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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:27:42 AM EDT
[#1]
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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. The closest to Rome or Egypt would be the Aztecs, Mayans, or Incas. All pretty impressive. But unless you believe Mormon stories, no such civlization flourished this far north in the Americas. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:30:18 AM EDT
[#2]
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i know, mexico has aztec pyramids and the second largest church in the world but nobody cares. It's also home to the world's 13th largest economy, the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, and also more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than any other country in the Western Hemisphere. That doesn't stop the peanut gallery from picturing the whole country as a mix of rural northern desert villages with burros on the streets and beach resorts. You have to take what you can get. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:36:58 AM EDT
[#3]
Quoted: 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... No. No it cannot. A cathedral with flying buttress walls, archways, etc, is a far cry from what is literally a pile of rocks. The Greeks, when not chasing boys and sheep, were building colonnaded temples that the Mayans probably would have thought was one of their gods personified. They didn't develop metal working, which of course meant that they were restricted to soft stones and wood. You can argue that they did good for a stone age people, but they certainly don't compare well to European and Asian people in a similar time frame. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:46:41 AM EDT
[#4]
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... 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... No. No it cannot. A cathedral with flying buttress walls, archways, etc, is a far cry from what is literally a pile of rocks. The Greeks, when not chasing boys and sheep, were building colonnaded temples that the Mayans probably would have thought was one of their gods personified. They didn't develop metal working, which of course meant that they were restricted to soft stones and wood. You can argue that they did good for a stone age people, but they certainly don't compare well to European and Asian people in a similar time frame. Less other civilizations to learn from, different resources, you name it. What were the Germans doing in / around 1 AD? |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:49:22 AM EDT
[#5]
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:50:58 AM EDT
[#6]
Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado.
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:56:32 AM EDT
[#7]
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There are large mounds outside of St. Louis. And Ohio, and PA but the ones in PA were leveled for buiding before any one knew what they were. Edit: just to add a link there were mounds all over Pittsburgh but progress probably too them all out before they were ever really discovered. The largest conical burial mound in the U.S. is in West Virginia. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:56:48 AM EDT
[#8]
Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: 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... No. No it cannot. A cathedral with flying buttress walls, archways, etc, is a far cry from what is literally a pile of rocks. The Greeks, when not chasing boys and sheep, were building colonnaded temples that the Mayans probably would have thought was one of their gods personified. They didn't develop metal working, which of course meant that they were restricted to soft stones and wood. You can argue that they did good for a stone age people, but they certainly don't compare well to European and Asian people in a similar time frame. Less other civilizations to learn from, different resources, you name it. What were the Germans doing in / around 1 AD? Wallowing in pig filth and howling at the moon, most likely. Not much different than today, really. Though to be fair, they did have things like metal working, the wheel (I know, no pack animals yadda yadda), and beer. But across the Rhine, the Romans were literally defining what we see as civilization. And much of their own learning came from the Greeks, who did a lot of the same on a much smaller scale, long before the Romans did. The Inca, and to a lesser extent, the Maya, did some neat stuff for stone age people. But I don't care at what point you pick, 1AD or 1600AD, they lagged far behind their contemporaries in Europe and Asia. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 7:01:57 AM EDT
[#9]
Toltec mounds A.D. 650 to 1050
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Posted: 11/26/2012 7:02:09 AM EDT
[#10]
Quoted: Quoted: There are plenty out west. You mean the cave dwellings? Look at Casa Grande in AZ, lots of others too |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 7:05:48 AM EDT
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Seems they are pretty much everywhere else in the world? Google Cahokia Mounds. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 7:15:57 AM EDT
[#12]
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Seems they are pretty much everywhere else in the world? Because things made out of wood tend not to last very long. True, to a certain degree... There are some very ancient ruins in N. America, and there were once a good deal more (think megalithic earthen mounds). The problem is, we tore down most of them in the 19th century to clear the land for farming... |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 7:22:19 AM EDT
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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. This is the most idiotic fucking post of the year to date. Congratulations. Perhaps it should be enshrined as a cautionary tale of the public educational system in California? That's one of the reasons I left . 
