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Why do you find the lack of domesticatable animals an unsatisfactory explanation? You don't need an oxcart without an ox.

mirimir 8y ago
That is a good point. But people can also pull carts, and often have. And there were wolves, from which Europeans bred dogs. Maybe deer and buffalo aren't amenable to domestication. But I don't recall Diamond's arguments and evidence about that. And what about iron weapons? I presume that there was meteoric iron lying about, as in Europe. And glass. Why didn't they independently discover glass? I suspect that there was something generally about indigenous American culture that favored peaceful coexistence. Notwithstanding some ritual warfare, of course. But they just didn't seem as driven as Old World cultures were.
- saalweachter 8y ago
  You might also be interested in another pop-history book, _Paper_. What I'd call its central thesis is that society changes technology, rather than technology changing society. It explores this thesis through the history of the adoption of paper, trying to substantiate the claim that paper was available for centuries before it was adopted by civilizations, and it was only adopted after those civilizations developed a pressing need for massive amounts of cheap, high-quality writing material -- prior to that, people persisted in using more expensive, difficult to produce parchment despite having the option of cheaper paper. Another thing to consider is any technology you might mention, like glass and iron, are relatively recent as developed technologies, about 2-3000 years old, with some older precursors. Moreover, they were developed and spread over the course of hundreds or a thousand or more years. Different parts of the Eurasia entered the Iron Age ~3000 years ago, while other parts -- parts connected by trade and separated by a few hundred miles -- didn't enter the Iron Age until ~2000 years ago. So the other question is, to what extent is it meaningful that the Americas, which did not have the benefit of Eurasian trade, had not independently entered the Iron Age ~500 years ago? Is that a meaningful delay that needs to be explained, or is it just the variation that should be expected to occur by the accumulation of chance factors? Re: domestication, there were domesticated dogs in the pre-Columbian Americas, but it was not an independent domestication. Deer and buffalo are not regarded as domesticatable; there were llamas and alpacas as large domesticated animals, but their range was limited and mountainous.

mirimir 8y ago

That is a good point. But people can also pull carts, and often have. And there were wolves, from which Europeans bred dogs. Maybe deer and buffalo aren't amenable to domestication. But I don't recall Diamond's arguments and evidence about that. And what about iron weapons? I presume that there was meteoric iron lying about, as in Europe. And glass. Why didn't they independently discover glass? I suspect that there was something generally about indigenous American culture that favored peaceful coexistence. Notwithstanding some ritual warfare, of course. But they just didn't seem as driven as Old World cultures were.

saalweachter 8y ago
You might also be interested in another pop-history book, _Paper_. What I'd call its central thesis is that society changes technology, rather than technology changing society. It explores this thesis through the history of the adoption of paper, trying to substantiate the claim that paper was available for centuries before it was adopted by civilizations, and it was only adopted after those civilizations developed a pressing need for massive amounts of cheap, high-quality writing material -- prior to that, people persisted in using more expensive, difficult to produce parchment despite having the option of cheaper paper. Another thing to consider is any technology you might mention, like glass and iron, are relatively recent as developed technologies, about 2-3000 years old, with some older precursors. Moreover, they were developed and spread over the course of hundreds or a thousand or more years. Different parts of the Eurasia entered the Iron Age ~3000 years ago, while other parts -- parts connected by trade and separated by a few hundred miles -- didn't enter the Iron Age until ~2000 years ago. So the other question is, to what extent is it meaningful that the Americas, which did not have the benefit of Eurasian trade, had not independently entered the Iron Age ~500 years ago? Is that a meaningful delay that needs to be explained, or is it just the variation that should be expected to occur by the accumulation of chance factors? Re: domestication, there were domesticated dogs in the pre-Columbian Americas, but it was not an independent domestication. Deer and buffalo are not regarded as domesticatable; there were llamas and alpacas as large domesticated animals, but their range was limited and mountainous.