Why did the Native Americans Not Advance Quickly?

In North America the most advanced pre-Columbian civilization was perhaps the Mississippian culture:

Hernando de Soto encountered remnants (?) of that culture during his expedition of 1539 - 1542:


Link to video.

I can see why some colonist abandoned their way of life to go and live the native Americans because life was simpler. Hunt, fish, live with clean water and in nature and protect the women and children. The things I see as advanced civilization on the colonists part is having , medicine, houses, guns, and transportation through horses and wagons. I think I would have went to live with the natives myself. I always rooted for them in the movies anyway. And I think the fact that they were all alike and not a melting pot obviously strengthened their culture.

Bear327122 said:

I can see why some colonist abandoned their way of life to go and live the native Americans because life was simpler. Hunt, fish, live with clean water and in nature and protect the women and children. The things I see as advanced civilization on the colonists part is having , medicine, houses, guns, and transportation through horses and wagons. I think I would have went to live with the natives myself. I always rooted for them in the movies anyway. And I think the fact that they were all alike and not a melting pot obviously strengthened their culture.

Click to expand...

Thinking they're alike is an amateur mistake. There were large differences between tribes, some had a more firmly entrenched class system then others, some had settled agriculture while others were hunter gatherers etc, etc. Even compared to Europeans the tribes were fairly more diverse.

Bear327122 said:

I can see why some colonist abandoned their way of life to go and live the native Americans because life was simpler. Hunt, fish, live with clean water and in nature and protect the women and children. The things I see as advanced civilization on the colonists part is having , medicine, houses, guns, and transportation through horses and wagons. I think I would have went to live with the natives myself. I always rooted for them in the movies anyway. And I think the fact that they were all alike and not a melting pot obviously strengthened their culture.

Click to expand...

Good to see you're not actually reading anything anybody's saying

I am pretty sure with 'all alike' he meant a single society rather than the whole population of them.

Also, I once read that at least Western medicine only started to help more people than it harmed towards the end of the 19th century, so that shouldn't be a problem

Well, any group of people is 'all alike', provided that you're prepared to ignore the majority of the population and most of the remainder's characteristics. Europeans and 'Natives' were really no more homogeneous, unless you chose to think of them as such. From the point of view of (say) an Aztec, Europeans were probably all the same.

Bear327122 said:

I can see why some colonist abandoned their way of life to go and live the native Americans because life was simpler. Hunt, fish, live with clean water and in nature and protect the women and children. The things I see as advanced civilization on the colonists part is having , medicine, houses, guns, and transportation through horses and wagons. I think I would have went to live with the natives myself. I always rooted for them in the movies anyway. And I think the fact that they were all alike and not a melting pot obviously strengthened their culture.

Click to expand...

Actually, a lot of Indian societies were melting pots, at least in the colonial periods: the Iroquois, for example, absorbed peoples from across Eastern North America, such as the Tuscarora from the Carolinas and many Hurons from the Great Lakes. A typical Iroquois village probably represented greater ethnic and linguistic diversity than a typical New England township, which would overwhelming be comprised of English-speaking English from England, if not so much as a European settlement in Pennsylvania or New York might.

Traitorfish said:

A typical Iroquois village probably represented greater ethnic and linguistic diversity than a typical New England township, which would overwhelming be comprised of English-speaking English from England, if not so much as a European settlement in Pennsylvania or New York might.

Click to expand...

Indeed. According to White observers who had contacts with them, by the 1650s "original" Iroquois were just 1/4 - 1/5 of them all, while the majority were people of defeated tribes, who had been absorbed into original tribes of the Iroquoi confederation. But that had not been the case before 1600, it was only the result of recent expansion (and perhaps that's why observers could distinguish between original Iroquois and those from other tribes, not yet fully assimilated into them).

What I understand about "advancement of a civilization" is mainly the amount of techniques and knowledge being mastered by a connected group of people.

I believe the key here is simply about exchanges, and the amount of people which are within the exchange loop. The very first Human civilizations developped from the natural exchange route which are rivers. The Egyptian civilization is very good example of this as the Nile is a very fertile land naturally protected by the desert. Hence an ideal environment to develop exchanges along the river. Euphrates, Indus and Yellow river are all similar natural routes allowing exchanges to grow between people.

And Humanity only progessed at the same rate as exchanges were growing in volume between more and more people. The Roman Empire was essentially a Mediterranean exchange network. The Arab civilization boomed because it was the crossroad of the silk trade route and the transsaharan trade, connecting 3 gigantic continents. And finally Europe only started to rise when it took over world trade through the seas. The carracks and the caravels are the one and only reason why Europe accumulated so much knowledge from the 15th century to the 20th century.

