One thing that really annoys me on this too is that people always disconsider the non sedentary natives as uncivilized, and that is so dumb, the brazilian natives for example even though they were not building great cities they were a civilization, the whole coastal was a group of tribes that were a cultural homogenous and spoke same language (A thing that actually made Portuguese comunication pretty easy as most of the first natives they found were speaking the same language) with tribes and subtribes living on a semi nomadic lifestyle, planting some food and fishing. these tribes were indepent and had like diferent interests for example during the french attempt to take over brazil ( a classic french goof) two rival tribes alied to each power to try to defeat the other one, and they founded a city after winning, which is the one i live (there is a big statue of the chief like on the street of my house)
another thing people dismiss is all of the very serious and extensive geoengineering and decentralized agriculture done at incredible scale by tribes in north and south america. europeans act like agriculture is when you micromanage the rock pile you've settled down on in order to force food to grow in the barren soil.
like yeah there is a lesser need to innovate to survive when you live in pure abundance, like for example the Amazon Natives had way more of a understanding of engineering like doing moats around their settlements and roads but that is because they were in way less habitable place they need this understanding to deal with the amazon rain and the rivers while the costal natives were living in the atlantic forest which is a lot less agressive and there is also a lesser danger from wildlife as there were not many animals that could hurt a man like in the amazon forest so them being just fine hanging makes a lot of sense there is food everywhere you can make multiple camping sites and re-use them when you come back to the area next time, which takes a lot of mapping and knowing about the area to do
One thing that really annoys me on this too is that people always disconsider the non sedentary natives as uncivilized, and that is so dumb, the brazilian natives for example even though they were not building great cities they were a civilization, the whole coastal was a group of tribes that were a cultural homogenous and spoke same language (A thing that actually made Portuguese comunication pretty easy as most of the first natives they found were speaking the same language) with tribes and subtribes living on a semi nomadic lifestyle, planting some food and fishing. these tribes were indepent and had like diferent interests for example during the french attempt to take over brazil ( a classic french goof) two rival tribes alied to each power to try to defeat the other one, and they founded a city after winning, which is the one i live (there is a big statue of the chief like on the street of my house)
another thing people dismiss is all of the very serious and extensive geoengineering and decentralized agriculture done at incredible scale by tribes in north and south america. europeans act like agriculture is when you micromanage the rock pile you've settled down on in order to force food to grow in the barren soil.
like yeah there is a lesser need to innovate to survive when you live in pure abundance, like for example the Amazon Natives had way more of a understanding of engineering like doing moats around their settlements and roads but that is because they were in way less habitable place they need this understanding to deal with the amazon rain and the rivers while the costal natives were living in the atlantic forest which is a lot less agressive and there is also a lesser danger from wildlife as there were not many animals that could hurt a man like in the amazon forest so them being just fine hanging makes a lot of sense there is food everywhere you can make multiple camping sites and re-use them when you come back to the area next time, which takes a lot of mapping and knowing about the area to do