Why did the Native Americans Not Advance Quickly?

I suppose there's something to be said for courage in one's convictions.

This is why you don't go down the rabbit hole. Nothing beneficial ever comes about as a result of this line of dialogue. For either party.
 
When you argue that you disagree with some points it would be good to mention which ones. No need to be so mysterious.

As for the Dutch language:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language#Development_phases

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch-language_literature

(...) Anna Bijns (c. 1494–1575) is an important figure who wrote in modern Dutch. The Reformation appeared in Dutch literature in a collection of Psalm translations in 1540 and in a 1566 New Testament translation in Dutch. The best-known of all Dutch writers is the Catholic playwright and poet Joost van den Vondel (1587–1679).

(...)

Before the 17th century, there was no unified standard language

1500–present Modern Dutch (Saw the creation of the Dutch standard language and includes contemporary Dutch)

Compared to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German

Standard German originated not as a traditional dialect of a specific region, but as a written language, developed over a process of several hundred years, in which writers tried to write in a way that was understood in the largest area. Until about 1800, Standard German was almost entirely a written language. In this time, people in Northern Germany, who mainly spoke Low Saxon dialects very different from Standard German, learned it as a foreign language. However, later the Northern pronunciation (of Standard German) was considered standard and spread southward; in some regions (such as around Hanover) the local dialect has completely died out with the exception of small communities of Low German speakers. It is thus the spread of Standard German as a language taught at school that defines the German Sprachraum, i.e. a political decision rather than a direct consequence of dialect geography, allowing areas with dialects of very limited mutual comprehensibility to participate in the same cultural sphere

So German is only about as old or even actually younger than Dutch.

Therefore how can you claim that Dutch language split from German in the 19th century ???

I think you are conflating all continental West Germanic languages as "German".
 
In the same vein, did Burns write in English, a different language called Scots, or a dialect called Scots which is still part of the English language?
For the record, the answer to this question is "yes". Sometimes within a single poem. His work is kinda weird like that.
 
Traitorfish said:
Yiddish-speaking Jews?

Jews before WW1 were usually counted as ethnic Jews regardless of what language they spoke.

And for example in the Austrian province of Galicia most of Jews spoke Polish - according to Austrian censuses.

As an example here are the figures for the city of Lviv from the Austrian 1910 census:

Religion:

Roman Catholic - 105,469
Jewish - 57,387
Uniate - 39,479
Protestant - 3,128
Orthodox - 560
others - 106

Total: 206,129

Language (Umgangssprache):

Polish - 172,560
Rusyn - 21,780
other Slavic - 800
German - 5,922
others - 103

Total: 201,165

There is a difference of 4,964 between the two "totals" - maybe language for those people could not be established or they refused to answer?

There was no such category as "Yiddish" to choose from (Austrian authorities considered Yiddish to be a dialect of German). There was a list of languages to choose from, regulated - for censuses taking place since 1880 - by the ministerial decree of 6 August 1880. Those languages to choose from included (for the province of Bukovina): "German", "Czecho-Moravo-Slovak", "Polish", "Rusyn", "Slovene", "Serbo-Croatian", "Italian", "Romanian" and "Hungarian".

I've not found the exact list of languages to choose from for the province of Galicia, but Yiddish was not included - just like in Bukovina.

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

And according to wiki:

https://www.google.pl/search?q=reli...-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=AEjJVLbnCcnKPbW6gMgB

In Lviv, according to the Austrian census of 1910, which listed religion and language, 51% of the city's population were Roman Catholics, 28% Jews, and 19% belonged to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Linguistically, 86% of the city's population used the Polish language and 11% preferred the Ukrainian language.

Austrian censuses of the 19th century and the early 20th century (last census in 1910) in Galicia counted only religion and "Umgangssprache":

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Umgangssprache

http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Umgangssprache

Umgangssprache, die

1. (Sprachwissenschaft) Sprache, die im täglichen Umgang mit anderen Menschen verwendet wird; nicht der Standardsprache entsprechende, aber weitgehend akzeptierte, meist gesprochene überregionale Sprache

Polish census of 1931 counted "mother tongue" and many Jews stated "Hebrew", even though they spoke both Polish and / or Yiddish fluently.

