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History Forum / General / General Topics / March 2004How were the incas and aztecs conquered easily by Conquistadors?
The conquistadors were small as atoms compared to a whole nation!!! Were the incas and aztecs just retarded or something? This is a serious question, it just boggles the mind! > The conquistadors were small as atoms compared to a whole nation!!! > Were the incas and aztecs just retarded or something? This is a > serious question, it just boggles the mind! Even a small population of blood thirsty religious zealots hungry for gold can destroy a larger advanced civilization if it is peaceful. > > The conquistadors were small as atoms compared to a whole nation!!! > > Were the incas and aztecs just retarded or something? This is a > > serious question, it just boggles the mind! > > Even a small population of blood thirsty religious zealots hungry for gold > can destroy a larger advanced civilization if it is peaceful. Of course the Aztec and Incan empires were very bloodthirsty, which is why the Spaniards had no trouble in getting Indian allies. NL >> > The conquistadors were small as atoms compared to a whole nation!!! >> > Were the incas and aztecs just retarded or something? This is a [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > NL Neville at his denial games again, I guess. Most historians agree that the Spaniards brought nothing but contempt and destruction for local traditions. To speak of a Dark Ages European "civilization" with a talent for Iniquisition as being somehow more advanced than an ancient civilization that had a well developed system of mathematics and astronomy only reveals more about you - that you consider people with ability to blow up and destroy to be more advanced than people who build. Happy reinventing ! > >> > The conquistadors were small as atoms compared to a whole nation!!! > >> > Were the incas and aztecs just retarded or something? This is a [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > > Happy reinventing ! Are you so stupid and uninformed that you do not know of the viciousness of the Aztecs and their endless human sacrifices? Which they got from endless war with their neighbours? And you call them 'peaceful'? Grow up. NL I'd jsut like to know how 177 conquistadors could conquor a whole empire. I might say the incas were retarded but if they were retarded they wouldnt have stayed very large. > I'd jsut like to know how 177 conquistadors could conquor a whole > empire. I might say the incas were retarded but if they were retarded > they wouldnt have stayed very large. Think disease and internal conflict prior to Spanish arrival. (Disease -small pox - spread faster than the people.) Hubbard C. Goodrich > I'd jsut like to know how 177 conquistadors could conquor a whole > empire. I might say the incas were retarded but if they were retarded > they wouldnt have stayed very large. The incase were not retarded but there were factors which helped Pizzaro. The country had been ruled by an usurper who hardly was liked (he murdered a big portion of the ruling class) so there was a 5th column among the "Incas" (ruling class). Then, the subdued tribes (not "incas") did not have any reason to fight against the Spaniards who would make them free from their masters. There, of course, was a "personal" factor: Pizarro captured Ataualpa and, as many other tyrants, he proved to be a coward: capitulated without putting any resistance. Incas' Empire being a totalitarian state, loss of the head of the state completely disorganized the whole system: it took years to organize an armed opposition. Some secondary issues: initially, Pizarro changed little in the existing social structure. The incas remained a privileged class, the local tribal leaders remained on their places, etc. So, for the most people, it was one tyrant replacing another. Why would they care? The firearms and diseases as a decisive factor are overrated. The Spaniards had even greater advantage against some "wild" Indian tribes and could not completely subdue them even in XVIII century. > The incase were not retarded but there were factors which helped > Pizzaro. The country had been ruled by an usurper who hardly was [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > loss of the head of the state completely disorganized the whole system: > it took years to organize an armed opposition. Maybe, but how did he actually conquer them? He killed atahualpa, i dont know the scenario of him capturing cuzco and finding a puppet emporer, and that it took the spanish 30 years to completely subdue the inca, but to fail to organize a revolt against a small band of explorors is pretty pathetic. Some secondary issues: > initially, Pizarro changed little in the existing social structure. The > incas remained a privileged class, the local tribal leaders remained on [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > had even greater advantage against some "wild" Indian tribes and could not > completely subdue them even in XVIII century. I dont know aobut disease, but I agree that firearms were not a significantfactor. I dont consider it a factor at all because firearms at the time(at least hand held ones) were a quantity weapon; not a quality weapon. So if anything firearms make the conquest even more stupifying. > > The incase were not retarded but there were factors which helped > > Pizzaro. The country had been ruled by an usurper who hardly was [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > dont know the scenario of him capturing cuzco and finding a puppet > emporer, This is not how it happened. By the time of Pizarro's appearence, Ataualpa overthrew and kept hostage a legitimate Emperor. Ataualpa himself, being a bastard, did not have any right to the throne, he was simply a successful military leader. After capturing Huaskar (sp), he stared a methodic extermination of all people with a greater right to the throne, which means a big part of the incas (the ruling class), including women and children (created one of the first death camps in a human history). As you understand, he could not expect to be supported by a ruling class and there was an unsolved issue of his own legitimacy with Huaskar still being alive. The subdued tribes (not incas) did not have any reason to have sympathy to any Inca. Which means that his supporting base was his army and the people who, by one reason or another followed him. No real legality besides a brutal force. Cortez captured him during their meeting (which was probably a dirty trick) and this made situation very interesting: who would led a resistance? Ataualpa ordered his followers to coroborate with the Spaniards and for the rest of those who mattered Pizzaro was a savior against a cruel usurper. Ataualpa took care of not having any serious alternative leader and he even ordered to kill Huaskar (a legitimate, not "puppet" Emperor). BTW, Pizarro did not "kill" Ataualpa. He was put on trial for Huaskar's murder, proven guilty (OK, there is always an issue of a quality of the court) and executed as a Spanish noble (garroted, IIRC). At this point, almost everybody was reasonably happy. > and that it took the spanish 30 years to completely subdue > the inca, but to fail to organize a revolt against a small band of > explorors is pretty pathetic. An obvious question is why would they revolt? The ruling class (incas) were free from the fear of Ataualpa's executioners and accomodated rather nicely. Their noble status of "Inca" was recognized (as being a little bit below the Spanish nobility) and their position in a society was intact for quite a while. Children of the marriages of the Spaniards and Inca women got status of the Spanish nobles (as Inca Garsilasio de la Vega). The subdued tribes changed one boss to another and I doubt that the Spaniards managed to organized the same level of exploitation as Incas. Anyway, the local casics also remained a privileged class and kept most of their power. They still were a force in XVIII during the upraising of Tupak Amaru II. The very fact that there was too few Spaniards helped the