Hey /his/,
There are many people who believe that the Europeans brought "civilization" to the New World. However, numerous complicated ancient civilizations existed before Europeans arrived on the American continents. Civilizations like the Anasazi Indians.
-form your own opinions, mine will be in the post that follows-
As we recall the various times America has been declared a “New World”, we must ultimately direct our attention towards its true age. In fact, the “New World” is really an “Old World” when we look aforetime during the pre-Columbian cultures. Specifically, looking at North America, a vast assortment of other Natives grew upon the land.
For example, beginning 12,000 to 15,000 years ago (among the Western Hemisphere), Siberians supposedly traveled across the Bearing Strait to reach Alaska in search of large game animals. After finding themselves in the American territory, these nomadic groups dispersed among the land and settled down.
Speeding time up a little bit, a lifestyle of crop cultivation, animal breeding, and the production of archaic weapons was already created and being used throughout the Native Americans when Christopher Columbus and other Europeans showed up. From there, it was only a short amount of time before North America was compelled to join the Spanish Empire (i.e. land was taken, Indians became slaves, etc.) and take on their living standards.
You could say that it was a clash of cultures as the Spaniards began to dominate the land. Later, Spain’s achievements caused great challenges as they ignited an uproar of other nations to want their own claims of land.
In conclusion, this “New World”, which really turns out to be an “Old World”, marks a key stage of history. The pre-Columbian culture of North America left behind many remarkable Native emblems such as: cities, agriculture, civic/monumental architecture, major earthworks, and societal hierarchies. As well as, the culture commenced a great civilization to follow afterward. This reinforces the belief that North America was not a “New World” after all.
>>596119
Indians were relatively civilized in some areas, contact with Europeans really devastated them through disease. It was going to happen at some point or another.
>>596168
>Indians were relatively civilized in some areas
Civilized in what way and relative to what?
>>596177
I am taking a course on American History, some of the earliest adventurers looking for the river crossing to the pacific came across Indians with towns and roads et cetera.
Relative to nomadic.
When the Europeans show up after Columbus to start claiming land, they were claiming the post-apocalyptic ruins of what ever civilizations that had been around. Disease had inadvertently obliterated North America and Europe was just picking up the pieces(however brutally)
>>596119
Native Americans were pretty primitive, they didn't even have the wheel. Their civilizations, while impressive considering their lack of communication with one another, were hardly impressive when compared to Asian and European civilizations.
Some of their buildings and monuments are however quite neat even if the bigger ones tended to have a fresh coat of human blood on them fairly frequently.
>>596198
>Native Americans were pretty primitive, they didn't even have the wheel.
The wheel has been invented once, ever.
>>596202
And not by Americans.
>>596217
But not wheels
>>596217
>They knew how to roll things
So do babies.
![trade_large[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/tWTK6Aw.jpg "trade_large[1].jpg")
>>596198
>considering their lack of communication with one another
please don't contribute to this board's ignorance about native Americans by posting shit you know nothing about.
>>596185
Still nothing compared to post midevil Europe
>>596177
Aztecs had one of the largest cities on Earth at the time, which was built on a lake, and had retractable bridges. They had mandatory education at state schools for all children, an organized army, and created large monumental temples and structures in their cities.
Relative to the European cities of the time, Tenochtitlan was on par and even superior in some regards.
>>596119
If people from across the Atlantic had arrived in the New World, they left no genetic trace
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-genetic-ancient-trans-atlantic-migration-professor.html
This would seem to go against the idea that people from across the Atlantic established civilizations here, and it would be a bit silly to assume that non-literate societies would've been able to just copy them from memory after the trans-Atlanteans disappeared.
>>596428
I would say far superior, to europe at least. Think sanitation, engineering, public schooling, poetry, architecture, agriculture, medicine, etc. Even their slavery was more civilized (as in it was a form of wage slavery, rather than chattel slavery).
I would like to see what the Americas would look like today had the natives possessed some miraculously acquired resistance to European pathogens.
>>596822
So, you mean having some cow analogue in the North/Central Americas? Because that's apparently all it took. Dirty fucking farming.
>>596830
I mean, the plagues brought over from the East probably had something to do with Europe's immune vigor as well.
