Why did they never build anything?

>you will never journey into the desert with your blood brother in pre-Columbian New Mexico and do peyote, facing the blackness of the universe and and engaging in mortal combat with your own soul, returning to the village endowed with cosmic wisdom

Why live?

Look up Haniwatha user.
They had a stable 5-nation government for a long time before the USA even existed, and that's only 5-6 bands/nations of aboriginals/natives.

Aztec, Inca, Maya, obviously count. Why would you discredit them? That'd be akin to discounting USA from "white" history.

They built trade routes and advanced agricultural methods, governments, mythologies, languages, lineages, religions and spiritual paths. The primary reason we don't see much of their historical "remnants" is their desire to remain accountable to nature, and not fuck up the planet (for the most part). Leaving a mark or scar in the world is a caucasian fantasy, the natives and aboriginals knew for years of their impermanence (and put that into practice).

Caucasians have this natural inclination toward grandiosity and a desire to be immortal in the physical plane, like leaving something nature will knock down over time actually means anything. It only takes 3-4 generations for a change in the values of population's majority, nowadays more like 1-2 with caucasians.

In the 1500's-1800's at least a dozen native/aboriginal bands or houses were thinking a minimum of 7 generations ahead. There are some who live in more mountainous regions who point to a history of aiming to benefit 11-15 generations down their lineage. There aren't many caucasians who had thought so far ahead, and fewer who have tried to practice or implement on those plans.

Asians did it, though. Africans did it. Middle Easterns did it. Indians definitely did, even now we're just learning the Indus Valley Civilization may have been from ~8000 BCE.

>Starts with good points and facts
>Then begins rambling about Caucasians

For fucks sake

>Don't give me that Aztec shit.

Remember that the Aztecs were simply a single state in their region (really a collection of vassal city-states under a trio of 3 ruling cities) among hundreds of city-states, kingdoms, and other empires. The region they, the Maya, the Mixtec, Zapotec, Teotihaucans, Olmec, and so on were all in was called "Mesoamerica".

Anyways, as says, Cahokia (pic related) and the Mississippians in general were basically an early civilization with proto-states with large, albiet somewhat primitive looking cities before they collapsed. The Southwest US groups also some proto-urban settlements and were developing nicely, though not as much as the Misssipiaians.

In general the native Americans had quite a number of towns, but they typically collapsed for one reason or another, many of them due to dieases when the europeans showed up, which actually spread across the contient and had caused them to be abandoned by the time european explorers came in from the east: The plains indians weren't even a thing before then. Some Spaniards (I think Hernando de Soto being one of them) who came up exploring from Mesoamerica encountered some of these before that collapse, thoug

Did the Iroquois actually have cities? I know they had decently complex political stuff but I wasn't aware they had more then small villages in terms of settlements

>Aztec, Inca, Maya, obviously count.
These were hardly the only complex, advanced state socities in Mesoamerica and the Andes.

>Was interested in a decent discussion on the internet
>Remembered I was on Veeky Forums, turned into a shitpost against caucasians

>btfo
>just make a new thread

>literal piles of dirt
I mean. I guess technically this counts as more than nothing.

Not necessarily cities, but they did have plots of land each nation considered in their territory.

Originally, it was hamlet- and village-type dwellings, with a major capital in each nation. After the Uniting, the technical capitol was in Onondaga(?) territory, the central territory of the first five nations, and the other 4 capitols became nation-homebase-city hybrids.

It took maybe 35 years before there were what would be considered between villages and cities (nowadays) across more of the land near Lake Ontario.

*Keeping in mind, of course, they had something like ~120 Peace Laws (I recall 117 Tenets) and
>
as OG American Human Rights, etc.

I think you'd be surprised both by how much modern infrastructure and architecture involves earth constructs; and much effort it takes: Any time you are driving on a road and see an overpass or a bridge and the roads need to lift up, that uses earthen constructs, it's just normally covered in a cement casing to look pretty.