things: being so few, they changed very little until much more of them came. Only when things started noticeably changing, the rebellion took place (I suspect that the quarrels among the Spanish leaders also helped the things). One small episode may be interesting in the context of your question. IIRC, it was described by Garsilasio de la Vega. During the customarily parade of the subdued tribes (preserved by the Spaniards) one of the tribes had been carrying a mocking effigy of the (already executed) Ataualpa. The Incas who had the seats of honor side by side with the Spaniards jumped from their places, took hold of the tribe's leader and started doing to him exactly the same thing that Pratchett's Librarian was doing to the people who called him a monkey: turned him upside down and kicked his head on the ground until the Spaniards interfered. It was not a business of the lesser people to mock an authority however bad this authority was. The same Incas disliked memory of Ataualpa so much that nobody wanted to talk to his children. One more thing to keep in mind. Empire of the Incas was a totalitarian state with a well-developed social hierarchy. In the states of this type population tends to be rather indifferent to the changes on the top. Look at the change of the leaders in the former SU. Did anybody care? > Some secondary issues: > > initially, Pizarro changed little in the existing social structure. The [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > not a quality weapon. So if anything firearms make the conquest even > more stupifying. Based on the Diaz' report about conquest of Mexico, a big part of the long-range weapons were the crossbows, not the firearms. Two factors he mentions time and again were the steel swords and the horses. Of course, in the case of Pizarro, there was practically no fighting on the 1st stage of a conquest. >> >> > The conquistadors were small as atoms compared to a whole nation!!! >> >> > Were the incas and aztecs just retarded or something? This is a [quoted text clipped - 27 lines] > > NL Are you so stupid and uninformed that you do not know of the viciousness of the Spaniards and their endless Iniquisitions ? Which they got from endless war with their endless thumping of their version of the Bible (like the sun going around the earth) ? And you call them 'advanced' ? Grow up. >>> >> > The conquistadors were small as atoms compared to a whole nation!!! >>> >> > Were the incas and aztecs just retarded or something? This is a [quoted text clipped - 32 lines] >war with their endless thumping of their version of the Bible (like the sun >going around the earth) ? And you call them 'advanced' ? Grow up. Actually, I think both are true. The Spanish were ruthless and brutal. But, so where the Aztecs. Neville is right that the Spanish had no difficulty in finding allies in the indians that were being preyed upon by the Aztecs for sacrificial victims. It's difficult for me to get worked up over the demise of a culture who sacrificed thousands of people to their gods in order to make it rain. On the other hand it's difficult to find a defense for the Spanish who went around forcibly imposing their ideas on everyone who they could bully into submission. In my book they were both rather on the contemptible side. > Actually, I think both are true. > [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > In my book they were both rather on the contemptible side. Agree totally. However, it is undeniable that the civilizations of the New World were intellectually more advanced than the Spaniards. And a case might also be made that the Incas were more peaceful than the Spaniards - just compare the areas either invaded. "It is undeniable that the civilizations of the new world were more intelectually advanced than the Spanish". Well, how do you prove that statement ? No new world civilization had the ability to navigate around the world, or build a ship to do so. No new world civilization had any weapons close to firearms. Please tell me of the wheeled vehicles the new world civilizations had. How about printing presses ? I think your "undeniable " statement is easy to deny. It all depends upon how you define " "intellectually advanced" To me, the term encompasses many, many factors, religion, culture, agriculture, technology, medicine, science, engineering, etc., etc. In the final analysis, the Inca and Aztec cultures, as a result of their brutal religion, based upon the daily sacrifice of many many people, and the need for those thousands upon thousands to sacrifice, had an internally destructive trait. Is that intellectually superior ? LE >> Actually, I think both are true. >> [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] >Agree totally. However, it is undeniable that the civilizations of the New >World were intellectually more advanced than the Spaniards. I don't know about that. How do you count people who sacrifice victims to their gods by cutting out their still beating hearts and then tossing the rest of the body down the stairs of their temple for the rest of the people to cannibalize as intellectually more advanced? While the Aztecs understood mathematics at this time, so did the Spanish. Else they wouldn't have been able to build the ships that they did and reliably sail them out into the endless tracts of the deep ocean, get to where they wanted to go and get back again. >And a case might also be made that the Incas were more peaceful than the >Spaniards - just compare the areas either invaded. Likely. While I'm not that well versed on the subject, I don't recall hearing much about the Inca being particularly violent. >>Agree totally. However, it is undeniable that the civilizations of the New >>World were intellectually more advanced than the Spaniards. [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > down the stairs of their temple for the rest of the people to > cannibalize as intellectually more advanced? When I compare them with people who torture their captives through some of the worst torture devices (drowning, iron maiden, etc.) ever invented to force them to recant their own beliefs and burn people at the stake in public, especially targetting women, I see little difference. Human life was cheap in those days, and various people reflected that. However, I find something extra vile and rotten about using a book to justify the cold well-defined sadistic methods of torture and public slaughter of people who choose to think for themselves. YMMV. > While the Aztecs understood mathematics at this time, so did the > Spanish. Else they wouldn't have been able to build the ships that > they did and reliably sail them out into the endless tracts of the > deep ocean, get to where they wanted to go and get back again. The difference is that the early American civilization did not learn mathematics and astronomy from anyone. The Spaniards received their "knowledge" of mathematics and astronomy from the Arabs who in turn got it from the Indians. Since some references to integral calculus appear in ancient Indian texts, the only original contribution made to mathematics by Europeans until the end of the dark ages appears to me to be the invention of logarithms. But that was not done by a Spaniard. I would rate creativity as the highest indicator of intellect. Lets put it this way - the Spaniards invented the Iniquisition and were one of the inventors of the various torture devices. The American civilizations invented their own method of mathematics and astronomy. >>And a case might also be made that the Incas were more peaceful than the >>Spaniards - just compare the areas either invaded. > > Likely. While I'm not that well versed on the subject, I don't recall > hearing much about the Inca being particularly violent. Most likely not. While the Spaniards laid waste to the entire New world practically, invaded Britain, etc. in name of religion. The greed and rapaciousness of the two just cannot be placed in the same class. >>>Agree totally. However, it is undeniable that the civilizations of the New >>>World were intellectually more advanced than the