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I think we can all agree that you don't have to go back very far in time for virtually everyone to appear like giant jerks (to put it mildly) when seen with mod

I think we can all agree that you don't have to go back very far in time for virtually everyone to appear like giant jerks (to put it mildly) when seen with modern eyes. Industrialization of exploitation has its own particular sinister aspect as opposed to just plain exploitation, though. I do get sad sometimes that Europe bulldozered over virtually everything, not from a "better or worse" perspective, or "right or wrong" (because how am I to be a judge of that?), but from the perspective of curiosity as to where the Mali, or Inca, etc., would have been today if that hadn't happened.

oblio 8y ago
There's some anthropological research that basically says that remote communities are generally more backwards than bigger communities. Some examples of this being the populations of the Americas, compared to the ones from the Old World; or the one in Tasmania, which managed to lose the use of tools their forebears in Australia were using. Of course, extrapolating is super hard and risky, but the impression I get is that at least for the Americas, the local populations would be less competitive than the ones in the Old World.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  Tenochtitlan had about 150,000-200,000 people at its height. That was larger than any city in Western Europe save Paris, and definitely far larger than any city that most of the conquistadors would have seen. The Spanish capital at Toledo was maybe 40,000-60,000 people.
  - oblio 8y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. The same people that lived in Tenochtitlan hadn't yet discovered iron or had an alphabet. By most objective measurements, their civilization was in an earlier stage than say, Ming China. A part of this was due to lower competition levels in the New World (fewer people - and cultures - overall) and a part of it was environmental. For example they didn't have wheeled vehicles because they didn't have horses or oxen. And regarding your city comparison, Ur had 100.000 people in 2100 BC (!), Carthage had 0.5M in 300 BC, Rome had 1.2M in 200 AD, Baghdad had 0.9M in 900 AD and Beijing had 1M in 1500 AD. So? :)
    - jcranmer 8y ago
      > By most objective measurements, their civilization was in an earlier stage than say, Ming China. Yeah, Tenochtitlan had a meritocratic system of governance, universal primary education, ... History doesn't work according to a Civilization-style tech tree. A lot of the technological development is driven by the needs of the immediate area. Maize, the staple crop of the Mesoamerica, is actually a superior crop to rice in terms of caloric yield per acre (and the genetic engineering it took to turn teosinthe into maize is amazing--far more involved than the domestication of wheat or rice). Tenochtitlan didn't use wheeled vehicles because it was built on a large lake bed and you could use flat boats to move a large amount of goods. The New World was probably more populated in 1492 than you think it was, and newer archaeological evidence is starting to show that what we thought were "empty" lands of people were actually fairly densely populated--say, the Amazon rainforest. Pre-Columbian Americas are usually now figured at about 100 million people, which would be more than contemporaneous Europe and North Africa in population.
      - oblio 8y ago
        > Yeah, Tenochtitlan had a meritocratic system of governance, universal primary education, ... So did various places in the Old World. Were those systems you mention for Tenochtitlan universal in the New World? > History doesn't work according to a Civilization-style tech tree. A lot of the technological development is driven by the needs of the immediate area. Maize, the staple crop of the Mesoamerica, is actually a superior crop to rice in terms of caloric yield per acre (and the genetic engineering it took to turn teosinthe into maize is amazing--far more involved than the domestication of wheat or rice). Tenochtitlan didn't use wheeled vehicles because it was built on a large lake bed and you could use flat boats to move a large amount of goods. Yes, and I even mentioned that there were various factors involved in the whole thing. Still, at the end of the day, if I have 100 coins and you only have 20, you're poorer than I am. Some things we can measure objectively, and civilizations are rated on a scale. Otherwise the Stone Age would be considered as developed as the Bronze Age and the Bronze Age would be as developed as the Iron Age and... Yet things don't work like that. > The New World was probably more populated in 1492 than you think it was, and newer archaeological evidence is starting to show that what we thought were "empty" lands of people were actually fairly densely populated--say, the Amazon rainforest. Pre-Columbian Americas are usually now figured at about 100 million people, which would be more than contemporaneous Europe and North Africa in population. Yes, but the Old World was much bigger in sheer size plus the main population centers were China and India, which you conveniently skip over :)