Also, dirt isn't easy to construct stuff with: There's actual engineering that needs to go into making those mounds, and moving that many thousands of pounds of materials isn't easy. Also, plenty of towns in medieval europe outside the most developed areas were mostly small shacks and earthen constructions as well, pic related, for example

Is it as impressive as the great pyramids of Egypt, or the Colosseum, or tthe temple complexes the Mesoamericans built? Of course not, the Native americans in what's now the US weren't at that level due to a variety of reasons, but it's impressive in context and shows that they were capable of, and sometimes did use monumental architecture. In terms of population, Cahokia had 40k people, which is very impressive: That's as much as a medium sized city in late medieval europe, Cities in the colonial US didn't hit that number till the 1800's; and

This is an average Iriquois town. It looks small but the larger ones would have over 100 longhouses with a population of 3000. Europeans called them castles.

>Or even write shit down.
Why would they? Your father and the chief would orally pass down all the knowledge needed anyway

I live in New Mexico. I can visit at least three Pueblo ruins within 30 minutes.

Nice ones too, as someone that's been to them. I like the one built under the cliff face.

the Chippewa had birch bark scrolls

>Mayans built huge stone cities connected by raised stone causeways
>OP says it won't count because reasons

...

The Iroquois lived in familial long houses based on matrilineal lines. Each was housing a different clan (named after animals) and some longhouses were huge and multistory to hold entire extended families. Before contact there were a lot more family clans so take those large longhouses and multiply it a few times. They might not be cities by means of sprawling developments, but populations could be high because longhouses specialized in housing as many people as possible.

When the portugese explored the coast they said that there were a shit ton of them, that was before the diseases brought over really made it up there, so they must have gotten assfucked pretty hard
Settling the east coast was pretty easy because they left behind orchards and other neat stuff

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound_Builders

What I find strange is how the Incas stand out so much in south america while the rest of the continent was far from any type of similar development.
Most of them lived naked for fucks sake, I just wanted someone to discover some kind of hidden sights of an early civilizations somehwere.

Well, that also happened in some tribal societies that weren't that advanced like the Tupi tribes, the french used to give away they old life and live among natives, even helping them fighting the portuguese.

The amazon kinda prevents civilization. The Inca lived in the mountains.

They were a post-civ society

Yet they are still finding mounds there

there have been many signs of an ancient civilization found when loggers were cutting down large swaths of the amazon

the cherokee didn't develop a written language until the 19th century, though, and they didn't develop writing independently. although cherokee is written in a syllabic script and not an alphabetic one, sequoyah, its inventor, credited the latin alphabet for giving him the idea, and many cherokee glyphs are just repurposed latin glyphs

>I thought cold/temperate climates made people smart?
Cold winter theory is the dumbest theory of all times.

>Did the Iroquois actually have cities?
Jacques Cartier visited the Iroquoian settlement on the island of Montreal in 1535 and described it as a palisaded village of about 50 longhouses with a population of roughly 3000. When they came back a few years later it was completely abandoned, probably due to disease.

environment demonstrably exerts a selective effect on behavior over time

It doesn't count because he's talking about a different group of people, idiot.

Source?

Yes, but it has nothing to do with cold winter.

Cold winter theory is a theory that suppose that the North is superior than the south because of cold, because "cold is a difficult environment, so there is a selection of the best people".

Which is dumb as fuck, are cold environments more difficult than arid deserts or any other hot environments?

Also, why aren't Eskimo a next level civilization? Why northern Europe was less developed than Rome, when it's colder in Ancient Northern Europe?

Brain size and eyeballs grow in adaptation to low light environments, nothing to do with cold winter, that is a theory literally based on nothing but suppositions that "cold environments are inherently more difficult than anything else" and that "difficult environment = big civs", BUT, a good climate is also favorable to civs, you need agriculture, animals... That's why the first civs are Mediterraneans, and not Eskimo, the problem with cold winter theory is thinking that cold environments are :

1.Always better for civs than hot environments
2.Always more challenging than hot environments

Because injuns never reached critical mass, they didn't needed to build very complex societies, just enough to survive, unlike aztecs that did reach a high enough population to start building all the good complex sheeeit.