Spaniards. [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] >force them to recant their own beliefs and burn people at the stake in >public, especially targetting women, I see little difference. Well, I certainly wasn't trying to write a defense of Spanish conduct. Like I said earlier, I see little difference between the two and wouldn't assign either to a superior position over the other. >Human life was cheap in those days, and various people reflected that. >However, I find something extra vile and rotten about using a book to >justify the cold well-defined sadistic methods of torture and public >slaughter of people who choose to think for themselves. There is little difference between that and the Aztecs slaughtering people in the name of their god, which is exactly what they were doing. Were I forced to choose to end up in the hands of one group or the other, I'd choose the Spanish. At least there one had a chance of "converting" or otherwise weaseling out of getting killed. Not so the Aztecs. The only thing they were interested in was blood to feed their god. >YMMV. > [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] >"knowledge" of mathematics and astronomy from the Arabs who in turn got it >from the Indians. Unless one subscribes to the theory that different groups of people are superior to one another, I think one will find that people, by and large, discover what they need to discover as a pressing need for that knowledge arises. This is almost always the case unless there is a crisis that doesn't permit time to figure out what they need to know. People make much of how the Aztecs didn't use the wheel, but they knew of it's existence. Likely their lifestyle didn't require it's use in a great way. On the other hand, their particular religious beliefs encouraged a certain knowledge of mathematics, so they figured them out. The lifestyle and religion of the Spanish didn't really require a knowledge of mathematics until one was trying to figure out how to get ones ship from point A to point B across an endless tract of sea so they could cash in on the spice trade. Then knowledge of mathematics suddenly becomes of paramount importance, and if the Spanish hadn't been able to borrow knowledge of mathematics from the muslims, I've little doubt would have worked it out for themselves. They certainly worked out enough other problems associated with reliably getting their ships around the world, like advanced hull designs and how to put them together so they didn't fall apart in the sorts of storms they were likely to encounter. >Since some references to integral calculus appear in >ancient Indian texts, the only original contribution made to mathematics by >Europeans until the end of the dark ages appears to me to be the invention >of logarithms. But that was not done by a Spaniard. The only thing that says to me is that at the time Europeans were dealing with problems that mathematics weren't particularly useful in solving. As European society became more technologically advanced and began undertakings in which they found mathematics to be useful, they got about the business of figuring them out in a big hurry and were quite successful at it. >I would rate creativity as the highest indicator of intellect. Intellect, and thus creativity, is an individual attribute, not a group attribute. Groups can encourage or stifle intellectual curiosity, but that rather depends on what a particular group finds useful for their collective survival. God only knows how many times some particularly bright individual worked out a means of discerning something through mathematics, but as the group didn't have any problems in which such knowledge was useful in resolving, the knowledge died with the discoverer. However, take that same groups and confront them with a problem in which the same knowledge of mathematics is useful in solving, suddenly such knowledge is important and thus isn't lost. >Lets put it this way - the Spaniards invented the Iniquisition and were one >of the inventors of the various torture devices. The American civilizations >invented their own method of mathematics and astronomy. I can only reference what I wrote before. For example, when the Europeans got sick of their calendar getting out of sink with the seasons every so many years, it lead to the people like Copernicus and Kepler to figuring out how the solar system actually works. Discoveries on gravity had their roots in trying to figure out where to point ones cannon to make a cannon ball go where it was wanted. What's the old phrase? Necessity is the mother of invention. >>>And a case might also be made that the Incas were more peaceful than the >>>Spaniards - just compare the areas either invaded. [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] >practically, invaded Britain, etc. in name of religion. The greed and >rapaciousness of the two just cannot be placed in the same class. The Spanish were playing in an entirely different environment where successfully playing the game of power politics was extremely important to their survival. Population densities were much higher and there were a lot more people around waiting to take advantage of weakness. Land meant power, just as it does now, and power means strength. Given that, it's hardly surprising that they had a rather rapacious attitude toward those who were weaker than themselves. I don't know about the Inca, except to note that they were known as an empire and empires don't usually come about voluntarily. I do know that the Aztecs certainly weren't especially charitable to tribes that were weaker than themselves. Those tribes were their main source of sacrificial victims. >>When I compare them with people who torture their captives through some of >>the worst torture devices (drowning, iron maiden, etc.) ever invented to [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > Like I said earlier, I see little difference between the two and > wouldn't assign either to a superior position over the other. I don't, per se. But as I stated in my initial post, the acquisitiveness and violence of the Spaniards was at a scale different from the American civilizations. Furthermore, there is the little matter of the invasion. The Spaniards, by invading lands that belonged to another placed themselves in a morally inferior position from the first instant. Had the Aztecs invaded Spain, it would have been the other way round. >>Human life was cheap in those days, and various people reflected that. >>However, I find something extra vile and rotten about using a book to [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > Not so the Aztecs. The only thing they were interested in was blood > to feed their god. I do not agree (its a matter of opinion). I find something extra heinous about a system that forces you to change your beliefs in order to survive. At least the victims of the Aztecs died a physical death, the victims of the Spaniards died a spiritual and mental death before the uncertain prospect of survival could present itself. And it is not that all the converted Americans were spared by the Spaniards. I recently saw a documentary on PBS that detailed an account of a band of newly converted Americans that strayed into Mexico and were slaughtered by the Spaniards. >>The difference is that the early American civilization did not learn >>mathematics and astronomy from anyone. The Spaniards received their [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > large, discover what they need to discover as a pressing need for that > knowledge arises. They do, but the creativity of people flourishes only a system that recognizes and rewards it. In so doing, that system (inevitably associated for a certain period of time with a certain body of people) becomes superior. Take the case of present day US. Despite the large scale erosion of civil liberties, it remains the most creative environment in which new ideas may be presented and developed. In that sense, it is superior to most other countries in the world today. > This is almost always the case unless there is a crisis that doesn't > permit time to figure out what they need to know. