Now I wanna make a movie about a tribe of Salish natives discovering a boat filled with katanas and conquering their neighbours to form a small kingdom.
Then a boatload with european sword pommels arrived in Mexico, which caused the destruction of many mesoamerican civilizations like the Maya an Olmecs.
Comparing stone age to primitivism is a common misconception. Not only the Mayans were quite civilized, but even stone age Europe was much more civilized than we tend to think.
While I agree with your point (I think that we should abandon the term "stone age" here entirely though, in anthropoligical contexts the terms are only used in reference to eurasian history); I think you are setting up a false dichotomy. Yes, Stone age Europe was more complex then just cavemen living in huts, but to compare Stone Age Europe, to, say, the Classical Maya is really incorrect: The Maya were way more complex then anything you see in Stone Age europe and are probably more comparable to Bronze or Iron age Mesopotamian city-states
@@g-rexsaurus794 He just said that the Mesoamerican Stone Age isn't comparable to the European Stone Age (which is, again, true) calm down bro, it's not an attack on any historical civilization
Must be so weird to be a Native in California to have these huge mysterious ships containing this futuristic super advanced metal just wash up to shore sometimes even with survivors, basically the equivalent of checking out a crashed UFO with aliens on board.
As far as I know they never had survivors. These ships were either washed out by typhoons or tsunamis and would usually take years to end up on the West Coast. Most of the Mid-Pacific is sparsely populated by edible flora/fuana making it down right impossible to make the float trip alive.
@@maneatingcheeze Actually from the late 17th to mid 19th century there were a total of 23 recorded cases of occupied drifting Japanese ships being washed up on North America carrying a total of 293 survivors. The survivors mainly subsisted on fishing and rainwater and were helped on by the powerful Kurishiro currents that lowered the journey time to under a year.
@@fludblud 17th to 19th century vs "since medieval times" (what the video said). That period was already after contact. You left that part out of the quote... "In the 1890s, lawyer and politician James Wickersham[64] argued that pre-Columbian contact between Japanese sailors and Native Americans was highly probable, given that from the early 17th century to the mid-19th century several dozen Japanese ships were carried from Asia to North America along the powerful Kuroshio Currents. Such Japanese ships landed from the Aleutian Islands in the north to Mexico in the south, carrying a total of 293 persons in the 23 cases where head-counts were given in historical records. In most cases, the Japanese sailors gradually made their way home on merchant vessels." /wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact_theories#Claims_of_Japanese_contact
Another thing about Mexico bronce age is that a culture called the purecha was in the early stages of weaponry of bronze specifically axes when the Spanish arrived so it was getting interesting but it was stop sad
I'd like to add a few of corrections. You actually don't need tin to make bronze. You can make it with arsenic, and arsenical bronze was the first produced in the Near East. Furthermore, while it is true that the Near East civilizations traded for most of their tin, from c. 2000 B.C., if not earlier, their primary source was Central Asia. European sources of tin were used predominately by European Bronze Age cultures. While the onset of the Aegean Bronze Age is conventionally dated c. 3200 B.C., artifacts made of tin bronze alloys, dated to c. 4650 B.C., have been uncovered in Serbia and Bulgaria. Central and South Africa have rich deposits of both tin and copper although there is no evidence that the tin veins were exploited in Ancient times. Still, it is probably unwise to assume that their lack of a Bronze Age was caused by an inability to access the necessary resources. Finally, statement that civilization arose in the Americas much later than Eurasia is debatable, depending on what criteria one uses to define civilization. One commonly sited mark of civilization is agriculture, and crops were domesticated in the Americas only one or two millennia after Eurasia and long before any culture had a Bronze Age. Perhaps you are referring to urbanization? In Eurasia, the onset of urbanization is contemporaneous with the start of the Bronze Age in many regions. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case with the Americas. The earliest known urban center is Caral, in Peru, which is dated to c. 2650 B.C., but there was no Bronze Age there. If I were to posit a reason for the late onset of bronze technology in the Americas, I would suggest it is due to a lack of cultural continuation. In Eurasia, when a culture ended, elements of it were often inherited and assimilated by succeeding cultures, often with an uninterrupted occupation of the same sites. In the Americas, we see a repeated cycle of urban centers developing and later being abandoned and forgotten. In addition to Caral, I can name Teotihuacan, Mayan sites, Chaco Canyon, and the Hopewell culture all come to mind. It might be this lack of an uninterrupted cultural tradition that impeded the development of certain technologies. It might also be linked to the lack of writing to record and transmit knowledge. The Maya, as far as I'm aware, were the only culture the have a fully developed writing system in the Americas.
While yes, you can make bronze with Arsenic (and also lead), the reason Tin is the only viable long-term option is pretty clear: it is the only one that won't kill you. That being said, I agree with your theory. The disconnect between successive cultures does seem like a major culprit in the slow growth of technology in the new world.
That kind of does make sense, because I know in North America some of the tribes would follow behind Bison herds. And the same thing in Africa. And the Mongols in Asia we're a horse tribe.
Good point. The natives rarely use the past tense and always speak in the present tense. FOR WRITING system, the Olmecs had a writting system, the Mixtec had a writing system as well as the Aztec Nahuatl. But even earlier, in NM pictograms have been seen which were dated to around 1600 BC and appear to have been from the Shang Dynasty. So there was civilization in the Americas as far as 2000 BC and they did have use of IRON. The pacific northwest natives actually had body armor and and bronze macquitls , central mexico also had bronze armor , they just stopped using it around 1000 AD. So by the time they were discovered in 1500 they were living in the dark ages. Western Europe had something similar with Rome. After Rome fell , WE fell back into a dark ages, many technologies were lost and were not really seen until the Islamic invasions and were not relearned until the disocvery of ancient Greek writtings. I guess it would be like if we went into another dark age 20 years from now and it set us back to pre industrial era, sort of like in Fallout games. But the Americas is one of the youngest civilizations. They did develop later during the Eurasian migrations in 5000 BC during Kenewick man. I think its more of a Human being thing and short attention spans. 98% of the world population doesn't really care for history.
Heck, that date for European bronze age isn't even true for all of Europe. Remote parts like Scandinavia *always* lagged a little behind in almost everything from farming, bronze and Christianity to witch burning. It took a while for news to spread this far north, though our retarded earning curve on farming meant we relied more on hunting which usually meant fishing which meant boats and hey let's see how far we can sail these bad boys.
Remote parts of Scandinavia were pretty up to date on the witch-burning, but yeah farming and metallurgy and other such *nice* things tended to diffuse more slowly. There were plenty of witch trials in Scandinavia in the late 16th/early 17th century (peak of the European witch hysteria), and Finnmark, the northernmost part of Scandinavia, executed more witches per capita than almost any region anywhere.
@@simen3971 For some reason I thought Northern Europe was always a little less Christian than their southern neighbors and even held onto paganism longer?
@@TonyStark-eb3dw no i should say that was not the case, at least not for sweden. After converting and establishment of strong kingdoms the church power was really strong as it was used to control people. Also after converting to protestantism the belive in god was extremly strong and the whole system was build upon that, sweden was well known for the fanatic army beliving in the fate of god around 1550-1800. Especialy in remote areas belive in god was strong for a long time. Most things has changed the last 100 years or so.
