, history is not deterministic thus civilization not the necessary outcome.

This, they were kangs

Lord Pakal would like a word with you two.

There were cities and empires in the Americas.
Cahokia supposedly had 100k people there and based on the ruins had markets and was a thriving city.

Most of the cities seemed to up and disappear before the Europeans showed up and anthropologists have no idea why some of them went away. Same thing happened with the Mayans.

Seems like the northern natives were living some kind of post acopalytpic mad max style life until European disease killed all of them.

I figure that was the case for most of the western tribes, especially the Navajo and the other SW tribes, but the Mississippian cultures had cities and far-reaching trade networks. Plus the Iroquois Confederacy was a thing as well.

I sometimes think that the overabundance of resources might have kept the natives from having to adapt to harsh conditions and improve. Combine that with a culture that promotes living in harmony and unity with the environment and the impetus for technological advancement isn't there.

>Seems like the northern natives were living some kind of post acopalytpic mad max style life until European disease killed all of them.

Which "northern natives" are you talking about? New England natives lived in comfy villages and better quality of life than Europeans at the time.

Probably the Plains Indians and the Southwest Indians.

The Sioux, Blackfoot, Cree, Apache, Navajo, Pueblo, Shoshone, Arapaho, Crow, Cheyenne, Commanche, Lakota, and Kiowa could certainly be called Mad Max style groups considering how cutthroat it could be out there.