The Greatest Empire of all Time?

[squealpiggy]

That is why most archaeologist are so impressed by them. When you compare them to any other part of the world in the same relative time, they are more advanced.

Apart from Europe, Asia and East Africa? So they were more advanced than... North America?

No beasts of burden, no metal tools

Technologically unsophisticated.

and yet they did what they did. Imagine if they were left to evolve the way other civilizations where able to?

They were consumed with internecine warfare, famine and crazy crazy religions.

Their major cities were on the verge of collapse, (well the Aztec civilization was) but there would have been others who would have rose up. Just like history has repeated itself many times.

They were headed the same way as the civilisation on Easter Island but on a much larger scale. Total collapse caused by depletion of nutrients because of lack of understanding about agriculture, exacerbated by absurd and damaging religious rituals that revolved around nobility waging war on one another so they could... well so they could eat each other.

Things were not looking good for Meso-America before the Spaniards came along with their shiny helmets and pointy moustaches.

[Ether]

squeal is going in like rap diss track.

[UglyPug]

No modern civilization uses a calendar based upon that of any Meso-American civilization.



I suspect you don't know what "zero sum" means. If you are referring to the concept of zero this was understood in Europe far earlier than the Spanish conquest and therefore this was not an influence on any modern civilisation.



The basis of our understanding of astronomy and orbits comes from observations made by numerous European luminaries, first among whom was probably Johannes Kepler. Mayan understanding was far too primitive to be instructive - those observations had been made by Egyptian astrologers some millenia earlier.



Egyptian pyramid structures of greater magnitude and also greater complexity and precision predated the blocky Meso-American structures. Which, by the way, were used as altars for human sacrifice. Nothing says "scientific progress" like casting magic spells and eating human hearts.



The civilisations of meso-America were on the brink of extinction due to overfarming as they lacked a basic knowledge of soil nutrients. Fallow field agriculture has been a feature of Eurasian farming for hundreds of years before the Spanish conquest.



The. Canoe.

Let me clarify something: South America was conquered by people who arrived in "canoes" that looked like this:





The Aztec and Maya civilisations conquered by Cortez may have been relatively complex given their primitive technology, but they were still centuries behind their conquerors. The Conquistadors had a more sophisticated understanding of just about everything - they were more advanced in every respect. Furthermore they were on the verge of total collapse at the point the Spaniards discovered them

They contributed only to their own isolated development and in no way increased the understanding or the knowledge of European civilisation.

that's one way of looking at it; myself, along with many others (including scholars who don't post on boxingscene) would beg to differ.

[UglyPug]

squeal is going in like rap diss track.

EXACTLY! bumbling, incoherent, one-sided, and lack of any culture, or understanding thereof. .

[UglyPug]

squeal is a spunk, unhappy little man. . .

LOL, the british empire. . . implementing backwards governmental racist policies until 1980!! SIR IAN SMITH FTW!!!

[Walt Liquor]

They contributed only to their own isolated development and in no way increased the understanding or the knowledge of European civilisation.

[Cuauhtémoc1520]

Apart from Europe, Asia and East Africa? So they were more advanced than... North America?

They had each other to learn from. Nothing any civilization of that part of the world did, was without learning from someone who came before them. the pre Colombian civilizations were isolated geographically.

Technologically unsophisticated.

Because they didn't have metal tools and beasts of burden? They didn't have metal tools because they didn't get there yet in there development. They would have eventually. #2, horses, oxen etc were native to Central Mexico so I don't think they had a choice in that one.

They were consumed with internecine warfare, famine and crazy crazy religions.

This is true but so was everyone else in the world basically.

They were headed the same way as the civilisation on Easter Island but on a much larger scale. Total collapse caused by depletion of nutrients because of lack of understanding about agriculture, exacerbated by absurd and damaging religious rituals that revolved around nobility waging war on one another so they could... well so they could eat each other.

Things were not looking good for Meso-America before the Spaniards came along with their shiny helmets and pointy moustaches.

That could be argued but I wouldn't compare them to the civilizations of Easter Island or any other Polynesian civilizations. They were much more advanced in every way. I'm not saying it wouldn't happen but you are diminishing them to some irrelevant civilization that accomplished a lot for being isolated geographically and evolving much faster than their European counter parts in the same era of their time.

[Enayze]

I think a lot of people are overlooking the Galactic Empire.

[Walt Liquor]

defending the british empire, yet making morality based comments on other civilizations?

[SigarSmoker]

The raza got owned in this thread