I'm glad you did this. The americas history is quite overlooked, and youre right Stone and Bronze Ages in the americas developed in a very different way than in Eurafrasia. They can barely be compared. Great video, greetings from Perú
This video I think illustrates why the term "X age" should (and is, in actual anthropology) be avoided entirely outside of Eurasia: They are really only periods of eurasian history, not developmental stages all cultures advance through linearly, which is something people get caught up on, assuming that because the Mesoamericans primarily used stone/wood tools, they are less advanced. ....In reality, The Aztec captial of Tenochtitlan had 200,000 to 250,00 people and covered 1350 hectacres, vs Uruk, one of the largest Mesopotamian Bronze age cities, having only 40k people/400 hectacres. You have political systems and an emphasis on The Arts and Intellectualism, among the Aztec fairly comparable to what you see in Ancient Greece as well, and they were outright among the most complex and advanced cultures in the world at the time when it came to water management systems, sanitation, medicine, and botany (The free paper "Public Health in Aztec society" is a good introduction to this), things which prior Mesoamerican cultures also excelled at. Overall, I think classical antiquity is probably the best comparison, but fundamentally the Mesoamericans and also the Andeans (Inca, etc) don't really match up with any specific period of Eurasian history in terms of social or technological complexity since due to their isolation, they weren't developing along the same pathway.
So if they were so awesome, why couldn’t they get past Stone Age tools, thoughts or inventions? They didn’t even have the water wheel, the most basic devices. I find it humorous that you’ve convinced yourself that the Aztecs had any type of intellectualism. No philosophical thought is being studied by them, no documents of theirs are being taught with regards to critical thinking, science, mathematics... you’re dreaming.
İn anthropology we dont compare astec capital o f 14th century to uruk 2300bc And generally more people isnt really an accomplishment of its own. American indians were certainly the very late to the party the end
@@Campocosas They did. Unfortunately the Spanish Conquistadores and the Spanish Inquisition burned and destroyed most of the Amatl codices from the Mesoamerican civilizations and the Quipu from the Andean Incan civilization. Also the diseases killed most of the population, probably killing most of the class of priests and scribes that knew how to read them. We only have left a dozen or so books and the monumental architecture.
@@TheFenderBass1 The idea that our lack of sources justifies the littlle attention they are given is horribly wrong. Yes, the Spanish burned thousands of Mesoamerican books and Andean rope/knot records, but there are hundreds of stone inscripions in Maya cities detailing political histories, as well as hundreds of writings documenting the history and society of various city-states and cultuires in central Mexico, such as the Aztec, dating from the early colional period by either Spanish friars or by native descendants of royalty and nobility re-re-recording information that was previously lost in the book burnings, and a few dozen similar works for other Mesoamerican groups. We outright have more Nahuatl (Aztec) language sources and writing from specific known authors then we do from Ancient greece. What we have less is indeed a shadow of the amount of sources we could have had, but there's still an ample amount to where we could spend a signficasnt amount of time on it in schools and in channels like Tigerstar here.
7:03 ...except that's an Aztec calendar on the right. It was created almost 1000 years after the Maya cities were abandoned and has little to no connection with the Mayan calendar. You were doing so good up to that point. I even subscribed...
This is a really important video in the collab. It's so necessary to step out of our eurocentric view points. For anyone interested the Moche also made some sexy ceramics.
Agreed. Plus anyone who follows history as much as this community is by now yearning for more videos on the history of other parts of the world. Your video on the pyramids was boss by the way, but dude, in a snow storm?!
They aren’t in the game. And yes, that would be cool, because if the maya were to be playable, then you wouldn’t want some shrine replacement granting a science or two when you can have a building with very original bonuses.
@@Shain3333 I Swear in civ 5 they had a shrine unique building that gave faith and science. Maybe a "grand pyramid" to serve as the temple replacement. Or even a replacement for something like the national academy in civ 5.
+Jayden Louise Nicholas Townsend That’s what I was referencing. The pyramid was strong (double the faith output, good amount of science) but felt uninspired
One of my favorite representations of how the stone age was nowhere near as primitive as people make it out to be is the intricate and beautiful mace heads that we sometimes find.
Interesting video idea. As you said it's important to remember that these age classifications don't always correspond to how complex or advanced the society is
"Civilizations simply arose later in the Americas than in the Middle East, Asia, Europe or Africa." That's not true, EmperorTigerstar. What about the Caral-Supe civilization in Peru? The pyramids of Caral are as older as the ones of Saqqara, in Egypt.
Bryan Gamarra Yeah, this is why pre Colombian American history isn’t taught often, because early civilization in the America’s has been wiped out during a catastrophic event that scientists have only recently begun to understand.
My understanding is that Caral and the Norte Chico are better described as stuff analogous to Gobleki Tepe rather then as urban state socities like sumer;
The world’s earliest copper smelting was c. 5000BC in Belovode, a Vinča culture site in eastern Serbia. They also had Bronze before India or the Middle-East. I have no idea why so many people neglect to mention them when summarising the history of metallurgy.
3:30 There is a big difference between "having copper" and reaching "the Bronze Age". North American natives never mass produced copper and it did not lead them to other vital advancements such as writing or sedentary agriculture (traits usually found in Bronze age civilizations around the world). Central and South America definitely have better claims of having reached the Bronze Age.
The youtuber Aztlan Historian has a great two part series on metalworking in the Americas. I'd recommend anyone with an interest in this subject check him out!
@Paul Tello He's just a history youtuber who focuses on pre-Columbian American history. "Aztlan" was a mythical island the Aztecs supposedly came from, so Aztlan Historian uses it in his name as an ironic nod. Also, for the record, in English we use "an" in front of words beginning with vowels, not "a".
Great video. Amerindians should have more love in history study. I already knew the Inca had bronze weapons thanks to _Kings and Generals_ but I wasn't aware that it wasn't that extensive in their society. The Hohokam in Arizona had copper jewelry and had extensive trade to Mesoamerica during their civilization's height. They too had an advanced stone age civ but to my knowledge did not have bronze, had they had access to tin I am certain that they would have excelled in alloy metalurgy. Likewise Cahokia.
The lack of knowledge on the tribes of the Americas is a mixture, from newest to oldest, of: 1) Historical disrespect, yes, this is the _newest_ bit; 2) The intentionally and accidentally spread plagues, turns out that the "Cities of Gold" didn't have much gold, they had roofs made of yellow grasses, and disappeared because the guy that found them brought some plague; and 3) In the last 2000 years, the central & eastern areas of North America have gone through civilizational collapses _twice_ - hard to get famous if the world ends every few centuries, Alexander would be no better understood than Orion.
Huh, I never really considered this specific question much before. I mean I had studied the Incas, Mayans, Aztecs and other various tribes during prominent times in history but I never truly based the question of whether they had a Bronze Age. This video was truly interesting and it' always nice to have another video discussing the works of Pre-Colombian America. It's insultingly oversimplified and overlooked in history as a whole.
