Why are there no ancient ruins in North America? - Page 2

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Posted: 11/25/2012 3:49:05 PM EDT

[#1]

Quoted:
the people that inhabited North America when the europeans came were basically stone age in thier ability. And life style. They moved with the game and the seasons. Not a life style that would favor permanent structures.

There are ruins out West. And you could count the Mounds they left around the country.

GD

This is not true for the East. The people who lived in the East were almost all settled agriculturalists.

Posted: 11/25/2012 3:51:01 PM EDT

[#2]

Quoted:

Quoted:
What? Somebody needs to revisit 4th grade geography. There are ancient ruins all over North America. Some that I have visited are Templo Mayor, Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, Chichen Itza, San Gervasio, & Casa Grande ruins. There are also Viking settlements in Greenland and surrounding areas and some large mounds in Ohio.

I thought Copan was cool as hell.

Haven't been there. Teotihuacan was probably my favorite of what I have visited. Definitely the largest.

Posted: 11/25/2012 3:51:23 PM EDT

[#3]

Quoted:

Quoted:

There are plenty out west.

You mean the cave dwellings?

Yep. If you want prehistoric ruins, you have to look to the people that were around then.

civilization always has organized, large-scale agriculture at it's core. Oddly, the North american ruins we do have were built in arid areas.

Been to the cave's, while impressive...it's nothing compared to Rome or Egypt.

Posted: 11/25/2012 3:51:35 PM EDT

[#4]

Quoted:
The Pilgrims bulldozed them.

The Pilgrims did a lot of damage. They were the al Qaeda of their time. The Europeans considered them a pack of religious nutjobs and tried to kill the lot of them. That's real bad when you ponder how God crazy the Europeans themselves were! The Puritans were worse.
That's why they came all the way here! That's why we still have issues with nudity and, well, boobies. You can thank our ancestors The Pilgrims for that.

Posted: 11/25/2012 3:52:06 PM EDT

[#5]

Quoted:
There aren't as many in northern North America because there were stable resources that could support increasing numbers of hunter/gatherers longer. In areas that have huge salmon runs, they may never have had to start agriculture for staple storable winter food

This is quite true but in SW Florida the Calusa developed a quite complex society based primarily on fishing. Tne NW Pacific coast also had wonderfully complex societies without agriculture.

Posted: 11/25/2012 3:53:42 PM EDT

[#6]

Quoted:

Quoted:
I live 10 miles from ancient Hopewell burial mounds built in 250AD.

Impossible. Humans were miracled here in the great wormhole accident of 1050.

You've been getting your history from Gaspar Correia, haven't you?

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Posted: 11/25/2012 3:53:57 PM EDT

[#7]

Quoted:
I live 10 miles from ancient Hopewell burial mounds built in 250AD.

Was going to post this.

Posted: 11/25/2012 3:55:25 PM EDT

[#8]

Look up Cahokia.

Posted: 11/25/2012 3:55:30 PM EDT

[#9]

Quoted:

Quoted:

There are plenty out west.

You mean the cave dwellings?

Yep. If you want prehistoric ruins, you have to look to the people that were around then.

Been to the cave's, while impressive...it's nothing compared to Rome or Egypt.

So ancient North American Indians were not architects?

Uh, welcome to 7th grade history.

Nomadic tribal cultures verses huge permanent societies.

Venture further south Central America is full of ancient structures because they were huge permanent societies and not bands of nomads.

Not entirely accurate.

The Mississippian civilization collapsed during the little ice age, Columbus basically discovered a post-SHTF new world. They built in mud & wattle and little survived the floods, but it was a fairly large agricultural society.

Mississippian societies were doing very well in 1540 when de Soto marched through the Southeast.

Posted: 11/25/2012 3:55:35 PM EDT

[#10]

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I will have someone date something at 8,000 years asap to destroy all credibility for the young earthers.

Posted: 11/25/2012 3:57:58 PM EDT

[#11]

There used to be alot more. Lots were destroyed or built over.

Posted: 11/25/2012 3:59:15 PM EDT

[#12]

just go to any national park. In particular Yosemite or The Grand Canyon. Billions of years of evolution right there. Ancient ruins don't hold a candle to ancient forests out west.

