After reading the book guns germs and Steel I decided that what I f the natives started to trade with each other and soon a spread of ideas went around both Americas then we could have an advanced america is it possible.....
There would have to be an extensive maritime trade amongst the more settled tribes. Most of the big mariners were in the North Pacific and while they had a cool culture, they were just settled hunter gatherers. If the Mississippi proto-cities, Meso-Americans or one of the Andean civilizations had taken to the waves in any number then trade could have evolved.
With the interchange of food and technology its conceivable they could have developed iron or at least a lot of bronze before the Europeans arrived.
Would this help if there was an earlier Polynesian discovery of South America and settlement along the coast?
The Inca were a bronze age society, and the only reason they didn't work iron was that there was no easily accessable iron in their Empire.
Well, given that bronze was only discovered in the Americas about 1250 AD, and the Inca Empire fell less than three centuries later, there really wasn't time for them to develop the smelting tech they would have needed to work iron. In the Old World...where conditions for invention were much more favorable...the leap from bronze to iron took over 1,000 years (actually closer to 1,500). To assume it could, or would, be accomplished in less than 300 years by the Incas is bordering on ASB territory.
It depends on ressource access: the earliest iron age is in a different region than the earliest bronze age and it took something like a thousand years before the part of Anatolia where the first ironworking appears to have Bronze. It also took something like 7 centuries between arrival of Bronze in the region and beginnings of iron working.
All I'm wondering is that will this allow Native Americans to advance to European level pre gunpowder by the time Europeans arrive so that the natives might stand a chance at surviving.....
But none of that solves the problem of Native American vulnerability to European diseases. As much as I dislike the book, the title is "Guns, GERMS and Steel." As soon as the first smallpox and measles epidemics hit, it's back to square one for a lot of native cultures.
At least some tribes would have adapted to the modern world and kept some of their distinctiveness alive.
I wont say back to square one. If the Aztecs had defeated Cortez for example (and very nearly did), the epidemic would have weakened them, but not wiped out their civilization. The conquest of the Aztecs would have taken longer as they would not be fighting the Spanish at the moment when they were at the lowest point.
None the less, iron weapons or no, this cannot stop the eventual conquest of the Americas. The Russians conquered Siberia dispite the Siberians having iron weapons and other old world technologies. An iron age America however would have a more lasting legacy than a stone age America. At least some tribes would have adapted to the modern world and kept some of their distinctiveness alive.