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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. The mayans reached thier height about the same time as the Roman Empire. You seriously dont think people with stone age tech would have a chance aganst the Roman legions? |
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Quoted: Not ancient or north enough. I posted a pic from Colorado. |
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Seems they are pretty much everywhere else in the world? Probably been said, but there are plenty in the west. Cave Dwellings, Adobe, brick buildings. Nothing on the scale of the Pyramids in the US, but some decent sized towns that are still relatively intact. Hell, I drive by 2 of them every day on the way to work... 3 if I take the bike (or surface streets). |
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Excellent books on the subject are titled 1491 and 1493.
While building a gold course south of Rochester, NY, the remains of a butchered mastodon were uncovered. It had been carved up, packed and sunk in a cold water pond for future use. Whoever did it never came back for it. Well over 11,000 years old. |
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There's a bunch in northeast AZ on the reservation and around Monument Valley. I used to go jeeping all around that area.
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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. The mayans reached thier height about the same time as the Roman Empire. You seriously dont think people with stone age tech would have a chance aganst the Roman legions? FWIW, the classical era Mayan civilization that we thought was their height now appears to have been a bit of a Renaissance. Mayan civilization may actually have reached its height while the Greeks were killing each other while showing off their abs. |
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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 there are also mounds in Moundsville wv |
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There are also medicine wheels constructed by Indians.
Medicine Wheels The most impressive example such a circle lies some 10,000 feet above sea level at the summit of Medicine Mountain in Wyoming. Though it has always been presumed the wheels were used for some sort of spiritual purpose, the 28-spoked Big Horn Medicine Wheel is one of the few that also bears an astronomical alignment. Not only did the 25-yard circle mark the ascent of the four brightest summer stars – Sirius, Fomalhaut, Aldebaran, and Rigel – but the beginning of the summer solstice as well and possibly even served a daily calendar. (Unfortunately for its builders, the Big Horn Wheel was unable to do the same in the winter, as it would have been buried under snow.) Originally built by the Crow people, it is currently supposed that the site was in use from at least 1200 AD onwards. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: 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. The mayans reached thier height about the same time as the Roman Empire. You seriously dont think people with stone age tech would have a chance aganst the Roman legions? FWIW, the classical era Mayan civilization that we thought was their height now appears to have been a bit of a Renaissance. Mayan civilization may actually have reached its height while the Greeks were killing each other while showing off their abs. Given that the height of Mayan architecture was 'the cleverly arranged pile of rocks', it doesn't really appear that their cultural zenith was much to crow about. |
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a number of them have been listed, so i'll just restrict myself to saying that according to a lot of scholarship, the population in the western hemisphere was overwhelmingly in the south. coming out of the last glaciation, conditions north of the rio grande weren't terribly congenial for sedentary human habitation. add to that the near-desert precipitation west of the mississippi, and you make things tough for agriculture, which is the basis for urbanization. take away the cities and the surplus labor, and you don't get a lot of those major construction projects that make for good 'ruins'.
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Also, there are supposedly some megalithic ruins in Massachussetts, though I know little about them.