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > encouraged a certain knowledge of mathematics, so they figured them > out. As long as they found an effective method of transportation (considering the mountainous and heavily forested lands that they ruled over), I do not think that use or no use of the wheel is pertinent. > The lifestyle and religion of the Spanish didn't really require a > knowledge of mathematics until one was trying to figure out how to get [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > mathematics from the muslims, I've little doubt would have worked it > out for themselves. But how many years would it have taken ? 20, 30, 500 ? It took the Indians about 1000 years to develop the most complicated system of mathematics and the number system (that is incorrectly called the "Arabic" numeral system). Most of those concepts today form the basis of modern mathematics, and hence modern science (whether they are acknowledged or not is a different matter). Think about it. How much different would the picture of the world have been if India or China had industrialized themselves 200 years before they did ? Its like a butterfly effect, and the process of creative work is necessarily an incremental and slow one. > They certainly worked out enough other problems associated with > reliably getting their ships around the world, like advanced hull > designs and how to put them together so they didn't fall apart in the > sorts of storms they were likely to encounter. The Vikings had a lead there, but let us not get into that. >>Since some references to integral calculus appear in >>ancient Indian texts, the only original contribution made to mathematics [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > about the business of figuring them out in a big hurry and were quite > successful at it. However, that glosses over the fact that these technological advancements would not have occured if they did not have the basic tools. To give you a more modern (and less radical) example, consider the mass exodus of German scientists into the US and the UK (to a lesser extent) due to Hitler's madness ? Do you think that the US would have been able to send astronauts to the moon had Germans not suddenly gifted the cream of their science (the most advanced at the time) to the US ? Werner von Braun designed the rockets which took people to the moon. Remove Hitler and what do you have ? The language of science of mathematics remains German as it was. Germans send a man to the moon sometime in mid 1950's, while a certain large but technologically and scientifically deficient country called USA is trying to get the basics of rocketry correct. Remember the UN would have never come into being if Hitler had not started the war, so the only way of exchange of ideas and peoples would have been of the slow conference to conference variety. >>I would rate creativity as the highest indicator of intellect. > > Intellect, and thus creativity, is an individual attribute, not a > group attribute. But the system that rewards and encourages the slow process of creative work is a group attribute. > Groups can encourage or stifle intellectual curiosity, but that rather > depends on what a particular group finds useful for their collective > survival. Ancient Indians had little use for calculating the value of PI to 50 odd decimal places (or for choosing that the earth goes round the Sun and not the other way round). Some work (especially true in mathematics) is done for its pure creative value. > God only knows how many times some particularly bright individual > worked out a means of discerning something through mathematics, but as > the group didn't have any problems in which such knowledge was useful > in resolving, the knowledge died with the discoverer. That is not always correct. > For example, when the Europeans got sick of their calendar getting out > of sink with the seasons every so many years, it lead to the people > like Copernicus and Kepler to figuring out how the solar system > actually works. Hardly - they used to add extra days to make up for the difference. And many people like Copernicus paid for their impudence with their lives or very nearly so. Think where Europe might have been if you remove the medieval roman catholic church. > Discoveries on gravity had their roots in trying to figure out where > to point ones cannon to make a cannon ball go where it was wanted. Actually it was for calculation of planetary orbits (Kepler, Newton, etc.) > Given that, it's hardly surprising that they had a rather rapacious > attitude toward those who were weaker than themselves. I think that Columbus went out with a desire to find an western route to the then richest country in the world - India. Hence, the unfortunate naming of native Americans as being "Indians". But in a way it was "good" - it saved the eastern coasts of Asia from an early onslaught of the relatively barbaric seafaring peoples of Andalusia. Only the Phillipines fell to the Spaniards eventually, but that gave the Asians time to preserve their civilizations, as also time to the Europeans to advance their civilizations to the level that such a meeting was not such a shock as it might have been. (Contrast that with the Arab conquest of Persia or the Spanish conquest of much of America). > I do know that the Aztecs certainly weren't especially charitable to > tribes that were weaker than themselves. Those tribes were their main > source of sacrificial victims. There is something extra heinous about calculated savagery done in the name of some higher deity. YMMV. >>>When I compare them with people who torture their captives through some of >>>the worst torture devices (drowning, iron maiden, etc.) ever invented to [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] >violence of the Spaniards was at a scale different from the American >civilizations. Mostly because they were larger groups to begin with and thus had more muscle to throw around. >Furthermore, there is the little matter of the invasion. The Spaniards, by >invading lands that belonged to another placed themselves in a morally >inferior position from the first instant. I'll give you that point. >Had the Aztecs invaded Spain, it would have been the other way round. > [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] >the Spaniards died a spiritual and mental death before the uncertain >prospect of survival could present itself. Yea. That's a value judgement. >And it is not that all the converted Americans were spared by the Spaniards. >I recently saw a documentary on PBS that detailed an account of a band of >newly converted Americans that strayed into Mexico and were slaughtered by >the Spaniards. At that point was it still the Spaniards who were running the show? There wasn't exactly any love loss between N. American Indians and the Indians who were in Mexico. >>>The difference is that the early American civilization did not learn >>>mathematics and astronomy from anyone. The Spaniards received their [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] >for a certain period of time with a certain body of people) becomes >superior. Rewards are based on need. >Take the case of present day US. Despite the large scale erosion of civil >liberties, it remains the most creative environment in which new ideas may >be presented and developed. In that sense, it is superior to most other >countries in the world today. True. However, again, that is in line with the goals of our society. We reward new ideas because we realize that new ideas frequently lead to new profits. Societies reward or discourage such innovation based on their goals and their goals are determined by their needs, perceived or actual. >> This is almost always the case unless there is a crisis that doesn't >> permit time to figure out what they need to know. [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] >mountainous and heavily forested lands that they ruled over), I do not >think that use or no use of the wheel is pertinent. Nor do I. >> The lifestyle and religion of the Spanish didn't really require a >> knowledge of mathematics until one was trying to figure out how to get [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > >But how many years would it have taken ? 