If left without European interference/involvement of any kind, how long would it have taken the American Indians to become technologically advanced? One could use the industrial revolution as the standard of measure.
This probably belongs in IMHO, but…
“technologically advanced” is a subjective term: the technology used by a culture may be perfectly adapted to its particular circumstances, without requiring what we call “progress” in technology. Simple solutions to everyday problems may address the culture’s needs without requiring complex devices such as machines, etc., which need maintenace, spare parts, and all. It is only when two cultures clash that differences in technology become glaringly evident. For example, if a small population of gatherer-hunters can flourish in a food-rich environment, why should they change their survival strategy to farming, which requires sedentaryism, care of the crops, storage of the harvest, etc.?
Uhh, that should read, “maintenance”
While you may disagree with some of the implied assumptions of the OP, I think there is a valid General Question here, viz., when would an Industrial Revolution have taken place on the American continent without outside influence.
The simple answer is, we don’t know if it ever would have happened. If you believe that human society progresses inexorably along a predetermined path, it should be possible to take a stab at how far from the industrial revolution Native Americans were in, say, 1500, by reference to developments in 17th and 18th century England.
If, on the other hand, you believe that the events of history are contingent on local circumstances, you would have to conclude that there is no way of predicting if or when an independent Industrial Revolution would have taken place.
According to idesa given by Jared Diamond in his book Guns,Germs and Steel, it would have been a long time. He cites many reasons for the slower progress of technology in the Americas including lack of large domesticable animals, north-south orientation of the continents, lack of domesticable plants, and many more. If you are interested in the development of human societies, I heartily recommend this book.
A hearty second to that! Diamond’s book is brilliant, read it twice and will again.
Keeping that in mind, the answer would most likely have been “never”. An industrial revolution must be preceded by agriculture, mettalurgy, mathematics, written language, etc., none of which American Indians were anywhere near.
As Diamond points out, agriculture arises from necessity and opportunity. The AI had neither.
The Mayan culture had all these things. Are you using “American Indian” to refer only to people living in what is now US territory? Is this correct usage?
I was just about to post something regarding the mathematical knowledge of the Mayans and certain other South American indians… Who can say what they would have accomplished if their empire had not collapsed? And, I guess, if it had been more ideally placed…
[HIJACK] Inuktituk and AFAIK Navajo both have written forms. Do these pre-date contact with European culture? If not, when were they developed?[/HIJACK]
Actually, MOST pre-columbian indians practiced agriculture. I know, we have an image of a “typical” indian as a horse-riding buffalo hunting plains nomad, but this is an artifact of western contact. Think about the pilgrims. They learned how to grow corn, beans and squash from the indians.
The biggest thing to consider is the introduction of disease to N America. Whole villages were wiped out. The pilgrims established Plymouth Rock on the site of an indian village that had been wiped out by western diseases. The disruption of society caused many tribes to emphasize hunting over agriculture.
But back to the OP. Another way to think about it would be to ask how close the Chinese were to an industrial revolution, or the Romans, or India. And the answer is that they weren’t. Up until the 1600s the Chinese were technologically superior to the Europeans. But they weren’t on the verge of an industrial revolution.
My guess is that industrialization is a special process, not an inevitability. It has only happened once in human history though, so our sample size is pretty small.
What role did excessive tribalism play? I read early accounts of settlement in Northern New England, admittedly written by European settlers. Various tribes of natives, would conduct routine raids on one another for apparently no reason other than to increase the status of the tribe’s warriors. Food was plentiful. There was no pressure from encroaching Europeans (perhaps a handful of families in the entire region). It would seem to me that before any significant technological advancement can occur, people have to be able to coexist peacefully in large numbers, i.e. cities and villages where resources and labor can be pooled. What environmental trigger led Eurpoeans to collaborate, while the Americans kept to themselves? I don’t know. It’s interesting to think about, though.
evilhanz-
The tribalism you describe, is the aftereffect, at least in part of the decimation of the Indian population by European disease. Before the Europeans arrived, many Indians did live in large settlements. The Indians who peopled these settlements are referred to as the Mound Builders.
When disease (particularly smallpox) wiped out huge segments of the native population, large settlements were abandoned, and Indians broke down into smaller groups.
Hey, I can answer a little bit of that sub-question, evilhanz. From essentially Manhattan to Cape Cod, there is a curious weather pattern formed along the coast due to the Atlantic Ocean. Temperatures there are considerably warmer than in the interior behind the coast. While it is a long stretch of coast, the weather benefits are patchy, and nowhere does it extend more than fifteen miles beyond the beach. In the winters of pre-colonial New England, habitable living space therefore shrunk to a fraction of its summertime size.
So prior to the onset of winter, pre-colonial tribes would fight for the best patches of coastal land. It was literally a matter of life or death, as we can guess from the near-extinctions of the Pequots in 1630s and the Narragansetts in the 1670s. In both cases, those tribes were defeated (by an English-Indian coalition) and were pursued into the interiors of Connecticut and Rhode Island at the onset of winter. We don’t have many solid numbers, but it’s safe to say that a majority of those who escaped murder died of exposure.
I think that this practice existed prior to the arrival of colonists. It may have been even more pronounced prior to the arrival of European diseases. If I know I’ve likely got a fight coming up this fall, I’m going to keep my lads sharp and blooded with the occasional raid. And we all know that cyclical violence quickly becomes a tradition of reprisal and counter-reprisal. This was probably also why tribes were so easily played against one another by the English–even had they collaborated to kick the colonists out–and on occasion they tried, New England tribes still would have had to face each other when it was all over.
I’m sure there’s a lot of truth in that. The weather here is quite unusual. However, the infighting and raids I was referring to actually occured in the mountainous regions and the Connecticut Valley.
Well, the same pattern of raiding existed in Southeast Asia and the larger Pacific Islands. Not so much post-WWII. But point taken.
No, they do not predate European influence. Written Inuit was developed by missionaries in 1894, based on Pittman Shorthand.
Written Navajo is apparently under some debate, see here. I got the feeling from skimming this article that it is still being created. Apparently it began to evolve around the turn of the century and is still being hammered into place. The only examples I could find in a fifteen-minute search used a variation on European lettering, as opposed to the Inuit, who had a whole new alphabet engineered for them. The issue with the Navaho, is apparently that it was not ever written and doesn’t parse well when you write it. And the elders don’t like it.
Tisiphone