The system is overrated. We are all so influenced by the ancient and outdated concept of the “stone age-bronze age-iron age” progression of human technology that it clouds our common sense and frames humanity in very limited ways. It didn't stop American civilizations from developing highly complex solutions for their environmental and practical problems. Some examples: 1) armor in much of Mesoamerica was made of layered fabric. The Spaniards adopted it and called it Escaupil which is a loan from the Nahuatl Ichcahuipilli. This could be very thick and often reached the knees or lower. You can imagine when infantry marched in rainy conditions, it only made the armor stronger since the tensile strength of cotton increases when wet. Alternatively it was soaked in brine and filled with rock salt. I assume the Andeans used similar solutions since their textiles were already highly advanced. 2) The Inka empire or Tawantinsuyu was full of suspension bridges and these were made not of stone but of woven grass. The ropes were as thick as a man's torso and could withstand the comings and goings of an empire's inhabitants. Bridge reparation was a tribute demand for locals. 3) Some Maya cities treated water by filtering it through sand and storing it in enormous reservoirs and underground tanks. In the case of Yax Mutul (Tikal), the lime concrete paved plazas, roads, and even buildings served as water catchment systems to funnel rainwater to these reservoirs and tanks. There was a switching system which distributed water to different parts of the city and hinterlands as needed. These are a few examples.
@@boocehop8500 Mesoamerican toys have wheels and axels, and they were used for pottery production. Their entire calaneder system was conceptialuzed as a series of concentric and interlocking wheels/cogs as well; and they may have used wheeled siege towers (hard to say, since we only know of siege towers in mesoamerica from a single mural). They understood the mechanical properties of wheels, they just didn't have much use for them in terms of transportation given the lack of beasts of burden and the arduous terrain in the region.
I'd say that these "Ages" should stick with its application of Eurasia, because that's where it's based upon. The empires in the Americas had some neat concepts going for them earlier, but yet they were squished much, much later from firearms to diseases.
Do you know of any books/resources with more information about the Americas and their technology? Thank you for sharing in these comments! This is very interesting and new to me :)
Where my family is from in Mexico, there have been a lot of bronze axeheads and even ceremonial breastplates found; unfortunately, not much anthropological or archaeological research is done in Michoacan in comparison to central Mexico or the Yucatan, so we don't really know if that was the full extent of bronze working there. Interestingly, the P'urepecha language is considered an isolate, and seems to be closer to Quechua and Zuni than anything actually in Mexico. As you mentioned, Quechua speakers were likely the first developers of metallurgy, so some people think that the technique could have spread through some unknown trade route along the Pacific coast.
Might owe to a lack of need for metal tools The America’s didn’t need sickles to harvest corn and potatoes Where in The Middle East did to harvest wheat You even see there they converted the design into the first swords which were sickle sharped rather than strait blades You would think metal picks for stone cutting would be useful but copper and even bronze are softer metals so maybe stone head picks and heating and cooling cracks are still the way to go
I like that you explain better the idea of iron age in terms of use of technology and how you relate with different geographic areas.Very interesting video.
Just me hypothesizing; there could've been an early cultural split involved between the ancestors of Eurasians and of Americans, where the former preferred to use copper for tools, and the latter preferred to use stone, obsidian, wood, and other preexisting materials for tools.
3:55 I never thought of that! I heard about the indigenous people near the great lakes and elsewhere using copper (without smelting though) but I never heard anyone mention shipwrecks from east Asia taking iron artifacts via currents to the northwest, that is awesome!
A lot of the problem with the Americas is logistics, and also the lack of tamable beasts. It's all a north/south trade route, which is much harder to deal with than the huge east/west routes of the Old World. This, I suspect is also one of the causes of the sub Saharan tardiness to the party. An east/west route has a fairly similar climate, flora, fauna and landscape. All of these change constantly in a north/south route.
@@baronofbahlingen9662 The map at 2:35 shows no copper for Cyprus. The map could be a modern survey of copper and tin. In that case Cyprus would not register because the majority of copper is gone now. Many empires, especially Rome, drained the mines.
I wish you would have mentioned cold hammered native copper in Alaska and the pacific northwest that was used for weaponry as well as status, but overall excellent video. Being new to the channel I feared this would be a much less rigorous video in a biased linear cultural evolution narrative, but I was very happy to be wrong. Thanks for the interesting information!
The Americans were in the Bronze age before European conquest. They made arsenic copper mixtures in the North where it was more plentiful then the techniques diffused Southward.
I've never seen any channel do an honest "Europe before the Middle East" type of video. Over the past 7 years there's been countless ancient genetics papers on ancient remains that offer a correct take on world history instead the now obsolete takes of cultural diffusion, etc. So around 10,000 years ago people from the Middle East settled Europe and brought things like agriculture and livestock with them, changing Europe forever. Over thousands of years they also completely replaced the supposed 'indigenous' 'Europeans' and by 5000 BC they were all but gone. A video of technological achievements (if any) _before_ people from the Middle East arrived around 10,000 years ago would be interesting.
Great 👍 except civilizations in the Americas did arise at the same time actually as the others... Norte Chico and that area (cities like Huaricanga, Caral, Cerro Sechin etc.) arose from 3000-5000 BCE or even earlier, and new findings suggest Mayas, Isthmian Mexicans, and Southeast USA had civilizations going up to 3000-4000 BCE as well. - Middle Eastern civilization and its extensions (Mesopotamia, Mediterranean, North Africa, Anatolia...) arose around that time period. - Chinese civilization arose around 2000 BCE. So yeah..
My understanding is that Caral and the Norte Chico are better described as stuff analogous to Gobleki Tepe rather then as urban state socities like sumer; and I don';t know what findings with the Maya and isthmians you are referencing are.
4:13 are you sure that picture depicts meso-america? The second person from the left wears a typical yayoi-haircut from the early japanese culture.
5 лет назад+2
Tbh. Seeing this, Tin should actualy be the resource needed to make bronze weapons in civilization, because Copper is much more common, thus making tin the "special resource".
Australia didn’t have a stone age in European Terms. As the video said, it’s inaccurate since these regions developed independently and isolated from the rest of the world.
Wasn't tin primarily gathered from the northern Afghanistan and the region around modern Cornwall? The Map seems not to show Afghanistan's deposits which were among the most important sources of the time.
This was the best video amongst the bunch. I appreciate how it attacked the euro / asian centric view of the bronze age and shed light on other zones of technological advance such as sub-saharan Africa & the Americas. P.S West Africa is Sub-Saharan....
Conclusion: It's not applicable to use the terminologies of 'Bronze Age' or 'Iron Age' to the Americas as civilizations there went through a different route of technological improvement from Eurasia, as evidenced alone by the fact that Native Americans had extensive gold and silver metallurgy yet a relatively scanty usage of copper, bronze and iron.
In Peru when we're taught stone-bronze-iron age concepts it only applies to the Old World. We definitely use other periodization for our precolumbian history
Likely the biggest factor in the lack of a development of an American equivalent to a 'bronze age' is that the only effective beast of burden pre-columbian exchange . . . were human beings themselves. This not only put a massive limit on how effective their farming, and thus city growth, could be, but also eliminated the need for certain kinds of tools. Who needs plows when you haven't horses to pull them. No need for a sturdy, light, metal plow when a human probably digs just as fast, if not faster, one hole at a time. And so on.
@@machintelligence The wheelbarrow was invented thousands of years after the wheel so I would say it was not as obviously useful as it seems now. Wagons or handcarts capable of being pulled or pushed by a person have much less capacity than what a beast of burden can haul.