The Polish census of 1921 by contrast had a question about "national identity" and indeed a large number of Jews stated "Polish".

Neither Austrian census of 1910 (or any census before that) nor Polish census of 1931 had questions about ethnic identity.

The closest thing to ethnic identity was in that census of 1921 - which asked about "narodowość" ("national identity" or "nationality").

A good indication of identity before 1921 - but national identity rather than ethnic - can be the results of elections. Before WW1 most of Jews in Galicia voted for Polish parties, i.e. parties that were supportive of leaving Eastern Galicia as part of Poland in case if Poland regained independence, and which opposed Ukrainian nationalism. During the last election before WW1 the total number of votes for such parties was a bit higher than the combined number of Roman Catholics, Jews and Protestants - which indicates that not only majority of Jews but also some part of Uniates (Greek Catholics) voted for them.
 
For the record, the answer to this question is "yes". Sometimes within a single poem. His work is kinda weird like that.

According to current classification, perhaps, but it wouldn't be invalid to categorise it all as 'English, but occasionally non-standard English' or alternatively as 'nearly all in a foreign language with some works in English'. I'll grant you that he does use different dialects as the mood takes him, mind.
 
Moderator Action: How about we get back to the advancement, or not, of the Americas and leave European ethnicity for a different thread. Thanks.
 
The native Americans lost the tech race because there never was a tech race.
Sorry but this is a bias introduced by the game and by our narrow European perpective.
Europe needed technological advancment because it was bottled up by the Ottomans and could only go to India by the sea. The native Americans had vast lands, lots of Buffalos and their own advanced spirituality. Why technology, then?
 
The significance of technology has been grossly overstated.

Disease is what did the natives in. Wiping out the vast majority of them made it possible to conquer the survivors.

European colonial powers would not have been able to exert themselves outside of a few trading posts and forts, had they had to do so against against thriving indigenous nations - particularly if we are talking about guns before rifling, mass production, and conscription and during an era in which trans-oceanic shipping was expensive, dangerous, and unreliable.

Without disease to wipe them out, indigenous nations would have acquired guns easily enough in time (particularly if they play politics and get themselves involved in European wars, as well as Europeans involved in their own).
 
The Mapuche of South America apparently did adapt quite well to counter European warfare, as - it seems - they actually defeated the Spaniards:

http://patagoniamonsters.blogspot.com/2014/07/loss-of-amerindian-genetic-diversity.html

(...) War against the Aztec or Inca was, however quite limited. The other native societies offered more resistance. The Maya had no central government which if taken would lead to a total surrender as happened in Mexico or Peru. They had to be taken a village at a time. They were subdued by 1697.

Even minor civilizations were problematic: for instance, the Mapuche in Chile. They engaged the Spaniards and, in 1536, just after they arrived, torching the recently founded town of Santiago (which nowadays is the capital city of Chile). The Spaniards held firmly on and pushed the Mapuche south, into the Chilean Lake District. War raged on for years but the Spaniards managed to settle the Lake District in the 1560s, after defeating the native chief Caupolicán (1558) and impaling him.

The Araucanian or Arauco wars simmered on and the towns of Villarica, Osorno, Angol, La Imperial, were razed in 1598. The Spanish government retreated north and consolidated their frontier along the Bío Bío River. Native raids and uprisings led to a negotiation in the mid 1640s which concluded in an uneasy truce that lasted from 1665 to the 1860s.

They lost only during the second war - by the end of the 19th century:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arauco_War#Occupation_of_Araucan.C3.ADa
 
What Native Americans are proposed in the original post? The Native Americans of the current lands of the USA were comprised of 10,000 tribes. Do you mean all of the Americans i.e. all of South America, Canada, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean?

Making a generic statement like the original post is rather like a blanket statement, "Why didn't the Africans produce more technology?" It's a silly incomprehensible statement. Surely the OP didn't mean that?

