# Did geology prevent American civilisations from leaving the stone age? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 25, 2011, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598 "2011-09-25T22:46:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2011, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/41 "2011-09-26T19:46:46Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Has anyone ever tried to plough a field with one? As many as have done with squirrels, I’d expect. ---
**Author:** ![EdwardLost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bbe5ce/32.png) [@EdwardLost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardLost)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2011, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/42 "2011-09-26T23:18:52Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Has anyone ever tried to plough a field with one? Not just one: you need a large team. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2011, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/43 "2011-09-26T23:21:55Z")
You need a team if lemmings. They’re motivated to move. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2011, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/44 "2011-09-27T00:59:04Z")
> [@EdwardLost](#): > > Not just one: you need a large team. I was thinking that you could use them to plough a field for sesame seeds. Just hook a tiny little plough to the guy’s back and dangle a sunflower seed in front of him. ---
**Author:** ![Grossbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ba8739/32.png) [@Grossbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grossbottom)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2011, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/45 "2011-09-27T03:22:56Z")
Lack of accessible tin reserves is a good partial answer. I say good because compared to Europe the Americas did not have alot of it. But partial because they had enough that the Inca were making bronze occasionally, and the alloy was known to varying degrees in the other relatively advanced areas of Mesoamerica (I’ll reserve comment on the Aztec-Tasco bronze wierdness). Diamond’s domesticable animal concept isn’t really applicable, since any real smelting and forging process is actually not as load-bearing as one might think. Such operations need _fuel_ by the ton to produce metals by the pound, and any real forge is more concerned about wood than metal. But American cultures had no problem moving tons of crap around when they felt like it. And moose, alpacas, Diamond, etc. The answer is probably obsidian, which they used in vast quantities as a cutting instrument. Volcanic glass can be easily chipped to a surgically precise surface in mass quantities, with none of the truly unbelievable hassle of even a modest bronze casting operation (let alone iron). And while obsidian is available everywhere, the deposits are massive in Central America. The human resources involved in producing bronze and iron are just not appreciated until you sit down and think out how much effort went into something as simple as a plough or a sword. For just about everything that needed a sharp edge, the Mesoamericans didn’t need a forge, fuel, a mine, miners, smelters, smiths, carts, animals, and the farmers to feed them all (and for bronze you have to do it twice). Mesoamericans just needed some guy to go chip them a knife using techniques that were literally from the Stone Age. From the quarry to market, bam, done. In an hour they could have a knife that would flay flesh from bone, whereas the sheer caloric effort of producing even a shoddy iron knife is mind-boggling. Obsidian was fragile but it was cheap and easily replaceable. Of course taking the hard road did lead to steel, and we know how that turned out. But still, if an Aztec walked into the Bronze Age Mediterranean he might have justifiably wondered if they were all crazy and why they were trying to get out of the Stone Age where life was just fine, thanks. They just didn’t have much motivation to get down, metallurgically-speaking. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2011, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/46 "2011-09-27T08:59:11Z")
> [@Grossbottom](#): > > They just didn’t have much motivation to get down, metallurgically-speaking. Not tool-wise, at any rate. It’s pretty widely acknowledged that there was much more concern about colour and even aural tone than e.g. toughness. So new alloys were developed primarily for how they looked. One theory says that Meso-Americans deliberately chose to produce not-as-tough arsenical bronze over tin bronze because it was better for use in sheets, for instance. ---
**Author:** ![Toxylon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@Toxylon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxylon)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2011, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/47 "2011-09-27T15:39:44Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > I believe (please correct me if the facts are wrong) the argument is that while North/Central America has plenty of iron ore, coal and copper ore, but almost no tin. > > Now, it’s easy to learn how to smelt copper by accident, since it will melt in an ordinary campfire. But iron ore needs a dedicated extra hot fire and special techniques to get useful iron. And pure copper is too soft to be a really useful tool, but adding tin to get bronze makes a valuable metal. > > So the crux of the argument is that once Europeans more or less accidentally made bronze, they were motivated to really develop smelting technology (and even then it took them a while to really learn about iron). Wheras the Americans didn’t have any easy first step to convince them to invest a lot of research in metallurgy, so there’s wasn’t a path to learn to smelt iron. Not exactly. Copper needs some 2000 F / 1100 C to melt, so an ordinary campfire won’t do. Also, pure copper is more difficult to cast than bronze. Iron is a vastly superior material for tools and weapons compared to either, and unlike copper and tin (which was somewhat rare even in Prehistoric Europe), can be found almost everywhere on earth. The problem with iron is that, apart from extremely rare meteoric iron, it is not found as pure nuggets ready to bang into useful shapes, but as various oxides instead, which need to be processed to get the metal separated from rubbish. Also, iron’s melting point is much higher than that of copper or bronze, necessitating quite sophisticated technology, as you say. Lots of resources needed to get the raw materials for an iron tool, but once one has the infrastructure, massive production is feasible, provided massive amounts of fuel is