Other New England Megalithic sites Megalitic Ruins in MA |
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Quoted: Quoted: ... Given that the height of Mayan architecture was 'the cleverly arranged pile of rocks', it doesn't really appear that their cultural zenith was much to crow about. that description could also be applied to any stone architecture––pyramids, temples, dams, aqueducts, cathedrals... |
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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. The mayans reached thier height about the same time as the Roman Empire. You seriously dont think people with stone age tech would have a chance aganst the Roman legions? FWIW, the classical era Mayan civilization that we thought was their height now appears to have been a bit of a Renaissance. Mayan civilization may actually have reached its height while the Greeks were killing each other while showing off their abs. Given that the height of Mayan architecture was 'the cleverly arranged pile of rocks', it doesn't really appear that their cultural zenith was much to crow about. You have to admit they were very good at killing. |
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So mayan temples in Mexico, the pyramids in Egypt, and the best Native Americans could come up with is dirt mounds?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beattie_Park_Mound_Group
"The Beattie Park Mound Group is located in downtown Rockford, Illinois' Beattie Park. The mounds and mound remnants in Beattie Park date from an era during the Late Woodland known as the Effigy mound Period. This period spanned from about 300-1100 C.E. and influenced the Upper Mississippi River Valley in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Native American Mound builders were not a culture, per se, it is more likely that there were vast differences in culture associated with the groups building effigy mounds during the same time period." |
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Montezuma's Castle in Arizona? http://www.thefurtrapper.com/images/Montezuma%20Castle.jpg And Canyon de Chelly http://travelblog.mostlyfiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/canyondechelly1.jpg http://www.nps.gov/cach/images/20100420180615.JPG That's cool, I'd like to visit those. |
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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. The Pilgrims did little to nothing. Plymouth colony was established in 1620. That's after over 100 years of exploration by Europeans in the New World. A shitton of people in North America were already dead when the Pilgrims appeared. When the Spanish were first sailing on the East Coast of the US they recorded large amounts of people. They were almost all gone by 1620. |
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a number of them have been listed, so i'll just restrict myself to saying that according to a lot of scholarship, the population in the western hemisphere was overwhelmingly in the south. coming out of the last glaciation, conditions north of the rio grande weren't terribly congenial for sedentary human habitation. add to that the near-desert precipitation west of the mississippi, and you make things tough for agriculture, which is the basis for urbanization. take away the cities and the surplus labor, and you don't get a lot of those major construction projects that make for good 'ruins'. I think you should have stopped before you started this time. |
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Poverty Point Indians in NW Louisiana are pretty friggin old. Traded with indians as far away as Wisconsin and Florida.
http://www.crt.state.la.us/archaeology/virtualbooks/LAPREHIS/ppt.htm |
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One thing that's missed by many is that North America really isn't suited for the development of civilization. First, you have the fact that with the verdant natural resources, a culture could do pretty damn well for themselves without needing to develop the trappings of what we call "civilization". If you read the books referenced earlier, mainly "1491", about pre-Columbian America, you'll find that there is good evidence that the natives were practicing agriculture––Just not as we'd recognize it. Why go to the bother of plowing and planting fields if you can get the same results by some judicious heaping of fish and so forth to grow corn?
Additionally, North America is very unstable, over the long haul. Consider the odds stacked against anything developing a civilization we'd recognize as such in a location like the Puget Sound region. Every five to six hundred years, you get a massive earthquake that wipes everything out, and the accompanying tidal waves wash the survivors out to sea. Then, there's the local volcanos, and God knows what else. Given that anything major you build is going to get destroyed every couple of hundred years, it's not a huge surprise that the local tribes were more concerned with living large off the abundant local resources, and having massive Potlatch parties every so often. Had they bothered to build a Northwestern Athens, it would have been flattened at least once a millennium, without fail. No surprise that they didn't. Similar issues prevail across the rest of the North American continent. Europe and China are comparatively stable, and that's where civilization that we'd entitle as such got their starts. North America? Let's face it: It's a great place to live, but the odds against developing much here in between modern-era technology and the stone age are not good. It's an either-or thing, with no in-between. And, we may find out that it's not-so-prime real estate ourselves, if something like the Yellowstone Caldera decides to uncork in the next few years. Me? I'm waiting for the next big one to hit up in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, and then I'm gonna go pick up a bunch of cheap beach-front property on the eastern shore of Lake Washington... |
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Yup... Worth seeing. |
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Quoted: Quoted: a number of them have been listed, so i'll just restrict myself to saying that according to a lot of scholarship, the population in the western hemisphere was overwhelmingly in the south. coming out of the last glaciation, conditions north of the rio grande weren't terribly congenial for sedentary human habitation. add to that the near-desert precipitation west of the mississippi, and you make things tough for agriculture, which is the basis for urbanization. take away the cities and the surplus labor, and you don't get a lot of those major construction projects that make for good 'ruins'. I think you should have stopped before you started this time. really? i don't see what's particularly controversial there, although you spend more time in the archaeological literature than i do. everything i've read indicates that population south of central mexico was 5-1 or greater (much greater) than northwards pre-colonization. conditions poor as the glaciers were retreating? seems logical. wind shadow of the rockies? check. agriculture driving urbanization? pretty well established. so it comes down to sedentarism. there were indeed some sedentary cultures, and these produced some of the major structures that have been posted in the thread. nothing on the order of teotihuacan or machu picchu, of course, but still respectable. are you suggesting that lithic ruins are not the results of sedentary cultures?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effigy_Mounds_National_Monument Been there, awesome place. Also been to multiple Anasazi ruins in the American southwest. Actually uncovered a few down there too... |
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Just out of curiosity, how old does a civilization have to be in order to be considered "ancient"? I've seen things posted in this thread that I would consider old, but not ancient.