A question about when you discussed where tin came from during the ancient/ middle eastern bronze age. While agreed most tin was traded as there were very few deposits in the middle east (mainly turkey) you stated it was traded from Europe (2:47). Now I had made a video about the bronze age civilizations collapse in 1177 BC, my source Eric Cline, Ph.D. states that most of the tin came from Afghanistan. He also cast heavy doubt on it coming from Europe, specifically Cornwall. Here is the link to his full presentation but the time stamp is 17:18 ruclips.net/video/bRcu-ysocX4/видео.html . I am just kind of curious on your response, as if I'm incorrect I may need to correct my video. still, a very good video, thank you. - The International Historian
Dear Tigerstar great video. The only thing that was left out was the Purepecha Indians of the State of Michuacan Mexico. They are also wrongfully called the Tarasco Indians. They actually had Brass weapons and armor, since that state is abundant in Zinc. Since Zinc and Copper make Brass, which would be considered another version of Bronze. And they did also do some Bronze as well.
Bronze working in Southern Africa appears to have began sometime in the early 2nd millennium A.D. and is often associated with socio-politically complex, elite centers like Mapungubwe, Bosutswe and Great Zimbabwe. While copper appears to have been mined and worked since the Early Iron Age (200-900 A.D.), the earliest tin mining and working dates to between 1000-1300 A.D. (see Bandama et al., 2015). This activity is associated with Eiland ceramic producers at sites like Rooiberg in present-day South Africa. This tin was then traded with communities like Mapungubwe (in present day Northern South Africa), Bosutswe (in present day Botswana) and Great Zimbabwe (in present day Zimbabwe) where bronze was manufactured.
I'm from Patagonia, people here doesn't care about anything but silver and bone. In Araucania it was similar but they also used copper, In the northern Andean area they went directly to gold and copper, bronze for everything. Gemstone work was just as common as metal throughout America.
Tiger, I said this before. West Africa is largely sub saharan. Your personal definition does not expand to how the term is commonly used, nor it's geographical range. Thanks for putting it up there though :P
Have you guys heard of the Tarascans? They were beginning to tinker with bronze towards the end of the Pre-Columbian period. Personally my favorite Mesoamerican culture.
Hey, at 4:12 and 6:05...isn't that an artist's rendering of Late Yayoi/Kofun Japan? With the thatched roofs, rice harvesting, and double knot hairstyle?
Northern N America did have copper from the big mine on Isle Royale off the Northern Peninsula of Michigan. My family and I vacationed there in the U.P. There are copper artifacts in museums from the Mound Builders. Incidentally, there are still some mounds in places such as Michigan and Upstate New York. In New York there are also some very old looking stone caerns, etc. And then there's always America's Stonehenge.
Bronze was firstly used by the Bulgarians all the way back in 696969BC. Bronze became widespread during the Rule of the Bulgarian godly emperor Biggu Dickoff (3269-3169) when the Bulgarians started establishing colonies in Greece , Western Europe, Egypt, Jupiter, India and Paris.
I am interested in how lack of easy access to materials and lack of some niches of fauna really shaped the growth curves of early American civilizations. I think a lot people forget is how you access and learn to refine metal is as important to growth technology as important to how you use it. Iron is a great example of this. When it easier to access and collect as well as plentiful makes it easier to experiment with. Bog iron and iron sand were relied upon before mining became a staple. It is difficult to mine if all your tools break before you can extract the ore you need.
What's important to mention is that the Bronze that was made in Precolonial America had a different tin to copper ratio that made it brittle to the point of not being good for weapon making. Think of it less of a metal and more of a Bronze ceramic.
The Middle East is positively swimming in tin compared to North America. A bronze age would've been impossible unless they were able to import tin from South America. NA does, however, have lots and lots of zinc, meaning there could, theoretically, have been a brass age.
could you do something about the maximum temperatures different cultures could achieve and when ? who first got to 1000C or 2000C or 3000C or 4000C and how well could they regulate temp its one thing to occasionally flare up to 1700C and a vary different thing to be able to consistently get to 1000c and then hold at that temp for say an hour after all
So wait, some Native American in Oregon could have theoretically found a boatload of katanas? Because that's how I like to imagine it
Now I wanna make a movie about a tribe of Salish natives discovering a boat filled with katanas and conquering their neighbours to form a small kingdom.
@@elitalks258 id watch that anime
That sounds awesome.
Then a boatload with european sword pommels arrived in Mexico, which caused the destruction of many mesoamerican civilizations like the Maya an Olmecs.
Dead meme
Comparing stone age to primitivism is a common misconception. Not only the Mayans were quite civilized, but even stone age Europe was much more civilized than we tend to think.
While I agree with your point (I think that we should abandon the term "stone age" here entirely though, in anthropoligical contexts the terms are only used in reference to eurasian history); I think you are setting up a false dichotomy. Yes, Stone age Europe was more complex then just cavemen living in huts, but to compare Stone Age Europe, to, say, the Classical Maya is really incorrect: The Maya were way more complex then anything you see in Stone Age europe and are probably more comparable to Bronze or Iron age Mesopotamian city-states
@@MajoraZ Funny how one side you deride classifying native Americans as primitive but do the exact same with Europeans without a second thought.
@@g-rexsaurus794 why are westerners so oversensitive about this? what he said was totally correct
@@RUINOUSDOLL I'm pointing out hypocrisy.
@@g-rexsaurus794 He just said that the Mesoamerican Stone Age isn't comparable to the European Stone Age (which is, again, true)
calm down bro, it's not an attack on any historical civilization
The mayans shall be henceforth referred to as an obsidian age civilization
But from what I underatand they had a maize age collapse.
@@baabaaer heh, corn maize
Sorry it is still stone
@@jozebutinar44 nice pfp grand dad
@@bluespy4050 grand dad sorry i am not old
Must be so weird to be a Native in California to have these huge mysterious ships containing this futuristic super advanced metal just wash up to shore sometimes even with survivors, basically the equivalent of checking out a crashed UFO with aliens on board.
As far as I know they never had survivors. These ships were either washed out by typhoons or tsunamis and would usually take years to end up on the West Coast. Most of the Mid-Pacific is sparsely populated by edible flora/fuana making it down right impossible to make the float trip alive.
@@maneatingcheeze Actually from the late 17th to mid 19th century there were a total of 23 recorded cases of occupied drifting Japanese ships being washed up on North America carrying a total of 293 survivors. The survivors mainly subsisted on fishing and rainwater and were helped on by the powerful Kurishiro currents that lowered the journey time to under a year.
@@fludblud 17th to 19th century vs "since medieval times" (what the video said).
That period was already after contact.
You left that part out of the quote...
"In the 1890s, lawyer and politician James Wickersham[64] argued that pre-Columbian contact between Japanese sailors and Native Americans was highly probable, given that from the early 17th century to the mid-19th century several dozen Japanese ships were carried from Asia to North America along the powerful Kuroshio Currents. Such Japanese ships landed from the Aleutian Islands in the north to Mexico in the south, carrying a total of 293 persons in the 23 cases where head-counts were given in historical records.
In most cases, the Japanese sailors gradually made their way home on merchant vessels."
/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact_theories#Claims_of_Japanese_contact
Note to self: write a sci-fi book with that premisse.
@@fludblud Sources?
Another thing about Mexico bronce age is that a culture called the purecha was in the early stages of weaponry of bronze specifically axes when the Spanish arrived so it was getting interesting but it was stop sad
Also forgot to mention that the purepecha were also making arrows and armour with bronze as well
The Inca empire was apparently less than 200 years old when it was conquered. Another interesting what-if.
That was the only reason the Aztecs couldn't conquer the Purépecha
@@blackerpanther3329 What a complete non-sequitur.
Satan I don’t think I can make it any more clear...
