Unfortunately, being a busy and tired dad, and seeing the scale of the problem, I have little patience and will to engage.
Following your comment, I did try, starting with OP:
There was no Mayan empire. The Mayas were divided among city-states.
But I lost courage when trying to answer the actual comments.
I recommend looking for the PugJesus comments – he knows what he’s talking about.
I will say just that:
The indigenous populations of the Americas are not fundamentally different. They’re humans.
It’s a misconception to think humans will follow the same path in different continents.
This continent was isolated from the old world. It’s no surprise that it would follow a very different path.
They do things differently not because they’re noble savages. The geography, and randomness, simply caused things to be different.
The old world did have a bit of a headstart, not because of time of arrival. Humans did arrive much later to the Americas, but this didn’t matter. The continent was well filled with humans by the end of the last glaciation. The headstart can be found mainly in two things:
The domesticates
The domesticates of the Near East were good and numerous. The list is long. I encourage looking it up if interested. It includes many of the important domesticates we still use today.
China and south-east Asia also had a pretty good package. Let’s mention rice which is very productive in paddy field farming.
In comparison, Mesoamerica had teosinte. It wasn’t great, and took a long time to select until it became proper corn. They didn’t have any labor animal. For protein, only beans, turkey and dogs.
The Andes had the potato, which is amazing, but locally, it was limited in range to the altitudes that provided a suitable climate. For carrying, they had the llama (not great), for textile, they had the alpaca, and for protein, they had beans, quinoa, and … the guinea pig.
Spread of ideas
The old world was big and convenently shaped along the same latitudes. The Near East and East Asia both benefited from each other’s domesticates. India had a suitable geography to support a great civilization but didn’t have much domesticates. Not a problem! It just used the domesticates of both the Near East and East Asia. Europe too had a pretty good geography – it just used the domesticates of the Near East.
Any advance in metalworking spread to the rest of the world.
Writing spread too.
Any invention really. And philosophical ideas and universal religions.
Meanwhile travelling in the Americas from north to south means travelling through a lot of different climates. A few domesticates spread from Mesoamerica and some also did from the Andes. Let’s mention corn which was used a lot in the Andes.
The potato would have been the best thing ever in much of North America. It could have completely reshaped societies and balance. It never got there.
By the time of the Incas, the Andes were becoming fully a bronze age society, like those of the old world before.
The Andes had a long tradition of incredible complex chemical processes to make alloys of copper, gold and silver look like pure silver or pure gold.
Techniques of metalworking did spread north, reaching Mesoamerica. When the Spanish under Cortès were fighting the Aztecs with indigenous allies, they relied on the Tarascan skill with arsenical copper to make objects made of metal.
None of what I’ve said is to diminish what the great American civilizations had become. Let’s mention the chinampa method of agriculture used in the lake Texcoco, extremly productive. It supported Tenochtitlán, one the largest cities in the world at the time. Let’s also mention the state of the art in surgery in Mesoamerica. The enormous pyramids of the Mayas. The previously mentionned Andean techniques of metalworking. The ridiculously large empire of the Incas, incomparable in size to any bronze age society in the old world. For bureaucracy, it used the quippu, a way of recording things using knots.
Feel free to ask if you have questions, I’ll answer with information or let you know if I don’t know.
Thanks for the answers! I do have one question here – I notice amaranth doesn’t get mentioned in your write-up. Do you know much about its role? I know its seeds nutritionally have protein content almost on par with quinoa and that its leaves are good as a green like spinach, and that unlike quinoa (AFAIK) it did spread north a fair amount, but it doesn’t seem like it ever got the focus corn did despite being a pseudo-grain.
I have no idea how far north it spread. There were domesticates that traveled north. Some domesticates also had two pools of domestication, one in the Andes and one is Mesoamerica. So, domesticates and technologies did spread, but not as much as in the Old world.
I mentioned the potato. Another one to mention would be the alpaca. The North Americans that live north of Mesoamerica could have appreciated the wool of the alpaca. But I think that because they are animals of dry high lands and mountains, they wouldn’t have tolerated the tropical moist climates inbetween the Andes and temperate North America. Even the Sonora desert might have been a good location for them. But they never got even close.
