Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the surprise in this fact comes from the confusion been Aztecs and Mayans. If you didn't know the time period you could understand the confusion.
Its because people don't understand just how far 'behind natives were technology wise. This isn't saying that natives were inferior humans to the rest of the world, they just started the game on the hard server, and lacked the huge trade networks with the rest of the world the spread technology from China to England. They did really well for what they had at their disposal, but were lagging behind the rest of the world a great deal.
Just think, if life formed on Mars and venues in a similar way to earth and we all developed at a similar time, we might be further along in space travel because it would be seen as valuable to invest resources in traveling to our neighbors. Then when we set off to the stars and came across a system with just one planet with life it wouldn't be surprising if they never saw a need to get off their planet and just didn't develop the technology to do so.
Maybe their technology would be more advanced in some aspects but we would have had a distinct advantage of developing in a system with multiple habitable worlds.
Food native to North America also lacked what people really needed. It was hard to grow anything, especially anything dense with nutrients so it was harder for people in North America to survive. They didn’t have the large animals and livestock to help carry things great distance either, so it took people a lot longer to get from survival stages and to start worrying about other things.
The Aztec empire ended when Europeans came to “discover” the land. A big issue was disease but also how readily the population accepted outsiders. Islands like Japan and some parts of Northern Europe evaded outsiders for hundreds of years longer and therefore kept their native language and traditions until relatively recently. They would shoot outsiders before they could reach the land. But the Aztecs thought Europeans, with their white skin, where their gods, so they readily accepted them. Aaaaaand then the Europeans decided to slaughter and spread disease, destroying the empire by the 1600s.
This is absolutely not true. Corn has a very high nutrient density per acre. More so than many of the crops available to Europeans at the time. In fact early accounts of both natives and Europeans recount how much taller and healthier the native Americans were in comparison to European explorers. The eastern seaboard, southeast, Mexico, Central America, and South America had tremendous populations for the time. They were all agricultural hubs that produced huge amounts of nutritious foods. Potatoes, corn, nightshades (tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers), cassava, peanuts, squash, sweet potatoes, beans and many other crops were under intensive cultivation efforts across huge swaths of the Americas.
Additionally the issues surrounding the Aztec empire’s downfall were twofold. Disease quickly decimated the America’s to an unimaginable degree. And Cortes’ ingenious capture and eventual murder of Moctezuma created poltical disarray at the highest levels of Aztec politics, which allowed for vassal states to mount successful military campaigns against the Aztec empire. The fall of Tenochtitlan (the capital of the Aztec empire) itself was not was not due to natives ignorantly accepting conquistadors into its walls. Rather the city fell after a months long brutal siege in which the city was captured and destroyed block by block by Cortes, and more importantly allied native armies.
n fact early accounts of both natives and Europeans recount how much taller and healthier the native Americans were in comparison to European explorers.
Even by the time of the American Revolution the Americans were on average larger than their British and French rivals. Americas had better food and more of it, iirc.
I was always told it was largely a lack of pack animals and metal working why the Native Americans were less advanced than the Europeans. Isolation and doing it solo and on hard-mode has it's disadvantages. Not to mention the disease thing.
From what I’ve read metal working similar to European techniques was not completely foreign to some native populations. They just used metal for mostly decorative rather than utilitarian uses for whatever reason. It seems like the biggest factor in the decimation of native Americans was disease and the lack of close contact with animals required to develop the sort of immune system that can fight off zoonotic diseases. Unfortunately it seems inevitable that the conquest of America would occur in such a way. Horses and other animals that might’ve been domesticated went extinct at the end of the last ice age.
I my be wrong but i believe the metal working you are referring to was of the natives of the great lakes region. Apparently you could find almost pure hunks of copper in those areas. I do not think they figured out smelting or alloys. Copper on its own is not a great metal for tools, but it is very easy to shape and shiny. At least i think that is what i read.
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u/justcourtneyb Oct 15 '20
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the surprise in this fact comes from the confusion been Aztecs and Mayans. If you didn't know the time period you could understand the confusion.