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Thread: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

  1. #1

    Default Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    Not my idea as I got it from one of the rare times I watched tv.

    Nonetheless, trade, communication, agriculture, war, horses were used for everything in Eurasian civilizations, often being the key of military successes.

    Has anyone read anything interesting about this?

    It can single handedly explain the limited development of North American natives and the relatively low number of urban civilizations in the rest of the Americas.

  2. #2

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    Quote Originally Posted by Basil II the B.S View Post
    It can single handedly explain the limited development of North American natives and the relatively low number of urban civilizations in the rest of the Americas.
    Well technically no, as you can use other animals than horses to plough (none of which were domesticated in the Americas), and dogs and llamas were used for trade.

    To be honest if they had domesticated cattle but no horses/donkeys I think urban civilizations wouldn't have been set back much. Horses are only key for nomadic pastoralists.

  3. #3

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    But horses move significantly faster. Sure you can use other animals for agriculture, but in terms of transport of people noone matches.

    In an environment like North America with massive plains it'd make an enourmous difference.

  4. #4

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    Transport of people really doesn't matter to sedentary cultures - only goods. Americans had no trouble trading their surplus with sleds and boats - they had little in excess. You get inferior, but relative performance pulling a wagon with oxen, but cattle are far more useful as food and do better in more environments. Some breeds of horses are the best for farming but in much of the world they were used rarely if ever, for either carts or ploughs - they're delicate and expensive animals.

    When horses were introduced they revolutionized tribes living in the prairies, but they would have remained nomadic tribes, just as on the Eurasian steppe. You can't develop agriculture on steppes - you exhaust the soil in mere years.

  5. #5

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    It's simply a matter of speed. Horses make everything faster. Transport of people, goods, communication. Societies could work twice as fast, especially in a large environment. If a society works faster you can argue it develops in less time.

    You mention nomadic steppe tribes as an example, but let's look at Turks for example, without horses, their history would be massively different, they would still be in Central Asia rather than Anatolia. Similarly horses were a primary element for the success of Mongols, without them extending from China to Europe would be impossible.
    It's not like nomadid societies never had any significant effect on Eurasian history.

  6. #6

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    Quote Originally Posted by Basil II the B.S View Post
    It's simply a matter of speed. Horses make everything faster. Transport of people, goods, communication. Societies could work twice as fast, especially in a large environment. If a society works faster you can argue it develops in less time.

    You mention nomadic steppe tribes as an example, but let's look at Turks for example, without horses, their history would be massively different, they would still be in Central Asia rather than Anatolia. Similarly horses were a primary element for the success of Mongols, without them extending from China to Europe would be impossible.
    It's not like nomadid societies never had any significant effect on Eurasian history.
    That might be, but I think in the grand scheme of things, the lack of domestic cattle or sheep analogues in most of the Americas was a bigger problem. Obviously there are bison, Bighorn Sheep, tapirs* etc. in some places, but the question is why they were not domesticated and if it's been attempted by the natives (does anybody have data on that?), or whether it might never have been feasible in the first place.

    * tapirs are actually related to horses...

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    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    That might be, but I think in the grand scheme of things, the lack of domestic cattle or sheep analogues in most of the Americas was a bigger problem. Obviously there are bison, Bighorn Sheep, tapirs* etc. in some places, but the question is why they were not domesticated and if it's been attempted by the natives (does anybody have data on that?), or whether it might never have been feasible in the first place.
    I don't know about the particularities of big horn sheep, though I am aware of a few key differences in herd structure and enviroment that differentiate it from Mouflons. However Buffalo are not domesticable, they are agressive, of wild temperament and the majority of the extant species are almost entirely genetically mixed with european cattle, with only around 15 to 25,000 purebreds recorded from the maternal line alone (not accounting for male imput), thusly most behavior that could be deemed amicable towards domestication probably stems from this exterior genetic stock, and even then they are just barely cooperative.
    Tapir's, at least those readily accesible to Mesoamerican states (the Baird Tapir) don't seem particularly inclined towards domestication either, they are solitary and territorial animals, take more than a year to gestate a single offspring and reach sexual maturity between one and a half and two years time. Compare this to the domesticated pig which reaches sexual maturity somewhere between 3 months to a year, with gestation periods of no more than a hundred or so days.

