Why did the Native Americans Not Advance Quickly?

I just want to add, this is one of the more interesting and intelligent threads of this forum - really. Much better than those futile who has the biggest whatever comparisons.
 
North King said:
That didn't seem to stop Europe from civilizing. Before the late medieval age it was a patchwork of languages as well, each language divided into hundreds of dialects.

don't know if you can compare that, in the medieval age the european languages consisted already of the big 3 of today: romanic, germanic and slavic languages, also Latin was spoken by the clergy, so I guess communication was possible.
 
I would say that the Mediterranium played a huge role in maiking Europe/ME/Northern Africa advance faster then the rest of the world. It enabled exchange of knowledge between numerous civilizations, and hence faster developement.

In the Americas the civilizations were extremely isolated, there was hardly any exchange of knowledge(or goods for that matter).
 
Perhaps because they did not war as often as their neighbors in the eastern hemisphere? A lot of man's advancements have come because war made them necessary.
 
luiz said:
I would say that the Mediterranium played a huge role in maiking Europe/ME/Northern Africa advance faster then the rest of the world. It enabled exchange of knowledge between numerous civilizations, and hence faster developement.
In the era the Eurocentrics termed the 'Middle Ages', China was the more technologically advanced society, and there's no Mediterranean there.

Ultimately, I think it's just a matter of numbers. The Old World, as one inter-connected unit, simply had more people than the Americas.
 
XIII said:
In the era the Eurocentrics termed the 'Middle Ages', China was the more technologically advanced society, and there's no Mediterranean there.

Not only was China more advanced, but the Arabs, and probably the
Indians (Asian) and Japanese were, too.

The big problem in the Americas was that there was no American
equivalent to the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, Indus, or Yellow rivers. That
is, there was not a (semi)desert area with a large,dependable river running through it that would make large scale irrigation/agriculture possible. The closest equivalent was the Colorado River, but *way* too much of its length
was through massive canyons to allow a large civilization to develop. And
other possible rivers (Salt, Gila, San Juan, Rio Grande) were'nt reliable enough
during drought to keep a civilization going.

Not to mention the draft animal problem mentioned previously.
 
They had copper, and they had gold, but they did not have steel," as Adrian Locke puts it. He does not need to add that the Spanish had plenty of steel.
 
luiz said:
I would say that the Mediterranium played a huge role in maiking Europe/ME/Northern Africa advance faster then the rest of the world. It enabled exchange of knowledge between numerous civilizations, and hence faster developement.

Good thinking. The med would also make it easy for one civ to invade another so there would have been pressure to keep up in the arms race. IIRC the khmer had advanced agricultural methods but had an obsolescent military and were an easy conquest for siam. There is advanced and advanced in the right way.
 
on7green said:
They had copper, and they had gold, but they did not have steel," as Adrian Locke puts it. He does not need to add that the Spanish had plenty of steel.

But they did have iron; especially in the Andes. The question is why did they not develop sufficiently to use this.
 
Native Americans alone on a large isolated continent had so many resources that there was no need to advance their technology. Social Darwinism.

"The constant tendency of population to outstrip the means of subsistence is the force which has distributed population over the world, and produced all advance in civilization." - William Graham Sumner
 
Jack the Ripper said:
I think draft animals had nothing to do with it. The way the native american religions worked allowed them to live in an "equilibrium" with their surroundings, with no need for technological advancements. To be fair, this is the same thing that happened to Europe during the middle ages, with religion in a way ruling the feudal system which was also a system in equilibrium.


Yes i agree with you, there was so much games, fish, bison,seal,moose, deer,beaver, name it. There religion was that all living beeing is a spirit and deserve respect, they would have never destroy entire forest just to built wooden desk, to them the forest was a god.

Some of their legend even predicted the destruction of natur by industrious civilisation.
 
Serutan said:
Not only was China more advanced, but the Arabs, and probably the
Indians (Asian) and Japanese were, too.

The big problem in the Americas was that there was no American
equivalent to the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, Indus, or Yellow rivers. That
is, there was not a (semi)desert area with a large,dependable river running through it that would make large scale irrigation/agriculture possible. The closest equivalent was the Colorado River, but *way* too much of its length
was through massive canyons to allow a large civilization to develop. And
other possible rivers (Salt, Gila, San Juan, Rio Grande) were'nt reliable enough
during drought to keep a civilization going.

What about the St-laurent river and the great lake, these are the world largest soft water IIRC. The native around that area were very properous and healthy, i dont recall any famine to them.
 
I believe the Indians did not have a real civilization is because they had no written language
 
With a written language it would be easier to communicate with each other and to teach and learn from their neighbors. Every civilization has it's own written language and I just don't mean cave paintings and drawings of horses and people but real symbols such as chinese
 
Owen
I don't know what that is. Please explain exactly.

You asserted Indians were not a civilization because they didn't write things down. I provided evidence to the contrary. I can provide some more if it'll make you understand better. They wrote quite a lot.
 
Owen
I don't believe the North American Indians invented what you have presented through their history but only started using what you presented once other civilizations came into contact with them


Although a writing system was in use among the Mayas of Mesoamerica at the time of first European contact, none was known in North America. All writing systems that have been used for North American Indian languages have resulted from the stimulus of European writing, or have actually been invented and introduced by whites. Perhaps the most famous system is that invented by Sequoyah, a Cherokee, for his native language. It is not an alphabet but a syllabary, in which each symbol typically stands for a consonant-vowel sequence. The forms of characters were derived in
 
And I misspoke about them not having a real civilization. What I meant to say was that their civilization was not as advanced as it could have been because of a lack of a written language.
 
Hey, can you not call Native Americans "Indians"? It is both insulting (to both Native Americans and Indians) and incorrect. Thanks :)
 
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