20, 30, 500 ? To answer this I'll reference the competition for Queen Anne's Prize, which was offered in 1714 and was a £20,000 award to the first person who discovered a reliable means of determining longitude at sea. By 1759 two reliable means of making such a determination had been discovered, one based on a mechanical clock developed by John Harrison and the other based on selenographics developed by the Greenwich observatory. Certainly not the speed at which were accustomed to technological change and discoveries, but not out of line with the rate of discovery at the time. > It took the Indians >about 1000 years to develop the most complicated system of mathematics and [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] >Its like a butterfly effect, and the process of creative work is >necessarily an incremental and slow one. I think, to a point anyway, how slow or how fast progress is achieved is directly related to the urgency that answers to certain questions are needed. The more something is needed, the more resources are put into the problem and the faster a solution comes. Personally, I don't consider the amount of elapsed time between the discovery of mathematics and the Apollo project to be all that long when placed in the context of total human history. As a side note, that's one of the things I find absurd about the arguments put forward by racists, who point to different states of development between different peoples as evidence of superiority. In the context of the entire history of Homo Sapiens, as of now some 160,000 years, the difference in technological advancement between the most advanced people on earth and the most primitive shrinks to statistical insignificance. >> They certainly worked out enough other problems associated with >> reliably getting their ships around the world, like advanced hull >> designs and how to put them together so they didn't fall apart in the >> sorts of storms they were likely to encounter. > >The Vikings had a lead there, but let us not get into that. They did at one point, but ok... Let's not go there. >>>Since some references to integral calculus appear in >>>ancient Indian texts, the only original contribution made to mathematics [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] >However, that glosses over the fact that these technological advancements >would not have occured if they did not have the basic tools. To take that chain of reasoning to it's logical extreme, we probably have to thank the guy who figured out how to tame fire for everything. Nobody knows who that was. But more to the point, even if the basic tool were initially lacking, I've little doubt that the Spanish could have developed them just as the Indians did had the necessity presented itself. >To give you a >more modern (and less radical) example, consider the mass exodus of German [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] >most advanced at the time) to the US ? Werner von Braun designed the >rockets which took people to the moon. Absolutely. Von Braun's work speeded the process a bit, but we had all the necessary components to develop such technology. The only thing that was lacking was a pressing need to do so. The Soviets provided that. >Remove Hitler and what do you have ? The language of science of mathematics >remains German as it was. Germans send a man to the moon sometime in mid >1950's, while a certain large but technologically and scientifically >deficient country called USA is trying to get the basics of rocketry >correct. We already had the basics correct. Von Braun himself said that Robert Goddard, who is considered the father of modern rocketry, was ahead of everyone. He was accomplishing in the late 20's and early 30's what Von Braun didn't accomplish until the early 40's. It's almost ironic that Von Braun and Goddard reached similar solutions to the problems associated with rocketry, even though their work was completely independent. Historically, Goddard's work wasn't given much priority because nobody saw any practical applications for it. Had the situation been different and the need more pressing, his work would have been given a lot more attention and development would have proceeded accordingly. It would have been a 3 way space race rather than 2 way. The biggest problem associated with getting into space for most countries is paying for it, not the lack of ability to figure out how to do it. It's is a matter of having the resources to devote to expensive experimentation, and a big part of freeing up such resources is a pressing need to get there. >Remember the UN would have never come into being if Hitler had not >started the war, so the only way of exchange of ideas and peoples would >have been of the slow conference to conference variety. Had Hitler not started the war, much of the technological development that occurred during the period would have been slower because there wouldn't have been the same pressing need for such development to take place. It's comparatively rare that a single individual makes a profound contribution to science that others aren't close to duplicating. Off hand, I can't really think of anyone who we can say with certainty provided a totally unique contribution to science. Even when it comes to basic mathematics, each generation contains some people who are heads above everyone else. If the guy who discovered counting hadn't done so, there is little doubt someone else would have. The same is no doubt true of the rest of mathematics. In Eurasia, India included, there is an unbroken chain of knowledge about such things that goes back... I don't know how far. While individuals may not have known how to make complicated calculations, the cultural knowledge that the possibility existed to do so has been wide spread for a long time. This makes it easy to say, for example, that all Spanish knowledge of mathematics was borrowed, and as far as it goes that's true. But that isn't evidence that the Spanish were incapable of working things out for themselves in the absence of knowledge of advanced mathematics. How many times have we studied ancient cultures and been surprised to learn that they had discovered the same things we have? When a need arises, people start working on the problem and the more pressing the need the more people who work on it. Take Einstein's theories for example. He put it all togethers first, but there were others who were working toward similar explanations for observed data. If Einstein hadn't gotten it, I'm certain someone else would have. The same goes for just about everything else. The Wrights were only marginally ahead of others in figuring out how to fly. Edison barely beat an Englishman to the light bulb. Bell only squeaked by someone else in getting credit for the telephone. I think that the greatest impetus for advancement is the need for a problem to enter into the realm of the practical rather than remaining theoretical. Once that happens, solutions are usually found. >>>I would rate creativity as the highest indicator of intellect. >> [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] >But the system that rewards and encourages the slow process of creative work >is a group attribute. Right, and that's based on the needs of the group. >> Groups can encourage or stifle intellectual curiosity, but that rather >> depends on what a particular group finds useful for their collective [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >the other way round). Some work (especially true in mathematics) is done >for its pure creative value. True. But I think the greatest factor there is having the resources to devote to pure research. When Indians were developing mathematics, they were likely in a better position than Europeans were to devote resources to such an endeavor. Due to the spread of ideas, it became unnecessary for Europeans to duplicate the research because someone else had already solved the problem. Later