Did they use wheels in pre-columbian times? I'm very curious about their understanding of technology.
why did the spaniards burn all the books?
How old was this civilization really?
Why were the big towns like Tikal abandoned on arrival of the spaniards?
>there was very little to no metal in these regions
Is this true?
pre-columbian history thread
I'd also like to draw a accurate representation of different pre-columbian citizens, but I found no scientific description of their appearance.
I would be interested in the children toys and clothes of free citizens (I assume they had slaves too?)
Azteks and Mayans had wheeled toys, but there were no wheeled carts whatsoever in the continent.
bump
>>453539
>Why were the big towns like Tikal abandoned on arrival of the spaniards?
There is no known reason. Possibly droughts, overexplotation of natural resources, diseases, etc.
There might have been some mythological explaination in the Mayan books, but Spaniards destroyed them.
>>453625
maybe something made them think using wheels is childish
>Did they use wheels in pre-columbian times? I'm very curious about their understanding of technology.
Not besides toys and shit like
>>453625
>why did the spaniards burn all the books?
IT'S THE DEVIL FILTHY HERETICS BURN IT ALL HAHAHA WE CONQUER NOW
Also the Mexican Revolution burned/destroyed basically the remainder of the pre-Columbian civilization works, books and all.
>How old was this civilization really?
Which one?
>Why were the big towns like Tikal abandoned on arrival of the spaniards?
I dunno lol. Happened to a lot of big cities in the Old World over time.
>there was very little to no metal in these regions
>Is this true?
It was just kind of useless. What good is rusted iron for combat or building? These are jungles. I don't know if they used bronze, but that was probably a fluke to be honest (because is there any reason to mix good, pure copper and tin?)
>>453539
>>453562
Some childrens toys had wheels, but they didn't have the right beasts of burden to really help with agriculture. Alpacas aren't strong enough to carry adults. For the Inca, mountainous territory was also a problem.
>there was very little to no metal in these regions
>Is this true?
For iron, yes, which is VERY unusual for most of the world. Not exactly for copper, silver and gold, though. Obsidian also had useful properties and was quite durable if properly fixed to an object.
there's a lecture from a columbia university world history course on youtube where the professor goes on for like an hour and a half about the development of the wheel and why civilizations would choose to develop or not develop them.
>>453539
Norte Chico was the oldest pre-Columbian civ. Very strange, look it up. Peru in general was the first inhabited area of the Americas. The Maya were also quite old dating back to around 1800-2600 BC, and they took from the Olmecs who were younger and emerged around 1500 BC. The Aztecs emerged in the 1200s AD, and the Inca around the 1430s AD. IIRC the Inca didn't even last a century.
>>453562
>>453562
2
>>453562
3
>>456180
Pa ...pa....papageno?
>>456156
Do you have sauce handy senpai?
>>453539
>Did they use wheels in pre-columbian times?
They knew of the concept of wheels, they had toys with wheels and perfectly round (ceremonial) stones. They didn't have any big domesticated animals to pull carts though, so they never developed wheeled transports.
>I'm very curious about their understanding of technology.
They had a level of technology on par with ancient babilonians or sumerians. Only a few cultures managed to develop copper metallurgy for everyday tools, the tarascans in mexico, the chimu in peru and the Mississippian culture in north america (cahokia).
>why did the spaniards burn all the books?
Because the spaniards were catholic fanatics, even in the climax of the renaissance and the illustration. The native americans were profoundly religious people and their books had their religion and their gods everywhere. The spaniards were always paranoid that their recently converted indians reverted to paganism and so they destroyed eveything that could remind them that they had a culture before the spaniards arrived. They destroyed all the cities and monuments they could find and built spanish buildings on top of them, sometimes even using the same stones. They burnt the books and burnt at the stake every priest, healer and indian intellectual they could find.
Continued.
>>456185
kek
>>453539
>>456415
How old was this civilization really?
Historically, mesoamerican civilizations started with the Olmecs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmec) around 1500 bc.
Why were the big towns like Tikal abandoned on arrival of the spaniards?
This idea that the mayans had dissapeared from the face of earth before the spaniards arrived is totally wrong. What happened is that they dispersed. The big cities were abandoned and the people dispersed through the land. Scientists theorize that they depleted the soil's powere to regenerate and thei crops failed massively. This was possible because the Yucatan peninsula has a very poor and thin soil, being geologically "new". But mayans survived and were on the way to have big cities again when the spanish arrived.
>there was very little to no metal in these regions, Is this true?
No. Mexico is very rich in copper, gold, silver and iron. Peru is very rich in gold, silver and copper too.
Real life is not a game of civilization. You can't know what is the next level of technology you are supposed to have. If people in the old world developed copper, bronze and iron they had their reasons. It gave them technological superiority vs americans but we can only know that in hindsight.
Humans got out of africa 60,000 years ago. Humans got into america 20,000 years ago. That's 40,000 years of advantage the middle east people had over the americans to develop civilization.
Sumer started civilization in the old world 7000 years ago. The olmecs started civilization in the new world 3500 years ago.
So that means the eurasia took 60000 - 7000 = 53,000 years to go from hunter-gatherers to the first civilization.
America took 20,000 - 3500 = 16500 years to get from hunter-gatherer to their first civilization.
So it seems to me americans were developing faster. Just a troll thought.
>>456415
Some Spaniards priest burned treatise, others protected them, others recopiled myths, another tried to stop other Spaniards from mistreating the natives, others teached new ways to raise crops or introduced animals to them, burning priest is the first time I hear of it, they mostly humiliated them like cuting they sacred hairstyle etc and building sacred building in top of others sacred buildings is as ancient as history, nearly all european churchs are atop ancient places of worship, or muslims temples in the middle east.
>Why were the big towns like Tikal abandoned on arrival of the spaniards?
If you mean Classic Maya Collapse, it happened in 10th century, before Spaniards. It's unknown, but perhaps due to some social upheavals combined with climatic changes.
>>455934
>>456102
It kind of makes sense that they may not have thought wheels practical at a large scale for some reason. Take the steam engine for instance, it was invented almost 2000 years ago in greece, how could they not know this would have changed the entire world if they'd just use them for something other than as a curiosity? Why did it take almost 1700 years for someone to actually do that? That's the answer to the wheel question.
>>453704
WE
