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One can only speculate as to why more advanced technologies weren’t developed, but one only has to look towards history; morphological and behavioral modernity has been around for longer than written history. Biologically, humans aren’t that different from how they were ~100k years ago. So why is the present so different, and why were the Europeans so much more advanced than their American counterparts?
Well, humans evolved so that their ideas could die instead of their genes (read: Dawkins' meme theory). The larger a culture, the more rapidly ideas are generated and distributed. The more ideas can be generated, the more subcultures or branching cultures are generated.
For example, language evolves MUCH faster than humans do. And that's just one idea. All it takes is one generation of not passing down your language, stories, traditions, etc., for your entire culture to go extinct.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_…
Language is a particularly potent example; if a linguistic framework is not taught to a child within a certain period during their development, the brain will not be configured for linguistics at all. So-called "Feral children" have been consistently observed to result whenever a child isn't taught language, to this day.
#Other_cases" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_chi…
Those who aren't transmitted an ideological framework, find it difficult to grasp *any* ideas that require it. Ideas generate new technologies, which also require psychological frameworks. Thus, if a new technology wasn't developed in your day, your ability to learn it will be just as truncated. Everyone is painfully aware of how older generations struggle progressively more with digital technology, for example. Your dad might be able to operate a computer decently well, but certainly not *his* dad, and you can forget *his* dad. And none of them can come CLOSE to being as good at it as *you*.
The brain of a child is very versatile. The scientific term for this is Neuroplasticity. Children have been documented to have nearly half of their entire cerebral cortex completely removed and make full recoveries.
wired.com/2007/05/removi…
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
By contrast, the older you grow, the more your brain becomes hardwired; the more intolerant to Chaos you become. This is why older generations are universally more resistant to new ideas. Their physiology literally can't handle it.
So, people generate ideas, ideas generate technologies (or sometimes, are technologies in and of themselves), which advance the Culture to a stronger, more stable Order. Cultures and Orders clash with each other, creating hybrids as a result can be traced almost all the way back to Mesopotamia. These hybrids are both biological and cultural, like how the Microstate of Mexica (Aztecs) became the Mexico of today. Sumerian religion laid the foundation for the Babylonians, which evolved into proto-Abrahamic religions, which were bolstered by the Egyptian tradition to create Judaism, which bred with the Greek tradition to create Christianity, which was spread by the Europeans to create the modern world. This is sadly an obscure realization that most people don't even know. But those Cultures eventually generated the idea of Sovereignty, which eventually became individualized, and poof! Democracies and Republics everywhere.
However, the most relevant idea to this context, the prime moral innovation of the Europeans, was that of *progress*. It's an incredibly new idea, relative to known human history. This moral innovation was thousands of years ahead of even the most advanced societies in the Americas.
Now, that's not to say that the Europeans were correct to kill the native's Giants, metaphorically speaking. The Aztecs had many codices that were preserved, but the Mayan's codices were destroyed by the Spanish in order to convert them to Christianity and assimilate them. Culture, ideas, values, language. They're all fragile, and it only takes one generation to destroy it. And this isn't even relegated to history. Case in point: the Cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_…
Now, you could say that the moral innovations of the Europeans gave them the responsibility to "update" the systems of the native peoples. But Assimilation is only pleasant if it's your culture that's doing it, your values that prevail. I would say, the "updating of cultures" is not a responsibility that humans are capable of shouldering. Any sharing of ideas must be presented as a gift, to be shared reciprocally, not as a demand, and only with willing participants. If your culture consumes that of another, it deserves to also be consumed. If your culture rejects the innovations of another, it deserves to remain stagnant and to lose out on the spoils of said innovations. If cultures interbreed, they deserve all the benefits of such a creative union. But each has the right to do as they see fit. The more "advanced" culture ought to see their "primitive" counterparts as individuals tend to see children: they don't yet have your wisdom, and perhaps you pity them for it, but they'll find out soon enough. Invite them to participate, and if they're unwilling, their time will come. Though it's not as if my philosophical musings are anything special. The Haudenosaunee and their Confederacy of the Five Nations agreed with me, at least, so hey, there's that.
Anyhow, arguably, the most advanced society in the Americas, the Aztecs, were still back at square one with the Sumerian/Mesopotamian/Babylonian proto-religions. Their religious buildings and traditions share some uncanny similarities. You could say they were in the Ziggurat Age, a time I'd surmise happens sometime between the Stone age and the Bronze age, in terms of Man's achievement as he strives towards meaning...
Pictured, Top: Great Ziggurat of Ur, Neo-Sumerian, present-Day Iraq, ~2100 BCE (Early Bronze Age)
Bottom: Chichen Itza, Pre-Columbian Maya, ~AD 800-1000 (Middle Ages)
Incredibly, the Pyramids of Giza are older than BOTH.
So yes, all native peoples were far technologically outstripped by the Europeans by the time they arrived. That's absolutely not to say they were primitive, per se. Humans would do well to appreciate the wisdom of the ancients. What they really ought to be teaching in schools is not how smart humans are today, but that the archaic people WEREN'T STUPID, especailly considering how easy it is to take for granted the guardrails modernity can put on the State of Nature. That is to say, if you didn't have to live in a constant state of fatal Chaos, you should probably assume you don't know what the hell you're talking about when considering archaic peoples.
