Why didn't the Native Americans advance beyond Stone Age technology?

Why didn't the Native Americans advance beyond Stone Age technology?

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hah, got em

>who were the nephites and lamanites

pls no Dorvan V

pls no Mormons

Israelites don't count

lack of animals fit for domestication

> this triggers Veeky Forums and /pol/

long story short: there might be some civ's that had had metalurgy but bronze or iron alone doesn't make an empire

if the aztecs had bronze then maybe we'd have seen a difference but by then it was too litle too late

they did have bronze.
>Tlaximaltepoztli

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_mining_in_the_United_States
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_in_ancient_times#Americas

Copper and Tin both existed in the Americas. They had plenty of time since the Ice Age to make copper. Why didn't they?

There were plenty of animals they could have domesticated. Why didn't they?

Olmecs did

>There were plenty of animals they could have domesticated
Such as?

Yeah, no.

I've never understood the Jared Diamond "lack of animals" meme given that there WERE several quite advanced civilizations in the Americas, and they were still actively developing. The Nahua were well on their way to developing a fully-fledged writing system, for instance -- give 'em another century or two and they'd have gotten there.

They got a later start than the Old World civilizations but there's no reason to believe that they'd reached a plateau when they got conquered. The Americas would've kept developing.

As to why American civilization was centered on Mexico and the Andes, while nobody knows for sure, I think it's fair to say it probably had a lot to do with where high-density crops like maize, squashes, and potatoes originated and were first domesticated -- who got an earlier start, basically. Civilization was also developing north of the US-Mexico border, but it was centuries behind.

Olmecs did what?

Buffalo, Deer, Turkey, Wolf off the top of my head

they did domesticate turkey and wolf tho

olmecs alredy used copper

>Buffalo, Deer, Turkey, Wolf off the top of my head
2/10 not even trying

Turkeys and wolves yes. You do know they had dogs right?

Buffalo was more complicated, but they were somewhat hearded. They were basically a patchwork of huge hunting parks created through controlled burnings over a wide stretch of land in the US.

"Rather than domesticate animals for meat, Indians retooled ecosystems to encourage elk, deer, and bear. Constant burning of undergrowth increased the numbers of herbivores, the predators that fed upon them, and the people who ate them both. Rather than the thick, unbroken monumental snarl of trees imagined by Thoreau, the great eastern forest was an ecological kaleidoscope of garden plots, blackberry rambles, pine barrens, and spacious groves of chestnut, hickory, and oak... Incredible to imagine today, bison occurred from New York to Georgia. A creature of the prairie, Bison bison was imported to the East by Native Americans along a path of indigenous fire, as they changed enough forest into fallows for it to survive far outside its original range. When the Haudenosaunee hunted these animals, the historian William Cronon observed, they

'were harvesting a foodstuff which they had consciously been instrumental in creating. Few English observers could have realized this. People accustomed to keeping domesticated animals lacked the conceptual tools to recognize that the Indians were practicing a more distant kind of husbandry of their own.'

... Carrying their flints and torches, Native Americans were living in balance with Nature---but they had their thumbs on the scale. Shaped for their comfort and convenience, the American landscape had come to fit their lives like comfortable clothing. It was a highly successful and stable system, if "stable" is the appropriate word for a regime that involves routinely enshrouding miles of countryside in smoke and ash..." - Charles Mann, "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

As for the deer, the Maya semi domesticated them, read de Landa's Relaciones de Yucatan.

He described how Maya women would breastfeed the deer, so they kept coming, keeping them close by and easier to hunt.

which animals?

fucking lamas? cavias?

dogs are great but you can't build a civilisation from them, dogs are a multiplier, not a static, dogs are great for hunting and herding but herding need something to herd and the only herdable animal was in the fucking mountains of south america, not where the wolves/dogs are

Was thinking about buying 1491, this makes me wanna buy it a lot. Any more you can tell me about this book?

Not that guy, but honestly it's not a great book, there are better ones to spend your money on. Don't have time to write a substantive reply right now but I'll drop back in later -- sorry.

I can upload it if you want it.
Pretty great book. Well written and full of things you probably know but never connected.

My favorite segment personally is the part of the Amazon of which I was not aware of much. The book goes through regions of the Americas, primarily the Andes, Mesoamerica, the Mound cultures of North America, the northeast of the US and the Amazon. I would recommend it, and if you are looking to investigate more into a particular segment or region there's a nice bibliography. I personally already had been investigating Mesoamerica, but I was not too knowledgable of the cultures in the north and south so it was insightful for me at least.