when Europeans got to the point that they had the resources to spare, they weren't exactly lax about trying to discover how the world works themselves. >> God only knows how many times some particularly bright individual >> worked out a means of discerning something through mathematics, but as >> the group didn't have any problems in which such knowledge was useful >> in resolving, the knowledge died with the discoverer. > >That is not always correct. I think it's correct often enough for the point to stand. >> For example, when the Europeans got sick of their calendar getting out >> of sink with the seasons every so many years, it lead to the people >> like Copernicus and Kepler to figuring out how the solar system >> actually works. > >Hardly - they used to add extra days to make up for the difference. Yes, until they decided that wasn't an adequate solution. Then they fixed it properly. >And many people like Copernicus paid for their impudence with their lives or >very nearly so. Think where Europe might have been if you remove the >medieval roman catholic church. While the Church had a repressive influence, I'll point out that the need for practical solutions to practical problems is exactly what broke the monopoly on ideas that the Church held. When technology reached a certain point, things could no longer be explained within the context of Church doctrine. People like Francis Bacon basically told the Church to go to hell, he had a problem to solve and if the solution to that problem didn't fit with Church doctrine, to bad for the Church. >> Discoveries on gravity had their roots in trying to figure out where >> to point ones cannon to make a cannon ball go where it was wanted. > >Actually it was for calculation of planetary orbits (Kepler, Newton, etc.) I'm going back a bit further. It was the science of ballistics that first made it important to try and understand the nature of gravity and it's effect on matter. That was one of the things that prompted Galileo's early experiments with falling bodies. It was later that Newton successfully reconciled what had been observed about the nature of gravity from the science of ballistics and what had been observed about the nature of solar system by the science of astronomy, Kepler's theories included, by developing a theory that fit all of the observations. The rest is history. >> Given that, it's hardly surprising that they had a rather rapacious >> attitude toward those who were weaker than themselves. > >I think that Columbus went out with a desire to find an western route to the >then richest country in the world - India. True. But the Queen, who paid for the expedition, had other things in mind for the wealth that a successful expedition of that nature would bring. >Hence, the unfortunate naming of native Americans as being "Indians". But in >a way it was "good" - it saved the eastern coasts of Asia from an early [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >shock as it might have been. (Contrast that with the Arab conquest of >Persia or the Spanish conquest of much of America). That's hard to say. I think it likely that the mainland peoples would have been more than strong enough to successfully defend themselves against the sort of power projection that the Spanish were capable of at the time. I don't think the Chinese or the Indians would have been overawed by guns or iron armor. Do you? A couple of bloody noses, which is exactly what they would have gotten had they tried to treat either of those populations as they did the Amer-indians, might have taught the Spanish some better manners. >> I do know that the Aztecs certainly weren't especially charitable to >> tribes that were weaker than themselves. Those tribes were their main >> source of sacrificial victims. > >There is something extra heinous about calculated savagery done in the name >of some higher deity. YMMV. Isn't that what the Aztec's were doing? >>I don't, per se. But as I stated in my initial post, the acquisitiveness >>and violence of the Spaniards was at a scale different from the American >>civilizations. > > Mostly because they were larger groups to begin with and thus had more > muscle to throw around. Was Spain more heavily populated than South America in pre-Spanish days ? >>I do not agree (its a matter of opinion). I find something extra heinous >>about a system that forces you to change your beliefs in order to survive. [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > > At that point was it still the Spaniards who were running the show? One might say the Mexicans, but these people were of almost the same stock as the Spanish royalty, with frequent contact with the Spanish govt. > There wasn't exactly any love loss between N. American Indians and > the Indians who were in Mexico. No, the people I refer to were ruling class Spanish descent Mexican generals. >>They do, but the creativity of people flourishes only a system that >>recognizes and rewards it. In so doing, that system (inevitably associated >>for a certain period of time with a certain body of people) becomes >>superior. > > Rewards are based on need. That would not explain all the arts and humanities programs in US universities or the endowment for pure science (like QCD, string theory, etc.) or pure mathematics. >>Take the case of present day US. Despite the large scale erosion of civil >>liberties, it remains the most creative environment in which new ideas may [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > reward new ideas because we realize that new ideas frequently lead to > new profits. I do not see how funding liberal arts or pure science leads to any "profits". By the admission of people who work in the field of string theory, the work that they do is currently untestable, let alone exploitable. > Societies reward or discourage such innovation based on their goals > and their goals are determined by their needs, perceived or actual. And I guess you will grant that pure academic endeavour is a form of perceived need :) >>But how many years would it have taken ? 20, 30, 500 ? > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > and the other based on selenographics developed by the Greenwich > observatory. However, you ignore that the people who accomplished the above did not have to : 1. Invent a suitable number system. 2. Invent trigonometry or spherical trigonometry. etc. Its easy to overlook the basic premises on which their work was based. >> It took the Indians >>about 1000 years to develop the most complicated system of mathematics and [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > The more something is needed, the more resources are put into the > problem and the faster a solution comes. To the first order that is correct, but the pace of technological progress is itself proportional to the progress already made, as your example above implicitly implied. > As a side note, that's one of the things I find absurd about the > arguments put forward by racists, who point to different states of > development between different peoples as evidence of superiority. That is bunk. IMO such opinions are based on an innate tendency to filter out all the contributions made by other groups of people. Such stupidity is impossible if one really knows what came from where. I will not be surprised if the unwitting German contribution to modern US technological advancement is glossed over 50 years from now. > In the context of the entire history of Homo Sapiens, as of now some > 160,000 years, the difference in technological advancement between the > most advanced people on earth and the most primitive shrinks to > statistical insignificance. I do not think so. There are parts of Africa where you could find people living pretty much the same way as Stone Age humans lived. >>However, that glosses over the fact that these technological advancements >>would not have occured if they did not have the basic tools. > > To take that chain of reasoning to it's logical extreme, we probably > have to thank the guy who figured out how to tame fire for everything. No. One could possibly not credit that man or woman