I'd like to add a few of corrections. You actually don't need tin to make bronze. You can make it with arsenic, and arsenical bronze was the first produced in the Near East. Furthermore, while it is true that the Near East civilizations traded for most of their tin, from c. 2000 B.C., if not earlier, their primary source was Central Asia. European sources of tin were used predominately by European Bronze Age cultures. While the onset of the Aegean Bronze Age is conventionally dated c. 3200 B.C., artifacts made of tin bronze alloys, dated to c. 4650 B.C., have been uncovered in Serbia and Bulgaria. Central and South Africa have rich deposits of both tin and copper although there is no evidence that the tin veins were exploited in Ancient times. Still, it is probably unwise to assume that their lack of a Bronze Age was caused by an inability to access the necessary resources. Finally, statement that civilization arose in the Americas much later than Eurasia is debatable, depending on what criteria one uses to define civilization. One commonly sited mark of civilization is agriculture, and crops were domesticated in the Americas only one or two millennia after Eurasia and long before any culture had a Bronze Age. Perhaps you are referring to urbanization? In Eurasia, the onset of urbanization is contemporaneous with the start of the Bronze Age in many regions. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case with the Americas. The earliest known urban center is Caral, in Peru, which is dated to c. 2650 B.C., but there was no Bronze Age there. If I were to posit a reason for the late onset of bronze technology in the Americas, I would suggest it is due to a lack of cultural continuation. In Eurasia, when a culture ended, elements of it were often inherited and assimilated by succeeding cultures, often with an uninterrupted occupation of the same sites. In the Americas, we see a repeated cycle of urban centers developing and later being abandoned and forgotten. In addition to Caral, I can name Teotihuacan, Mayan sites, Chaco Canyon, and the Hopewell culture all come to mind. It might be this lack of an uninterrupted cultural tradition that impeded the development of certain technologies. It might also be linked to the lack of writing to record and transmit knowledge. The Maya, as far as I'm aware, were the only culture the have a fully developed writing system in the Americas.
While yes, you can make bronze with Arsenic (and also lead), the reason Tin is the only viable long-term option is pretty clear: it is the only one that won't kill you.
That being said, I agree with your theory. The disconnect between successive cultures does seem like a major culprit in the slow growth of technology in the new world.
Damn you typed that whole thing
That kind of does make sense, because I know in North America some of the tribes would follow behind Bison herds. And the same thing in Africa. And the Mongols in Asia we're a horse tribe.
Good point. The natives rarely use the past tense and always speak in the present tense.
FOR WRITING system, the Olmecs had a writting system, the Mixtec had a writing system as well as the Aztec Nahuatl. But even earlier, in NM pictograms have been seen which were dated to around 1600 BC and appear to have been from the Shang Dynasty. So there was civilization in the Americas as far as 2000 BC and they did have use of IRON. The pacific northwest natives actually had body armor and and bronze macquitls , central mexico also had bronze armor , they just stopped using it around 1000 AD. So by the time they were discovered in 1500 they were living in the dark ages.
Western Europe had something similar with Rome. After Rome fell , WE fell back into a dark ages, many technologies were lost and were not really seen until the Islamic invasions and were not relearned until the disocvery of ancient Greek writtings.
I guess it would be like if we went into another dark age 20 years from now and it set us back to pre industrial era, sort of like in Fallout games.
But the Americas is one of the youngest civilizations. They did develop later during the Eurasian migrations in 5000 BC during Kenewick man.
I think its more of a Human being thing and short attention spans. 98% of the world population doesn't really care for history.
Cited*
Heck, that date for European bronze age isn't even true for all of Europe. Remote parts like Scandinavia *always* lagged a little behind in almost everything from farming, bronze and Christianity to witch burning. It took a while for news to spread this far north, though our retarded earning curve on farming meant we relied more on hunting which usually meant fishing which meant boats and hey let's see how far we can sail these bad boys.
Remote parts of Scandinavia were pretty up to date on the witch-burning, but yeah farming and metallurgy and other such *nice* things tended to diffuse more slowly. There were plenty of witch trials in Scandinavia in the late 16th/early 17th century (peak of the European witch hysteria), and Finnmark, the northernmost part of Scandinavia, executed more witches per capita than almost any region anywhere.
@@simen3971 For some reason I thought Northern Europe was always a little less Christian than their southern neighbors and even held onto paganism longer?
Scandinavia had an extremely vibrant culture during the Bronze Age occurring the same time as other Bronze Age cultures.
@@TonyStark-eb3dw no i should say that was not the case, at least not for sweden. After converting and establishment of strong kingdoms the church power was really strong as it was used to control people. Also after converting to protestantism the belive in god was extremly strong and the whole system was build upon that, sweden was well known for the fanatic army beliving in the fate of god around 1550-1800. Especialy in remote areas belive in god was strong for a long time. Most things has changed the last 100 years or so.
@@hnorrstrom According to some sources they were at least as Christian as the rest of Europe by 1150. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Swedish_Crusade
I'm glad you did this. The americas history is quite overlooked, and youre right Stone and Bronze Ages in the americas developed in a very different way than in Eurafrasia. They can barely be compared. Great video, greetings from Perú
how could they have obsidian if they only had stone tools
im sorry
traded with villagers?
They could have found it inside some temples or abandoned mines
MrNiszu verry intelligent
There are surface deposits of obsidian throughout parts of the southwestern US. Obsidian is a stone itself, and can be worked with other stones.
Alienjests A i had almost forgotten minecraft too
This video I think illustrates why the term "X age" should (and is, in actual anthropology) be avoided entirely outside of Eurasia: They are really only periods of eurasian history, not developmental stages all cultures advance through linearly, which is something people get caught up on, assuming that because the Mesoamericans primarily used stone/wood tools, they are less advanced.
....In reality, The Aztec captial of Tenochtitlan had 200,000 to 250,00 people and covered 1350 hectacres, vs Uruk, one of the largest Mesopotamian Bronze age cities, having only 40k people/400 hectacres. You have political systems and an emphasis on The Arts and Intellectualism, among the Aztec fairly comparable to what you see in Ancient Greece as well, and they were outright among the most complex and advanced cultures in the world at the time when it came to water management systems, sanitation, medicine, and botany (The free paper "Public Health in Aztec society" is a good introduction to this), things which prior Mesoamerican cultures also excelled at.
Overall, I think classical antiquity is probably the best comparison, but fundamentally the Mesoamericans and also the Andeans (Inca, etc) don't really match up with any specific period of Eurasian history in terms of social or technological complexity since due to their isolation, they weren't developing along the same pathway.
Exactly. The world isn't civ 4, different people develop differently.
where is your little heart tigerstar
So if they were so awesome, why couldn’t they get past Stone Age tools, thoughts or inventions? They didn’t even have the water wheel, the most basic devices.
I find it humorous that you’ve convinced yourself that the Aztecs had any type of intellectualism. No philosophical thought is being studied by them, no documents of theirs are being taught with regards to critical thinking, science, mathematics... you’re dreaming.
@@blackerpanther3329 did you study korean history in highschool, most probable no, does that mean that they dont have history?
İn anthropology we dont compare astec capital o f 14th century to uruk 2300bc
And generally more people isnt really an accomplishment of its own. American indians were certainly the very late to the party the end
The precolumbian history of the Americas is the most undeservedly ignored topic in history.
Its not ignored there just aren't enough sources to give it the attention it needs. Same as central africa.