ITT: Indian WE WUZ
There were no "ancient" civilizations when Europeans arrived except the Mayas. Aztecs were 300 year old, Incas only 200. Sure you have civilizations in the Americas that date as far as the 2000 BC, but all of these lasted roughly 300-500 years before collapsing and going back to semi-nomadic tribal lifestyles for a couple centuries and theb repeating the process. There are no indications that Aztecs or Incas could escape the fate of the Olmecs or the Moches. In fact, Aztecs seemed to be on the verge of a revolution anyway, judging from the way the Spanish conquest played out anyway.
>>596794
>I would say far superior, to europe at least. Think sanitation, engineering, public schooling, poetry, architecture, agriculture, medicine, etc.
>>596842
For the survivors, I suppose. But we'll never really meaningfully be able to compare a Europe with the plague and one without it. Same with the Americas and large domesticated animals, too, I suppose.
>>596794
t: José Rodriguez
>>596127
WOAH. HOLD ON. JUST HOLD ON A SECOND.
ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT THERE WERE PEOPLE IN THE AMERICAS BEFORE EUROPEANS.
WOAH. I MEAN REALLY WTF I NEVER HEARD THAT IN MY HISTORY CLASS SO REVOLUTIONARY.
AND THESE PEOPLE... YOU SAY... THEY DID... 'THINGS'...
man oh man sweet freshmen history class essay outline.
>>596794
>i got my information about mediaeval Europe from Monty Python and the Holy Grail
>>596822
Probably poorer and weirder. Think India but with a batshit death-worshiping religion.
>>596119 >>596168 >>596198 >>596764
This is all proof that the Mormon religion is true.
https://www.lds.org/?lang=eng
>>596198
they did have the wheel they just didn't use it for transport
>people that practiced human sacrifice and cannablism were civilised
Can't make this shit up, leftists actually believe this.
![122_00_2[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/5ZXDdEF.jpg "122_00_2[1].jpg")
>>596198
I don't think anyone has ever claimed there was no civilization in the new world.
2 of the most popular conceptions of first contact are Cortez and the Pilgrims, the first involves Cortez coming across enormous cities with sophisticated agriculture, the second involves starving European peasants who traded manufactured wares for maize.
The idea that Europeans believed the new world was uninhabited and diminished the achievements of native Americans is a modern meme. It's the 90s, the berlin wall has fallen, get with the times.
>>597108
No serious historian has said it directly, but most Americans in the 19th and the early 20th centuries didn't regard Indians as civilized except for the 5 civilized tribes.
>>597268
>proceed to kill everyone in the civilized tribes
Sure desk senpai
>>598301
Choctaw did OK.
t. choctaw
>>596995
>a fucking toy
So your grand defence for the poor wittle indians is the fact that they were too stupid to put the wheels they used for toys onto a fucking hand cart?
>>598482
I wasn't making a grand defense, I was demonstrating your basic ignorance of the topic.
>>598499
So what part exactly do you take issue with? My claim that they didn't have the wheel?
And your basis for this is a toy and a few other artefact that have been found none of which meaningful use.
Taken as an absolutist factual statement it's wrong, but taken as a practical statement, "Native Americans didn't have the wheel", isn't wrong. Pointing out a handful of irrelevant knick-knacks doesn't make you intelligent and it certainly doesn't give you any worthwhile point.
>>598509
>And your basis for this is a toy and a few other artefact that have been found none of which meaningful use.
I really fucking hate that this website doesn't have an edit function. Then again if I could proofread worth a damn this wouldn't be an issue.
>And your basis for this is a toy and a few other artefacts that have been found none of which suggest or demonstrate meaningful use.
>>598509
>>598516
I take issue with the fact that you have demonstrated a lack of knowledge on the topic but are continuing to act as though your flippant generalization accurately describes the hundreds of different cultures that inhabited North America before Europeans arrived. You didn't even bother providing a metric for what makes a civilization "impressive," which is purely a matter of opinion anyways.
If theyre so great what was their stance on gay marriage? It aint civilised if i cant bum bum my bum buddy without getting my head rolled down the templa stairs.