>selection of the best people
no, selection of group behavioral patterns.
>are cold environments more difficult than arid deserts or any other hot environments
no, although polar environments are mindboggling. They are certainly very different from one another though, and therein lies the main point.

I think you're working from a strawman of a position.

I'm attacking cold winter theory.

doesn't that primarily differentiate between Eurasia and Africa, and speak to the emergence of behavioral modernity?

so you're telling me you don't adjust your behavior to your environment? Seems maladaptive to me.

Because there is no iron or coal

>Brain size and eyeballs grow in adaptation to low light environments

So we're all going to be brainlet? Being exposed to light and electronic screen all day?

oh no no no no no no no no no

they also didnt have any good animals for donesticatiom, sadly

They piled some dirt

Incredible...

The more complex societies in NA were devastated from plague before yuros got more than a glimpse; an unfortunate side effect of population density is that infectious diseases spread like wildfire. There's a reason that the vast majority of Missippian cultures just up and vanish from the anthropological record more-or-less immediately after the de Soto expedition came their way.

The Inca are hardly the fiirst complex civilization in the Andes. The Chimu, Sican, Moche, Wari, Tiwanku and more came before them and were all somwhat urban, and either early or protostates to outright full state societies. And before that, you have the Chavin, Paracas and the even earlier Norte Chico, which were proto-civs

The Aztecs weren't nearly the first mesoamerican civilization either, both the Aztecs and Inca were amoong the most recent civilizations in both regions.

Also, see, , the Missipisans had towns and early cities with large population concentrations, had were basically proto-states/about civilization tier, and a variety of other native american groups had settlements and towns with a few thousand people, which is about as much as smaller cities in Ancient egypt, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, Greece, the Andes, etc.

See

well they did have a fairly sophisticated trade network

My contention is that the Indians "lived in peace with nature" because they did not have the population or the technology to seriously disrupt nature, not because they had any special environmental insight.

>The primary reason we don't see much of their historical "remnants" is their desire to remain accountable to nature, and not fuck up the planet (for the most part). Leaving a mark or scar in the world is a caucasian fantasy, the natives and aboriginals knew for years of their impermanence (and put that into practice).
>Caucasians have this natural inclination toward grandiosity and a desire to be immortal in the physical plane, like leaving something nature will knock down over time actually means anything. It only takes 3-4 generations for a change in the values of population's majority, nowadays more like 1-2 with caucasians.
>In the 1500's-1800's at least a dozen native/aboriginal bands or houses were thinking a minimum of 7 generations ahead. There are some who live in more mountainous regions who point to a history of aiming to benefit 11-15 generations down their lineage. There aren't many caucasians who had thought so far ahead, and fewer who have tried to practice or implement on those plans.
>Asians did it, though. Africans did it. Middle Easterns did it. Indians definitely did, even now we're just learning the Indus Valley Civilization may have been from ~8000 BCE.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

There is plenty of that fucking stuff in Pennsylvania.

that's why you have to compute in a dark room

People like that are part of what the whole internet reactionary thing is reacting to in the first place.

>chad west lives in the moment and conquers the world

White devil BTFO!

Not true. Read about Marajo, Petroglyphs, Terra Preta, Orellanas trip down the Amazon and Kuhikugu.

What will happen is that the first world will be full of brainlets, while the third world will be full of big brains, especially with Harmattan in West Africa being more and more powerful with climate change.

At the same time jungle Africans get shit about this?

They're thousands of miles apart with every terrain imaginable between them. It's the same reason people split up africa when talking about it.

Jungles are not conducive to civilizations.

Wouldn't a ton of bodies be left behind. When people die they don't just vanish.

You're being problematic.
indigenoushistory.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/what-if-people-told-european-history-like-they-told-native-american-history/comment-page-2/

>
The first immigrants to Europe arrived thousands of years ago from central Asia. Most pre-contact Europeans lived together in small villages. Because the continent was very crowded, their lives were ruled by strict hierarchies within the family and outside it to control resources. Europe was highly multi-ethnic, and most tribes were ruled by hereditary leaders who commanded the majority “commoners.” These groups were engaged in near constant warfare.

