Arrested development...

[Rokcet Scientist]

Pre-Columbian Native Americans, whatever their origins, had in fact not progressed one iota since they crossed the Bering Land Bridge at the end of the last ice age! Why? What was wrong with those dudes? The rest of Homo Sapiens Sapiens was darn busy running around, waging wars, and building and destroying religions and civilizations one after another, but the NA just sat there watching the bison herds grazing in their millions? C'mon! What's wrong with that picture? Why the complete inertia in development?
And don't blame it on the white man or his booze, 'cause they weren't around!
What is the fundamental difference between NA and e.g. Caucasians that caused that? Any ideas? Or is it "not socially desirable" to say it out loud?

[Frank Harrist]

This was a land of plenty. There was little incentive to advance technically. The technologies that they had were sufficient to provide them with a good, simple life. They did invent the bow and arrow independently of the old world and made improvements on their preojectile and tool manufacture. There is even a little evidence coming to light only recently that they were smelting metals. They weren't as stagnated as it would seem. The meso-american cultures were very advanced astronomers and did have smelting technolgies, at least for the softer metals. The new world cultures simply took a different path than the old world ones.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Frank, the NA were in the stone age 10,000 years ago. They were still in the stone age in 1492, ten thousand years later. Why?
Because life was so good, simple and easy? Where did you get that from? Life wasn't so good, simple and easy at all! Try camping out in Ohio, South Dakota, or New York State, in the middle of winter...
BTW: this is the NA, the north-American Native Indians, I'm talking about.
Not meso-American Indians or anybody else.

[Minimalist]

First off, it's an oversimplification.

True, some tribes remained in the hunter/gatherer mode but some had progressed to agriculture and even, in the case of the Iroqois confederation, some sort of shared political consciousness.

There is just as much land in South America yet there they managed to progress to civilization quite handily....if bloodily.

[FreeThinker]

The Native Americans were in no way static in their developement. By the time Columbus "discovered" the Americas they were very advanced. They had pottery, agriculture, mathematics, laws, complex religions, written language, astronomy, metalurgy (not iron) and other technologies at thier disposal. The Spanish were stunned when they firt came into the central American region to encounter cities that where bigger and grander than anything in Europe at the time. Hardly the work of an unadvanced people. It is primarily through incorrect Eurocentric teaching that the notion of NAs as "backwards" and "savage" took hold. A good way to justify the genocide and theft of their lands.

What is curious to me is that in North America there is very little use of stone (eastern North America, not the western desert area where there was stone use) as a building material from any of the long years of human habitation. Why? Even in the stone age, European areas of the same latitude and climate were constructing huge structures from stone and continued to do so on up to the present. It has alway perplexed me why the NAs of North America seem never to have used stone in the same way. There were large cities and religious complexes. Why only mound and timber construction? Even if stone was not the prefered building material I would have thought at least in some cases it would have been used but oddly it wasn't. Why not?

[Minimalist]

Why not?

Too heavy?

[RK Awl-O'Gist]

Too labour intensive?

[Guest]

Too labour intensive?

Did they even use the wheel? or the concept?

[stan]

Based on my memory...
There seems to have been diffusion of culture out of south and central america into north america.
The major population and cultural centers were in central and S.america, and don't forget the climate was very different there than in NA.
It seems that the Mississippian culture in the Southern US was a fringe or backwater area, compared to Aztecs, for example. Most of the big cultural achievements in Eurasia occurred in major cities, I guess, and although there were some big areas like Cahokia and others in NA, I wonder if it is appropriate to compare them to Sumer or Mohenjo- Daro, and so on.
Of course, I don't really know why those things RS mentioned did not happen. Or why they hadn't invented the wheel for transportation or pottery. (Apparently there were wheeled toys in MesoAmerica.)
However, if there is a doctrine of of necessity that "explains" why various societies developed in certain ways, then perhaps it should also be applied to the NA NA's. In other words, it wasn't necessary for them to do the things that European and Middle Eastern cultures did....so it is for us to understand why not.

[Barracuda]

It is a good question. One I have pondered myself.

Could it be a simple matter of timing?

The fact that NA society was TECHNOLOGICALLY behind western European society by several thousand years may seem like a lot from our current point of view, but relatively speaking, it is a short time when considered in the context of human history.

The advancement of technology is exponential once it starts, but the timing of the spark that ignites the revolution is going to vary in isolated areas.

I don't think that is the whole story, but I am sure it is part of the story.

[archaeologist18]

i don't think you can limited this arrested developement to just the early north american people. what about the aborigenes of australia? their developement was slow inthe making and not until the white man invaded their country. or south america, not every civilization was like mayan, the aztec or the inca, et al. they are still finding stone age tribes deep in the amazon forest.

then don't forget about africa. even before the colonial period,the natives were locked into a non-progressive society. I think you will find that this is a global situation throughout history.

what is holding certain groups back from progressing beyond the stone age?

[Rokcet Scientist]

[...] They did invent the bow and arrow independently of the old world [...]

The more I think about that, the more I doubt it.
Remember, we know of those Irish monks getting to America in the 7th century AD. And about Leif Erickson's Norse dudes getting there in the 11th century AD.
If those guys could and did, others could and did too. We just don't know about it.
Assuming that, there will have been plenty of opportunities to get 'bow technology' to America. And hey! What are we talking about here? Let's keep this in perspective. This is kid stuff 'technology'... You only have to see it in operation once to pick up the concept. So, with all of them old geezers landing from the east, and, of course, the west!, in probably every century since, say, the Minoans, I feel pretty convinced the NA saw the bow, and copied it.

Put yourself in those old geezers' shoes and ask yourself: what would you carry if you stepped off a boat in a completely strange new land...?

[FreeThinker]

"what is holding certain groups back from progressing beyond the stone age?"

In many cases people who remain stone age hunter gatherers do so because there is no need for them to change. They live in areas which they know how to live and prosper in, without resorting to new tools. Kind of an if it aint broke don't fix it explaination. That said, those folks are no dummies themselves. Give them a steel axe and they will gladly use it over a stone axe any day.

Of course there are many reasons for the range of technologies different cultures employ. Even today we have the full gamut from materially and technologically minimalistic societies like the tribal people of the Amazon, to hyper materialistic and technological societies like, say, the United States. I would be very careful about labeling minimalist societies as "backwards" or even "primative", at least as in having a negative connotation. As our own hyperculture grinds along through environmental degradation, overpopulation, wars, and modern alienation perhaps some new wisdom can be learned from those societies who still hold on to our earliest strategies for survival.

[Frank Harrist]

[...] They did invent the bow and arrow independently of the old world [...]

The more I think about that, the more I doubt it.
Remember, we know of those Irish monks getting to America in the 7th century AD. And about Leif Erickson's Norse dudes getting there in the 11th century AD.
If those guys could and did, others could and did too. We just don't know about it.
Assuming that, there will have been plenty of opportunities to get 'bow technology' to America. And hey! What are we talking about here? Let's keep this in perspective. This is kid stuff 'technology'... You only have to see it in operation once to pick up the concept. So, with all of them old geezers landing from the east, and, of course, the west!, in probably every century since, say, the Minoans, I feel pretty convinced the NA saw the bow, and copied it.

I don't know nothing about no Irish monks, but the bow was invented here before Erickson came here. Even if, (and I'm highly doubtful) the monks came here they probably didn't carry bows. Enlighten me about the Irish monks. I never heard of that.

[Minimalist]

what is holding certain groups back from progressing beyond the stone age?

The bible.