    Now their exists a species of wild hog called the Peccary that ranges from northern Argentina to southern USA. I'm aware that the peccary were kept as livestock in a fair amount of Mesoamerican regions (Particularly the Yucatan and Oaxaca) even to this day, and recent studies of the massive Mayan kindom of El Mirador (6th century BCE to 1rd century CE) suggest a very large amount of small structures that seemed to have served as pens for peccary livestock, so their use in mass dates several thousand years and yet the animal itself never seemed to have been domesticated at all.
    Complementing that, a couple of years back I recall reading a report by I believe the Mexican department of agriculture, deeming the white lipped peccary as unsuitable for domestication, due to, among other things, a particularly agressive temperament. I recall the process lasting at least a decade or so? But to be honest I don't quite recall the entire details of the report.
    Last edited by saxdude; June 03, 2017 at 02:37 PM.

  8. #8

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    There's actually several species of peccary. However as you said, they're famously aggressive - though I wonder how much more so than wild boar from Eurasia; has that really been measured in a scientific way? Boar have a reputation of their own, although that's more to do with wounded individuals (wounded or cornered males have been known to kill hounds, hunters, and even some unlucky tigers in self-defence), or sows protecting their offspring. By the way, there are also at least two species of wild pig in Africa.

    Regarding bison and cattle, it's worth noting that there is a European bison species which has never been tamed (and hence almost went extinct), whose range must've overlapped with that of the Aurochs. I'm still not entirely sure what made the Aurochs the best bovine candidate for domestication vis-ŕ-vis bisons and (in Africa) Cape Buffalo - at least the male Aurochs was a dangerous beast as well.

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    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    There's actually several species of peccary.
    I'm aware, they are four actually, but I don't know what you'd call the peccary, a genus? Feels right to call them a species with a set of subspecies but I'm no biologist. Whatever the case they seemed to have been suitable to be kept as livestock but not as domesticated as their european family members. The white lipped peccary herds range from 20 to 300 individuals, and breed at most seasons of the year, which would make them ideal livestock for large cities such as El Mirador. On the other hand sexual maturity takes a couple of years, and gestation is roughly 250 days with an average of one or two offspring, and 6 months of weaning.
    So that could be a part of it as well? Coupled with their agressive behavior, it might make Peccaries unsuitable for smaller scale pig raising, as opposed to more large scale farming or simply hunting.
    This is speculation of course, but the evidence does seem to suggest that peccaries are not a domesticable animal. I'll try to find the report relating to modern attempts at domestication.

    Regarding bison and cattle, it's worth noting that there is a European bison species which has never been tamed (and hence almost went extinct), whose range must've overlapped with that of the Aurochs. I'm still not entirely sure what made the Aurochs the best bovine candidate for domestication vis-ŕ-vis bisons and (in Africa) Cape Buffalo - at least the male Aurochs was a dangerous beast as well.
    It is indeed an interesting point, and further cements the idea that Bison aren't really useful cattle comparisons for the New World. It's hard to tell what it is that makes bison so difficult to domesticate, but perhaps it has less to do with agression and more to do with power structure within the herd, among other things. I bet there are probably studies relating to this somewhere.
    Last edited by saxdude; June 03, 2017 at 04:59 PM.

  10. #10

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    Quote Originally Posted by saxdude View Post
    However Buffalo are not domesticable, they are agressive, of wild temperament and the majority of the extant species are almost entirely genetically mixed with european cattle, with only around 15 to 25,000 purebreds recorded from the maternal line alone (not accounting for male imput), thusly most behavior that could be deemed amicable towards domestication probably stems from this exterior genetic stock, and even then they are just barely cooperative.
    But that docility is a product of domestication, not the reason for it. Aurochs were huge, much bigger than their domestic descendants. Having stood next a fully reconstructed Middle Eastern Auroch skeleton, it's much more surprising to me that aurochs were ever domesticated than that bison never were.