oblio 8y ago

There's some anthropological research that basically says that remote communities are generally more backwards than bigger communities. Some examples of this being the populations of the Americas, compared to the ones from the Old World; or the one in Tasmania, which managed to lose the use of tools their forebears in Australia were using. Of course, extrapolating is super hard and risky, but the impression I get is that at least for the Americas, the local populations would be less competitive than the ones in the Old World.

jcranmer 8y ago
Tenochtitlan had about 150,000-200,000 people at its height. That was larger than any city in Western Europe save Paris, and definitely far larger than any city that most of the conquistadors would have seen. The Spanish capital at Toledo was maybe 40,000-60,000 people.
- oblio 8y ago
  I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. The same people that lived in Tenochtitlan hadn't yet discovered iron or had an alphabet. By most objective measurements, their civilization was in an earlier stage than say, Ming China. A part of this was due to lower competition levels in the New World (fewer people - and cultures - overall) and a part of it was environmental. For example they didn't have wheeled vehicles because they didn't have horses or oxen. And regarding your city comparison, Ur had 100.000 people in 2100 BC (!), Carthage had 0.5M in 300 BC, Rome had 1.2M in 200 AD, Baghdad had 0.9M in 900 AD and Beijing had 1M in 1500 AD. So? :)
  - jcranmer 8y ago
    > By most objective measurements, their civilization was in an earlier stage than say, Ming China. Yeah, Tenochtitlan had a meritocratic system of governance, universal primary education, ... History doesn't work according to a Civilization-style tech tree. A lot of the technological development is driven by the needs of the immediate area. Maize, the staple crop of the Mesoamerica, is actually a superior crop to rice in terms of caloric yield per acre (and the genetic engineering it took to turn teosinthe into maize is amazing--far more involved than the domestication of wheat or rice). Tenochtitlan didn't use wheeled vehicles because it was built on a large lake bed and you could use flat boats to move a large amount of goods. The New World was probably more populated in 1492 than you think it was, and newer archaeological evidence is starting to show that what we thought were "empty" lands of people were actually fairly densely populated--say, the Amazon rainforest. Pre-Columbian Americas are usually now figured at about 100 million people, which would be more than contemporaneous Europe and North Africa in population.
    - oblio 8y ago
      > Yeah, Tenochtitlan had a meritocratic system of governance, universal primary education, ... So did various places in the Old World. Were those systems you mention for Tenochtitlan universal in the New World? > History doesn't work according to a Civilization-style tech tree. A lot of the technological development is driven by the needs of the immediate area. Maize, the staple crop of the Mesoamerica, is actually a superior crop to rice in terms of caloric yield per acre (and the genetic engineering it took to turn teosinthe into maize is amazing--far more involved than the domestication of wheat or rice). Tenochtitlan didn't use wheeled vehicles because it was built on a large lake bed and you could use flat boats to move a large amount of goods. Yes, and I even mentioned that there were various factors involved in the whole thing. Still, at the end of the day, if I have 100 coins and you only have 20, you're poorer than I am. Some things we can measure objectively, and civilizations are rated on a scale. Otherwise the Stone Age would be considered as developed as the Bronze Age and the Bronze Age would be as developed as the Iron Age and... Yet things don't work like that. > The New World was probably more populated in 1492 than you think it was, and newer archaeological evidence is starting to show that what we thought were "empty" lands of people were actually fairly densely populated--say, the Amazon rainforest. Pre-Columbian Americas are usually now figured at about 100 million people, which would be more than contemporaneous Europe and North Africa in population. Yes, but the Old World was much bigger in sheer size plus the main population centers were China and India, which you conveniently skip over :)