There are several civilizations that stand out at certain points in history. Like the Ancient Egyptians, The Roman Empire, The French Empire, The British Empire, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Mayans and the list goes on.
One of my teachers said that some scientists recently found evidence of trade and exchange of technology between Europe, North Africa and Central America at different points in the past.
To me, it seems that isolation from other civilizations causes a civilization to become ‘technologically impaired’ such as the Aboriginal People of Australia (Who did not develop their society much past the stone age in many areas.)
Is this true and if so did exchange of technology accelerate the Civilizations’ technologies, particularly the Central American Civilizations? And did the isolation of Civilizations such as the Aboriginal Australians cause ‘impaired growth of technology’?
PerfectDark
Anything before 1000 you should be extremely skeptical about. In the 70s this guy showed that it was possible to sail from Africa to the Americas with ancient Egyptian technology. I think he did it on a papyrus boat. But that doesn’t mean that they did it. People like the idea but it didn’t happen. The Norsemen were the first Europeans to reach the Americas around 1000 and some fisherman were almost certainly fishing off the coast of New England by the mid to early 1400s. But of course you’re doing something lucrative, and they were, you don’t go wagging the maps under the noses of people who might go ahead and take a piece of the pie.
The same goes for Australia. The Chinese were visting Australia long long before the British came across it. Although they mostly just came for seahorses to grind up for medicine. Why they didn’t commercialize is difficult. But not all people who can do, it might be cultural, it might be environmental. Certainly it didn’t help that they had no consistant contact with other civilizations but that didn’t keep them from following a course followed the other farmers. YOu know what? It might be that they didn’t have a handy grain like rice, wheat, corn or potato that has the ability to enable a people to become subsistance farmers.
I think the Central Americans and South Americans pretty much built up their civilizations on their own. Whereas in the Africa-Asia-Europe region all civilizations benefited from exchange. On example I learned which astounded me was this. I can’t remember the exact details but basically Alexander the Great brought Greek culture to India, from India to China with Bhudism which then went to Japan. In Japan you find these Bhuddist prayer thingys whose ancestry can be traced to representations of Zeus’ thunderbolts.
I don’t know if isolation definitely was the cause of “technologically impaired” civilizations as you say, but trade among other civilizations definitely helped improve technology (e.g., agriculture, writing, metallurgy) for those peoples.
You may want to read Jarod Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs, & Steel” which discusses in-depth why some civilizations grew technologically whereas others did not. I’m still reading the book, so I can’t give you his complete answer!
Were the Native Americans in North America before the late 1700’s technically impaired? If they had no need for steel or even the wheel for that matter why would they bother to invent it? Trade certainly provides access to various goods that might not be available locally… but cultures tend to develope the tools and products they need and don’t waste time and energy inventing technologies they have no use for. Inventing firearms might seem like it would have been a really handy thing for Native Americans to invent… but it turns out they could do just fine without it. We seem to live in a world of techno bigots…
You seem to be implying that cultures can somehow tell in advance which technologies will be useful to them, and which will not. Most cultures are not wise enough for this to be a viable way of achieving progress. The rate of technological advance depends far more on to what extent the individuals in the culture hold the view that “what was good enough for grand dad is good enough for me”.
If the Native Americans in North America before the late 1700’s had no need for steel, why did they exchange things they valued in order to get it once it became available ? Different cultures have different needs, but something that works well in one can frequently be adapted to work well in another, and adaptation is a LOT easier than invention.
Are you sure of that? Long before Alexander reached India, the Aryans had their own lightning god, Indra, whose legends influenced Mahayana Buddhism more than faint whispers of religion from Greece.