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The largest in the SW, Chaco Canyon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Historical_Park http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Prehistoric-Roads.jpg |
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All over AZ as mentioned. Plenty off the map locations that most don't know about either
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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. The mayans reached thier height about the same time as the Roman Empire. You seriously dont think people with stone age tech would have a chance aganst the Roman legions? FWIW, the classical era Mayan civilization that we thought was their height now appears to have been a bit of a Renaissance. Mayan civilization may actually have reached its height while the Greeks were killing each other while showing off their abs. Aren't the Greeks starting to do that again right now? |
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV0SdsVYyuw[/youtube]
Nope. Gotta be ALIENS!!! |
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i know, mexico has aztec pyramids and the second largest church in the world but nobody cares.
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There are, and there is evidence of a grand ancient North American culture (pre-dating what we now call the American Indian tribes). For many reasons, pre-Colombian history in North America was re-written or erased during European colonization with a fevered pitch just prior to and continuing after the American Revolution.
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Quoted: Because Indian casinos didn't exist in ancient times. they did but the damn spaniards would always double down and win. |
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Seems they are pretty much everywhere else in the world? Come on your better than this... Go to Arizona there are ruins all over the place,The Anasazi? In Mexico you have the Mayan temples. |
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Seems they are pretty much everywhere else in the world? Come on your better than this... Go to Arizona there are ruins all over the place,The Anasazi? In Mexico you have the Mayan temples. this. I think a more accurate thread title would have been "why are there no ancient ruins in the US" seems that people forget that most of mexico is considered North america. |
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Aren't there some castle foundations along some rivers in Pennsylvania that very close dimensions to some in the UK? I thought I remember reading something about that.
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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. That's a common liberal lie. Disease wiped out most of the 2nd wave (Clovis) of native Americans during the exploration of the Spanish. Smallpox is believed to have arrived in the Americas in 1520 on a Spanish ship sailing from Cuba, carried by an infected African slave. As soon as the party landed in Mexico, the infection began its deadly voyage through the continent. Even before the arrival of Pizarro, smallpox had already devastated the Inca Empire, killing the Emperor Huayna Capac and unleashing a bitter civil war that distracted and weakened his successor, Atahuallpa.
When the Europeans arrived, carrying germs which thrived in dense, semi-urban populations, the indigenous people of the Americas were effectively doomed. They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent,
killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans. |
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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. That's a common liberal lie. Disease wiped out most of the 2nd wave (Clovis) of native Americans during the exploration of the Spanish. Smallpox is believed to have arrived in the Americas in 1520 on a Spanish ship sailing from Cuba, carried by an infected African slave. As soon as the party landed in Mexico, the infection began its deadly voyage through the continent. Even before the arrival of Pizarro, smallpox had already devastated the Inca Empire, killing the Emperor Huayna Capac and unleashing a bitter civil war that distracted and weakened his successor, Atahuallpa.
When the Europeans arrived, carrying germs which thrived in dense, semi-urban populations, the indigenous people of the Americas were effectively doomed. They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent,
killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans. just curious, what makes that a liberal lie? |
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There are plenty out west. You mean the cave dwellings? There's also the mounds here in the mid-west. There's one less than a mile form my house. |
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