I think Subsaharan Africa is ignored even more.
@@Campocosas They did. Unfortunately the Spanish Conquistadores and the Spanish Inquisition burned and destroyed most of the Amatl codices from the Mesoamerican civilizations and the Quipu from the Andean Incan civilization. Also the diseases killed most of the population, probably killing most of the class of priests and scribes that knew how to read them. We only have left a dozen or so books and the monumental architecture.
@@TheFenderBass1 The idea that our lack of sources justifies the littlle attention they are given is horribly wrong. Yes, the Spanish burned thousands of Mesoamerican books and Andean rope/knot records, but there are hundreds of stone inscripions in Maya cities detailing political histories, as well as hundreds of writings documenting the history and society of various city-states and cultuires in central Mexico, such as the Aztec, dating from the early colional period by either Spanish friars or by native descendants of royalty and nobility re-re-recording information that was previously lost in the book burnings, and a few dozen similar works for other Mesoamerican groups.
We outright have more Nahuatl (Aztec) language sources and writing from specific known authors then we do from Ancient greece. What we have less is indeed a shadow of the amount of sources we could have had, but there's still an ample amount to where we could spend a signficasnt amount of time on it in schools and in channels like Tigerstar here.
@Berend Emanuel "Africa"
Okay? You literally need to be specific
7:03 ...except that's an Aztec calendar on the right. It was created almost 1000 years after the Maya cities were abandoned and has little to no connection with the Mayan calendar. You were doing so good up to that point. I even subscribed...
This is a really important video in the collab. It's so necessary to step out of our eurocentric view points. For anyone interested the Moche also made some sexy ceramics.
Agreed. Plus anyone who follows history as much as this community is by now yearning for more videos on the history of other parts of the world. Your video on the pyramids was boss by the way, but dude, in a snow storm?!
Hell yeah! I’m an archaeologist and we love some sexy ceramics
Now that I think about it, the Maya should have the observatory as a unique building in Civ 6
They aren’t in the game. And yes, that would be cool, because if the maya were to be playable, then you wouldn’t want some shrine replacement granting a science or two when you can have a building with very original bonuses.
@@Shain3333 I Swear in civ 5 they had a shrine unique building that gave faith and science. Maybe a "grand pyramid" to serve as the temple replacement. Or even a replacement for something like the national academy in civ 5.
+Jayden Louise Nicholas Townsend That’s what I was referencing. The pyramid was strong (double the faith output, good amount of science) but felt uninspired
@@Shain3333 that long count calendar UA is pretty awesome and give them variability though
You were almost right
One of my favorite representations of how the stone age was nowhere near as primitive as people make it out to be is the intricate and beautiful mace heads that we sometimes find.
Interesting video idea. As you said it's important to remember that these age classifications don't always correspond to how complex or advanced the society is
So happy to see my favorite channels coming together n finding a few I didnt know
"Civilizations simply arose later in the Americas than in the Middle East, Asia, Europe or Africa."
That's not true, EmperorTigerstar. What about the Caral-Supe civilization in Peru? The pyramids of Caral are as older as the ones of Saqqara, in Egypt.
Bryan Gamarra
Yeah, this is why pre Colombian American history isn’t taught often, because early civilization in the America’s has been wiped out during a catastrophic event that scientists have only recently begun to understand.
My understanding is that Caral and the Norte Chico are better described as stuff analogous to Gobleki Tepe rather then as urban state socities like sumer;
The most fascinating video of the whole bunch!
3:55 what? this deserves its own video
This is a great series thank you!
Thank you for not forgetting about the Americas, pre columbian history is almost all ways pushed aside
That was interesting. Thanks for telling me something new!
Thank you for pulling these things apart. So important and helpful.
We need new language!
Also, the Vikings had their Ulfbert swords; made of high-carbon steel ingots that they obtained from the Romans.
i thought they got the steel from india that was traded on the silk road; i'm pretty sure the ulfbert swords came after the romans
Thank you for this video. It widened my perspective about technology and civilization development.
The world’s earliest copper smelting was c. 5000BC in Belovode, a Vinča culture site in eastern Serbia. They also had Bronze before India or the Middle-East. I have no idea why so many people neglect to mention them when summarising the history of metallurgy.
3:30 There is a big difference between "having copper" and reaching "the Bronze Age". North American natives never mass produced copper and it did not lead them to other vital advancements such as writing or sedentary agriculture (traits usually found in Bronze age civilizations around the world). Central and South America definitely have better claims of having reached the Bronze Age.
The youtuber Aztlan Historian has a great two part series on metalworking in the Americas. I'd recommend anyone with an interest in this subject check him out!
Thank you so much for telling me ahout that channel.
@Paul Tello He's just a history youtuber who focuses on pre-Columbian American history. "Aztlan" was a mythical island the Aztecs supposedly came from, so Aztlan Historian uses it in his name as an ironic nod. Also, for the record, in English we use "an" in front of words beginning with vowels, not "a".
Soma Hanikeri ok thanks for the recommendation, have nice day.
Thanks
Great video. Amerindians should have more love in history study. I already knew the Inca had bronze weapons thanks to _Kings and Generals_ but I wasn't aware that it wasn't that extensive in their society. The Hohokam in Arizona had copper jewelry and had extensive trade to Mesoamerica during their civilization's height. They too had an advanced stone age civ but to my knowledge did not have bronze, had they had access to tin I am certain that they would have excelled in alloy metalurgy. Likewise Cahokia.
The lack of knowledge on the tribes of the Americas is a mixture, from newest to oldest, of:
1) Historical disrespect, yes, this is the _newest_ bit;
2) The intentionally and accidentally spread plagues, turns out that the "Cities of Gold" didn't have much gold, they had roofs made of yellow grasses, and disappeared because the guy that found them brought some plague; and
3) In the last 2000 years, the central & eastern areas of North America have gone through civilizational collapses _twice_ - hard to get famous if the world ends every few centuries, Alexander would be no better understood than Orion.
They do know their history.
that was pretty cool! thanks for sharing it
Huh, I never really considered this specific question much before. I mean I had studied the Incas, Mayans, Aztecs and other various tribes during prominent times in history but I never truly based the question of whether they had a Bronze Age. This video was truly interesting and it' always nice to have another video discussing the works of Pre-Colombian America. It's insultingly oversimplified and overlooked in history as a whole.
I agree
I'm glad we have a Tiger as an Emperor to teach us history and edit maps for us.
Thanks EmperorTigerstar, I enjoyed the video and learned something new
The system is overrated. We are all so influenced by the ancient and outdated concept of the “stone age-bronze age-iron age” progression of human technology that it clouds our common sense and frames humanity in very limited ways. It didn't stop American civilizations from developing highly complex solutions for their environmental and practical problems. Some examples: 1) armor in much of Mesoamerica was made of layered fabric. The Spaniards adopted it and called it Escaupil which is a loan from the Nahuatl Ichcahuipilli. This could be very thick and often reached the knees or lower. You can imagine when infantry marched in rainy conditions, it only made the armor stronger since the tensile strength of cotton increases when wet. Alternatively it was soaked in brine and filled with rock salt. I assume the Andeans used similar solutions since their textiles were already highly advanced. 2) The Inka empire or Tawantinsuyu was full of suspension bridges and these were made not of stone but of woven grass. The ropes were as thick as a man's torso and could withstand the comings and goings of an empire's inhabitants. Bridge reparation was a tribute demand for locals. 3) Some Maya cities treated water by filtering it through sand and storing it in enormous reservoirs and underground tanks. In the case of Yax Mutul (Tikal), the lime concrete paved plazas, roads, and even buildings served as water catchment systems to funnel rainwater to these reservoirs and tanks. There was a switching system which distributed water to different parts of the city and hinterlands as needed. These are a few examples.