for inventing the number system. But to take anything other than a syncretic view of technological advancement is illogical, IMO. So, yes, it was an extreme all right, but not very logical :) > Nobody knows who that was. > > But more to the point, even if the basic tool were initially lacking, > I've little doubt that the Spanish could have developed them just as > the Indians did had the necessity presented itself. It would have taken the Spaniards at least 500 years to go from the invention of the number system, trigonometry (another Indian contribution) to the invention of the method of calculating longtitudes. That would put the date of that invention at about 1900 AD. History would have been very very different. That is assuming that the Indians did not kick out the Islamic invaders and start on a global expansionist colonial system themselves :) >>To give you a >>more modern (and less radical) example, consider the mass exodus of German [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > > The Soviets provided that. Agreed. The space program was a vanity race between the US and the USSR. To see the effect of lack of competetion, look at the decrepit state of NASA today. No vision, just humdrum, unexciting work. >>Remove Hitler and what do you have ? The language of science of >>mathematics remains German as it was. Germans send a man to the moon [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > Von Braun himself said that Robert Goddard, who is considered the > father of modern rocketry, was ahead of everyone. The nuclear weapons program (which the US initiated) would have been impossible without the help of the German refugees. > He was accomplishing in the late 20's and early 30's what Von Braun > didn't accomplish until the early 40's. [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > Historically, Goddard's work wasn't given much priority because nobody > saw any practical applications for it. Correct, but what is the use of a rocket if you cannot put a warhead at the end of it ? By firing a missile without a warhead, you might kill a dog or two (heard of the most unlucky dog in history - 1833 meteor shower ?), but not much more. > It would have been a 3 way space race rather than 2 way. Even if we grant that (and I doubt that scenario very much), I will suggest the following timeline : No world war is fought initially because of a saner Hitler, who wants to be extra strong before starting a possible war. 1941 - Germany detonates the first nuclear weapon. Japan attacks the US. 1942 - Peenemunde is the site of the development of the first IRBM. 1944 - Europe (as in the real timeline) splits into two camps - the appeasers (led by the Brits) and the opposers (led by the USSR). France, convinced that its territory would become the battlefield, signs a no-aggression pact with Hitler. In return for peace, it gives up its north African colonies to Germany. US and USSR overcome their ideological differences to jointly combat the Japanese empire and the emerging German power. 1945 - At gunpoint, Hitler obtains Austria, Denmark, Poland, Sweden and Norway because no one is ready to fight him. 1946 - The US-USSR alliance detonates its own first atomic bomb in eastern Russia. After a hard fight at two fronts, Japan surrenders. ... Instead of the USSR being the target of encirclement, Germany takes its role. However, the primacy of German science ensures that Germans are the first to get to the Moon in 1955. US-USSR follow soon after in 1962. ... We are writing in Deutsch today because it is the language in which all scientific work is done :) Wunderbar ! > The biggest problem associated with getting into space for most > countries is paying for it, not the lack of ability to figure out how > to do it. That is true today, but you can try telling that to people who were sending Sputniks into space. >>Remember the UN would have never come into being if Hitler had not >>started the war, so the only way of exchange of ideas and peoples would [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > wouldn't have been the same pressing need for such development to take > place. Slower, perhaps, but it would have been almost completely German in nature. Since the Germans would have not fought anyone, no one else would have woken up to their threat until they were already a nuclear power. > It's comparatively rare that a single individual makes a profound > contribution to science that others aren't close to duplicating. The early 20th century was known for many such individuals - Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Dirac, etc. Barring one, all the above were Germans / lived close to Germany. > Off hand, I can't really think of anyone who we can say with certainty > provided a totally unique contribution to science. Einstein would be a necessary choice in that list. > Even when it comes to basic mathematics, each generation contains some > people who are heads above everyone else. If the guy who discovered > counting hadn't done so, there is little doubt someone else would > have. > > The same is no doubt true of the rest of mathematics. However, the development of such concepts takes time. Its easy to talk of accelerating when you have the basic toolset ready. > In Eurasia, India included, there is an unbroken chain of knowledge > about such things that goes back... I don't know how far. Its impossible to know, but the chain accelerates according to the length of the chain before it. Symbolically, dp/dt = c p where p = progress c = some constant => p(t) = p0 exp(ct) p0 being another constant. > This makes it easy to say, for example, that all Spanish knowledge of > mathematics was borrowed, and as far as it goes that's true. > > But that isn't evidence that the Spanish were incapable of working > things out for themselves in the absence of knowledge of advanced > mathematics. It is not, but it certainly constitutes proof that the history of the world would have been radically different had the Spaniards had to do all the work that people before them did. > How many times have we studied ancient cultures and been surprised to > learn that they had discovered the same things we have? Too often to feel smug about the current state of affairs. > > When a need arises, people start working on the problem and the more [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > If Einstein hadn't gotten it, I'm certain someone else would have. Not so with the Special theory. He faced almost universal ridicule for proposing it, and until Sir Arthur Eddington's 1919 experiment, it was just that - a theory. It explained the Michelson-Morley experiment, but that was a post-facto issue. > The same goes for just about everything else. The Wrights were only > marginally ahead of others in figuring out how to fly. Edison barely > beat an Englishman to the light bulb. Bell only squeaked by someone > else in getting credit for the telephone. Macaroni I think. However, you are mixing up the difference between discovery and invention. In discovery, the final goal is not known, invention is by comparison, much easier. For instance, it was easier for Indians to come up with a number system, it was considerably harder to invent trigonometry or discover that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter was a constant. >>Ancient Indians had little use for calculating the value of PI to 50 odd >>decimal places (or for choosing that the earth goes round the Sun and not [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > But I think the greatest factor there is having the resources to > devote to pure research. True. This is one of the prime reasons why India suffered a major decline once political instability set in with the later Hindu kings and invasion of India by Muslims. The concomitant development of a hidebound version of caste system along with the taboo on overseas travel only served to sound the death knell of Indian science. Take that away, and you might have India as a superpower today. In a sense, it was similar to 1930's Germany, only that there was no US to receive the fruits of Indian intellect. So it