>Pre-contact Europeans wore clothing made of natural materials such as animal skin and plant and animal-based textiles. Women wore long dresses and covered their hair, and men wore tunics and leggings. Both men and women liked to wear jewelry made from precious stones and metals as a sign of status. Before contact, Europeans had very poor diets. Most people were farmers and grew wheat and vegetables and raised cows and sheep to eat. They rarely washed themselves, and had many diseases because they often let their animals live with them.

>Religion infused every part of Europeans’ lives. Europeans believed in one supreme deity, a father figure, who they believed was made of three parts, and they particularly worshiped the deity’s son. They claimed that their god had given humans domination over the earth. They built elaborate temples to him and performed ceremonies in which they ate crackers and drank wine and believed it was the body and blood of their god, who would provide them with entrance into a wondrous afterlife called heaven when they died. Many wars were fought over disagreements about the details of this religion, each group believing their interpretation was the right one that should be spread across the land.

>Now imagine that is part of a textbook that has entire chapters on the Mississippian polities of the 1200s and a detailed account of the diplomatic situation of the southeastern provinces in the 1400s and 1500s, an enormous section that goes through the history of the rise of the Triple Alliance in Mexico and goes through the rule of each tlatoani and their policies, the heritage of Teotihuacan and its legacy in later Mesoamerican politics, elaborate descriptions of the trade routes that connected and drove various nations in North America. Long explanations of the rise of various religious movements such as the calumet ceremony and Midewiwin, and how they affected political agendas and artistic trends. Pages and pages and pages going through the past thousand years of American history century by century.

>And these three paragraphs are the only mention of European history before the year 1500.

>If your textbook of North American history goes into the details of the Middle Ages, the Reformation and Renaissance, the Silk Road, and European monarchies, and you don’t include equal description of the Mississippian coalescence and dispersal, Haudenosaunee-Algonquian relations, the Woodlands, trans-plains, and southwestern trade systems, the Mexica conquests and the Fifth Sun ideology with explicit naming of various places and leaders, then your textbook is inadequate.

>first immigrants to Europe arrived thousands of years ago from central Asia
that's a weird way of saying Ukraine

>Why do you include those “pre-contact” European things? Because they explain the motivations and reasons for what Europeans did. But people largely imagine North America as this timeless place and don’t recognize that pre-contact American history had just as much of an effect on post-contact history because it provides explanations of the motivations and reasonings behind indigenous peoples’ actions.

>But of course, that would require people to recognize that indigenous people had their own histories and agendas and agency that affected the course of history rather than making them a passive recipient of European historical force.

When one properly identifies and addresses the core issues, it is plain to see that Euro-centrism plays a dynamic and heavy role in turning Native American history into that of a second-class citizen.

>your textbook is inadequate
>equal description of the Mississippian coalescence and dispersal, Haudenosaunee-Algonquian relations, the Woodlands, trans-plains, and southwestern trade systems, the Mexica conquests and the Fifth Sun ideology
lol Amerindian history is less relevant than Western history and it's obvious

it's important because Europeans started using New World crops

>indigenous peoples’ actions
lol who cares?
>Euro-centrism
it's not controversial, circumnavigation is really important.

Youre fucking retarded. It 's as important, if not more important, than European history. They literally invented the crops use d that saved the western continent from staervation and the black plague, and allowed them to ingage in impoerialism to tbegin wiht. They even helped american s who would have died fi they didn't have guidance. It all traces back to these powerful dynasties who first held continental power in the American interior.

Not really. I'm 10% native, and I actually live on the same land they did, but know remarkably little about them. I know far more about Europeans and even africans than I do about Americans. That's at the root of all the we wuzzery. I refuse to believe native history is as empty as I am led to believe.

>Native Americans never we wuz because they actually did things

every day i feel worse and understand the plight of African Americans every day

All Americans we wuz. It's odd celebrating a history disconnected from the land you live on simply because you know nothing about it.

