One reason why I think the Middle Eastern societies weren't able to grow as large cities as the Mesomericans. I think the presence of violent nomadic peoples in the middle east. Cities developed in the middle east partly because of a threat of invasion, while in Mesoamerica I think you see cities develop for religious reasons generally. Mesoamerican cities were huge and had huge tracts of space between buildings. While in the Middle east Walls and tightly packed homes were mainly how cities were designed. I think this goes along with how socially developed the Mesoamericans were.
Neolithic civilizations of Mesoamerica compared to those of the Old World
- Thread starter Timmy811
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Cities (walled communities up on hills) certainly coincide archeologically with signs of destruction of preceding communities (usually lowland and more open-plan)
So a qualified disagreement, depending on what was meant by 'city'
I think this is also the reason why Middle Eastern societies developed metals faster.
Animal domestics made a much larger nomad/barbarian presence possible in the Middle East, which put constraints on city size and encouraged weapons development.
Part of the problem is that what you refer to as "neolithic" civilizations in the new world were actually much more comparable to the "Bronze age" civilizations of the old world in terms of social organization, civilization,and urbanization. This is the problem when using the simple 19th century stone ages/bronze age terminology developed to describe cultural developments in the old world to characterize the new world. Essentially, the shift to metallurgy (which in the old world was associated with the rise of cities, literacy, kingdoms, etc) did not occur at the same time in MesoAmerica. MesoAmerican civilization developed these attributes without metals, but could hardly be classified as "neolithic" in the old world sense.
Sure, manure would improve yields, but a diet of pure corn, even nixtamalized corn, isn't as good of a diet as a mixed one of corn and beans. Nixtamalization doesn't give you all the nutrients you need. Another protein source is needed, and beans will give you that. Growing both together would still be more economical since otherwise you would need to devote a field to each when the same amount of land could be used to grow almost double the food.
What allowed the Europeans to feed more people isn't because they had monocultures (and a field in those days was hardly the monoculture that it is today). It was because the Europeans had the ability and desire to clear large tracts of land solely for agriculture. The Native Americans got most of their animal protein from hunting and thus were not able to clear cut the land and lacked the tools to do so anyway. Europeans, with their domesticated animals, had no need for maintaining the forest and could have much larger fields. Until the advent of chemical fertilizers and the Green Revolution, growing two or more crops on one piece of land is still going to be more economical for the most part than growing each crop separately.
I don't think you can really say that-the time period of comparison has 90% of the Native population dying of half a dozen major plagues they had no immunity to. Studies indicate the American population pre-Columbus was entirely respectable compared to Europe, and with an on average healthier person.
You know, aside from those who were human sacrifices. Not a stable long-term occupation.
NothingNow
Banned
For the Americas is really is, since it is a european concept linked to Eurasian development, and thus completely fucking useless when describing what was pretty much a separate planet at the time. The same with classifying civilizations by their level of agricultural accomplishment (which the Pre-Columbian Amazonians would win handily.)
True. But an Atlatl is even better. And surprisingly easy to use. They just aren't as flashy.
Yeah, less contagious disease and a generally better diet tends to do that to people. As for the human sacrifices, on an absolute and per-capita basis they were actually not that many, honestly it's comparable to the average number of hangings per nation in Europe at the time.
The last part was a bit of a joke. Wasn't seriously thinking the number of human sacrifices in a given year would have actually had demographic implications.
It's very light compared to a musket, I'll give you that. And it even looks impressive.
But it will always get defeated by muntions armour (mass produced plate for common soldiers which muskets scoff at), and it has about comparable range to a good 17th c. musket at best, and worse than the crossbows that the Spanish also widely used at the time.
It also needs skilled craftsmen to make! The dart tolerances for consistent performance are very narrow, unlike arrows (a good deal of tolerance), or worse bullet (cast by the user at a campfire; will it fit in the barrel? Then it will fly.)
Also, it's a much heavier missile than either bolts or bullets, so a Spanish musketeer/crossbowman would win in prolonged battles almost every time (armour, more ammo).
It might be a better hunting weapon, maybe. But 17th c. muskets win for every other situation.
EDIT: Incidentally, it's not like the Europeans were completely ignorant of either arrows or thrown weapons. Spanish used darts and javelins themselves as late as the 15th c. and maybe later, and they certainly fought the Turks (whose marines used composite bows), and the Barbary states (who definitely used weighted javelins that were thrown with the aid of a cord, similar to an atlatl). They still preferred the musket. In eastern Europe (Turkey and Russia, say), the BOW was the prestige weapon and thrown weapons were also pretty widely used. Nonetheless, firearms replaced bows as infantry weapons by 1500 and started appearing as a bow/pistol combo on cavalry by 1600, and completely replaced the bow by 1700. The javelins died out even earlier.
