Bear327122
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Native Americans
Why did the Native Americans Not Advance Quickly?
- Thread starter Amenhotep7
- Start date
EricTheGreat12
King
To answer the OP, I find they didn't advance enough because of the fact that it isn't what their society was based on. Yea, they develloped hunting technologies and so on, but in the end, they didn't really work a lot to improve.
EgonSpengler
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Wow, a 10-year thread bump. That must be some kind of record.
Thank you, gents, for making me realise quite how bad WH was before I got here.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
They did actually advance much in many respects - or some particular groups of them did. It is evident that inventions did not spread easily in the Americas compared to Eurasia. I think that was because they lacked a huge natural highway across the two continents. In Europe and Asia such a huge natural highway was the Eurasian steppe which extended from the Pannonian Basin and along the coast of the Black Sea all the way to Northern China. Combined with domestication of horses and invention of wheeled transport this highway connected all the densely populated regions of Eurasia. In the Americas geography did not facilitate communication between various "hotspots of civilization", but rather promoted relative isolation. In the Americas variety of useful animals worth domesticating was much smaller than in Eurasia. On the other hand they had more plants and did exploit this fact - remember where we got potatoes and dozens of other plants from.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Bear327122
Chieftain
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There are still pockets of tribes living like cave men in the amazon because they are isolated from other people and ideas.
Maybe I'm over-optimistic, but I was looking at the first page and there's at least four people I can think of now who could, with a concerted effort, have a much better conversation than that - and bear in mind that in 2004 they thought that was a particularly good thread!
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
Well, some of the points they brought up weren't completely wrong, it is just that this thread seems to not see the bigger picture.
schlaufuchs
Break My Heart
Well it's starting from a terrible place to begin with:
Europeans are great. Native Americans are not so great. What did Europeans do that Native Americans did not do?
The base assumption is bad.
Does that mean we can't talk about relative levels of advancement at all? So questions like 'why did technology/culture/whatever advance more quickly in the 1400s than in the 900s?' are out? I'm curious as to exactly what's bad about the assumption.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Whose technology, though? The Mississippians were building elaborate temple complexes when my ancestor where still trying to figure out if you could eat mud. The indigenous people of North America (which includes most Mesoamerica cultures, for the record; drawing a line along the current US-Mexico border is completely arbitrary) were as diverse as those of Europe.
Not necessarily. A lot of Native Americans identify as "Indian", some in preference to or even exclusion of "Native American". It's also the preferred term in academia, especially history. Proper usage tends to depend on context and preference, and so long as the term isn't used in a dismissive or condescending manner, it's unlikely to be taken as an insult.Hey, can you not call Native Americans "Indians"? It is both insulting (to both Native Americans and Indians) and incorrect. Thanks
That's a fair point. I'm not sure I have a good answer to it except to fall back on how we now describe countries as 'more developed' and 'less developed', and suggest that there must be some way of mapping that backwards.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
There's really no linear paths of development, though. The Mexica developed a very sophisticated urban civilisation without hard metals or writing, both of which were readily available to relatively "primitive" European peoples like the Gaels or Norse. We can compare the sophistication of individual technologies, or we can compare general social complexity, but there's no clear way to compare "development".
I think comparisons between how different societies develop are useful, but trying to map them to some general index of "historical development" doesn't really make sense. Especially when, as Owen points out, we're starting out with an assumption of greater European development that isn't supported by any actual investigation, which is taken as the premise of any index rather than a conclusion to be drawn from it; that's just bad practice.
I think comparisons between how different societies develop are useful, but trying to map them to some general index of "historical development" doesn't really make sense. Especially when, as Owen points out, we're starting out with an assumption of greater European development that isn't supported by any actual investigation, which is taken as the premise of any index rather than a conclusion to be drawn from it; that's just bad practice.
I suppose we usually differentiate in the modern world by GDP per capita or HDI, which is essentially a measurement of the former factoring in its useful employment. Is it not valid to do that for historical societies? And what exactly is 'social complexity' in a measurable sense and is it definitionally a good thing?
