NationStates Jolt Archive

I recently saw a guns, germs and steel piece on the conquest of the Americas, and it put things in a particularly depressing light. It seems that because of its access to good livestock animals and east-west as opposed to north-south orientation the victory of the New World over the Old World was inevitable, even with the vast numerical disadvantage the early conquistadors had. My question is: what would it have taken short of continental drift to allow even one of the ancient civilizations of the Americas to survive to the present day? Could they have defeated the invaders if they merely made different choices, or would history have to be radically altered to give them a chance?

If the natives had better immunity to western diseases they could have made a stand. Perhaps if they developed medicines, that would have changed it.

Contact with the Arabs, thats what gave the Europeans their edge. Otherwise, I dunno, maybe nuclear powered death robots would have turned the tide if the Aztecs could have invented them in time, but they just had to stop researching Nuclear Fission.
I watched a bit of the Guns, Germs, and Steel series and I decided that the East-West thing was a bunch of crap and made about as much sense as saying that the Europeans won because they had greater access to Jews. This was important because as everyone knows:
"T3H J3WS R00L T3H W0RLD!!!!11!"

If the natives had better immunity to western diseases they could have made a stand. Perhaps if they developed medicines, that would have changed it.

One problem with building up immunity to western disease, though, is that they never encountered it. This wasn't as much a problem for the Europeans because they grew up with livestock and thus built up immunities to just about everything. Perhaps the Incas could've survived if they kept their llamas indoors.

thats also a book that amazingly enough was brought up in my Native American Studies class today. Disease was a major part. Natives did not really have domesticated animals and most diseases are spread through them. I just read a book called "Broken Spears." Its all written accounts from the Aztecs about the Spanish conquest. What is interesting is that the Aztecs actually pushed the Spanish out of tenoctitlan. The Spanish regrouped and tried to make another try to fight. When they returned, they found that the Aztecs were beaten down by disease. (Smallpox). They were not able to hold off Spanish victory after that.

Contact with the Arabs, thats what gave the Europeans their edge. Otherwise, I dunno, maybe nuclear powered death robots would have turned the tide if the Aztecs could have invented them in time, but they just had to stop researching Nuclear Fission.
I watched a bit of the Guns, Germs, and Steel series and I decided that the East-West thing was a bunch of crap and made about as much sense as saying that the Europeans won because they had greater access to Jews. This was important because as everyone knows:
"T3H J3WS R00L T3H W0RLD!!!!11!"

The contact with Arabs thing is a point, though: what if the eunuchs stayed in power in China, the treasure fleet program wasn't scrapped, and China began regular trade with the New World? They'd probably conquer them too, but if they lost interest at some point (eunuchs lose power again, for example) they would leave the people of the New World with valuable technology. Junks in particular would have been useful in alerting Athahualpa of the conquest of Mexico.