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Posted: 11/26/2012 7:31:41 AM EDT
[#14]
Another example where some indigenous people left their mounds all over some perfectly good, flat agricultural land... 
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Posted: 11/26/2012 7:38:34 AM EDT
[#15]
Not really ancient, though. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 7:54:12 AM EDT
[#16]
Go and see the Cahokia mounds some time. The people who built them were FAR more civilized than today's current day inhabitants.
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Posted: 11/26/2012 8:00:12 AM EDT
[#17]
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Detroit. This +1 |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 8:06:09 AM EDT
[#18]
Just want to say that the requirements for being called "Civilization", as I was taught them, didn't include "hi-tech" except anecdotally. Also, except anecdotally, a people's ruins need not have survived to have been a civilization by the requirements I was taught.
I realize the above does not address the OP's question, but it does somewhat address where this topic has evolved. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 10:50:06 AM EDT
[#19]
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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? Dirt mounds that from the air look like animals, are in almost perfect alignment with stars and seasons, not the coliseum but construction took an understanding of mathematics that most on this site don't understand. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 12:27:50 PM EDT
[#20]
Great sights, continue posting, we dont have such things in Central Europe.
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Posted: 11/26/2012 12:38:14 PM EDT
[#21]
Because 10,000 years ago NA was covered in ice?
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Posted: 11/26/2012 12:41:49 PM EDT
[#22]
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Great sights, continue posting, we dont have such things in Central Europe. But you have the bone church |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 12:47:15 PM EDT
[#23]
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http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/k562/jacksfriend/images-3.jpg http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/k562/jacksfriend/Tuzi_1.jpg 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. I was just wondering how people communicated faster than it takes to travel back in the day. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 12:53:38 PM EDT
[#24]
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Great sights, continue posting, we dont have such things in Central Europe. Exactly. The OP and others miss the point that there aren't ancient ruins all over Europe except for thise left mostly by one civilization. (Rome) There were others of course, but mostly in the mediterranian climate and the mid east. Coincidentally, the same latitudes where ruins are found in Asia and The Americas. Go figure. No, the Mayans and Incas and the Aztecs were not carving columns, but they were working stone with tools. Look at the joinery at Machu Pichu. You cannot put a slice of paper between the stones. They did not carve statues of gods & goddesses as the Greeks and Romans did, they carvered them as they envisioned thers. Does the OP think that perhaps because we are descendents of Western Civilization, we are more familiar with the styles of our ancesters and have a preference to them as opposed to others'? Theink we might be biased? These civilizations built cities and temples and canals just as the Europeans did, but they did them differently. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 12:55:57 PM EDT
[#25]
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http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/k562/jacksfriend/images-3.jpg http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/k562/jacksfriend/Tuzi_1.jpg 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. I was just wondering how people communicated faster than it takes to travel back in the day. Mirrors and the proverbial smoke signals. (Polished metal mirrors such as gold) They had great trade routes from Arizona to the Pacific coast. Also there is evidence of McCaws from Central America at Montezuma's Castle as well as Tuzigoot. Montezuma;s Well, just north of the Castle has a canal still in use that is over 1000 years old. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 12:57:56 PM EDT
[#26]
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Posted: 11/26/2012 1:21:49 PM EDT
[#27]
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Mississippian societies were doing very well in 1540 when de Soto marched through the Southeast. I believe Mississipian civilization peaked during the medeival climate optimum and was in severe decline by 1600. Primitive flood plain agriculture supporting a large population is a bit precarious. It's a bit fuzzy, but the research I did on the subject back in school suggested there was a series of really bad storms/floods and a major change in the weather patterns as the warm period ended and the little ice age began and the large population centers failed before whites got there. Mississipian civilization went on, but not as the large, organized agricultural society it had been. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 1:23:05 PM EDT
[#28]
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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. Cliff dwellings. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 1:23:59 PM EDT
[#29]
Quoted: Google "Mound Builders" from the mid west and "Anasazi" in the south west. My first two thoughts. I grew up around Angel Mounds in southern IN. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 1:29:51 PM EDT
[#30]
There are... just not major city type ruins.