Jesus lad your blood pressure, you can't even type

no you're retarded.
>more important, than European history
>saved the western continent from the black plague
Delusional retard, try thinking for yourself instead of parroting some shitty blog.

Iroquois society was comfy as fuck. I live in Quebec and we learn all about them in school.
One of the explorators, Samuel de Champlain, loved them so much and wanted to create a new society with them as equals with europeans

it's not empty at all, but listen a lot of them didn't actually write much down so you have to rely on western authors and academics.

Jesus, this is next level cope

It is more important than European history to Americans. We're the only people in the world that celebrate the history of distant lands while completely ignoring our own. The land you live on has a profound effect on you. While the native blood in our genetics might be small, we look out at the same world, from a flaura and fauna and climate perspective that they did.

you do not understand, American history is relevant to European history but European history is more relevant to American history.

I know plenty about both, but I don't fool myself about them.

Nothing hugely disagreeable in that style of writing and nothing that makes euros seem sub human or lesser.

What do you think the noble savage myth would look like being applied to euros ?

Massive waves of Europeans didn't really come to America until after the early 1800's and the bulk didn't come until the turn of the 20th century. To allow them to dominate the American history narrative is ridiculous.

so what? They were still massively influential even in the early stages of colonization.

see
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Wars

Italians have been invaded by germans and North Africans? Do they celebrate african history? Like I said even though they make up a small percentage of an Americans average genetics, we live in thier environment and have for hundreds of years, and imo owe them more reverance of thier(our) history than we give.

Uh, Italians also invaded North Africa famously. In fact, the very word for what we now call Africa comes from Rome. Besides, that's a major false equivalence due to the exceptional nature of the New World.

>Adena
>Hopewell
>Cahokia
educate yourself you tard

Take a look at how Europeans view the Roman’s despite the literal conquest and genocide. Romania even took the countries name for its own. Likewise look at middle easterners love of the early caliphates

Why do you think Native American history should be owed reverence ?

...

It's just strange how they are exceptionally ignored with the dumb american "muh heritage" shit

This is a bit preachy and goes a bit too far, but the basic point is very true: People aren't taught enough about the history of the Americas. You get, at most, a chapter to cover all of Mesoamerica and the Andes, and only the Aztec, Inca, and Maya only ever get mentioned, and only to basically say "and the spaiin conquerred them", and doing a halfassed job of actually explaining how the conquest happen or how existing native geopolitics played into it.

America overwhelmingly influenced by Western culture and Western culture is most of the foundation for global/international culture, so obviously to America, it makes sense to focus more on european history, i'm not gonna go full retard like that user and imply otherwise
At the same time, you can easily put more effort into teaching about precolumbian history without it being disproportionately represented: As I saiid above, basically jack shit is taught to people about precolumbian history even though there's enough of it and it's as involved as many other non-western regions and cultures that get covered in more detail

I think also you need to consider what the point of teaching history is: It's not just to give a particular population knowledge about where their country came from. It's also to build a foundation of seeing how facets of society intersect with each other to apply those lessons to modern life. For the regions of the Americas that had state socities, urban cities, etc; like Mexico and Peru, they would be as useful as many ohter regions at teaching that foundation, and actually offer unique advantages: It's the only case in human history where we have totally isolated civilizations. How they developed differently, and the implications that has, as well of the implications of how contact went, you can't really get via learning about other regions or time periods.

listen I think Chinese history needs a little more attention in the west too. I think native North American history is criminally underrated, but Chinese history might be a little more relevant.

How is it exceptional that people aren’t as interested in cultures and peoples of whom are neither their ancestors nor an importance source of the values and ideas?

Are there any people’s or counties that do focus on such cultures ?

Chinese kids in China learn Chinese history. American kids in America pretty much don't learn American history outside of a European context.

>Not thier ancestors
Practically all Americans who's bulk of thier family has been in the new world since pre-United States has native ancestry. The fact that we also live on the same land should count for something.