Why NOT in America?

[Rokcet Scientist]

A lot happened after the end of the last ice age: it marked the emergence of agriculture, city culture, metals, wars, trading, craftsmanship, writing, seafaring, organized religions, etc. HSS' development got into high gear as a consequence of a very changed environment. A gear you may call 'civilisation'.

'Civilisation'. Agriculture, city culture, metals, wars, trading, craftsmanship, writing, seafaring, etc. A range of processes and dynamics that for some reason seems to have largely passed by the peoples of the Americas. Comparatively, the stone age lasted remarkably long there!

Why?

[Minimalist]

There was a wide disparity in the Americas, R/S. I'm not sure that you can generalize in that manner. Even among the American Indians in NA there were nomadic types in the mid west; town dwellers in the SW and NE who practiced agriculture.

The Maya, Aztec, Inca and Toltec did not seem to have problems building cities. There are tantalizing clues about early American cultures but these are shrouded in legend and when someone, like Poznansky suggests an early date for Tiahuanaco, the Club laughs him off because their model says there was no one here before Clovis.

It's a mystery why having those forms present they did not make more of an impact on history, though.

[kbs2244]

In Guns, Germs and Steel, I believe, he talks about this.
His argument is that the Western Hemisphere is a North to South alignment, with a whole lot of different climates.
Whereas the Eastern Hemisphere is much more East to West oriented with, therefore, similar climates across large areas.
Since agriculture, in particular, is climate sensitive, it spread more quickly in the Eastern Hemisphere.

[Minimalist]

Diamond is also an ardent Clovis-Firster.

[kbs2244]

Yeah, and I think he was real wrong about the "untouched by humans Amazon basin."
He wrote before the recent discoveries.
But, wrong in one thing, doesn’t mean wrong in everything.
It seems to me there may be some merit in the North/South vs. East/West concept.

[Minimalist]

I'd have to go back and read it again. Generally I agree with you. One strike does not make an out.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Still, in the old world, the oldest cities we know of, sofar, date back to 4,000/5,000 years BC. In the new world, however, there is none we know of older than 500/1,000 BC.

Why that chasm?
What's the difference?

[Minimalist]

That's simply not true, R/S. Caral in Peru has been pushed back to the early 3'd millenium and they are still working on it.

[Rokcet Scientist]

That's simply not true, R/S. Caral in Peru has been pushed back to the early 3'd millenium and they are still working on it.

Maybe I need to read up on Caral. What's the club's stance on Caral?

[Minimalist]

http://www.philipcoppens.com/caral.html


As long as it post dates Clovis they have no problem with it.

[Digit]

On the subject of the Amazon Basin untouched by humans, I doubt it.
The Amazonian rain forest is at most only a few thousand years old.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Still, Caral is 'only' 2627 BC. And, afaik, it seems to be the 'only' city of that age in the Americas. While we know of many more old cities in the old world – Megiddo, Ur, Dwaraka, Harappa, and one or two ancient chinese sites come to mind. I'm sure we can list a dozen or even more if we try. And those cities are twice as old as Caral. At least!

Maybe you don't see that as a chasm in development, but to me it clearly is.

So my question remains: why?

Let me specify:
civilisation/cities, in the old world, emerged in at least a dozen places more or less simultaneously/concurrently. Between 7,000 and, say, 3,000 BC.
There are no indications, at all, that anything similar ever happened in the Americas. Sofar, Caral is a great exception, but it's not nearly as old, it is only one of its kind, and what we think we know about it is much more based on conjecture than our understanding of the the ancient cities in the old world is.

[kbs2244]

We talked about this in the first “Upheavals in there Third Millennium BCE” thread.
Look at pages 4 and 5 where I listed a bunch of stuff in South America going on in this time period.
When European white men took over the world, we wiped out a lot of local history and culture. What pre-dated us was forgotten in a generation or two.
It isn’t that nothing was happening in the Western Hemisphere. It just wasn’t talked about in the Bible and was therefore ignored by “Western Civilization.”
Nothing was written about it, so nothing was known about it. All us armchair explorers were clueless. If you didn’t see it with your own eyes, you didn’t know about it.
We have a local newspaper that has the slogan “All the News That is Fit to Print.” Of course, if it isn’t printed, then it isn’t on record, and pretty soon no one knows it ever happened. You don’t have to re-write history, you just don’t write it in the first place.
It is only in the last few years that some have been able to shake off the tunnel vision idea the Middle East was the “Cradle of Civilization.”
Most of the great rivers of the world, the Euphrates, Indus, Ganges, Mekong, Yellow, Nile, Amazon, maybe even the Congo, seem to have had their Civilizations at somewhat contemporary times.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Enlighten me on the 'Amazon civilisation' then, please?

How much fact? How much wishful thinking, conjecture, projection, assumption?

And if your 'great rivers' point applies: where is the 'Mississippi civilisation'?

[Minimalist]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopewell_culture

Hopewell culture is the term used to describe common aspects of the Native American culture that flourished along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern United States from 200 BC to 400 A.D. At its greatest extent, Hopewell culture stretched from western New York to Missouri and from Wisconsin to Mississippi, and included both the American and Canadian shores of Lake Ontario.