available. > [@Acsenray](#): > > Certainly woven fiber clothing wouldn’t have been available to non-settled non-agricultural people. You might have furs, but you wouldn’t have cotton or woollen cloth. Actually, the earliest woven textiles (imprints of them on clay) date to the Upper Paleolithic, or more than 10 000 years before the first signs of agriculture. There are a number of wild fiber plants that can be used to make cloth and have been used so by various peoples. > [@Acsenray](#): > > Also, pottery, being fragile, would not have been very useful for non-settled people. Although, the development of pottery is very important for storing grains, so it is a critical component of agricultural society. Pottery was extensively used in places like Japan, Northwestern Russia and Fennoscandia by Stone Age hunter-gatherers without agriculture, although to be fair, this is an exception from the more typical situation where pottery is adopted as part of the Neolithic transition with food production and sedentarism. > [@Grossbottom](#): > > The answer is probably obsidian, which they used in vast quantities as a cutting instrument. Volcanic glass can be easily chipped to a surgically precise surface in mass quantities, with none of the truly unbelievable hassle of even a modest bronze casting operation (let alone iron). And while obsidian is available everywhere, the deposits are massive in Central America. The human resources involved in producing bronze and iron are just not appreciated until you sit down and think out how much effort went into something as simple as a plough or a sword. For just about everything that needed a sharp edge, the Mesoamericans didn’t need a forge, fuel, a mine, miners, smelters, smiths, carts, animals, and the farmers to feed them all (and for bronze you have to do it twice). Mesoamericans just needed some guy to go chip them a knife using techniques that were literally from the Stone Age. From the quarry to market, bam, done. In an hour they could have a knife that would flay flesh from bone, whereas the sheer caloric effort of producing even a shoddy iron knife is mind-boggling. Obsidian was fragile but it was cheap and easily replaceable. Of course taking the hard road did lead to steel, and we know how that turned out. > > But still, if an Aztec walked into the Bronze Age Mediterranean he might have justifiably wondered if they were all crazy and why they were trying to get out of the Stone Age where life was just fine, thanks. They just didn’t have much motivation to get down, metallurgically-speaking. Substitute flint for obsidian, and the same rhetoric could be used for Neolithic Europe: Flint, like obsidian, can be easily chipped to a surgically precise surface (more accurately, edge) in mass quantities, and it was available most everywhere. Late Stone Age Europe had numerous flint industry centers that produced extremely finely crafted axes, gouges, knives, scrapers etc. in vast quantities and transported them over vast distances. Yet metal tools and weapons were quickly taken up as soon as they became available and master flintknappers were reduced to trying to imitate the metal weapons in flint to be able to compete, in vain. Yes, an obsidian or flint knife is a handy tool for flaying flesh from bone, and projectile points made from these materials match steel in killing performance, but for most purposes knapped stone sucks compared to metal. Having used both (knapped as well as ground) stone and prehistoric metal tools for various projects, this becomes clear in no time. Stone is fragile whereas metal is not. Metal can be turned into delicate yet resilient tools that work effectively for a long time. Metal can take the punishment of efficient edge angles for woodworking, stone can not. Hewing an oak plank to make a primitive wagon wheel, for instance, is much faster and easier with bronze than with stone. For work or for war, I’ve found a small bronze axe packs the same whallop as a much bigger, clumsier stone axe and is also more durable, due to it’s density and resilience. Once the metal blade is either broken or resharpened beyond repair, it can be recast into a new one. Try that with a stone blade. The massive “absolute cost” of metal (mining, fuel, furnaces and forges etc.) compared to stone was of no consequence to a prehistoric person capable of paying whatever the going price was for a quality blade then and there. Judging from the tonne-like quantities of bronze weapons and tools in circulation in Early Metal Age Europe, plenty of people had the means. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2011, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/48 "2011-09-27T16:12:43Z")
Eurasian civilizations had a huge head start over American civilizations. In America, there was a 10,000-12,000 year period to evolve from a minimal level of technology to the state found when Europeans arrived. Eurasians had a 60,000-90,000 year jump on establishing long term centers of civilization. The Eurasians had competition and trade and between established civilization centers to foster development of technology. Time, and the big headstart, for Eurasian civilizations seem to be to be the greatest factor. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2011, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/49 "2011-09-27T16:17:31Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Eurasian civilizations had a huge head start over American civilizations. In America, there was a 10,000-12,000 year period to evolve from a minimal level of technology to the state found when Europeans arrived. Eurasians had a 60,000-90,000 year jump on establishing long term centers of civilization. The Eurasians had competition and trade and between established civilization centers to foster development of technology. Time, and the big headstart, for Eurasian civilizations seem to be to be the greatest factor. I was at first thinking along those lines, too, but keep in mind that the settling of the Americas was earlier than you state. More like 15k years, at least. What were Eurasians doing 15k years ago that gave them a jump on their cousins migrating into the Americas? It’s quite possible that the precursors of civilization were popping up in Eurasia at that time, but I’m not aware of any evidence that they were. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/50 "2011-09-27T16:30:08Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I was at first thinking along those lines, too, but keep in mind that the settling of the Americas was earlier than you state. More like 15k years, at least. What were Eurasians doing 15k years ago that gave them a jump on their cousins migrating into the Americas? > > It’s quite possible that the precursors of civilization were popping up in Eurasia at that time, but I’m not aware of any evidence that they were. Yeah, all these numbers are unsettled. And I don’t have expertise in this area. But I am under the impression that there were civilization centers in Mesopotamia (as an example) that had developed the early signs of modern civilization while the northern Eurasians were migrating to North America with an Ice Age nomadic culture. Even with minimal technological development, permanent locations, trade, competition, war, domesticable sheep, perhaps formal religion, all contributed to a jumping off point for technology while Americans were still migrating north to south looking for the places to start this process. I wouldn’t say that is everything, but nobody has identified any particular advantage found in the American continents that would overcome this time difference. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2011, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/51 "2011-09-27T17:16:49Z")