@@boocehop8500 Nah, they did. No draft animals to make it practical, though. Human power was more efficient in those circumstances.
@@boocehop8500 Mesoamerican toys have wheels and axels, and they were used for pottery production. Their entire calaneder system was conceptialuzed as a series of concentric and interlocking wheels/cogs as well; and they may have used wheeled siege towers (hard to say, since we only know of siege towers in mesoamerica from a single mural). They understood the mechanical properties of wheels, they just didn't have much use for them in terms of transportation given the lack of beasts of burden and the arduous terrain in the region.
I'd say that these "Ages" should stick with its application of Eurasia, because that's where it's based upon. The empires in the Americas had some neat concepts going for them earlier, but yet they were squished much, much later from firearms to diseases.
Do you know of any books/resources with more information about the Americas and their technology? Thank you for sharing in these comments! This is very interesting and new to me :)
it's interesting, because some videos from channels talking about medieval armor say padded armor was usually better than mail, scale or leather.
At 5:24 you say Peru yet the map shows Bolivia (I just want to point this out for people who aren’t very well versed in geography)
They're the same
Ah, Bolivia, Peru's rebel province.
@@pempotfoy6206 yup like united statians and canadians
@@Кайо-н4в Em no, more like north Korea and south Korea, or Colombia and Panama
@@pempotfoy6206 nah man its all the same. It depends only on how close you are to them and your perspective on those people
Where my family is from in Mexico, there have been a lot of bronze axeheads and even ceremonial breastplates found; unfortunately, not much anthropological or archaeological research is done in Michoacan in comparison to central Mexico or the Yucatan, so we don't really know if that was the full extent of bronze working there. Interestingly, the P'urepecha language is considered an isolate, and seems to be closer to Quechua and Zuni than anything actually in Mexico. As you mentioned, Quechua speakers were likely the first developers of metallurgy, so some people think that the technique could have spread through some unknown trade route along the Pacific coast.
13 views
1 like
1 commen- wait wtf these stats are what are to be expected from the amount of views this video has
No one cares
Might owe to a lack of need for metal tools
The America’s didn’t need sickles to harvest corn and potatoes
Where in The Middle East did to harvest wheat
You even see there they converted the design into the first swords which were sickle sharped rather than strait blades
You would think metal picks for stone cutting would be useful but copper and even bronze are softer metals so maybe stone head picks and heating and cooling cracks are still the way to go
Surprisingly interesting perspective. Thanks.
I like that you explain better the idea of iron age in terms of use of technology and how you relate with different geographic areas.Very interesting video.
Just me hypothesizing; there could've been an early cultural split involved between the ancestors of Eurasians and of Americans, where the former preferred to use copper for tools, and the latter preferred to use stone, obsidian, wood, and other preexisting materials for tools.
Very cool and informative!
3:55 I never thought of that! I heard about the indigenous people near the great lakes and elsewhere using copper (without smelting though) but I never heard anyone mention shipwrecks from east Asia taking iron artifacts via currents to the northwest, that is awesome!
Very cool vid thanks
Your channel is why RUclips exists for!
A lot of the problem with the Americas is logistics, and also the lack of tamable beasts. It's all a north/south trade route, which is much harder to deal with than the huge east/west routes of the Old World. This, I suspect is also one of the causes of the sub Saharan tardiness to the party. An east/west route has a fairly similar climate, flora, fauna and landscape. All of these change constantly in a north/south route.
The island named after copper (or vice versa) has no indication of copper on the map. Interesting
Darrin Coleman Which are you referring to? I’m very curious.
@@baronofbahlingen9662 The map at 2:35 shows no copper for Cyprus. The map could be a modern survey of copper and tin. In that case Cyprus would not register because the majority of copper is gone now. Many empires, especially Rome, drained the mines.
I wish you would have mentioned cold hammered native copper in Alaska and the pacific northwest that was used for weaponry as well as status, but overall excellent video. Being new to the channel I feared this would be a much less rigorous video in a biased linear cultural evolution narrative, but I was very happy to be wrong. Thanks for the interesting information!
The Americans were in the Bronze age before European conquest. They made arsenic copper mixtures in the North where it was more plentiful then the techniques diffused Southward.
Awesome! Really cool
I've never seen any channel do an honest "Europe before the Middle East" type of video. Over the past 7 years there's been countless ancient genetics papers on ancient remains that offer a correct take on world history instead the now obsolete takes of cultural diffusion, etc. So around 10,000 years ago people from the Middle East settled Europe and brought things like agriculture and livestock with them, changing Europe forever. Over thousands of years they also completely replaced the supposed 'indigenous' 'Europeans' and by 5000 BC they were all but gone. A video of technological achievements (if any) _before_ people from the Middle East arrived around 10,000 years ago would be interesting.
Great 👍 except civilizations in the Americas did arise at the same time actually as the others... Norte Chico and that area (cities like Huaricanga, Caral, Cerro Sechin etc.) arose from 3000-5000 BCE or even earlier, and new findings suggest Mayas, Isthmian Mexicans, and Southeast USA had civilizations going up to 3000-4000 BCE as well.
- Middle Eastern civilization and its extensions (Mesopotamia, Mediterranean, North Africa, Anatolia...) arose around that time period.
- Chinese civilization arose around 2000 BCE.
So yeah..
Whats ur flags about?
My understanding is that Caral and the Norte Chico are better described as stuff analogous to Gobleki Tepe rather then as urban state socities like sumer; and I don';t know what findings with the Maya and isthmians you are referencing are.
Chinese civilization is a LOT older than that, lol.
Towsends has a great video on axes demonstrating how fine-tuned stone technology was in North America
Excellent!
4:13 are you sure that picture depicts meso-america? The second person from the left wears a typical yayoi-haircut from the early japanese culture.
Tbh. Seeing this, Tin should actualy be the resource needed to make bronze weapons in civilization, because Copper is much more common, thus making tin the "special resource".
That feel when Australia went from the stone age right to gunpowder. It's quite shocking if you think about it.
Australia didn’t have a stone age in European Terms. As the video said, it’s inaccurate since these regions developed independently and isolated from the rest of the world.
Wasn't tin primarily gathered from the northern Afghanistan and the region around modern Cornwall? The Map seems not to show Afghanistan's deposits which were among the most important sources of the time.
I love the insinuation that some cultures just "skipped" the bronze age do to there advanced nature and wanting to cut to the chase.
>advanced nature
Yes, sub-saharan africa is very advanced
@@viktordickinson7844 Compared to which other civilization?
The island of Cyprus was also a major deposit of tin for the Middle East in the Bronze Age
Cool video
Nice one!
This was the best video amongst the bunch. I appreciate how it attacked the euro / asian centric view of the bronze age and shed light on other zones of technological advance such as sub-saharan Africa & the Americas.
P.S West Africa is Sub-Saharan....
Great vid... other Emperor.
What an AWESOME Collaboration!! I watched the entire series!! TY!!
