Material Conditions

[FalceMartello]

Why did the material conditions not develop in the Western Hemisphere before the European invasion? Or why did they develop so slowly? Obviously they hadn't changed much over centuries until the Europeans colonized. Why is this so?

[FalceMartello]

No takers? <_<

[Martin Blank]

That&#39;s a rather big question you&#39;re asking. It may take some time to come up with the answer.

Miles

[Severian]

I think Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond explains a lot of it.

Here&#39;s the transcript of Episode 2 of a PBS series based on it. (http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/transcript2.html) - explaining some of the advantages the conquistadors had over Western Hemisphere societies.

You can get to the other episodes by links on that page.

For example, there were few species of domesticable animals in the Americas, for whatever reason. Llamas and their relatives, mostly. None of them suitable for pulling plows and carts.

Cows, pigs, goats, sheep - all of them native to southwest Asia, the cradle of civilization - are now the major species of livestock in much of the world. Which indicates its not differences in people, but in their natural environment. &#39;Cause as civilization and conquest has spread worldwide, nobody&#39;s found more suitable domesticable animals to replace those....horses from what&#39;s now south Russia, water buffalo from south or southeast Asia, donkeys from Egypt are the major additions. All of those aided the development of Eurasian-North African civilization, but were slower to spread elsewhere.

[Red Powers]

The Mayans, the Aztecs and the Incas all had highly developed civilizations. There were also neolithic societies in North America, Cahokia for one. All of this was developing, none of it was static. But keep in mind humans only migrated to the western hemisphere some 40,000 years or so ago.