EDIT: Factoring in that second paragraph I see more clearly the danger you're trying to avoid - namely the kind of Whiggish view whereby 'now' is the end-point of all things and historical societies can be measured based on how far they have 'progressed' along the path of inevitable positive development.
As for 'disunity', though, is that not also falling into the same trap? I mean, it's a modern idea that 'America', or 'Mexico', or 'North America' 'should' be unified. You often get this in second-rate Roman history, with people pointing out that the Greeks or Gauls were taken over due to 'a lack of unity'. In fact, the idea that they ought to be working together at all was a product of the Roman takeover!
EDIT: Factoring in that second paragraph I see more clearly the danger you're trying to avoid - namely the kind of Whiggish view whereby 'now' is the end-point of all things and historical societies can be measured based on how far they have 'progressed' along the path of inevitable positive development.
As for 'disunity', though, is that not also falling into the same trap? I mean, it's a modern idea that 'America', or 'Mexico', or 'North America' 'should' be unified. You often get this in second-rate Roman history, with people pointing out that the Greeks or Gauls were taken over due to 'a lack of unity'. In fact, the idea that they ought to be working together at all was a product of the Roman takeover!
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
That is part of the reason I said this thread doesn't see the big picture. It looks at the European conquest of the New World and concludes that the Europeans were more advanced, when really, what this thread was asking is "why was North America's development different from Europe's?"
People seem to underestimate the role of disease and disunity in the equation. I believe up to 90% of Native Americans/ American Indians died from disease. Had the Vikings brought some European diseases in 1000 AD, things might be a little more different. So saying that Europe beat the American Indian tribes so the Europeans were more advanced is false.
People seem to underestimate the role of disease and disunity in the equation. I believe up to 90% of Native Americans/ American Indians died from disease. Had the Vikings brought some European diseases in 1000 AD, things might be a little more different. So saying that Europe beat the American Indian tribes so the Europeans were more advanced is false.
Terxpahseyton
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I recall reading about an American colonist who plainly stated that the way of life of the Indians was a great deal more likable then the one he knew from the Colonies.
That mostly is just an unproductive criticism of what the idea of advancement can stand for.
But perhaps it also points into a productive direction: If advancement is not necessarily desirable, the reason it was somewhat lacking in North America was perhaps that social forces enforcing advancement were lacking. Mainly - what I am thinking of is that I have the impression that North America was way less under control by a rigid firm system of power in comparison to Europe and other parts of the world. It to me more looks like a widl free land sparsely populated with a couple of people. Rather than one intensely fought over by rivaling factions. And that alone is perhaps all the difference as far as trickering 'advancement' goes.
That mostly is just an unproductive criticism of what the idea of advancement can stand for.
But perhaps it also points into a productive direction: If advancement is not necessarily desirable, the reason it was somewhat lacking in North America was perhaps that social forces enforcing advancement were lacking. Mainly - what I am thinking of is that I have the impression that North America was way less under control by a rigid firm system of power in comparison to Europe and other parts of the world. It to me more looks like a widl free land sparsely populated with a couple of people. Rather than one intensely fought over by rivaling factions. And that alone is perhaps all the difference as far as trickering 'advancement' goes.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
It's a question of usefulness, rather than validity. We're not talking about average income or public facilities, we're talking about things like social structure, agricultural practice, the availability of metals; these aren't things that can be quantified, certainly not expressed as a single, universal quantity. Again, what general measure could satisfactorily describe both illiterate, neolithic urbanists in Mexico and literate, iron-using pastoralists in Ireland?
"Social complexity" isn't strictly measurable either, but it at least involves a great enough degree of abstraction that we can meaningfully talk about societies being more or less complex. It's an attempt to describe societies rather than measure them, as things like HDI do.
So, put another way, you're actually pointedly avoiding the terminology of 'development' and the implication that movement in either direction on the scale is automatically a good thing?
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
It's not just an aversion to classifying societies as "better" or "worse", it's just that such a measure doesn't really explain anything. It would simply be misleading.
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