You misused a picture of Japanese bronze age in representation of mesoamerica
Prof pic checks out
We were so close to the Tarascans getting mentioned
7:03 the calendar is aztec not mayan... please know the difference.
Conclusion: It's not applicable to use the terminologies of 'Bronze Age' or 'Iron Age' to the Americas as civilizations there went through a different route of technological improvement from Eurasia, as evidenced alone by the fact that Native Americans had extensive gold and silver metallurgy yet a relatively scanty usage of copper, bronze and iron.
Plus they had no reason to develop something that would be much more expensive to produce when they much more cost saving, abundant materials.
what is the source on "wrecked chinese ships gave the NW access to iron"? because i've never heard of anything like that.
In Peru when we're taught stone-bronze-iron age concepts it only applies to the Old World. We definitely use other periodization for our precolumbian history
I also learned something. When in doubt, if you find a strange artifact, always think of drifted sunken ships.
Likely the biggest factor in the lack of a development of an American equivalent to a 'bronze age' is that the only effective beast of burden pre-columbian exchange . . . were human beings themselves.
This not only put a massive limit on how effective their farming, and thus city growth, could be, but also eliminated the need for certain kinds of tools. Who needs plows when you haven't horses to pull them. No need for a sturdy, light, metal plow when a human probably digs just as fast, if not faster, one hole at a time. And so on.
Lack of wheeled transport also hindered development.
@@machintelligence How useful is wheel transportion when the only thing that can pull a cart are humans or maybe llamas?
@@jliller Have you ever used a wheelbarrow or a wagon?
@@machintelligence The wheelbarrow was invented thousands of years after the wheel so I would say it was not as obviously useful as it seems now. Wagons or handcarts capable of being pulled or pushed by a person have much less capacity than what a beast of burden can haul.
What the cabb-age, the saus-age, the spin-age! Do you catch on?
Elaine Evans Yup
A question about when you discussed where tin came from during the ancient/ middle eastern bronze age. While agreed most tin was traded as there were very few deposits in the middle east (mainly turkey) you stated it was traded from Europe (2:47). Now I had made a video about the bronze age civilizations collapse in 1177 BC, my source Eric Cline, Ph.D. states that most of the tin came from Afghanistan. He also cast heavy doubt on it coming from Europe, specifically Cornwall. Here is the link to his full presentation but the time stamp is 17:18 ruclips.net/video/bRcu-ysocX4/видео.html . I am just kind of curious on your response, as if I'm incorrect I may need to correct my video. still, a very good video, thank you. - The International Historian
Asking the real questions!
Could you one day make a video about the Pre-Inca empires of Wari and Tiahuanaco? his story is so mysterious
Dear Tigerstar great video. The only thing that was left out was the Purepecha Indians of the State of Michuacan Mexico. They are also wrongfully called the Tarasco Indians. They actually had Brass weapons and armor, since that state is abundant in Zinc. Since Zinc and Copper make Brass, which would be considered another version of Bronze. And they did also do some Bronze as well.
Bronze working in Southern Africa appears to have began sometime in the early 2nd millennium A.D. and is often associated with socio-politically complex, elite centers like Mapungubwe, Bosutswe and Great Zimbabwe. While copper appears to have been mined and worked since the Early Iron Age (200-900 A.D.), the earliest tin mining and working dates to between 1000-1300 A.D. (see Bandama et al., 2015). This activity is associated with Eiland ceramic producers at sites like Rooiberg in present-day South Africa. This tin was then traded with communities like Mapungubwe (in present day Northern South Africa), Bosutswe (in present day Botswana) and Great Zimbabwe (in present day Zimbabwe) where bronze was manufactured.
You mean second century AD?
@@culterwaleddy no, early second millennium A.D. Roughly 1000-1300A.D. The second century A.D. is 101-200 A.D.
I'm from Patagonia, people here doesn't care about anything but silver and bone. In Araucania it was similar but they also used copper, In the northern Andean area they went directly to gold and copper, bronze for everything.
Gemstone work was just as common as metal throughout America.
Not only did South Africa completely skip bronze, but their iron was so high in carbon it was similar to the properties of steel!
Tiger, I said this before. West Africa is largely sub saharan. Your personal definition does not expand to how the term is commonly used, nor it's geographical range. Thanks for putting it up there though :P
Admire Kashiri i had interacted with him before, and his definition then was the same one used in this video
Have you guys heard of the Tarascans? They were beginning to tinker with bronze towards the end of the Pre-Columbian period. Personally my favorite Mesoamerican culture.
Hey, at 4:12 and 6:05...isn't that an artist's rendering of Late Yayoi/Kofun Japan? With the thatched roofs, rice harvesting, and double knot hairstyle?
Northern N America did have copper from the big mine on Isle Royale off the Northern Peninsula of Michigan. My family and I vacationed there in the U.P. There are copper artifacts in museums from the Mound Builders. Incidentally, there are still some mounds in places such as Michigan and Upstate New York. In New York there are also some very old looking stone caerns, etc. And then there's always America's Stonehenge.
P.S> you were right about the Maya.
Ancient European metal workers: "unga bunga! Metal make good bonk bonk!"
Ancient American metal workers: "does this metal make my butt look big?"
Nice background music.
I wonder how much the lack of horses stunted the Americas Bronze Age considering the plow and the wheel were the primary inventions with Bronze?
Very interesting, looks like regarding tools and arms they used obsidian more because it was abundant and very sharp
Nice to see my boy UsefulCharts represented next to the big guys
I wonder how much Mesoamerica would have differed if the natives discovered Gunpowder and bronze
En Suramérica usaban bronce ya desde el siglo II
Bronze was firstly used by the Bulgarians all the way back in 696969BC. Bronze became widespread during the Rule of the Bulgarian godly emperor Biggu Dickoff
(3269-3169) when the Bulgarians started establishing colonies in Greece , Western Europe, Egypt, Jupiter, India and Paris.
Alеxander The Great Is Bulgarian Finally some REAL history.
Also don’t forget the great Bulgarian-Atlantean war of 420 BC.
Is this sarcasm?
@@NONO-oy1cu no
lot of 69
@@NONO-oy1cu It’s a fact
I am interested in how lack of easy access to materials and lack of some niches of fauna really shaped the growth curves of early American civilizations. I think a lot people forget is how you access and learn to refine metal is as important to growth technology as important to how you use it. Iron is a great example of this. When it easier to access and collect as well as plentiful makes it easier to experiment with. Bog iron and iron sand were relied upon before mining became a staple. It is difficult to mine if all your tools break before you can extract the ore you need.
Honestly, whether or not a Culture/Group built Cities is a better indicator of advancement.
Ooh Bronze Age collab
What's important to mention is that the Bronze that was made in Precolonial America had a different tin to copper ratio that made it brittle to the point of not being good for weapon making. Think of it less of a metal and more of a Bronze ceramic.
Good video, but a nitpick. The sunstone seen on the right at 7:11 is actually Mixtec not Mayan.
The Middle East is positively swimming in tin compared to North America. A bronze age would've been impossible unless they were able to import tin from South America. NA does, however, have lots and lots of zinc, meaning there could, theoretically, have been a brass age.
could you do something about the maximum temperatures different cultures could achieve and when ? who first got to 1000C or 2000C or 3000C or 4000C and how well could they regulate temp its one thing to occasionally flare up to 1700C and a vary different thing to be able to consistently get to 1000c and then hold at that temp for say an hour after all