With that in mind, consider the geography of the Tribes, Societies, and Microstates of the time. Even the most advanced States -residing in South America- were relatively isolated from each other due to the massive differences in Terrain. You're not going to map out new territory if there's mountains in the way that are impossible to traverse.
This isolation made their respective Orders safe- no reason to defend against external threats, if very little existed. And no reason to compete with other cultures, if they were effectively nonexistent to each other. Their cultural traditions also heavily valued a cyclical understanding of things. Order is destroyed by Chaos, from which new Order arises, only to happen again, ad infinitum. Their traditions provided a sufficient explanation of reality. They had little reason to do away with them.
In the Northern areas, particularly among nomadic tribes, there was nowhere near enough of a stable food supply to even build a State. The Tribal leadership and their traditions was the best you could muster, and when it wasn't enough, your culture died, thrusting you back into Chaos to fend for yourself. This, no doubt, was the fate of many lost cultures.
And when they weren't perishing by the hand of Chaos, they were being devoured by the hand of their neighbors. This was especially true in present-day America and in the midwest. Tribal warfare is a human universal. The real miracle is why you're not doing it with bloodthirsty fervor yourself. If you're a human today, you likely share 99.9% of your DNA with the same supposedly primitive humans who wage tribal warfare, today and yesterday. So don't think you're so special; you would go to war for your tribe. The most you can do is abstract your tribe ideologically, and that's not really much different, all things considered. It just means you've formed your tribe more contemporally, which every human does, as a social animal (i.e. the community that makes up your circle of friends, family, etc.). Wars of the mind are better fought than wars of the flesh, for the flesh is the mind, and not much thinking (thereby, not much *being*) can go without it.
Tangentially, in the Mormon tradition, the belief is that the many people in the ancient Americas built many great civilizations, and they were so war-torn by the end of it all, that the culture and the ideas they engendered were all but lost, leaving Moroni as the last of the record-keepers.
"...wherefore, I wander whithersoever I can for the safety of mine own life."
Moroni remains an ardent cultural symbol for Latter-Day Saints, though evidence of whether or not the records and the events therein correlate with any archeological or historical occurences is hotly debated.
Even when cultures like the Anasazi and the Hohokam were able to make some relatively decent technological advancements (by archaic standards), it still wasn't enough to keep their Orders stable, thus, their cultures went extinct, and those who replaced them in the land couldn't even fathom how to begin to replicate their success.
The Anasazi were called the "Ancient Ones" by the Puebloans. They came thousands of years after the Anasazi's ideas died out, and were thus incapable of reverse-engineering their success. (Read: Judge Holden's monologue on the Anasazi, from Blood Meridian)
A poignant example of the fragility of ideas and the cultures they engender: the Pyramids were built thousands of years before, and have stood longer, than all the other wonders of the world, almost combined! It's significantly larger, and modern humanity STILL doesn't know precisely how they did it... And what's more, the traditions that generated all of these artifacts are as extinct as the majority of them. Though, to be fair, it's still not clear whether or not the Hanging Gardens of Babylon ever existed.
If it can be said that we stand on the shoulders of Giants, what happens to a society when the Giants have long since decayed?
Don't be at all surprised if you're the last person to know how to operate something as complex as a computer or motor vehicle, let alone how to build or maintain one. The ideas and cultures that generated such technologies are beyond the capacity and will of Man to preserve, especially in the wake of his destructive capacity. I make no reference to environmental damage, only to the hatred of greatness, the demonization, vilification, and cannibalization of the good as such. The irate, spoiled children of the future will be the ones most willing to destroy the Giants of today. It will be those who have the most that will hunger for its bloodshed.
The force that opposes innovation, success, greatness, and reciprocality, is far from cosmic; it's as temporal as can be. The line between whether it will prevail in its aim to decimate all that is good, is drawn right along the heart of each individual.
With this understanding, it's only natural that the most advanced societies in the Americas were agrarian States with central governments on par with 18th century China, AT BEST. The real miracle is how the hell we're NOT in a collection of agrarian microstates or wandering, warring tribes. And the charge of those who can ponder such an epiphany is as follows: climb the shoulders of the Giants, rediscover their wisdom, see as far as they did, build upon their sight as your foundation, and attempt to venture beyond. Only by greatness, can one become greater still. Such greatness must be rediscovered, reclaimed, resurrected, inhereted, preserved, cherished, venerated, and given to the next generation as the ultimate gift, and the ultimate responsibility.
Though, I suppose you could say that's merely an echo of the Tower of Babel. Man will always miss when he shoots for the moon. But better to miss your moonshot, than never to have taken any aim at all.
Mukirr@HalfWolfMukirr
As a Native American (Anishinaabe) I have a question. What cosmic force was preventing my ancestors from discovering gunpowder? Steelworking? Paved roads? Shipyards and naval engineering? Why did we barely have the wheel? The land was being utterly wasted before it was "stolen".
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