The precolumbian demographics of the Americas were vastly more limited than those of the whole Afro-Eurasian hemisphere. So quite frankly, there's hardly any surprise in the fact the Western hemisphere couldn't accumale as much knowledge as its eastern counterpart.

Simply put
Chinese people look like Chinese people
Asian people look like Asian people

So there you go amateur

Bear327122 said:

Simply put
Chinese people look like Chinese people
Asian people look like Asian people

So there you go amateur

Click to expand...

Are Zhuang Chinese? Are Hui Chinese? Are Manchu Chinese? Are Tibetans Chinese?

Better question: Are Portuguese, Spaniards, French, Italians, Germans, Austrians, English, Norwegians, and Russians all one group, or separate groups?

If they are separate groups: Are Madrileños, Catalonians, Vascos, and Gallegos one group or separate groups?

Are Germans and Austrians one group?
Are Bayrisch, Brandenburgers, Rheinlanders, Silesians, Frisians, and Sorbians one group or separate groups?

Are these people German?

Are these people German?

Click to expand...

Without looking at their ID cards I cannot tell if they have German citizenship or not.

It as well depends on who disputes their identity. For example people from a country north of Greece go around with similar banners saying "We are Macedonians", yet Greeks and some other guys dispute this. Perhaps many people would also disagree with these women and dispute what their banners say.

I thought you couldn't claim to be a fictitious ethnicity. Well, guess what, I was proven wrong today.

I thought you couldn't claim to be a fictitious ethnicity. Well, guess what, I was proven wrong today.

Click to expand...

Well, Owen Glyndwr in post #71 just mentioned Silesians - an ethnicity equally "fictitious" as Macedonians.

Actually, Silesians are even more "fictitious" than Macedonians, because nobody heard of them (or of their language) during the 16th century:

"(...) Zwei Volksstämme, die sich nicht nur nach ihren Wohnsitzen, sondern auch nach ihren Sitten scheiden, bewohnen es; den nach Westen und Süden gelegenen Theil nehmen die Deutschen ein, den Theil nach Osten und Norden zu die Polenö beide trennt als eine ganz sichere Grenze die Oder von der Neißemündung ab, sodaß auch in den Städten diesseits die deutsche, jenseits die polnische Sprach vorherrscht. Man erkennt zwischen beiden Völkern einen starken Gegensatz. (...)"

Source:

Barthel Stein, "Descriptio Tocius Silesie et Civitatis Regie Vratislaviensis", published in 1513.

Which translates to English:

"(...) It [Silesia] is inhabited by two ethnic groups [Volksstämme], distinct from each other not only in terms of territories they occupy, but also in terms of customs; Western and Southern parts are inhabited by Germans, while Eastern and Northern parts are inhabited by Poles, they are divided by a safe boundary roughly along the Oder River starting from the outlet of the Neisse River in such a way, that also in cities on one side of the river we can hear German speech, while in cities on the other side by contrast we can hear Polish speech. Between these two peoples there are strong differences. (...)"

By contrast, Slavic-speaking Macedonians were already known under this name at that time, or at least their Slavic language was Macedonice:



Source: Hieronymus Megiser (1554 - 1618) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Megiser

Terxpahseyton said:

I am pretty sure with 'all alike' he meant a single society rather than the whole population of them.

Also, I once read that at least Western medicine only started to help more people than it harmed towards the end of the 19th century, so that shouldn't be a problem

Click to expand...

In this episode of W. Cejrowski's "Barefoot Around the World" there is a lot about medicine of one of native tribes of Amazonia:

http://www.bosoprzezswiat.kinofabryka.pl/znachor.php

They are growing for example Paracetamolum and Chininum in their gardens (or maybe "green pharmacies"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LYdVKpD0ls&x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534

=================

About (in English): http://www.cejrowski.com/en/

I did it again, didn't I? Goddamn it.

Tolni said:

I did it again, didn't I? Goddamn it.

Click to expand...

It is not something you do from time to time. It is a long-lasting condition.

Terxpahseyton said:

...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.

Click to expand...

I think you are on the right track here. Advancement seems to be stimulated by population pressure and the resulting competition. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Domen said:

It is not something you do from time to time. It is a long-lasting condition.

Click to expand...

I think the point was that ethnicity is by definition how one sees oneself in relation to other groups classified by hereditary physical features, so once anyone claims the ethnicity it ceases to be fictional.

Classified by hereditary physical features ??? That's not ethnicity but race, a different concept.

You can't tell Italians from French people just by looking at their hereditary physical features.