Unfortunately, being a busy and tired dad, and seeing the scale of the problem, I have little patience and will to engage.
Following your comment, I did try, starting with OP:
But I lost courage when trying to answer the actual comments.
I recommend looking for the PugJesus comments – he knows what he’s talking about.
I will say just that:
The indigenous populations of the Americas are not fundamentally different. They’re humans.
It’s a misconception to think humans will follow the same path in different continents.
This continent was isolated from the old world. It’s no surprise that it would follow a very different path.
They do things differently not because they’re noble savages. The geography, and randomness, simply caused things to be different.
The old world did have a bit of a headstart, not because of time of arrival. Humans did arrive much later to the Americas, but this didn’t matter. The continent was well filled with humans by the end of the last glaciation. The headstart can be found mainly in two things:
The domesticates
The domesticates of the Near East were good and numerous. The list is long. I encourage looking it up if interested. It includes many of the important domesticates we still use today.
China and south-east Asia also had a pretty good package. Let’s mention rice which is very productive in paddy field farming.
In comparison, Mesoamerica had teosinte. It wasn’t great, and took a long time to select until it became proper corn. They didn’t have any labor animal. For protein, only beans, turkey and dogs.
The Andes had the potato, which is amazing, but locally, it was limited in range to the altitudes that provided a suitable climate. For carrying, they had the llama (not great), for textile, they had the alpaca, and for protein, they had beans, quinoa, and … the guinea pig.
Spread of ideas
The old world was big and convenently shaped along the same latitudes. The Near East and East Asia both benefited from each other’s domesticates. India had a suitable geography to support a great civilization but didn’t have much domesticates. Not a problem! It just used the domesticates of both the Near East and East Asia. Europe too had a pretty good geography – it just used the domesticates of the Near East.
Any advance in metalworking spread to the rest of the world.
Writing spread too.
Any invention really. And philosophical ideas and universal religions.
Meanwhile travelling in the Americas from north to south means travelling through a lot of different climates. A few domesticates spread from Mesoamerica and some also did from the Andes. Let’s mention corn which was used a lot in the Andes.
The potato would have been the best thing ever in much of North America. It could have completely reshaped societies and balance. It never got there.
By the time of the Incas, the Andes were becoming fully a bronze age society, like those of the old world before.
The Andes had a long tradition of incredible complex chemical processes to make alloys of copper, gold and silver look like pure silver or pure gold.
Techniques of metalworking did spread north, reaching Mesoamerica. When the Spanish under Cortès were fighting the Aztecs with indigenous allies, they relied on the Tarascan skill with arsenical copper to make objects made of metal.
None of what I’ve said is to diminish what the great American civilizations had become. Let’s mention the chinampa method of agriculture used in the lake Texcoco, extremly productive. It supported Tenochtitlán, one the largest cities in the world at the time. Let’s also mention the state of the art in surgery in Mesoamerica. The enormous pyramids of the Mayas. The previously mentionned Andean techniques of metalworking. The ridiculously large empire of the Incas, incomparable in size to any bronze age society in the old world. For bureaucracy, it used the quippu, a way of recording things using knots.
Feel free to ask if you have questions, I’ll answer with information or let you know if I don’t know.
Thanks for the answers! I do have one question here – I notice amaranth doesn’t get mentioned in your write-up. Do you know much about its role? I know its seeds nutritionally have protein content almost on par with quinoa and that its leaves are good as a green like spinach, and that unlike quinoa (AFAIK) it did spread north a fair amount, but it doesn’t seem like it ever got the focus corn did despite being a pseudo-grain.
You’re right, I did forget about amaranth.
I have no idea how far north it spread. There were domesticates that traveled north. Some domesticates also had two pools of domestication, one in the Andes and one is Mesoamerica. So, domesticates and technologies did spread, but not as much as in the Old world.
I mentioned the potato. Another one to mention would be the alpaca. The North Americans that live north of Mesoamerica could have appreciated the wool of the alpaca. But I think that because they are animals of dry high lands and mountains, they wouldn’t have tolerated the tropical moist climates inbetween the Andes and temperate North America. Even the Sonora desert might have been a good location for them. But they never got even close.