Some of the achievments early on in places within the Mayan culture or in Cahokia are rather spectacular when considering other places in Western Europe in those same time periods that seem backwards by comparison.

Why not try again and narrow it down some? :crazyeye:
 
Read Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. It presents a very compelling explanation IMO for why the Native Americans of North America and the peoples of the Americas as a whole did not advance as quickly as the people of Eurasia and much of Africa.

That's its entire point, actually. The first chapter is So-and-So's question, and so and so's question is the OP's.
 
What Native Americans are proposed in the original post? The Native Americans of the current lands of the USA were comprised of 10,000 tribes. Do you mean all of the Americans i.e. all of South America, Canada, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean?

Making a generic statement like the original post is rather like a blanket statement, "Why didn't the Africans produce more technology?" It's a silly incomprehensible statement. Surely the OP didn't mean that?

Some of the achievments early on in places within the Mayan culture or in Cahokia are rather spectacular when considering other places in Western Europe in those same time periods that seem backwards by comparison.

Why not try again and narrow it down some? :crazyeye:

Would Cahokia really make Western Europe at the time seem backwards?
 
Would Cahokia really make Western Europe at the time seem backwards?

I (normally) live near Cahokia. I've visited it several times. Archaeology is still turning up new information, but overall, it had a big population but little else. You can't reasonably say it made Western Europe look backwards.
 
"A big population" is more than it sounds like, though. It implies a complex social and economic structure which you couldn't achieve simply by piling nomadic bands into one place.
 
"A big population" is more than it sounds like, though. It implies a complex social and economic structure which you couldn't achieve simply by piling nomadic bands into one place.
Tenochtitlan supposedly was larger than European cities of its day, possibly the equal of the Chinese cities.
 
I haven't touched this thread in forever, but its important to remember that it took a good 20k-30k years more for humanity to reach the Americas by most historical estimates than it did for humanity to reach Europe. Tenochtitlan is just one of many examples of numerous prosperous cities in the history of Mesoamerica and frankly one of later ones to emerge.

Around the year 1,000-1,100 Paris's population was only around 20,000 - there were numerous cities in Mesoamerica with far larger populations [and of course the relevant equally large social structures that accompanied them]. Between 1,000 BC- 300 A.D. El Mirador was a city that had a larger urban sprawl than Los Angeles does today. Teotihuacan during its time was considered one of largest cities in the world, if not the largest. Considering many population estimates in Mesoamerica are gradually/continually considered to be higher than initial estimates as archaeologists and time do their work, it wouldn't surprise me if Mesoamerica was once more densely populated than China.

Considering all this, if we remember that Europeans had theoretically a 25,000 year head-start, I think it just goes to show how lethargic European development was in truth. If we were to put 1400s Americas vs Europe in the 1,400s (and take away 25,000 years of European history) then we wouldn't even have the title of this thread as a thing
 
It's not as much about size as about number - Late Medieval Europe had a lot of smaller and bigger towns, a dense urban network.

European High & Late Medieval chartered town was also unique in global scale in terms of its organizational model - urban citizenship, autonomy and separate legal status. In no other civilization towns enjoyed autonomy, and in no other civilization legal status of townsmen was different than legal status of peasants. In China there was no legal difference between peasants and townsmen, towns and villages. The only comparable entity was Ancient Greek polis.

In China every city and town was at the mercy of the Emperor, while in Europe towns enjoyed autonomy that kings & princes had to respect.

The first step forward from Early Medieval patrimonial monarchy was emancipation of nobles, while the second step was emancipation of towns.
 
Considering many population estimates in Mesoamerica are gradually/continually considered to be higher than initial estimates as archaeologists and time do their work, it wouldn't surprise me if Mesoamerica was once more densely populated than China.

On the other hand, what was the size of densely populated area in Mesoamerica ???

Mesoamerica has the same problem as Egypt - limited (in the north by deserts & mountains) size of good terrain. For example in 1938 Egypt had 15,5 million people, which seems to be a modest number for such a large country, but inhabited area of Egypt was only 35,000 km2, or the same size as Holland.
 
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