There's a village here or there in the southwest. Lack of domesticatable animals. Cows, ox, goats, sheep, horses... all European animals. North America has the Buffalo... South has the Lama... Buffalo show promise but still isn't domesticated today. You wouldn't strap buffalo to a cart... Lama is domesticated but poor at pulling or hauling cargo. So the few ancient ruins are in places that made extensive use of slave labor... or where the environment forced people to gather around limited resources. Another point... Mountains. Rock to make long lasting houses out of... versus forest and wood structures which rot away... |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 1:32:23 PM EDT
[#31]
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... 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... Less other civilizations to learn from, different resources, you name it. What were the Germans doing in / around 1 AD? Wallowing in pig filth and howling at the moon, most likely. Not much different than today, really. Though to be fair, they did have things like metal working, the wheel (I know, no pack animals yadda yadda), and beer. But across the Rhine, the Romans were literally defining what we see as civilization. And much of their own learning came from the Greeks, who did a lot of the same on a much smaller scale, long before the Romans did. The Inca, and to a lesser extent, the Maya, did some neat stuff for stone age people. But I don't care at what point you pick, 1AD or 1600AD, they lagged far behind their contemporaries in Europe and Asia. Why is this? |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 1:38:00 PM EDT
[#32]
Ever been to Detroit?
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Posted: 11/26/2012 1:40:05 PM EDT
[#33]
The politics are ruins, as is the Constitution. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 1:41:56 PM EDT
[#34]
No time build pyramids when your whole life revolves around staying warm. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 3:04:09 PM EDT
[#35]
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Posted: 11/26/2012 3:22:45 PM EDT
[#36]
Quoted: https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/298617_1772875262280_1012393_n.jpg https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/309552_1772840661415_6121068_n.jpg https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/185254_1772843061475_1096103_n.jpg Nice try, Bohr_Adam, but you can't fool me. Those ruins are on Yavin 4, not North America. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 3:24:19 PM EDT
[#37]
Ruins at Brasstown bald Georgia.
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Posted: 11/26/2012 3:27:20 PM EDT
[#38]
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https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/298617_1772875262280_1012393_n.jpg https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/309552_1772840661415_6121068_n.jpg https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/185254_1772843061475_1096103_n.jpg Nice try, Bohr_Adam, but you can't fool me. Those ruins are on Yavin 4, not North America. I googled that, and learned something new today. Now I have to watch Star Wars again... I can't even remember that scene right now. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 3:43:00 PM EDT
[#39]
Quoted: Quoted: Wallowing in pig filth and howling at the moon, most likely. Not much different than today, really. Though to be fair, they did have things like metal working, the wheel (I know, no pack animals yadda yadda), and beer. But across the Rhine, the Romans were literally defining what we see as civilization. And much of their own learning came from the Greeks, who did a lot of the same on a much smaller scale, long before the Romans did. The Inca, and to a lesser extent, the Maya, did some neat stuff for stone age people. But I don't care at what point you pick, 1AD or 1600AD, they lagged far behind their contemporaries in Europe and Asia. Why is this? I'm not saying I agree with everything written in it, but Guns, Germs, and Steel is a pretty good book on the subject. Goes into available crops, pack animals, etc. All kinds of stuff. Or did you mean the Germans? Well, that's just how Germans are wired. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 4:56:15 PM EDT
[#40]
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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. LOL. Teaching at Berkley this year?
