WI: No Mississippian Culture Implosion

Mathuen

Banned
What?

Do you have some distorted view of history where every society has equality in cultural development? Do we try to pretend that the Mississippian mound builders are equally developed culturally compared to the Ming Chinese or Abbasid Caliphate or even Periclean Athens?

Or are you just trying to bully someone? Reported you right back.

What does this even mean?
 
What?

Do you have some distorted view of history where every society has equality in cultural development? Do we try to pretend that the Mississippian mound builders are equally developed culturally compared to the Ming Chinese or Abbasid Caliphate or even Periclean Athens?

Or are you just trying to bully someone? Reported you right back.

No, it's not bullying, I'm just being honest in my intentions, and you are welcome to report me back.

Oh, and thank you for more or less continuing the tradition of calling my ancestors primitive savages.
 
What does this even mean?

It means that when the only evidence we have of social, political and cultural achievements / development amongst the Mississippian cultures approximates to that of the Middle East of 3-4000 BCE then it would be strange to equate their ability to contest or even influence European colonists with even that of the Mesoamerican cultures.

Right or wrong the colonists at the time would not value or respect their claims over the land and would eventually displace them.
 
No, it's not bullying, I'm just being honest in my intentions, and you are welcome to report me back.

Oh, and thank you for more or less continuing the tradition of calling my ancestors primitive savages.

As were mine (and most of the rest of Europe). When they were rolled over and culturally assimilated by the Romans.

The only difference is that we don't hold a grudge against the Italians.
 

Mathuen

Banned
It means that when the only evidence we have of social, political and cultural achievements / development amongst the Mississippian cultures approximates to that of the Middle East of 3-4000 BCE then it would be strange to equate their ability to contest or even influence European colonists with even that of the Mesoamerican cultures.

Right or wrong the colonists at the time would not value or respect their claims over the land and would eventually displace them.

I still have no idea what this means or even what metric it uses to compare cultures. It just looks like pulling some weird cultural scaling out of thin air to make some kind of point.

I also fail to see how it even relates to the second point, especially since many european settlers and groups engaged in cultural transmission until beaten down by other groups after historical displacement.

This whole post just seems backwards,
 
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Mathuen

Banned
As were mine (and most of the rest of Europe). When they were rolled over and culturally assimilated by the Romans.

The only difference is that we don't hold a grudge against the Italians.

Once again... what? Are you trying to say that being culturally assimilated, absorbed, and then denied an independent nation is a good thing or something?
 
Once again... what? Are you trying to say that being culturally assimilated, absorbed, and then denied an independent nation is a good thing or something?

I'm making no comment on the "goodness" of history at all. History is not a value judgement.
 
Uhuh, okay then.

Biggest difference I think is that you are using "culture" in the accepted academic sense and hence my use of comparitives smacks of ethnocentrism.

I'm using it in the non-academic sense of a shorthand for achievement / development.

Oxford Dictionary said:
1 the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively
2 the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society:

Definition one would allow relative comparisons to be made (accepting the potential bias this involve from the observer)
Definition two makes the idea of development or progression meainingless
 
You're still missing the point about how you don't have to have an arbitrary level of "cultural development" to not be wiped out very quickly. You know, the point I made in response to your staggeringly incorrect post in the beginning of the thread?
 
The Maya were smaller in area and population than the Aztecs and yet they've been pulling off resistance to the government into the present day, and came within a hair of driving whites from their country in the 1800's.

I take your point, but the "collapse" of Cahokia (which was frankly the only Mississippi urban center, if we can call it that) didn't end the region's population density. Early Spaniards trompsed through the area, saw tons of people and no gold, and didn't return.

What changes here?
 
You're still missing the point about how you don't have to have an arbitrary level of "cultural development" to not be wiped out very quickly. You know, the point I made in response to your staggeringly incorrect post in the beginning of the thread?

Which demonstrated a continuing guerilla war in a part of one state of Mexico. The Mayans were armed by the Mexicans during the course of a separate civil war.

Accepting that my use of "cultural development" as a short hand for technological, political and economic development is unhelpful to some, I fail to see how the example of an ethnic revolt of one community within a society helps to explain what would happen when a different ethnic group within a different society with different technological, political and economic achievements is confronted by another group who have advantages in all these areas.
 
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I apologize for back seat modding. Thought that was limited to "That's going to get you kicked/banned." So any punishment for that I accept.

I'm done with this debate and thread, but encourage others to explore this possibility in a TL or even just further discussion. Regardless, the continuation of such a complex society during colonialism will have an impact on European involvement as many other posters have pointed out.

Good day everyone, I'm going back to work. :D
 
I apologize for back seat modding. Thought that was limited to "That's going to get you kicked/banned." So any punishment for that I accept.

I'm done with this debate and thread, but encourage others to explore this possibility in a TL or even just further discussion. Regardless, the continuation of such a complex society during colonialism will have an impact on European involvement as many other posters have pointed out.

Good day everyone, I'm going back to work. :D

I sincerely hope neither of us is reprimanded. My intent was not to insult anyone and I apologise if I have done so.
 
I take your point, but the "collapse" of Cahokia (which was frankly the only Mississippi urban center, if we can call it that) didn't end the region's population density. Early Spaniards trompsed through the area, saw tons of people and no gold, and didn't return.

What changes here?
More people to resist, and also butterfly effect. It's all sort of random, really. I don't know quite so much about the first Spanish incursions into the area, but an easy sacking of tribal centers wasn't the universal story in North America. Took centuries for people with less population density to be taken over even after contact with Europeans. The Iroquois even lasted until the War of 1812 as an independent nation, there's no guarantee a Mississippian polity can't do the same at least. And I'd definitely call Cahokia an urban center, and it wasn't the only one just because it's the most famous. Moundville and Etowah deserve some attention, and they were also reasonably affluent and did in fact work in metal.
 
The Mississippian Culture was probably a set of related groups in independent Chiefdomshifts.

Culturally, I think we can make an analogy with OTLs Plains Indians. You had multiple independent nations from wildly different language groups, but they shared a way of life, and much of their culture.

I think its pretty clear that mound builders spoke languages from at least three different families. But they also had a lot of cultural similarity among them.
 
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