    Dall sheep were only in the northwest of North America, but they seem pretty domesticatable:



    Bighorn sheep would have probably have to be penned to be domesticated, but that's how horses seem to have been domesticated (for food originally):



    That a species can be domesticated though, doesn't seem to be enough. For most of human prehistory, people all over the world lived near likely domesticatable species, but didn't. Then all of a sudden (in relative terms) people in the Middle East domesticated several species. Not any sort of bird though, despite having a local pheasant species, which is strange because when chickens arrived from the east, they were more than happy to incorporate them.

    People in the Andes domesticated lamas, which could maybe have spread all over if the geography had been more amenable to it. I think domestic turkeys spread from Mesoamerica to through the area what is now the southern US.
    Quote Originally Posted by Enros View Post
    You don't seem to be familiar with how the burden of proof works in when discussing social justice. It's not like science where it lies on the one making the claim. If someone claims to be oppressed, they don't have to prove it.


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    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    But that docility is a product of domestication, not the reason for it. Aurochs were huge, much bigger than their domestic descendants. Having stood next a fully reconstructed Middle Eastern Auroch skeleton, it's much more surprising to me that aurochs were ever domesticated than that bison never were.
    You could say the same thing about the wild boar and the peccary, yet there is evidence for continual usage of the latter for live stock purposes since at least 300 BCE (and probably earlier), as well as very recent attempt, with no apreciatable behavioral shift, they are as wild as they have been for ages. Moreso, bison aren't docile at all, and american cattle owners have been trying to mix them with domesticated cattle since the 1800's, to such an extent that it is unlikely that any true purebred Bison exists today.
    It seems to me that it has something to do with Bison behavior vis a vis the Auroch, as opposed to it's physical imposition.


    Bighorn sheep would have probably have to be penned to be domesticated, but that's how horses seem to have been domesticated (for food originally):
    That a species can be domesticated though, doesn't seem to be enough. For most of human prehistory, people all over the world lived near likely domesticatable species, but didn't. Then all of a sudden (in relative terms) people in the Middle East domesticated several species. Not any sort of bird though, despite having a local pheasant species, which is strange because when chickens arrived from the east, they were more than happy to incorporate them.
    Regarding Big Horn sheep I admit I'm not familiar with the species nor how old world sheep were domesticated, but there are subtle behavioral differences that in theory explain why attempts at domestication weren't made or weren't succesful, which include the lack of dominance heirarchies, which play a big part in flocking behavior in domesticated sheep.
    Perhaps they are domesticatable with a fair amount of work and time put into it, but ultimatly the requirements when compared to Mouflon sheep are different, and I'm not quite sure to what extent these differences affect the domestication process, but probably a lot. You have to wonder if catering to these differences was ultimatly worth the effort for the people that were living near the habitat of these animals.

    And thats kind of the gist of it isn't it? People follow the path of least resistance when available, and sometimes the question of why a species was domesticated here, and not there, is because it's just that lil' bit much harder to do it with this sub-species than that sub species, and that's all it takes for people to not bother. People have attempted to domesticate Bison for 200 years at least, and that's with the monetary investment of one of the largest economical superpowers in human history and still no cigar. Aurochs were just better animals for domestication it seems, even if they are both just furry cows to you and me.



    Regarding the videos, they can be penned and be guided to behave in a certain endearing ways, but in much the same way, does having a cage full of talking parrots constitute a domesticated species? How about Alligator farms? Or work/war elephants?


