Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Hi, PamelaIamela! Which pre-Columbian North American animal would you have domesticated into a draft animal? And could you please walk us through the process of how you, if you lived along, say, the Mississippi circa 1300 AD, would go about producing a useful metal alloy? Thanks!
I have no idea what animals would have been appropriate except those (bison?) that were captured and/or bred for the purpose. Regarding metals, much advancement among peoples has relied on commerce and roads that can support the transport and exchange of goods from far distances, thus enabling the mix of materials that provide the ingredients that creative minds use to advance a culture.
Of course a wheel and axle + draft animals and roads, or seagoing vessels to explore and exchange goods and ideas between coastal communities would have fostered such innovation which has transformed most societies from primitive cultures thru intermediate stages and beyond.
Why the folks north of the Rio Grande never attained those levels of development is a matter of conjecture.
I have no idea what animals would have been appropriate except those (bison?) that were captured and/or bred for the purpose. Regarding metals, much advancement among peoples has relied on commerce and roads that can support the transport and exchange of goods from far distances, thus enabling the mix of materials that provide the ingredients that creative minds use to advance a culture.
Of course a wheel and axle + draft animals and roads, or seagoing vessels to explore and exchange goods and ideas between coastal communities would have fostered such innovation which has transformed most societies from primitive cultures thru intermediate stages and beyond.
Why the folks north of the Rio Grande never attained those levels of development is a matter of conjecture.
Well, ya know, deserts (American SW and northern Mexico) aren't known for accommodating seagoing vessels. The interior of the continent (Mississippian territory) also didn't have any coastlines handy. The NW Coast tribes did have seagoing vessels that they used for travel and trade from Alaska down to Oregon.
We look at civilization with the bias and handicap of our own cultures. They say "necessity is the mother of invention", not the shallow expectations of tourists or arm-chair archaeologists. You have to actually go there and search for clues in most cases. Few places in the US have a climate that preserved fragile evidence and many populations had to experience a harsher climate with less time to make doodads for later investigators to find.
The West Great House at Aztec, NM, is one place that is relatively easy to access and explore and has been tidied up a bit so people can walk through and see what remains of the 400 rooms occupied in the 1200s. These were people from the Chaco Canyon and later Mesa Verde cultures.
Reconstructed Great Kiva - one of many
800-year-old ceiling construction inside the Great House
The Aztecs and the Mayas left the remnants of vast empires that existed in what is now Mexico and Central America.
However, there are no pyramids, cities, or signs of any advanced civilization that developed in the United States in pre-Columbian times. Only some pueblos in southwestern states like New Mexico.
Why do you think the Native Americans in the U.S. never developed much beyond the primitive state in spite of living here for many thousands of years?
Its probably best that some folks think like this because it gives Native Americans an advantage.
Well, ya know, deserts (American SW and northern Mexico) aren't known for accommodating seagoing vessels. The interior of the continent (Mississippian territory) also didn't have any coastlines handy. The NW Coast tribes did have seagoing vessels that they used for travel and trade from Alaska down to Oregon.
Is this a serious response?
Is no one aware that ancient caravan trails passed from Mongolia (i.e. Bayanhongor aimag) across the Gobi Desert to link up with the Silk Routes of China?
I think my time on what has degenerated into a silly thread is ended.
Well. I grew up in Central Ohio and we had part of the Mound Builder civilization in our area that built many large earthen structures some of which are still visible today.
Is no one aware that ancient caravan trails passed from Mongolia (i.e. Bayanhongor aimag) across the Gobi Desert to link up with the Silk Routes of China?
I think my time on what has degenerated into a silly thread is ended.
Native North Americans also had trade trails spanning the continent in various directions, and traded with the Aztecs and Maya. You're privileging the Silk Road, simply because people rode animals on it, while traders in the Americas travelled on foot. That's your personal bias.
I have no idea what animals would have been appropriate except those (bison?) that were captured and/or bred for the purpose. Regarding metals, much advancement among peoples has relied on commerce and roads that can support the transport and exchange of goods from far distances, thus enabling the mix of materials that provide the ingredients that creative minds use to advance a culture.
Of course a wheel and axle + draft animals and roads, or seagoing vessels to explore and exchange goods and ideas between coastal communities would have fostered such innovation which has transformed most societies from primitive cultures thru intermediate stages and beyond.
Why the folks north of the Rio Grande never attained those levels of development is a matter of conjecture.
IOW you're a stone age person, too, since you don't know about metallurgy or animal taming
Humboldt noted that the north-western Aboriginals had some home-grown form of writing & monumental architecture.
This chimes in with the scattered pieces of evidence connecting the North American Aboriginals with Pacific trade routes mentioned by C. Loring Brace & Jack Forbes independently & respectively.
I think this is backwards the first civilizations didn't occur in places where you'd think. They occurred in the middle of the desert, meaning people became civilized out of nessecity with such scarcity of resources innovation was bound to occur, and from Mesopotamia civilization migrated northward.
There's so much wrong with that.
The places you think of as being desert today, like the Iranian Plateau, the Saudi Peninsula, the Levant, North Africa and the like were lush tropical paradises 12,000 years ago.
Geologists were confounded by certain mineral deposits in the Basra Region of Iraq.
Those minerals are not naturally occurring and being sediments, it means they had to be transported by water.
At the time, it meant only two possibilities, the Zagros Mountains where the River Karun originates or the Taurus Mountains in Anatolia where the Tigris and Euphrates originate.
Except those minerals aren't organic to those mountain ranges.
Something else geologists noted, was a strange demarcation line on the Saudi Peninsula. All the sand dunes north of the demarcation line were aligned in one direction, while all the sand dunes south of the demarcation line were aligned in a different direction. No would could explain why that was happening.
In the early 1990s, the space shuttle went on secret military mapping missions using ground-penetrating radar to find things governments from other countries hide, like under-ground military bases, government operation centers, storage facilities and the like.
What they found was a long dead river flowing from the Hijazz Mountains in western Saudi Arabia right across the Saudi Peninsula conforming exactly to the demarcation line and merging with the Tigris, Euphrates and Karun Rivers in the Basra Delta.
When they went to the Hijazz Mountains, they found those minerals.
It was snow melt -- yes, snow -- and rain, plus wind, that eroded those minerals out of the rock and they flowed through what is now called the Kuwait River across the Saudi Peninsula and joined the Tigris, Euphrates and Karun Rivers.
Those four rivers formed the Eden River which flowed over a cataract 100' to 120' high and through the Persian Valley --- yeah, that's right...there was no such thing as a Persian Gulf 12,000 years ago -- into a delta a few miles south of the mouth of the present Persian Gulf.
The space shuttle also found the remnants of that delta, and when they drilled core samples they found the minerals from the Hijazz Mountains, plus minerals known to originate in the Zagros and Taurus Mountains.
The Earth looks nothing today like it did 12,000 years ago, or 25,000 years ago, or 100,000 years ago.
In the middle of the next Glacial Period, you'll be able to see what Earth looked like 12,000 years ago.
You really need to get up to speed with things.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