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Posted: 11/26/2012 4:57:47 PM EDT
[#41]
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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? If piling up dirt and rocks is the best you have .... run with it. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:34:33 PM EDT
[#42]
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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. 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? Not sure where you are getting your population statistics from, I have never seen anything to suggest that populations in the south were larger. Second, the west was not always as arid as it is now, those ruins in the SW were left by people heavily reliant on agriculture. Why would things be too cold north of the Rio Grande? That doesn't explain civilizations in the northern mid-west, and there were plenty of sedentary cultures in the north. Plus for a decent portion of the early Holocene the climate was warmer everywhere than it is now. As we see in complex hunter/gatherer villages in the PNW, agriculture is not the basis for urbanization, in most cases by the time people start to have to rely on agriculture, there is already urbanization present. Glaciers whether retreating or not produce good conditions for hunter/gatherers. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:40:41 PM EDT
[#43]
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... 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... Less other civilizations to learn from, different resources, you name it. What were the Germans doing in / around 1 AD? Wallowing in pig filth and howling at the moon, most likely. Not much different than today, really. Though to be fair, they did have things like metal working, the wheel (I know, no pack animals yadda yadda), and beer. But across the Rhine, the Romans were literally defining what we see as civilization. And much of their own learning came from the Greeks, who did a lot of the same on a much smaller scale, long before the Romans did. The Inca, and to a lesser extent, the Maya, did some neat stuff for stone age people. But I don't care at what point you pick, 1AD or 1600AD, they lagged far behind their contemporaries in Europe and Asia. Why is this? Europe and Asia had higher populations competing for less resources. People don't take to agriculture until they can't feed everyone by hunting and gathering. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:41:16 PM EDT
[#44]
I think the angel Moroni explained this.
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:45:33 PM EDT
[#45]
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I think the angel Moroni explained this. The devil hid them to trick people? Religion forum is that way ––––––––––––––––––––––> |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:49:05 PM EDT
[#46]
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Because 10,000 years ago NA was covered in ice? Not even close. The ice did not go very far south .... |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:52:47 PM EDT
[#47]
Jocelyn Wildenstein
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:52:54 PM EDT
[#48]
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Mississippian societies were doing very well in 1540 when de Soto marched through the Southeast. I believe Mississipian civilization peaked during the medeival climate optimum and was in severe decline by 1600. Primitive flood plain agriculture supporting a large population is a bit precarious. It's a bit fuzzy, but the research I did on the subject back in school suggested there was a series of really bad storms/floods and a major change in the weather patterns as the warm period ended and the little ice age began and the large population centers failed before whites got there. Mississipian civilization went on, but not as the large, organized agricultural society it had been. There is interesting data from Illinois to support your ideas but further to the south in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas ... fully flurishing Mississippian societies that de Soto encountered. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 6:58:05 PM EDT
[#49]
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Mississippian societies were doing very well in 1540 when de Soto marched through the Southeast. I believe Mississipian civilization peaked during the medeival climate optimum and was in severe decline by 1600. Primitive flood plain agriculture supporting a large population is a bit precarious. It's a bit fuzzy, but the research I did on the subject back in school suggested there was a series of really bad storms/floods and a major change in the weather patterns as the warm period ended and the little ice age began and the large population centers failed before whites got there. Mississipian civilization went on, but not as the large, organized agricultural society it had been. There is interesting data from Illinois to support your ideas but further to the south in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas ... fully flurishing Mississippian societies that de Soto encountered. http://moundville.ua.edu/moundville/ "By the 1500s, most of the area was abandoned with only a few portions of the site still occupied. Although the first Europeans reached the Southeast in the 1540s, the precise ethnic and linguistic links between Moundville’s inhabitants and what became the historic Native American tribes are still not well understood." Moundville is kind of a neat place to check out if you're in the area. I went there last semester for extra credit. I think it was like $15 bucks for a pass and you can prerrty much just check out whatever you want. They also have a nice little museum with a bunch of artifacts. |
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Posted: 11/26/2012 7:01:26 PM EDT
[#50]
Aztalan in Wisconsin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztalan_State_Park
I remember going on school field trips to that place. |
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