Isolation

Inferior race. It's that simple

An upload would be much appreciated

I'm particularly interested in the aztecs, about to start broken Spears. If anyone knows any good books on the aztecs that would be much appreciated too

I recommend you start with the Aztecs by Michael E Smith or the Aztecs from Thames and Hudson. Both are great introductions. Of course I also recommend the codices (Florentine, Duran's, Chimalpopoca). As well as the written account of the Anonymous conquistador, Bernal Diaz de Castillo, and Cortes' letters to the King. But read these with caution, especially when you get to the religion parts. At times theres blatant bias like when they refere to the gods as demons or inject their own weird theories like Quetzalcoatl was really St, Thomas. As for academic books outside of the two I mentioned, if you are interested in a particular topic I can suggest specific books to you.

Not him but do you have any other recommendations for books on mesoamerica in general or other groups like the Maya or Inca?

Tbh most of Veeky Forums doesn't seem to get this, but like genetic evolution, cultural evolution is not a straight line. Civilization does not make you any more "advanced", it's just that given our current environment, it happens to be the most viable method of cultural propagation. Many tribes practiced metal working, but they didn't need to use metal outside of ceremonial or religious uses because of their well developed lithic technology. Why would you abandon tech that you've used effectively for millenia to pursue a tech that hasn't proven it's effectiveness? Even in Europe/Middle East, people nearly exclusively used bronze for tools, for thousands of years, and it wasn't till the bronze age collapse (collapse of trade routes due to bronze shortages) that people got desperate enough to move to iron, which was still really shitty up until much later when they developed better smithing technology. Also a large factor is probably isolation, how civilization was only a viable thing in certain, concentrated areas. Outside of those areas, there wasn't enough competition/trade to spur further growth. Civilizations kinda play off each other through competition, and without that, you have a loss of advancement, and if that civilization ever gets destroyed it'll be much more difficult to re-invent it.
Forgive me if I'm not making any sense, I'm tired as fuck.

I don't think Diamond was arguing that the lack of animals to domesticate meant the civilizations had reached a plateau, more so that the lack of animals meant their development was slower.

If you think about it, it makes sense. When you have animals that you can domesticate, it increases productivity and output in a variety of ways, which naturally would translate to an increased rate of development.

This is a little different but I'm interested in how modern mexico has used aztec history in nation building. Not sure if I'm phrasing it

drive.google.com/open?id=0BygGBt33rrTdSURpU0lkQ2QyMjg

drive.google.com/open?id=0BygGBt33rrTdREdSZURvN0pEakk

Thanks my man

>relatively small concentrations of people
>hugely available resources in a temperate climate
>entire religion and belief system was a deeply spiritual connection to nature
>nomadic or semi permanent lifestyle and homes

There was really no need to. Even the tribes that fought with each other weren't in direct competition. they knew how to live off the land in a way that would not interfere with it. When the Europeans first came there was really nothing that the natives wanted to trade with them because most tribes felt they already had everything they needed. It wasn't really until the tribes became dependent on European goods that their lifestyle was compromised.

For the Maya the Chronicle of Maya Kings and Queens is very good to understand the politics and hsitory of the Classical period. The Maya by Robert Sharer and Maya by Michael D Coe are both good, especially the former. Make sure to get the latest editions of both. Maya art and architecture by Mary Ellen Miller is another must. A forest of kings, maya cosmos by barbara tedlock, star gods of the maya, the chontal maya of acalan tixchel, the quiche maya of utatlan by robert carmack, the tzutujil maya by sandra orellana, the chorti maya by charles wisdom.

Now as for primary sources, defintitely the Popol Vuh, Christenson or Tedlocks versions are both good, I like Tedlocks a little more. The relacion de yucatan by Diego de Landa is also good (yes this is the same friar that burned over 2000 maya books, And he regretted this so much later in life he wrote down this book as an attempt to preserve some knowledge of the people). Other good ones are the Annals of the Cakchiquels and Titles of Totonicapan.

Mmmm not my area really so I can't suggest.

They did! Pic related.

Even the primitive ones were far beyond what you'd consider 'stone age'.

Dude Yellowknives and Copper Cree mined and crafted copper

Inuit crafted meteorites that were of iron and likely expanded their exploration of the far north.

Metal outside of areas were excessive were pushed into luxury and religious goods. Outside of float copper areas the limitations of dispersal to only upper caste people made technological diffusion highly unlikely beyond ornamentation.

All you people are dumb.

there where indians that build walled settlements and grew corn
why didn't they dominate their plain cousins?

as it now shows the plains were excellent for growin corn

not without extensive irrigation it's not!

Besides, it took Eurasia how many centuries to beat back the steppes peoples? Walled settlements don't make you invincible, especially if you're far enough into their territory to try and 'dominate' them.

All farm societies in the plains were riverine. Without plows they couldn't break through the root masses of perennial grasses.

Why didn't they develop plows then? They had plenty of time.

Thanks user!