    People in the Andes domesticated lamas, which could maybe have spread all over if the geography had been more amenable to it. I think domestic turkeys spread from Mesoamerica to through the area what is now the southern US.
    Perhaps, they are not that much better than humans as pack animals though, it would have been interesting to see how non Andean cultures made use of them. I'm not entirely sure but I do think the evidence suggests that the idea of turkey domestication was spread from mesoamerica into the american southwest though.
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3414452/
    Last edited by saxdude; June 03, 2017 at 05:16 PM.

  12. #12

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    Quote Originally Posted by saxdude View Post
    Regarding Big Horn sheep I admit I'm not familiar with the species nor how old world sheep were domesticated, but there are subtle behavioral differences that in theory explain why attempts at domestication weren't made or weren't succesful, which include the lack of dominance heirarchies, which play a big part in flocking behavior in domesticated sheep.
    Perhaps they are domesticatable with a fair amount of work and time put into it, but ultimatly the requirements when compared to Mouflon sheep are different, and I'm not quite sure to what extent these differences affect the domestication process, but probably a lot. You have to wonder if catering to these differences was ultimatly worth the effort for the people that were living near the habitat of these animals.

    And thats kind of the gist of it isn't it? People follow the path of least resistance when available, and sometimes the question of why a species was domesticated here, and not there, is because it's just that lil' bit much harder to do it with this sub-species than that sub species, and that's all it takes for people to not bother. People have attempted to domesticate Bison for 200 years at least, and that's with the monetary investment of one of the largest economical superpowers in human history and still no cigar. Aurochs were just better animals for domestication it seems, even if they are both just furry cows to you and me.
    I actually think domestication efforts were probably not deliberate in the first place, at least not until a culture already had evidence that it could be done with other species. It seems to me that it was probably initially saving some of the young from hunted animals for later, but which one are you going to eat first? Probably the one that gives you the most trouble, meaning if you keep some long enough to breed, it's more likely to be those that are more docile. Another possibility is animals sort of domesticating themselves, like what those dall sheep are doing, those that are less afraid are more likely to follow people and beg for food, though that's a risky business for the animals, seems like it could have been the case with dogs though. As far as path of least resistance, yeah, nobody bothered to domesticate foxes until that Russian project, and why not? Probably why bother, we already had dogs, and they're better for our purposes.

    Quote Originally Posted by saxdude View Post
    Perhaps, they are not that much better than humans as pack animals though, it would have been interesting to see how non Andean cultures made use of them.
    They can be ridden, although they're not very big, but neither were horses at first. Maybe they could have been turned into something more sturdy via breeding if there had been more time, but again, why bother once horses showed up.

    Related to that and the topic of the thread, I don't really see that civilization was hindered in the Americas. It had a different start point chronologically, but civilization only arose independently a few times over the tens of thousands of years of our species. I question the premise because I don't know that development proceeded at a different pace once a settled farming population came into being.

    Quote Originally Posted by saxdude View Post
    I'm not entirely sure but I do think the evidence suggests that the idea of turkey domestication was spread from mesoamerica into the american southwest though.
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3414452/
    Thanks for this.
    Last edited by sumskilz; June 04, 2017 at 06:58 AM. Reason: heat induced cognitive deficits
    Quote Originally Posted by Enros View Post
    You don't seem to be familiar with how the burden of proof works in when discussing social justice. It's not like science where it lies on the one making the claim. If someone claims to be oppressed, they don't have to prove it.


  13. #13

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    Quote Originally Posted by Basil II the B.S View Post
    It's simply a matter of speed. Horses make everything faster. Transport of people, goods, communication. Societies could work twice as fast, especially in a large environment. If a society works faster you can argue it develops in less time.

    You mention nomadic steppe tribes as an example, but let's look at Turks for example, without horses, their history would be massively different, they would still be in Central Asia rather than Anatolia. Similarly horses were a primary element for the success of Mongols, without them extending from China to Europe would be impossible.
    It's not like nomadid societies never had any significant effect on Eurasian history.
    Ruminants need to graze constantly to survive, and even that is dependent on the environment. If you use horses for farm work or transport they need to be fed instead. They don't make everything more efficient - if they're not making you more food than they cost they're not worth it. If the already urban civilizations of the Andes, Amazon, Yucatan were given horses they would have been much less useful than in Europe. For others, definitely Mississippian cultures, they could have been a big benefit. They could have developed extensive farming, expanded and been more resilient to famine.

