Weapon/Tool Development/Anthropology... Formerly Blocking useless?

[jobo]

So do the Americas now. They've come a long way recently

not in hill billy land they dont

 

[pdg]

yes don't forget Egypt didnt have,desserts to contend with, oh wait!

Yes, desert one side, sea the other - strips of fertile habitable land that have an area larger than the UK, smaller than quite a few American political states.

Ideally sized in fact for advancement in technology to be necessary to support continued expansion and survival.

 

[pdg]

Indeed there are. And I don't agree with all of them either. And let me say I am not an expert. I just have a keen interest in anthropology, archeology, and linguistics, at a very amateur level. Like you, I like to think things through for myself. If I don't agree, I don't agree. And I may be wrong in my disagreement.

Disagreement is encouraged

If you simply disagree without a competing theory, you can't really say my theory is wrong.

If you have a competing theory, we can both say each others is because xyz.

The more evidence there is for either can sway which is more likely.

As for this particular theory, I am yet to see anything that can show it doesn't apply...

 

[pdg]

not in hill billy land they dont

Buuuut...

Hillbillies are descendents of immigrants, so they had the historical access to the technologies imported with said immigrants.

They cannot be classified as indigenous.

 

[JowGaWolf]

millions of people on two contents with a land bridge are not isolated, north could go south and south could go north, how on earth is that issolation. That's,aside from the fact that the Vikings made it over and you could walk across the ice to Russia if you wanted to, in fact sailing to Russia is no distance

nb the Chinese were effectively isolated for hundreds of years and made massive strides in technology in that time

nbb there is an emerging body of evidence that some of the med cultures made it over pre christ as well, its on maps that predate columbus by a long long time

And yet none of what you say is evidence of the influence that would have occurred due to trade.

 

[jobo]

Yes, desert one side, sea the other - strips of fertile habitable land that have an area larger than the UK, smaller than quite a few American political states.

Ideally sized in fact for advancement in technology to be necessary to support continued expansion and survival.

I'm not understanding where you are going with this, America is an idea location for humanity to progress, it has everything the rest of the world has all in one place, you want fertile land , , tons of it, you want rivers loads of them, you want raw matterial, more than you can count. There is no better place on earth to build a civilisation, the whole point is, they,didn't, then the Europeans turned it into a supper power, in two hundred years, after 12,000 years of just walking after the buffalo

 

[JowGaWolf]

Buuuut...

Hillbillies are descendents of immigrants, so they had the historical access to the technologies imported with said immigrants.

They cannot be classified as indigenous.

This fact is not widely known. Most people in the U.S. think that Hillbillies were U.S. born backwards people. They actually have a very interesting history and are not accurately portrayed. The way they are portrayed in the U.S. is more of what people thought of them and not who they were. My jaw dropped when I learned about the history of the "Hillbilly"

 

[jobo]

And yet non of what you say is evidence of the influence that would have occurred due to trade.

they could have traded with the,Aztec or the Inca, that they chose not to is because of their lack of abilities, not a cause of those lack of abilities

 

[Gerry Seymour]

no my point is the properties of the matterial change the design, no one is going to recreate a,stone hammer in iron, the,stone hammers design was limited by its matterial, there is no pint recreating design flaws in a superior matterial. As,soon as they invented metal hammers, they invented the nail

The properties of the material can cahnge the design. They don't have to. Like the vinyl football, which can follow the same design as the leather one. A stone head can, in fact, be replaced with a nearly identically shaped metal one. That may not be the best use of the material (metal), but it will actually work - perhaps better than the stone, perhaps not. Is that best practice? Probably not. Does it still happen? Of course.

You're arguing "doesn't happen", using "shouldn't happen" evidence.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

those are mallets, you cant hammer with a mallet by defintion.

you can strike or knock it thump, but only hammers can hammer, ,

A ball-peen hammer doesn't usually have a claw on the other end of the head.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

i see European history is a bit lacking, the French are celts, that took over much of Europe, there is very little,difference between the,French, the welsh the Spanish and the Italians. The germanic tribes had significant differences, so Sweden, Norway Germany Poland England etc are much the same as,each other and very different to the,celts. It's nit proximity that makes a difference to the national look, so much as who invaded who .

I'm not sure you and I are saying anything in this part that conflicts.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

the intrinsic difference between a mallet and a hammer is it purpose, hammers are hard designed to hit as hard as possible with out damaging the hammer, mallets are soft( er) designed to deform so not as to damage the thing being hit

Wait, I thought all hammers had claws. Wasn't that your claim a few posts ago?

