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To: muawiyah
I think I mentioned 'other than' farther south latin america and I don't consider dirt mounds proof of high levels of civilization anymore than I'd ascribe Stonehenge to an advanced civilization.
In the long run wheels, pulleys, sanitation, and a written language trump astronomy unless you have some other means of getting past the lower atmosphere. However, math skills appear to have been quite high - making an interesting look into what skills are needed first and what skills are most readily acquired.

My sense of meso (south) american history is one of a series of ascendant & descendant cultures, rarely close in proximity in time and geography, seldom peaceful, and generally disappearing without clear cause (to us).

Yes there was trade but in North America it appears mostly between separated groups or by way of pillage and ritualized theft.

I doubt that burning off land was intended to 'foster deer...". Rather to allow short term planting/residence and to drive game. It's also my understanding that those who practiced clearing by burning did not stay in that place too many years before they'd used up the ground or game or both.
Note that until quite recently, forest fires were a bad thing in our own culture and only recently have they been seen as beneficial by the masses OR government.

Next question, what caused the disappearance of the Anasazi, Olmec, Toltec, and various other pyramid or citadel builders that I believe went away before "our"diseases could touch them?

50 posted on 08/18/2005 12:56:50 PM PDT by norton (it's an honest question, I just talk that way)
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To: norton
The Anasazi built with mud brick. Construction of a similar nature had been going on throughout the Americas for several thousand years.

Now, concerning dirt mounds ~ such structures are indicative of a high degree of social cooperation which, in turn, is always suggestive of religion and governmental forms far in advance of what you might find in the Paleolithic.

The various "figures" created in large mound structures are equal to the best of similar structures built in what is now the United Kingdom, Japan, China, and the Middle East, and far superior to anything similar built in Subsaharan Africa.

As far as "pullies" and "wheels" are concerned, the block and tackle had been known since the early Paleolithic. All you need are chunks of wood and rope ~ which can be made from various kinds of vines, natural wood fibers, cotton, and so forth.

As you know the advantage is gained through what amounts to a flexible lever, and not simply as a consequence of having a wheel.

Now, speaking of high technology, just about everything you eat today had its origins in the science of agronomy as applied in the Americas. Whether you are talking about giant strawberries and popcorn (both attributed to the Iriquois), squash, corn, beans, chocolate, tomatoes, potatoes or hundreds of other farm products, the American Indians made people in the Old World look like they had been stuck in early Paleolithic times.

BTW, you should bother sometime to learn Plains Indians sign language. It's closest congnate is the Chinese written language found in the Shang Dynasty materials. Most likely it is Chinese, and probably brought here by people who settled along the Mississippi. The Plains Indians are, of course, descendants of the tribes living roughly in the vicinity of Cahokia from roughly 1000 BCE to the 1500s when DeSoto visited them.

52 posted on 08/18/2005 5:19:13 PM PDT by muawiyah (/ hey coach do I gotta' put in that "/sarcasm " thing again?)
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