    But the speed of horses is largely irrelevant. Larger states do not cause societal advances, not that the Incas needed horses to create or administer one of the world's largest empires. And being conquered by horse-riding nomads like the Mongols or Turks certainly does not help or create urban civilizations.

    Technically your answer is that any large work animal would have helped, not just horses, and possibly horses least of all.

  14. #14

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    I'm leaving farm work aside for a moment as there are alternative that can be arguably better than horses for it.

    For communitcation and transport however they are still far better.

  15. #15

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    How would these have encouraged development though?

    Tribes that didn't have agriculture would find horses useful for many things, but would never settle down because of them. The Mongols, Turks, Bulgars never settled down, they conquered farming societies and became part of them in time. This didn't lead to lasting urban development where little-to-none existed before.

    Tribes with agriculture, or young urban cultures, would have had an easier time trading with horses, but were presumably trading everything they could anyway. They didn't need to travel far regularly except to hunt. The gains would be small if just taking that into account. They would have been more helpful as a source of food and hide, though just about any farm animal is a better choice for eating, and others have wool.

  16. #16

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    Well, think about it, if you can transport material for buildings in weeks instead of months, doesn't make development faster?
    If goods reach a warehouse faster, can it prevent starvation or make a population healthier?
    If an idea reaches a place years before, doesn't it make the spread of it faster? It opens possibilities that do not exist until then.

  17. #17

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    This is all true, but of minor impact, and you can use other animals for all of these things. You build with wood or mud if stone is too hard to move, build granaries closer to your fields if they're too far - you use more labour but they managed. I can't speak on how technology spreads, but the Americans' biggest failing was their lack of industrial metalworking. This wasn't due to too few cultures knowing about metal or lack of trading.

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    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    Quote Originally Posted by Basil II the B.S View Post
    ...
    It can single handedly explain the limited development of North American natives and the relatively low number of urban civilizations in the rest of the Americas.
    I disagree. There's some good point ITT in response, I'll just recap my own (mostly ignorant) position.

    Animal domestication occurs at first to harness animals as docile meat, not as labour or for secondary products. The possible exception is hunting aids, that is dogs and raptors, but even dogs were possibly domesticated as food first. The Americans were definitely at that stage, with guinea pigs and other animals on the menu.

    However the domestication of animals is a different kettle of fish to "civilisation" that is the establishment of urban centres, an hierarchic society etc. Domesticated animals do aid in developing civilisation but the horse played less of a part in any of the great classical civilisations than say the caprids or bovines.

    Given the damage done to "civilised" societies by steppe nomads on horseback (from the Cimmerians to the Mongols) one could argue the horse was as much of an obstacle as an aid to civilisation.

    Quote Originally Posted by sumskilz View Post
    ...I don't really see that civilization was hindered in the Americas. It had a different start point chronologically, but civilization only arose independently a few times over the tens of thousands of years of our species. I question the premise because I don't know that development proceeded at a different pace once a settled farming population came into being...
    This is a fascinating point. Civilisation seems to be initiated by the need to support large numbers in a small area. I find Fernand Braudel's thesis about the importance of narrow North South pathways (which become loci for migrations in periods of climate change) very persuasive: for example the Levant, Mesopotamia, the eastern plain of China, the Punjab and the Nile all would have provided choke points for hunter gatherers to congregate seasonally, and subsequently sustained larger populations which were forced to adapt radically once the migrations ceased or changed.

    Both the central American highlands and the Andean coastal plain are such "choke points": perhaps the Mississippi valley is one too, and its no surprise there was an incipient civilisation developing there for a while. Perhaps environmental events in the Americas forcing migrations through the choke points occurred later than in the Old World?

