Compared to European and Asiatic civilizations?

Worried about where this might go with the "primitive" label, but the short answer is shortages of domesticable crop and animal species. No agriculture means no cities, means no "civilization."

It's worth remembering, though, that "Native Americans" is broad enough to cover the Olmec, Aztec, Maya, Inca, etc, who were urban-dwelling agriculturalists like Eurasians.

They weren't primitive. They had vast skill sets allowing them to exploit whichever region they were in.

Aztec cities were bigger and more fabulous than the cities of the Spanish who visited them.

Turn Prophet does have a point, the lack of draft animals did point their development in directions that weren't always noticed by or impressive to Europeans.

The word "primitive" does not hold up well as an analytical category. "Non-literate" or "non-industrial" work better, because they do not start out with the assumption of one society being more accomplished than another.

Take some English loom tenders from 1790, and Sioux from the plains and run a battery of tests.The Sioux will have more accumulated knowledge than the other. You could train Sioux to stand at a machine a lot easier than you could turn a mill tender into a Sioux. So what makes a group primitive?

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond that addressed this very question. A very good book also had a 3 part mini series about the book which was good as well.

Jared Diamond is very balanced and i think his model may be a bit too simple it believe it has a lot of merit and is well worth the read if you are interested in the topic.

From today's times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/sc...ml?ref=science

Burial mounds show remarkable wealth of some nomads circa 200 b.c.e.

being culturally brainwashed to believe that the European "way" of life is the only that qualifies as "civilized" != Civilization imo

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

We don't live "right" today. Kinda hard to claim "they" didn't live "right" before "we" got there/here. If the Egyptians and Romans never figured out the key to politics is claiming that your king/pharaoh/emporer was God on Earth... well, if a frog had wings...

I disagree with your premise. All cultures have positive attributes and sophistication but part of being a great advanced culture is to have the ability and strength to perpetuate your culture and way of life for long periods of time.

China has done this. The Mongolian empire's run was a great example of this at it's peak. The United States would not have been as successful as a country and culture if it did not have the ability to stand up to the British in the 1700's, the native American's in the 1800's, the German's and the Russian's in the 20 century.

It does not mean you have to be an aggressor like the Roman's were at their peak but clearly cultures on other continents failed in this most important part of having a successful nation or culture. The ability to protect itself from others forcing their will on them.

'to the victor goes the spoils'

If Carthage beat the Roman's in the Punic wars Africa may have taken a whole different path. A great culture was wiped out by losing to it's wars with Rome, changing a potential path of history.

This is not a question of right or wrong. You could be very brutal and exploitive like the Assyrian's and your culture carry's on where nobler people and cultures were wiped out.

The Australians and some of the native Americans were tribal peoples. The Aztecs and Incas had a pretty sophisticated civilization, although the rapid advance of European civilization in the 200 or so years before the conquest probably surpassed it. Mexico City was one of the largest cities in the world. Some of the Indians in what is now the US were pretty sophisticated, particularly in the southeast and southwest. Indians were more advanced in plant breeding and in medicinal drugs than Europeans.

The problem is living a as you define it "tribal" life style is that even if your culture is sophisticated you don't have the capability to protect your way of life from being dominated or wiped out by a stronger groups of people.

The Native American's in North America, Tibet, Aztecs and Incas like you suggest have no way to perpetuate the lifestyle, culture and values except for the grace of other groups willing to leave them alone or defend them.

The problem with these groups was not their culture, which in many cases is very interesting and sophisticated, but that their defense is so primitive they rely on external events and groups for their culture to continue to survive.

Amish villages can thrive in the USA today because of the protection they are provided by the much larger non-Amish USA military power, and a willingness to leave their way of life alone by the general population. Even a willingness to protect their right to thier way of life.

I wouldn't want to put people in a time machine to start an modern Amish village outside of Rome in what we now call Italy, in 70 BC. Their current culture might be on par with the Romans, but it's chance of survival is almost 0.

bolded is in error. Engagement throughout the process of what might otherwise be called genocide was almost exclusively at the behest of the "Americans." They did not stand up to anything from the "Indians."

The durability of culture is subject purely to knowledge of the world and the ability to adapt over time. The roughest, toughest cultures are still subject to decline.

The sophistication of the culture is what I believe excludes it from being labelled "primative" as suggested in the OP. And, also, the last time I checked there was still a pretty healthy Native American population in the U.S. So one might say the culture still thrives.

For full discloser the think Native American tribes have rich culture.

Genocide has been a common practice with stronger groups imposing there will on the weaker groups. It wouldn't take me long to show how typical the experience of the Native American's was to other weaker groups in history. Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) estimated 1,700,000, killed Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) estimate 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII) killed and Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) plus 23,000,000 killed in the purges plus Ukraine's famine. These are just a few recent examples.