>>596988
http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm
>>596127
>The pre-Columbian culture of North America left behind many remarkable Native emblems such as: cities, agriculture, civic/monumental architecture, major earthworks, and societal hierarchies
Ok, so where are the ruins of these cities and monumental architecture?
The per-Columbian natives were millennia behind the rest of the world.
>>598646
Why do you assume he's Christian?
>>598723
>so where are the ruins of these cities and monumental architecture
Arizona and New Mexico mostly
>>598739
oh and Mexico of course
>>598739
The post implies cities (plural) across the Americas, not a few desert outposts that weren't continually inhabited for more than a century.
![e5d13956ce709c4513c99c88f942562f[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/r8GQIrR.jpg "e5d13956ce709c4513c99c88f942562f[1].jpg")
>>598750
>desert outpost
It was five stories tall, possessed 800 rooms, and was inhabited for 300 years until repeated droughts forced its inhabitants to abandon it.
>>598736
Not the anon who linked that, but whether the original anon is Christian or not hardly matters. The point is that Europeans commited atrocities just as horrible as native Americans did, so claiming they're uncivilized just because of human sacrifice is ridiculous.
>>596845
More like white leftists DEY WUZ
>>598794
More like /pol/tard DEY WUZN'T
>>596119
Winner take all, and write their own history, and powder-guns was strong argue into real estate topics.
>>598558
This look like a monastery or a boarding house.
Natives had republican government. It was a better quality of life for the middle and lower classes but things didn't get done the way an autocracy does. Please remember Regina to Toronto is nearly equivalent to Amsterdam to Moscow. There wasn't the same need to develop military technology to keep their independent state as it was in Europe. For some nations, yes, there was constant warfare and brutality but this is commonplace all throughout the world at various areas. Native societies had irrigation, agriculture and rich cultures of their own just like Europeans, in some ways more advanced while in others, they were not where the Europeans we're simply because the mother of invention is necesito.
t. Cree
>>598842
Then his claim is that there was no civilization anywhere, which is even more retarded.
How you personally perceive the morality of a foreign culture has nothing to do with it having a civilization.
![The_Palenque_Palace_Aqueduct[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/BQRidz1.jpg "The_Palenque_Palace_Aqueduct[1].jpg")
>>598810
It was the city's palace where the Maya aristocracy performed various functions and ceremonies. The central tower's about 75 feet tall.
It also has an aqueduct that used to feed their baths and fountains.
>>598856
>perceive the morality
Morality is objective.
Unless you are prepared to argue that human sacrifice is perfectly acceptable under certain circumstances that do not involve the teleological suspension of the ethical.
>>598868
way to miss the point of the post
>>598868
>Morality is objective.
Wrong, but also irrelevant. My point is that whether you or anyone else believes natives they were morally righteous has nothing to do with them having civilizations. Are you going to disregard their architecture, technology, culture, organized religion, complex economies, etc just because they killed some people and that makes you unhappy?
>>598858
So based
South americas are pretty cool. Loved the apocalypto film except for the rambo segment. Too bad for them they didnt keep up with the advancements or didnt have diverse opportunities to prosper and develop parrallel with the mainland continent.
Were they mostly city-states like in the mesopotamian times?
>>599156
That's probably the best equivalent in the old world, except the Mesoamericans tended to be a lot more unstable and colllapse and rise periodically. It's a shame they were still Stone Age people.
Also read the Popol Vuh
pic related a very cool temple in Mexico emerging from the waters of a lake because of a drought
>>598482
In Mesoamerica merchants would have moved around in boats to trade food so there was no need for food.
In the Andes, towns were usually isolated in rainy valleys full of creaks and it wasn't until Inca times that bridges began to be built (and these were shitty wood bridges that wouldn't have been able to support regular use of carts).
In the Amazon jungle and the prairies in North and South America, population was semi-nomadic due to more drastic winters and settlements were often too far spread out to encourage trade.
It doesn't seem like the needs for carts would have arose until a couple centuries later
>>596988
>leftist
>morals make something a civilisation
Civilisation refers to social and technical complexity, not to morals of the culture in question. Also you don't have to be a leftist to be interested in the precolumbian Americas. I'm a Catholic and not a leftist and I do this. I'm not alone either. Native culture was appreciated even by early Europeans coming to the New World, like de Sahagún.