    Nevertheless the Americas did develop urban centres, public institutions, metal working, complex religion and (the most compelling evidence of civilisation) decadent drug use and weird art. Heads inside heads, man. HEADS INSIDE THEIR HEADS!

    WUT


    I accept the thesis that the American civilizational clock started later than in the Old World, (it may be that their were fewer suitable sites so critical mass took longer to develop, or the dislocations of prey happened later), and when the Mesopotamians founded their cities there weren't any riding horses around: they had to be imported from central Asia through a complex osmotic relationship with the "uncivilised" steppe peoples.
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    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    Quote Originally Posted by sumskilz View Post
    I actually think domestication efforts were probably not deliberate in the first place, at least not until a culture already had evidence that it could be done with other species. It seems to me that it was probably initially saving some of the young from hunted animals for later, but which one are you going to eat first? Probably the one that gives you the most trouble, meaning if you keep some long enough to breed, it's more likely to be those that are more docile. Another possibility is animals sort of domesticating themselves, like what those dall sheep are doing, those that are less afraid are more likely to follow people and beg for food, though that's a risky business for the animals, seems like it could have been the case with dogs though. As far as path of least resistance, yeah, nobody bothered to domesticate foxes until that Russian project, and why not? Probably why bother, we already had dogs, and they're better for our purposes.
    Yeah it's what I'm thinking as well, at least where Bison and Bighorns are concerned, since neither seems to lend itself well to captivity unless you manage to have a strong infrastructure in which to consistantly house and care for them, thus any accidental acclimatization seems unlikely. I don't know about self domestication regarding the dall sheep though, at least when compared to canines and felines who seemed to be the ones "offering their services", where as the dall sheep are just ceding themselves to curiosity from what I can tell; to be fair the domestication process is rather vague and you can't really measure how much input is necessary from both humans and the animal itself, I would assume that any animal that can be domesticated requires at least some measure of self domestication.
    It seems to me that predatory animals are the type who are more likely to self domesticate, seeing as they seem more likely to risk their lives for a potential easy meal.


    Quote Originally Posted by sumskilz View Post
    They can be ridden, although they're not very big, but neither were horses at first. Maybe they could have been turned into something more sturdy via breeding if there had been more time, but again, why bother once horses showed up.
    That's actually an interesting point, I know Llama's and Alpaca's aren't fantastic cargo holders, and more often than not the Inca depended more on porters who were more reliable and could go on for longer stretches of time in harsh Andean terrain. But if sent to more amicable habitats such as the Mexican central basin, which is largely plain, template and of high altitude, to be developed as both livestock and work animals, then perhaps a relationship much like that of the human and the horse would have occured (or more accuratly the human and the camel).
    Though one has to wonder why then did something like that not occur in the Andes itself? I'm no expert in Andean culture, but perhaps it could be due to terrain and ecological conditions? There are some evenly leveled niches in the Andes, particularly towards the coastline, but these are few and far between, from what I can tell, so perhaps it was simply a matter of little potential riding use for Llama's in rocky terrain? Horses are afterall famously useless when terrain gets rough; All the while population figures from Andean urban centers, while big, seem to be on average, smaller than their Mesoamerican counterparts. I can't find any accurate source for the preconquest inca populations of places like Cusco and Choquequirao, I found one unsourced site claiming 150,000 people at it's [Cusco's] zennith, and for Chan Chan (a Chimu city), around 20,000 - 60,000 to 100,000 people at it's zenith, though the latter number seems to come from an old source (Middendorf 1894), so I don't know it's modern validity, these being some of the major cities I can think of for the Andes region. So maybe Andean peoples just couldn't afford the investment that larger animals necesitated?
    But this is just conjecture on my part, it'd be nice if some expert in andean cultures could pitch in, maybe Llama's and Alpaca's have biological limitations to growth and carry sizes.