I think the North-South orientation of the Americas vs the East-West orientation of Eurasia was a critical factor. It took thousands of years to develop varieties of maize that would grow well in cooler North America. Maize was never grown in South America, and potatoes were never grown in North America. New world crops didn’t spread as far and as fast. When we look at our current food crops it is astounding how many came from the New World, yet in 1491 farmers in the New World were completely ignorant of the crops grown in other parts of the New World. All over North America were lands that would have been perfect for growing huge potato crops, yet the people who lived there had never seen a pototo. They had to wait for potatos to go from South America to Europe, and then be introduced to North America by Europeans. Then we can compare the amount of land suitable for early intensive agriculture. Why are China and India the most populous places on earth? Because they have the most productive farmland on earth. There is a huge swath of incredibly productive land that stretches from China to India to the Middle East to the Mediterranean. In the Americas, there just wasn’t the same vast extent of productive land. , and the productive lands weren’t continually in contact with each other. So you start with a smaller population base in the Americas. How many crops and tools and technologies used in Europe originated in China and India? Name an invention, any invention, and you’ll probably find it was created in China hundreds of years before it was used in Europe. Since the population centers of the Americas were much smaller and more isolated than the population centers of Eurasia, it shouldn’t be suprising to see that they weren’t as technologically advanced. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2011, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/52 "2011-09-27T20:18:03Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > So you start with a smaller population base in the Americas. How many crops and tools and technologies used in Europe originated in China and India? Name an invention, any invention, and you’ll probably find it was created in China hundreds of years before it was used in Europe. Since the population centers of the Americas were much smaller and more isolated than the population centers of Eurasia, it shouldn’t be suprising to see that they weren’t as technologically advanced. I don’t know about that. We’re talking purely about metalurgy here, which was developed around 5K years ago in Eurasia. How did the population density of that time compare with the population density in the Americas 600 years ago or 1000 years ago? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/53 "2011-09-27T20:28:09Z")
> [@Toxylon](#): > > Substitute flint for obsidian, and the same rhetoric could be used for Neolithic Europe: Flint, like obsidian, can be easily chipped to a surgically precise surface (more accurately, edge) in mass quantities, and it was available most everywhere. Late Stone Age Europe had numerous flint industry centers that produced extremely finely crafted axes, gouges, knives, scrapers etc. in vast quantities and transported them over vast distances. Yet metal tools and weapons were quickly taken up as soon as they became available and master flintknappers were reduced to trying to imitate the metal weapons in flint to be able to compete, in vain. Obligatory link to the Mitchell and Webb skit [“Bronze Orientation Day”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTLyXamRvk4). ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/54 "2011-09-27T20:28:20Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I don’t know about that. We’re talking purely about metalurgy here, which was developed around 5K years ago in Eurasia. How did the population density of that time compare with the population density in the Americas 600 years ago or 1000 years ago? I think the distance between population centers and the amount of interchange is a big factor there. The origins of Eurasian metallurgy are cloudy, but it seems to arise in several places at around the same time. Bronze required both copper and tin, which are rarely found in proximity, so there would have to be significant trade preceding the development of bronze technology. There is one theory that the trade issues pushed development of iron technology, which had preceded the use of copper and bronze. On the other hand, the bronze age encompasses a lot of usage of straight copper. Americans did begin to produce copper, but it doesn’t appear to have reached the level of Eurasians. (And I’m not leaving Africans out either. I just don’t know a convenient term for the Europe-Asia-Africa supercontinent). ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2011, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/55 "2011-09-27T20:32:27Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I just don’t know a convenient term for the Europe-Asia-Africa supercontinent). Afroeurasia. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598/56 "2011-09-29T08:21:51Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Bronze required both copper and tin Once again: tin bronze is not the only kind of bronze. It’s the _best_ for tools, sure, but arsenical bronze is still bronze. And arsenic is usually a component of copper ore. > [@](#): > > There is one theory that the trade issues pushed development of iron technology, which had preceded the use of copper and bronze. Yeah, tin trade stopping as a result of the [Bronze Age Collapse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age_collapse). It’s a popular theory. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-geology-prevent-american-civilisations-from-leaving-the-stone-age/597598.md?page=2)