 

[Gerry Seymour]

i think that another chicken and egg argument, farming increases population density considerably, ergo when Europa people were nomadic/ hunter gatherers they had a low population density as that's all that life style would support,

Agreed. The two can work in reverse. In either case, there's technology that won't likely spontaneously occur among traveling groups.

One correction: farming doesn't directly increase population density. It makes it possible/supportable. It probably does have an attraction effect in more mature societies, but among competing tribes, that wouldn't occur.

 

[jobo]

The properties of the material can cahnge the design. They don't have to. Like the vinyl football, which can follow the same design as the leather one. A stone head can, in fact, be replaced with a nearly identically shaped metal one. That may not be the best use of the material (metal), but it will actually work - perhaps better than the stone, perhaps not. Is that best practice? Probably not. Does it still happen? Of course.

You're arguing "doesn't happen", using "shouldn't happen" evidence.

apart from the end object being a,sphere , there is no comparison between leather and vinyl footballs in there qualities of flight, bounce curve or if they knock you out cold when you head one ,

could they have made one as bad out of vinyl , I'm not sure they could, they could never get vinyl to absorb 5times it own weight in water or if you waterproofed it 4times its own weight in dubbing

 

[Gerry Seymour]

people are putting forward there being nomadic as an excuse for them being tech backwards, I've made the point that a lot were not , that being so, we need to look elsewhere for a reason they remained neolithic long long after most of the rest of the world progressed

You think people are making excuses? You've missed the point. They're putting forth theories (which are attempts to explain, not attempts to excuse).

You're also looking at dates, but that ignores differential progression from population density, climactic factors, and ease of living. Disease probably factors in, as well.

And if you made the point that many weren't nomadic, I missed that. All I've seen you do is argue the relationship between nomadic lifestyle (and what leads to its end) and the development of metallurgy.

 

[jobo]

Agreed. The two can work in reverse. In either case, there's technology that won't likely spontaneously occur among traveling groups.

One correction: farming doesn't directly increase population density. It makes it possible/supportable. It probably does have an attraction effect in more mature societies, but among competing tribes, that wouldn't occur.

it dies directly increase population, over,several generations, at least that what happened to all cultures when farming took off

 

[jobo]

You think people are making excuses? You've missed the point. They're putting forth theories (which are attempts to explain, not attempts to excuse).

You're also looking at dates, but that ignores differential progression from population density, climactic factors, and ease of living. Disease probably factors in, as well.

And if you made the point that many weren't nomadic, I missed that. All I've seen you do is argue the relationship between nomadic lifestyle (and what leads to its end) and the development of metallurgy.

the point that a nomadic life meant technology was difficult was,somebody elses, i just pointed out that, that didn't stop other nomadic tribes and,ALSO that being nomadic wasn't universal

 

[JowGaWolf]

Russia is huge as well, Asia is a lot bigger, they still managed to stop being stone aged

They both traded with countries that had significantly different technology and cultures as well. Their technology did not develop in a vacuum.

 

[pdg]

I'm not understanding where you are going with this, America is an idea location for humanity to progress, it has everything the rest of the world has all in one place, you want fertile land , , tons of it, you want rivers loads of them, you want raw matterial, more than you can count. There is no better place on earth to build a civilisation, the whole point is, they,didn't, then the Europeans turned it into a supper power, in two hundred years, after 12,000 years of just walking after the buffalo

Yes, exactly.

There was enough directly available resources to support tribal society with no need to develop technology to survive.

The Europeans, who had societal and environmental pushes to force development in agriculture and warfare took those advances with them, and all but wiped out the indigenous people.

Then they used that technology to exploit the rich new environment to a whole other level.

Take away farming and transport from the Americas and the population would rapidly reduce to (probably) pre-Columbian levels, and likely fall back to tribal communities.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

they could have traded with the,Aztec or the Inca, that they chose not to is because of their lack of abilities, not a cause of those lack of abilities

Do you have any idea how far the Navajo were from the Inca and Aztec? I think you underestimate the distance between, the natural barriers that exist in that direction, etc. Remember that travel and expansion first tend to follow the easier routes. Mainland NA has vast regions that are easy to traverse. When tribes came to barriers, there was little reason to cross them. And I don't recall there being a sea-faring culture (might just be my ignorance) among the NA aboriginals. Without that, there's little chance of interaction bleeding across larger distances. The northern Europeans (and others, I'd guess) provided a better early dispersion of ideas because of their sea travel.

You'd have to compare similar development levels, not similar dates, to get relevant comparison. So compare neolithic ground travel in Europe to the same in NA.