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:00:45 PM EDT

[#13]

Quoted:
Glaciers.

Glaciers only played a role in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene by creating fauna rich proglacial environments. The Bering land bridge was gone by 7000 BP and the big ice sheets were gone by 5000 BP.

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:01:21 PM EDT

[#14]

Quoted:
There used to be alot more. Lots were destroyed or built over.

Don't underestimate "stone age cultures". The Maya were a stone age empire that ruled millions and had huge mega cities while Europeans still lived in mud huts. If their ships had made it to Spain we'd all be speaking Mayan right now.

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:02:42 PM EDT

[#15]

Quoted:

Miamisburg Mound in Ohio between Dayton & Cincinnati.....built approx 2500 years ago (Adena)...

http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj67/lsheets65/3834442-Mound_City_Ohio_Miamisburg.jpg

I'll have to see this some day

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:02:56 PM EDT

[#16]

Quoted:

Detroit.

That would be hilarious if it was a joke.

Why is detroit such a shithole, and essentially ruins?

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:06:32 PM EDT

[#17]

Quoted:

Quoted:

Detroit.

That would be hilarious if it was a joke.

Why is detroit such a shithole, and essentially ruins?

Can we recycle it?

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:11:45 PM EDT

[#18]

Quoted:

Quoted:

Miamisburg Mound in Ohio between Dayton & Cincinnati.....built approx 2500 years ago (Adena)...

http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj67/lsheets65/3834442-Mound_City_Ohio_Miamisburg.jpg

I'll have to see this some day

If you go to ohio http://greatserpentmound.com/

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:12:41 PM EDT

[#19]

I grew up with 2 miles of these as a kid. I used to go all over, on my grandparents land there is a place where you can still find pieces of old pottery.

Pinson Mounds

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:13:31 PM EDT

[#20]

Quoted:

Miamisburg Mound in Ohio between Dayton & Cincinnati.....built approx 2500 years ago (Adena)...

http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj67/lsheets65/3834442-Mound_City_Ohio_Miamisburg.jpg

'Built' seems a little optimistic for that, no?

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:14:33 PM EDT

[#21]

Rock Eagle

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:17:07 PM EDT

[#22]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Glaciers.

Glaciers only played a role in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene by creating fauna rich proglacial environments. The Bering land bridge was gone by 7000 BP and the big ice sheets were gone by 5000 BP.

This makes sense. The egyptian pyramids were built 4500 yrs ago and the mexican pyramids were built much later.

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:19:09 PM EDT

[#23]

Quite a few here in NM.

http://www.nps.gov/band/index.htm

http://www.nps.gov/gicl/index.htm Not really ancient though

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:21:33 PM EDT

[#24]

This is Tuzigoot. Built at about the same time a the cliff dwellings by the Sinagua people between 1125 and 1400 CE. There are both "pueblos" like this one and cliff dwellings all around me. The ancient people had line of sight communication posts from roughly Flagstaff to the Phoenix area.

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:22:00 PM EDT

[#25]

Hopewell Culture NHP aka "Mound City" aka "City of the Dead". Worked there 6 years, great experience. Also have large mounds on several off-sites. Serpent Mound isn't one of them but it's impressive.

500 A.D.

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:22:21 PM EDT

[#26]

OP you never been to a Indian Reservation?

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:22:28 PM EDT

[#27]

Quoted:

Detroit.

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:23:51 PM EDT

[#28]

Global Warming fucked up the Eskimo's ruins

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:24:33 PM EDT

[#29]

Go to New Mexico, there is some really old stuff there. Also, AZ, tons of ruins in Mexico too which is North America.

Posted: 11/25/2012 4:29:05 PM EDT

[#30]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Glaciers.

Glaciers only played a role in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene by creating fauna rich proglacial environments. The Bering land bridge was gone by 7000 BP and the big ice sheets were gone by 5000 BP.

This makes sense. The egyptian pyramids were built 4500 yrs ago and the mexican pyramids were built much later.

Well, during the Wisconsin advance, there was never any ice sheets near Egypt or Mexico. In North America the ice didn't make it much south of the present Canadian border, and the closest they got to Egypt was the northern part of western Europe.