If you somehow are implying that Native American's won the conflict this is simply not correct. European groups imposed there will on a vast population native Americans winning wars, forcing to native American's to re-loacte and even engaging in genocide as you posted.

There were many fine examples of native American warriors but that was the case in many other cultures that suffered defeat to a more powerful group as well.

As you suggest there is a healthy Native American population in the US but they were eventually assimilated by the stronger group. There are many examples of this throughout history where a weaker group was not completely destroyed but instead assimilated. They still lost, and survived not on strength, but this willingness of the stronger group allowing their survival.

Was their tragedy in the Native American experience? Yes. Was it different then the fate of many other weaker groups throughout history. Absolutely not.

I like Diamond's theory for Eurasia. It doesn't explain euro taking over, but it certainly explains eurasian cultural advances. One thing that i don't remember seeing is that north America did possess the animals necessary to evolve into a superior race - but they killed them all and they were left with Lama's and buffalo's.

No llamas in North America--only the Andes region of South America. The only large mammal species in North America were Bison (not east to domesticate, and almost useless for a plow), deer/elk/moose (not domesticable because of their social structure), bighorn sheep (much less docile than than their Eurasian cousins), wild pigs (not as useful or productive as Eurasian hogs), and dogs (which were often used as hunting companions, and rarely for food in Mesoamerica).

Most everything else with a Eurasian counterpart died out at the end of the Pleistocene, possibly with help from Paleolithic hunters.

The fact that there is a flood of foreign immigration pouring into Western civilization indicates that the European "way" of life has significant advantages over that of other cultures.

I think that's confusing effect with cause, though. Right now, the West enjoys the highest standard of living in the world, but that doesn't mean this has always been or will always be the case, so the current "way" of life may be a temporary advantage.

Oh dear, I knew this would go in a bad direction...

If you're suggesting that the current advantages of Western civilization are attributable to foreign immigration, I think that you're the one putting the cart before the horse.

People follow incentives.

Implying that there aren't IQ differences between the races, or that if there were, they are in no way relevant to varying advancements of different civilizations.

Pro-tip: they are an important consideration to account for in answering the OP's question. The nature/nurture dichotomy is not black/white in either direction.

Some posts were deleted, the specific statements were not factual (by disipline)and obivously posted to denigarte certain groups or to troll for responses etc. And disipline has been banned (not by me, nor do I know the all the reasons etc).

Let's keep the discussion on an even keel and use reliable sources and evidence to back up statements and debate in a civil manner. Thanks.


-Zeno

Grunting men in metal armor != more sophisticated

Endentured servants to "landowners" with weaponry != more sophisticated

Europeans were slaves to inbred deified hereditary sociopaths who still play a role in convincing the world that theirs is the "civilized" way of life.

History and cultural clashes aside, the premise of this thread is offensive.

Access to running water, electricity, plumbing, modern medicine, air travel, an abundance of food, etc. = more sophisticated. These are things people want, ergo they're moving west.

I agree with your basic argument, Prophet, but have one minor quibble. "Wild pigs" (family Suidae) never existed in the Americas until post-Columbian times, as far as I can tell. Javelinas/peccaries (family Tayassuidae) are the Western Hemisphere counterpart - and not exactly suited to domestication. Oddly, javelinas did live in the Eastern Hemisphere in prehistoric times.

Javelinas and Peccaries are what I was referring to--thank you for clarifying.

[ ] relevant to op

I'll go ahead and restate the thread title for those who have short attention spans:

THREAD TITLE: Why were native americans/australians so primitive?

Great pic. Horrible use.

No wheels! No draft animals! No metals other than ornamentals! They did very well with what they had , however, they needed these things to be on a tech level with Europeans and Asians and Africans!

True, but the effects of bold are much more serious than many people realize. No large-scale domestication of large mammal species (other than limited use of the llama in the Andes) meant no acquisition of nasty cross-species germs that the Europeans had in abundance. Even had the Aztecs and Inca had comparable metallurgy to the Spaniards, they still could not have defeated a microscopic enemy truly terrifying in its effectiveness or scale. I've often wondered how the fate of the New World would have changed had Cortes' daring raid into Tenochtitlan failed, but I'm often depressingly left with the thought that smallpox and influenza would probably have eventually done the work for the Europeans anyway, probably just delaying the conquest (but perhaps giving other parts of the world longer to catch up).

This, among other reasons, is why I'm not anxious for extraterrestrial contact... the impact of new diseases alone could be truly apocalyptic, even if we happened to meet benevolent aliens.