I think there was a universal verdict among people who used all three that given bows, javelins and muskets, muskets are overall winners.
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Another disadvantage of the atl-atl is that the overhand throwing motion to hurl the dart requires more space than a firearm, bow, or even a hand-held spear. It cannot easily be used from ambush, but is best an open-field weapon. Also like the bow, it requires significant training and skill to use effectively, where a musket or crossbow can be used by essentially anyone able to point the business end in the general direction of an enemy.
NothingNow
Banned
Actually give one a nice metal tip (a good needle bodkin with good iron or steel) and an Atlatl thrown javelin will out penetrate pretty much anything it can hit, and it's a lot more traumatic than getting hit by an Arquebus ball (think about it, five foot bit of wood sticking out of you or a bullet wound, which is going to freak you out more?) and better for use against cavalry, (along with Bolas.) It does take a bit of training to use though, like pretty much anything else.
But yeah, the Arquebus and later musket are the all around better choice for warfare. The Atlatl is just a much nastier weapon than people usually give it credit for being, and munitions armor wasn't as commonly used in Mesoamerica, (speaking from first and second hand experience, the heat and humidity make it really uncomfortable to wear Munitions armor, and it's padding, when you're active in this sort of climate.)
Of course, most of Cortez men were Rodeleros, so there goes that firepower advantage, and a Macuahuitl or Tepoztopilli is a pretty solid threat as well, but something I'd have to get together with the guys and test, while a Cuauhchimalli ought to be close enough to a buckler to be a non-issue.
It's really too bad I'm not still an Anthropology or History major. I could've used that for my Bachelor's thesis. But a guy with an AA in Engineering (and a trained draftsman) working on getting a Bachelors in Anthropology isn't that weird is it?
Everything has demographic implications.The last part was a bit of a joke. Wasn't seriously thinking the number of human sacrifices in a given year would have actually had demographic implications.
It's a good measure of the scale of it, especially when you're considering that the Tripple Alliance's domain had something like twice the population of Iberia, (Denevan's "consensus count" of 1976 says 15 million in the Aztec empire, versus a known population of ~7.5 million in spain and portugal, said consensus count is also low due to current knowledge, but close enough in Mesoamerica.)
Add in that there's legitimately fewer crimes worthy of execution (you can't steal livestock as much, heresy is noticeably harder to commit, and there's no royal forrest to trespass in,) and that you've got a better fed population (who are thus less likely to steal) you've got what in all likelihood is a much lower crime rate.
Our resident Native American experts may have to correct me on this, but I thought that the Mesoamerican states also had to deal with (semi)-nomadic invaders. Didn't the Tarascans, for example, come down from the deserts of the American southwest?
The Nahua themselves came down from the desert earlier. And after the main group of Nahua peoples like the Tepaneca and Acolhua, there came more groups from the desert like the Mexica. And they occasionally had to deal with the Chichemeca (basically people who stayed in that desert) as well. Of course they all still faced greater threats of invasion from each other than nomads from the desert. And Mesoamerican cities were not as widely-spaced as Tobit seems to think. Some of the Maya cities had a lot of spaces comparatively speaking, but those spaces were used and in any case they weren't universally spread out. And that's just the Maya. Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacan were denser. Some later Maya cities were also quite crowded. And they did have defenses like walls, moats, and ditches. And they weren't formed for religious reasons.
Yes, but the lack of domesticates meant New World nomadic populations were smaller and less organized. Especially the lack of a domesticated horse.
twovultures
Donor
You know, it just occurred to me 'violent barbarians' were not actually a greater threat to Middle Eastern civilizations than Mesoamerican civilizations until the 2nd millenium BC, when horses began to appear in the Middle East for use of warfare. The introduction of the horse would have to be done by horse-riding people, who could use the force-multiplier of horseback riding and chariots to take on settled societies with a greater ferocity than what the Aztecs would have faced from Chichimecs (or the Mixtecs from the Nahuatl, etc). Even then, though, these nomads did not have tree saddles or stirrups and the civilizations they faced adopted the chariot and would have been able to manufacture them on a larger scale, competing easily with a nomadic cavalry.
'Barbarians' are ultimately not the explanation for why neolithic cities were smaller than Mesoamerican ones.
Yes. Also, I restate my opinion that treating old world "neolithic" farming communities as equivalent to MesoAmerican city states is apples and oranges. Teotihuacan or Tenochtitlan are better compared with Babylon or the Indus Valley civilizations. If anything, the old world "neolithic" is more comparable with the new world "formative" cultures, which represented the initial stages of sedentary town life, not full-blown urban civilizations.
But the old world HAD fullblown urban neolithic civilizations. They just picked up copper smelting fast enough that we dont think of them as such.
And comparing, olmecs, say, to sumer probably IS fair.