World History Question?

Question

I've always wondered about this:

People have been living in America for thousands of years. How come the ancient Romans and Greeks were so advanced and sophisticated compared to the Native Americans? They made entire cities and conquered half of Eurasia, while the Native Americans lived in small, simple tribes and had practically no knowledge of other lands. The Romans built the coliseum over two millennia ago, and yet, merely a half millennium ago, the Europeans came to America and found people who had no structures even close to those of the Romans. Why is this so?

Answer 1

this is a very hard question the answer, but here the main part of it.

Romans mainly lived in larger groups, while Indians lived in small tribes...The larger Roman groups could create a surplus of food, which lead people to specialize in labor while only some farmed....over years this grew into cities with the knowledge of iron weapons, complex housing, and even a a public water system in ancient rome.

native americans, however, did not live in large enough groups where they could have only a percentage of the people support themselves, so they were forced to slow in their development.

Answer 2

The answer is a bit complicated but please read "Guns ,germs and steel" by jared diamond;it explains everything and makes you furious that you were never taught that at school.

Answer 3

your forgetting about the aztecs and Mayans in south america.

they were very advanced.

but for the native americans its probley because north america was wild and harsh. very cold winters and very warm summers. climate plays a big role in ancient civilizations. the early man didn't have electricity and a weather channel.

Answer 4

This is a question I too have always wondered, but I have never known the answer to.

Answer 5

Lets look at it logically. The argument that the Indians had fewer resources doesn't wash.North America has plenty of resources. The Egyptians had the Nile, the Sumerians had the Tigirs and Euphraties, but the American Indians had the Mississippi and the Columbia, and theHudson River valley.  There is some truth to the argument that Euraisans had a better selection of beasts of burden, in that they had oxen and horses, but the Incas had the Llama, and other animals were available for domestication.

Any racial arguments are, of course, silly. American Indians are just as clever and intelligent as anyone else on the whole. The fact that it was American Indians that hybridized corn (some call

it Maize) into what it is today would prove that fact all on it's own. (Corn is a GM food, it's just that the Genetic Modification took a long time and was done with late stone age technology.) The great cities of the Aztec, the Inca, the Maya, and the Mississipian Mound

Builders (such as Cahokia) or the Pueblo Indians would also go against that argument.

So what we are left with is a CULTURAL or PHILOSOPHICAL superiority by the Europeans.

When you think about it, a culture is nothing more than the software you use to run your society. It is a long and complex series of rules dictating what you are supposed to do and how

you are supposed to do it. (IF A then B. IF A is greater than X then C, if A is not greater  than X then D).

The advantage the Europeans had was that they were the first to recognize the value of,  and the rights of, the individual.

Most human socities, even today, like to view people not as individuals but as a part of a group. In the ancient times you were Angus, son of Sven, grandson of Thor (which is why  so many people are named Johnson, Svensen, and McDonald). People organized themselves by clan...you still see that in much of the Arab world. Nowadays people are organized and categorized by Social Security Number and GSCE score.

Under this idea two things happen. One is you recieve not "inalienable God given rights"  and the freedom to do what you want, but the rights that are appropriate to your station in the group. Women do "womens work" regardless of how good they are at it, or how good they are at anything else. People have roles and duties they are expected to fulfill, and (as they say in Star Trek) "The needs of the many are greater than the needs of the one".  You can see this in the laws of Hammurabi where there are three classes of people, Nobles, Freemen, and Slaves. Penalites for the same crime vary depending on the status of the both the perpetrator of the crime and the victim of the crime.

This seems to be the "default state" for human society, and for most people over most of history it works pretty well. People don' t have to think a lot or make a lot of difficult choices. (No Mideval Pesant ever lost a nights sleep over deciding which college they should choose.) People know what is expected of them, and life has (barring the occasional Viking raid or outbreak of plague) a high degree of predictability.

The problem is, it is incredibly wasteful of human resources. Take for example Saudi Arabia, which is still very much organized along these lines. Women aren't allowed to drive, they don't go to school, it is incredibly difficult for them to have jobs, and they are dependent on men for everything. Well assuming that the Saudi population has a normal distrbution of IQs, the Saudis have taken half their brightest people (the ones who happen to be female) and tossed them right out. That means they loose half their potential doctors, half their potential lawyers, half their potential inventors, economists, and engineers right off the bat.

What gave Europe the edge over the Ameircan Indians, (and the Africans, Arabs, Asians as well) is that while they weren't perfect, they were better than the other civilizations at using the human resources and human capital they had. Their society was just a little bit more individualistic, and valued individual rights and freedom and equality more...which made it easier for tallented individuals of all classes, and genders to contribute. St. Thomas A Becket http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Beck... from the middle class to the top of the nobility is an example of this.  Remember, European society didn't have to be perfect for this to work (it wasn't). It just had to be better at it than the competition.

So why did European society have this edge? Two reasons. One was the Ancient Greeks and their Philosophy.  They first advanced ideas like Democracy, and a Republic of laws (something the Romans had as well) and social mobility.  What knocked this idea into overdrive was Christianity.  Chrisitianity teaches that all are equal before God.  (Galatians 3:34-29  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?sea...  The idea that all were equal before God and God's law gradually translated

Answer 6

You have actually answered your own question. The Romans lived in large (for their times) cities surrounded by farms and nearby farming communities which produced surplus food for sale. This allowed others to specialize shoemakers, blackmiths, laborers, soldiers, etc. They were also competing with other countries for trade, land, influence all of whom were armed with iron weapons and thus competition. Native Americans were hunters and gatherers who moved with the game, had no fixed home who competed against other tribes armed with no more than the stone weapons that they had. Until the Europeons came to North America they were not under pressure to change. Native people were very successful adaptors to there environment. When that environment changed they could not.  

Answer 7

This is one of the most interesting questions I've seen on here. I don't know the answer, but it's made me think about it. Maybe the Native Americans had plenty of natural resources and didn't need to fight other tribes for them. Wars lead to advances in technology. You need better weapons, stronger fortifications, etc. If you are short on natural resources, you need machines to help you do work more efficiently. This is by no means "the answer." It's just something to think about.

Answer 8

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. In its centuries of existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy to an oligarchic republic to an increasingly autocratic empire.

The city of Rome may have once seemed as unsophisticated as Native American culture. It grew from settlements around a ford on the river Tiber, a crossroads of traffic and trade. According to archaeological evidence, the village of Rome was probably founded sometime in the 8th century BC, though it may go back as far as the 10th century BC, by members of the Latin tribe of Italy, on the top of the Palatine Hill.

While some indigenous peoples of the Americas were historically hunter-gatherers, many practiced aquaculture and agriculture. Some societies depended heavily on agriculture while others practiced a mix of farming, hunting, and gathering. In some regions the indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, chiefdoms, states, and massive empires.

Answer 9

The Incas, Mayans, & Aztecs were fairly sophesticated. In many ways even more than the Greek or Romans.

Answer 10

Which native Americans? If you look at South America you see plenty of buildings, roads and other architectural wonders, and they came from the same original settlers who came over the Alaskan landbridge as the North American natives did.

Some culture never managed to make the big step towards a society of cities, look at some African areas, or Australia, others got the right explosive mix that made them switch from hunter gatherer or small farmers to something bigger.