As a different OP said, they didn't need 2. real life isn't like civ, there's not some set path you advance up. You do what makes sense for you at the time. Calling different societies who never interacted more or less advanced, ie comparing europeans in 1300 to Indians in 1300, is literally a meme you fell for

Buffalo

Buffalo aren't truly domesticated, bison cow hybrids are. Pure bison are ranged and penned like emu.

it took them so long before they found someone interested and strong enough to take thr whole of them

look at what the poles did with the cossacks near the crimea

If any historian says there was a single reason for it, they know nothing about history.

Cattle became domesticated, why couldn't the natives do it for buffalo?

Because the conditions of North America aren't the same as Eurasia and the world isn't a video game.

The guy asked for examples that they COULD have domesticated. Buffalo is one.

But they aren't. The descriptions of bison by colonizers proclaimed large swaths of land filled with them. They were not easily tamed nor could they by agrarian society.

We see in cattle herd of some size, but never has the remains shown anything to the degree of.Plains bison.

As a result of megafaunal extinction bison took over but accelerated beyond the pass of human populations. This is not so much the case of Eurasians who killed megafauna long before domestication and cattle never fulfilling quite the same.niches.

Secondly the behavior of wild cattle and bison are extremely different. The way they interacted with animals is far removed from Eurasian proto herders.

Beyond that the exploitation of farmland expanded into animal husbandry, that was carried to Europe where no such event occurred. In North America there was independent domestication of plants, however by the transmission of corn no additional beast was brought about because society developed without them.

We can see the capacity to utilize animals was quickly adopted without direct European contact by mustang, farmers abandoned their old mode of being and became plains hunters of bison but when the animal is sacred the idea of owning it and breaking it down could seem preposterous.

So stud dumbass

That's why you don't ask historians about matters of social evolution.

Stfu

Because there was no environmental pressure and need to do so.

That's not really a reason.

Bison are capable of being domesticated. There are domesticated bison now on ranches in the United States and Canada.

Natives tribes may have chosen not to domesticate because the bison were simply so abundant, or for any number of cultural reasons, but they could have. This is especially true considering that natives had dogs and other domestic animals. They understood the concept and chose not to do it for an animal which could have provided meat, milk, and draft power.

It's possible, but probably not a good idea for the people attempting in the first place.

Bison and cattle are essentially the same. The animals are so similar that they can interbreed. If Eurasians could domesticate cattle, Amerindians should have been able to domesticate bison.

Their agricultural revolution happened in 1000 bc as comepared to 10,000 bc in afroeurasia. Id say the aztecs are about on par with the ancient mesopotamians, and civilization only had about as much time to progress.

Most were dumb, didn't have good enough animals, and the smartest were in the fucking arctic, farther north than even Nords.

That still begs the question why?

Why did it take people in the Americas so long to adopt agriculture, stoneworking, roadbuilding, etc?

They are not domesticated. They are ranched and in the long process of domestication.
The conditions of humans in North America and Eurasia and the behaviors of bison and cattle are not the same

I'd argue the same.reason why Europeans were unable to domesticated cattle but mean they didn't even domesticated plants even though they were there much long than any time of the Americas

Bison are ranched like cattle. These aren't hunting ranches I'm talking about... these are commercial operations producing meat in a similar fashion to cattle ranches. I live within a few miles of several such places.

Also... are you really sure you want to say that Europeans did not domesticate plants?

Well how long did it take them to walk their asses there? Lel

But nah, its because they had shittier plants and had to learn how to plant beans, squash, and corn all in the same fields. The three foods work together to be calorie efficent or something. Look it up. Wheat and to a lesser extent rice are ez to farm though and more importantly ez to think to farm...

I'm sure Aurochs were pleasant to tame.

Beans, squash, and corn are shitty plants?

That trio provides a pretty whole diet, even without meat. There's a reason that the agricultural cultures of the Americas were so numerous. Places like Tenochtitlan were so large and densely populated that they were described as greater than any European city the Spanish had ever seen.

Yet these people still couldn't build metal weapons or tools. They didn't develop phonetic writing. They didn't have currency. They didn't have firearms or telescopes or metal armor. They were by most measures less advanced technologically and culturally.

There are domestic cattle that are ranged on ranches

The bison are tamed nondomesticates and ranched
No memes please

Aurochs being the forerunner to modern cattle is a meme now?

What are your criteria for "domesticated"?

Bison are pretty much raised just like cattle. They're bred in captivity. They're corralled by fences. They're culled for meat. They're milked for dairy.

They're basically fucking furry cows.

Eurasia simply had more civilizations for a longer time so information could travel around

What the Americas did independently is honestly pretty impressive

Don't mind me, just memeing.here.