Posted: 11/25/2012 5:47:16 PM EDT

[#31]

Chichen Itza

Posted: 11/25/2012 5:53:02 PM EDT

[#32]

Quoted:

Mel's Hole

what the hell does gay porn have to do with ancient ruins?

Posted: 11/25/2012 5:54:50 PM EDT

[#33]

Never heard of Mesa Verde?

Posted: 11/25/2012 6:03:43 PM EDT

[#34]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztalan_State_Park

Posted: 11/25/2012 6:04:15 PM EDT

[#35]

Detroit

Posted: 11/25/2012 6:08:38 PM EDT

[#36]

Quoted:
Miamisburg Mound in Ohio between Dayton & Cincinnati.....built approx 2500 years ago (Adena)...
http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj67/lsheets65/3834442-Mound_City_Ohio_Miamisburg.jpg

This is the best North America has for ancient ruins?

Posted: 11/25/2012 6:12:09 PM EDT

[#37]

Chaco Canyon
Canyon de Chelly

Posted: 11/25/2012 6:15:30 PM EDT

[#38]

Quoted:

Detroit.

Posted: 11/25/2012 6:20:09 PM EDT

[#39]

Quoted:

Quoted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound_builder_(people)

There are a good number of structures, but at the same time, something very bad happened around 10k years ago in North America basically cleaning out most of the population. Central and South America didn't get hit so bad until the rest of us showed up.

Not so. Major depopulation did not happen until European contact. Not many people in North America 10,000 years ago. Read the recent article in American Antiquity by Ashely Smallwood for some neat ideas.

There were quite a few people from present day North America all the way down to the tip of South America many thousands of years ago. Not millions but around the same amount if not more than in Central and South America.There are burial sites in Argentina that are 12000+ years old. This means that people were crossing into the Americas starting around 20k+ years ago probably from both sides of the ice sheet. Something bad happened just around the end of the last ice age that really messed up North America for a good while. It was either a quicker than normal ice melt or a meteor strike that ended up killing off most of the plants and animals here in the North. A lot of the "Indians" in North America are more recent immigrants from Siberia than their southern cousins. 3k, 4k, 5k at the most.

Posted: 11/25/2012 6:21:15 PM EDT

[#40]

Look up the Casa Grande ruins in Coollidge, AZ... I worked on an outage in Globe, Arizona a couple years back and I stayed in Florence, drove over to Coollidge one day and saw the Casa Grande ruins... Cool place...

Posted: 11/25/2012 6:23:12 PM EDT

[#41]

There aren't?

Posted: 11/25/2012 6:25:02 PM EDT

[#42]

Quoted:

Been to the cave's, while impressive...it's nothing compared to Rome or Egypt.

Quoted:

Suppose the city of Sparta to be
deserted, and nothing left but the temples and the ground-plan, distant ages would be very
unwilling to believe that the power of the Lacedaemonians was at all equal to their fame. And
yet they own two-fifths of the Peloponnesus, and are acknowledged leaders of the whole, as
well as of numerous allies in the rest of Hellas. But their city is not built continuously, and has no
splendid temples or other edifices; it rather resembles a group of villages like the ancient towns
of Hellas, and would therefore make a poor show. Whereas, if the same fate befell the
Athenians, the ruins of Athens would strike the eye, and we should infer their power to have
been twice as great as it really is. We ought not then to be unduly sceptical. The greatness of
cities should be estimated by their real power and not by appearances.

Posted: 11/25/2012 6:26:08 PM EDT

[#43]

Because Indian casinos didn't exist in ancient times.

Posted: 11/25/2012 6:26:44 PM EDT

[#44]

Posted: 11/25/2012 6:27:34 PM EDT

[#45]

Quoted:

Quoted:
The Pilgrims bulldozed them.

The Pilgrims did a lot of damage. They were the al Qaeda of their time. The Europeans considered them a pack of religious nutjobs and tried to kill the lot of them. That's real bad when you ponder how God crazy the Europeans themselves were! The Puritans were worse.
That's why they came all the way here! That's why we still have issues with nudity and, well, boobies. You can thank our ancestors The Pilgrims for that.

This is the most idiotic fucking post of the year to date. Congratulations.