Nope. I do not blame the Mayans for Cortez. But I do blame them for losing the knowledge that Cortez destroyed. If it wasn't Cortez (or as some see it: a civil

Nope. I do not blame the Mayans for Cortez. But I do blame them for losing the knowledge that Cortez destroyed. If it wasn't Cortez (or as some see it: a civil war caused by the local population being confronted with Cortez showing them an alternative) For that same reason that I'd blame the person who lost their bitcoins by a phone falling in the water: If it wasn't that event, something else would have happened and destroyed that knowledge. It's not the fault of the disaster, rather of the inadequacy of the measures taken to prevent disasters, whatever they are, from taking it out. You cannot prevent disasters from happening at all, so you must simply be ready for them, and there's no excuse for not being ready. The difference between civilizations with lasting scientific progress and those without is not Cortez, or flooding, or ... it's whether they had backups of their knowledge and whether they spread it. Most didn't, and knew perfectly well that they didn't. They simply preferred having a small group that had power solidified into that power forever, and locked up everything including their scientific progress, to that end. That's what happened to Mayan scientific progress. That's what happened to Islamic scientific progress, that's what happened in a LOT of places. this is the big missing link in most stories. Why is western civilization destroying indigenous tribes, e.g. in Africa ? Mostly (I'm not claiming there were no atrocities, there were. And they're no OK, they are not the major cause of the destruction though) because their members would much rather be westerners than tribe members ... That's the local perspective and this does not seem to be well understood in the West. Life in indigenous cultures is mostly boring, short, and painful. It has a few positives that we in the west may or may not have lost, but in general individuals in the west live a lot better than members of indigenous cultures. That, of course, causes a systematic "leak" of individuals choosing to "join the West", rather than maintain their indigenous customs. Often just partially.