They didn't need to, they were prosperous

desu I want to see someone doing a backflip over a charging bison

we know the cretan could do it over an aurochs and you guys are better then some lousy greeks aren't you? and after all bison and auroch are the same thing

Oh you're new to this thread. The first meme here was Europeans domesticating auroch (they didn't)
Domestication has.a series of physiological markers in relation to their undomesticated kin.

You can look it up.

Board I mean

Well, auroch domestication leading to taurine cattle is around 8,000-10,000 years old and the bull leaping fresco is only from 1450BC...........

Oh ok. Anyways, some people are attempting to bring back the Auroch look.

The auroch can never be brought back. You'll have a cow that looks like an as auroch.

....which is what I said.

Oh sorry late night. All my friends died in a fire and I'm distracting myself here

They had metallurgy before the Europeans did...

...and yet, oddly, no wheel, or bronze.

poor agriculture, lower populations, unlike the old world which had the fertile crescent, indo-gangetic plain and the north china plain and a higher likelihood of stumbling across things like bronze and iron

Stone age is maybe harsh therm, ut technically it is correct since the main technological material was flintstone.
It is interesting that metallurgy was not very advanced in precolumbian high civilizations of the Americas. More so since they had plenty or, advanced pottery and every basic metallurgy , gold silver copper, was known. They even had casting and cold working technologies developed to a high level.
So it is correct to call even the high civilizations neolithic and to locate some north American tribes at the start of the copper age.
Bit puzzling, since many other technologies where highly developed. What could the reasons be? Metal tools would have been highly useful for farming cultures like Inca or Maya or Aztecs.

The evolution of a civilisation is like regular evolution, it follows the path of least resistance. If you survive by embalming babies with their faeces but enough survive, you'll keep on doing that until a more advanced civ comes along

No iron deposits near the Aztecs. Can't speak for the other two. Though the northern American tribes apparently were working copper before they were, and certainly had iron deposits about. However, most of those cultures were dedicated to following state-sized herds of buffalo from place to place, and thus didn't set up long term settlements, let alone mines, but there were certainly a number of exceptions.

Agriculture is one of their high points actually, they domesticated so many plants and in the amazon invented one of the worlds richest soils to make an ungrowable tropical rainforest suitable to grow orchards, crops and gardens of many fruits and vegetables. I won't even get into the Andes and Mesoamericam agriculture.

>No iron deposits near the Aztecs
Iron is the most common metal ore, it is found virtually anywhere. Here have some old school smelting from Africa: youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ
Interestingly the west Africans directly went from stone age to iron age, which is remarkable, because iron smelting is much more complex than copper or bronze.
I read that there was bronze made in certain places in the Americas, yet for some reason the technology did not catch on. Bit of a mystery to me.

The more I read, I come to the conclusion that they knew about at least bronze, but for some reason did not really use the material much. At least for the Inka.

coochie mama

It's a popsci book about precolumbian America. A good overview if you want to go into the subject and know nothing about it.

>There were plenty of animals they could have domesticated. Why didn't they?
Good luck domesticating a buffalo without mans best friend and a horse to help you

Mayans had the highest pre industrial population density, so calling them stone age is kinda off.

Underrated post

> lack of animals fit for domestication

It it perfectly fine to call the Maya stone age, since it only classifies what their main technical work material was. Thats how archeology works.

>no wheel
Seriously? Why?
Did they have bad wood or something?

Taming a few individuals =/= domestication. Don't act dumb.

The Nazca, Moche and later even the Incas had bronze, it's only than it wasn't that widespread. Heck, even the Nahua had some copper weapons and used them as a currency.

Not him but taming is a good step. Some English explorer in the late 19th century even where planing to breed some sub-races of zebras than were easier to tame to domesticate them, but with the invention of the automovile it was abandoned. Heck, foxes were domesticated in 50 years, if it can be done with solitary predators why not with herd animals, even herd as small as zebras have?

What people also need to take into consideration is that at least in Eurasia there was a lot of cultural exchange. Not sure about Africa, but the Americas and Australia didn't have as much cultural exchange - they (more) were isolated.

I think frontiers ala Peter Turchin style are important as well. They force cultural adaption so to speak.

The first horses were wild like zebras, they had to be tamed and domestication took many generations of selective breeding. The same could be done with zebras if it were economically viable.

The domestication of the zebra failed because Africa has a shitty environment for pastoralism and cattle needed to be domesticated elsewhere and even so disease limits productivity. However liberals are so afraid of racists they flip out whenever someone so much as points out a minor error in the gospel of Jared Diamond and refuse to alter their position, falsely accusing good wholesome historians such as myself of racism even if our correct position is infallible and would utterly disprove actual racists.

Leftists are a blight.

>why not with herd animals, even herd as small as zebras have?
It seems possible in theory to just select for those least anxious about humans and breed those.
There remains a possibility that zebras are all too anxious to select this trait but I am not so sure.

How are they different than donkeys?