Metal_made said:
But I think, that american cultures could have conquered Europe if they had settled down first.
No, that never would have happened.
The time difference between the population of Europe and the Americas is of marginal importance. By the time the Olmecs had established an urban civilization, Europe was not even in the iron age. The Americans would have had the possibility to catch up rather easily. At around 500 BC, Greece and the Mayas were at a comparable cultural level.
There are several reasons why the Americans did not really develop any further and kept the basics of their civilisation from that point, and why they weren't unhappy about it.
One of the most important reasons is that the Americans never developed metal working. This seems somewhat strange at first, especially because there are huge copper reserves in the Rocky Mountains, huge tin reserves in the Andes, and even some iron here and there. Objectively, these reserves were not more widespread than in Eurasia. Although there were vast tin ressources in Wessex (in Greek and Roman times, Britain was also known as the "tin islands") and smaller reserves scattered all around Europe, critical analysis of early bronze age artifacts has revealed that at the beginning of the Bronze Age, all the tin used to create bronze came from Central Asia. Copper, on the other hand, was and still is endemic in Europe (although there is hardly any copper left, of course). The route from Central Asia to Central Europe is even longer than the route from the Andes to Mesoamerica. However, there is a minor difference. In Eurasia, people had domesticated horses, elephants, camels, dromedaries, buffalos, donkeys and cattle from the beginning on. These animals could pull carts and even carry heavyweight goods on their backs. In the Americas, the only comparable animals are llamas, alpacas and bisons. Llamas and alpacas are easy to domesticate and they can carry trade goods, however only light ones such as cloth or small artifacts. Pulling a wagon full of tin- forget it. Bisons, on the other hand, would be strong enough, but it is impossible to domesticate them for any other purpose other than producing food (i.e. you can make them breed, but you can't make them pull a wagon). So, it was virtually impossible for pre-horse America to transport tin from the Andes to Mesoamerica. The lack of transport animals, by the way, is also the reason why there was no use for the wheel in pre-Columbian America. The Aztecs
did know of it, but the only use they had for it was mechanical toys.
Without tin, copper is of little use. I have worked with copper myself, and I can tell you, it takes a ridiculous amount of heat to make copper shapeable, yet it is battered if you drop it two or three times. So, why use copper (which is available in Mexico), which is hard to work with yet largely useless, if you can use stone, which is easier to shape and, literally, hard as a rock?
Iron, on the other hand, is harder (and also available in Mexico), but it really does not have very much long-time useage unless it is made to steel, but that would require other minerals which were unavailable to the Mesoamericans.
So, from the point the Africans and Eurasians developed Bronze working, they had a technological advantage which the Americans would never have been able to catch up on. Even if the Americas would have been populated in 10 000 BC and Europe only in 500 BC, the Europeans would eventually have gained that technological advantage.
The next point is, in my opinion, even more important. There was, simply put, no
reason for the Americans to try and conquer Europe. There were not that many people in Mesoamerica, and the place was far from being overpopulated. Even if it would have been overpopulated, the people would not have made a risky journey across the ocean, not knowing if they would ever reach land. Why should they? There was more than enough land just a few miles north! There were only about a million people living in the entire area north of the Rio Grande, so there would have been more than enough room for the Mesoamericans to expand there once their homelands got too crowded. As a matter of fact, even
if the Mesoamericans would have known of Europe, they would most probably have expanded to North America. Europe was a crowded place with many tiny pieces of arable land scattered all around, no valuable ressources whatsoever (at least not by 1500), and the Europeans would have defended themselves fiercly- why conquer it? What for? Even at about 2000 BC, the ressources of Europe would never have matched those of North America.
Which brings us to another interesting question: Why then, if Europe is so worthless, did the Europeans become so powerful?
Until ~1300, Europe could care for itself. The agricultural produce was big enough to feed the entire population, which was small enough to be fed by it. Bronze and iron was available, and there was enough trade with the neighbours to cover the need for other ressources.
The first disaster happened in the early 14th century. All of the sudden, there were a huge famines in the years 1316 and 1322, from which, for the first time, the population could not recover. Usually, after such a catastrophe, the people would do extra shifts to make sure enough children were born so the population level from before the disaster would be reached again soon (this is the reason for the baby boomers after WWII). This did not happen after 1322. I don't pretend to know the reason why, but my assumption is that the people had seen it was impossible to feed such a huge population.
The next disaster struck around 1350- the Black Death. 75 million people, according to an estimation I once read, died within only a few years. This was a serious blow for the already cracked population. I dare not imagine how many people would have died had the famines not been. The Black Death was apocalyptic for the contemporaries, and it took until ~1480 for the population to recover from these two disasters.
So, when Columbus discovered America in 1492, and the continents were explored in the following two hundred years, the only reason why there were new settlements at all in the New World was because the Europeans wanted the American ressources. They did not even have the necessary manpower for that, because there were already too few people in Europe, so they needed slaves from America, and, when the Pope banned that, from Africa.
Things only really changed in the 18th century, when England and France were starting to experience overpopulation (mostly England), and settlers were sent to the New World in order to actually cultivate new living space. Before that, people only emigrated because they were Protestants living in a Catholic country/Catholics living in a Protestant country/Sectarians/Adventurers and the likes, but not because they did not have the necessary economic fundaments in their homelands.
As a footnote, it should be said that the reason why America was discovered in the first place, was because the Europeans were looking for new trade routes. Overland trade became increasingly dangerous when the Ottomans and the Christian Europeans decided to be enemies to the bone. Moreover, the overland trade routes from China and India to Europe were simply not profitable anymore, and there was an increasing demand for the luxury goods gained from those places, so new oversea trade routes had to be found that were both faster and free from danger. The Portuguese had already circumnavigated Africa in the early 15th century, but the route was too dangerous. The only other possibility was trying to go to the open sea and see how long it took to get to China. Columbus was NOT trying to prove that the earth was round. That was already common knowledge at that time, and the first globe was already made just before Columbus set out to the sea. To get even further into digressive detail, maps in the Middle Ages were mostly made not as a method of geographic orientation, but as a representation of Gods creation. The world was portrayed in knowingly a distorted schematic way, with the east on top because that was where the sun rose ("East", Latin
Orient, hence "orientation"). The world was drawn as the body of Jesus, and on the world maps of those times, you can see Jesus' head on top, the arms on the side and the feet at the bottom, the navel being Jerusalem.
The ancient Greeks had already written several books on the structure of the world, them already considering it obvious that it was round, and these books were copied in the Middle Ages by monks. The notion that the earth was flat was hence only carried by those who were uneducated, i.e. those
outside the clerical world.
I know that at one point, the flatness of the world became a part of Catholic dogma, but that was still considered wrong by educated contemporaries- and I am inclined to think that this only happened when the Church actually lost the monopoly on science which it held throughout most of the Middle Ages.
The Church
did however have a huge problem with the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun.
Anyway, where was I?