    Quote Originally Posted by sumskilz View Post
    Related to that and the topic of the thread, I don't really see that civilization was hindered in the Americas. It had a different start point chronologically, but civilization only arose independently a few times over the tens of thousands of years of our species. I question the premise because I don't know that development proceeded at a different pace once a settled farming population came into being.

    Thanks for this.
    I agree with the general statement, it doesn't seem like the spread and development of civilization was stifled much by the lack of horses, if anything proximity to civilization and horses didn't seem enough to pressure some Northern native americans into sedentary lifestyles with the coming of europeans anyway. If anything it intensified nomadic activity, adding to the point made by pathfinder.
    The Mapuche are another good example, showing adaptability and the restructuring of identity and society when faced with both the Inca and Spanish invaders, the horse was nothing more than another tool that they apropriated from the would be conquerors, rather than a means of spreading civilization itself.
    And your welcome!


    @Cyclops

    I don't think the OP is disregarding Andean and Mesoamerican civilizations, as opposed to asking wether the lack of horses hindered the spread of their civilizations (or rather the concept of civilization), in other parts of America traditionally though as hunter gatherer only. I don't think that was the case, first and foremost because they did spread: Southwestern North American cultures such as the Pueblo and the Hopi were heavily influenced by Mesoamerica, with direct cultural parallels and social-religious concepts, hell they even have dedicated ball game fields. There isn't some wide gap of desert and HG's between the southwest and the northen most borders of Mesoamerica, but several towns and settlements linking passageways between the two cultural areas such as Chalchuihuites in Zacatecas and Paquime in Chihuahua. Mayan influenced reached well into central America all the way to Panama, and it's unlikely that the Mississipi Chiefdoms arose independantly either, as their expansion and growth was due in no small part to the large scale cultivation of Maize which is shown to have been domesticated and spread exclusively from southern central Mexico:
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC122905/
    https://teosinte.wisc.edu/pdfs/YV_Directional_Evol.pdf

    Quote Originally Posted by From Article
    We present phylogenetic analyses based on 264 individual plants, each genotyped at 99 microsatellites, that challenge the multiple-origins hypothesis. Instead, our results indicate that all maize arose from a single domestication in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. Our analyses also indicate that the oldest surviving maize types are those of the Mexican highlands with maize spreading from this region over the Americas along two major paths. Our phylogenetic work is consistent with a model based on the archaeological record suggesting that maize diversified in the highlands of Mexico before spreading to the lowlands. We also found only modest evidence for postdomestication gene flow from teosinte into maize
    For the Amazonian societies it's a bit harder to argue, mostly because of little information out there(that I'm aware of anyway) and constant destruction of the amazonian rainforests by illegal logging and other such activities. As far as I'm aware of (but this may well be outdated) Amazonian societies begin to develop around 1000 BCE, based on large scale chiefdomes with dense population aggregates (between thousands and tens of thousands), mound construction, warlike and tributary tendencies and widespread trade, not unlike the Olmecs come to think of it, with the earliest archaeological evidence coming from south eastern Brazil, as opposed to near the Andes were you'd expect to find such growth. So the Amazon could possibly be considered the starting point of it's own civilizations or part of a greater range of transition into sedentary lifestyles in South America.


    I think the other part of the problem of the OP's premise, might be visual bias. The expansion of civilization might seem rather small and concentrated when looking at a traditional world map, but when taking account the actual sizes in regards to raw square kilometers, as well as the above mentioned spheres of influence, it becomes actually fairly large:
    http://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!...MjE0MTMzNjA)Nw
    Last edited by saxdude; June 05, 2017 at 05:08 PM.

  20. #20

    Default Re: Lack of horses in the Americas, how much did it hinder civilization development?

    Nobody mentions Mississippians, Iroquois, or Pueblos, or North Pacific people like Tlingits? Weird. They got pretty far without horses.

    Look up Cahokia. That used to be a large city-state similar to the stuff you find in Mexico. I like to imagine the Eastern part of the United States sits on top of a prehistoric empire without realizing it.
    Last edited by Slytacular; June 10, 2017 at 08:53 AM.

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