just died out. > Later when Europeans got to the point that they had the resources to > spare, they weren't exactly lax about trying to discover how the world > works themselves. You will note that Spain and England had a stable political system that could even encourage such development. Which is why I see neo-cons with such trepidation - barring the short term moral and economic cost of that approach of fighting / displeasing almost everybody and allowing unrestricted free trade, there are longer term dangers to an approach that fritters away US intellectual capital until the point that the US loses its necessary primacy in the world. Values like separation of the religion from the state, guarantee of civil liberties, a non-intrusive government etc. were values that made this country what it is today. These are being lost now. >>> For example, when the Europeans got sick of their calendar getting out >>> of sink with the seasons every so many years, it lead to the people [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > > Then they fixed it properly. It had worked for 500 years, who are we to say that it would have not worked indefinitely ? >>And many people like Copernicus paid for their impudence with their lives >>or very nearly so. Think where Europe might have been if you remove the [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > need for practical solutions to practical problems is exactly what > broke the monopoly on ideas that the Church held. Correct. Northern Europe broke away from the Church. The beginning of the decline of Spain can also be traced to this point in time. > When technology reached a certain point, things could no longer be > explained within the context of Church doctrine. That had been true for a long time. > People like Francis Bacon basically told the Church to go to hell, he > had a problem to solve and if the solution to that problem didn't fit > with Church doctrine, to bad for the Church. No wonder, he is seen as a positive force. >>> Discoveries on gravity had their roots in trying to figure out where >>> to point ones cannon to make a cannon ball go where it was wanted. [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > That was one of the things that prompted Galileo's early experiments > with falling bodies. Galileo's early experiments were mostly to demonstrate the equivalence of falling of two bodies with different masses. > It was later that Newton successfully reconciled what had been > observed about the nature of gravity from the science of ballistics > and what had been observed about the nature of solar system by the > science of astronomy, Kepler's theories included, by developing a > theory that fit all of the observations. I do not think so. The secular equations that described the planetary motion had a certain form. These forms were derivable for an inverse square law. You might want to read up some book like Goldstein's Classical Mechanics. >>I think that Columbus went out with a desire to find an western route to >>the then richest country in the world - India. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > for the wealth that a successful expedition of that nature would > bring. Wealth, being a versatile tool of power, is often an end in itself. >>Hence, the unfortunate naming of native Americans as being "Indians". But >>in a way it was "good" - it saved the eastern coasts of Asia from an early [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > I don't think the Chinese or the Indians would have been overawed by > guns or iron armor. Do you? Certainly not the Chinese who had invented gunpowder, but I am not so sure about the coastal Indians. They were a pacifist people at that time. > A couple of bloody noses, which is exactly what they would have gotten > had they tried to treat either of those populations as they did the > Amer-indians, might have taught the Spanish some better manners. Very likely, but it would have ended with a large scale disruption of the Indian (and Chinese / Japanese) way of life. >>> I do know that the Aztecs certainly weren't especially charitable to >>> tribes that were weaker than themselves. Those tribes were their main [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > Isn't that what the Aztec's were doing? There is a difference in capturing some POW's in occasional wars and then killing them in the name of religion, and GOING OUT to seek "infidels" and heretics in the general populace with a fine tooth comb and then systematically torturing them and killing them in the name of religion. Occasional savagery vs constant savagery. >>>I don't, per se. But as I stated in my initial post, the acquisitiveness >>>and violence of the Spaniards was at a scale different from the American [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > >Was Spain more heavily populated than South America in pre-Spanish days ? I'm not sure. My guess is yes. But even if they weren't, they were certainly more powerful than any of the AmerIndian cultures. Iron Armor and Horses are a great force multiplier. >>>I do not agree (its a matter of opinion). I find something extra heinous >>>about a system that forces you to change your beliefs in order to survive. [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] >One might say the Mexicans, but these people were of almost the same stock >as the Spanish royalty, with frequent contact with the Spanish govt. I'm not saying you're wrong, but many are unaware of how little Spanish blood the Mexicans actually have. However, probably the most important thing is the cultural link, so your point would still stand. >> There wasn't exactly any love loss between N. American Indians and >> the Indians who were in Mexico. > >No, the people I refer to were ruling class Spanish descent Mexican >generals. Ok. >>>They do, but the creativity of people flourishes only a system that >>>recognizes and rewards it. In so doing, that system (inevitably associated [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] >universities or the endowment for pure science (like QCD, string theory, >etc.) or pure mathematics. Pure research in the sciences is carried out because we've discovered often enough that pure research leads to very unexpected and profitable discoveries. In the absence of that it's a measure of curiosity and leisure time. All cultures possess curiosity, but not all possess leisure time. Both must be present. As to the arts, that is a universal human compulsion with no real explanation. All societies have art. >>>Take the case of present day US. Despite the large scale erosion of civil >>>liberties, it remains the most creative environment in which new ideas may [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] >I do not see how funding liberal arts or pure science leads to any >"profits". Like I said above. The arts are in a class by themselves. Nobody knows why people feel compelled to create, but it's a universal human trait. >By the admission of people who work in the field of string >theory, the work that they do is currently untestable, let alone >exploitable. The key there is "currently". We've been surprised often enough that we realize that basic research has it's value, even though that value may not be obvious. >> Societies reward or discourage such innovation based on their goals >> and their goals are determined by their needs, perceived or actual. > >And I guess you will grant that pure academic endeavour is a form of >perceived need :) Yes. I will. >>>But how many years would it have taken ? 20, 30, 500 ? >> [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] >1. Invent a suitable number system. >2. Invent trigonometry or spherical trigonometry. I'm not ignoring it. I'm suggesting that those disciplines would likely been worked out by the English once the need for them arose had they not been able to borrow them from someone else. >etc. > [quoted text clipped - 41 lines] >I do not think so. There are parts of Africa where you could find people >living pretty much the same way as Stone Age humans lived. That's rather my point. My German ancestors were living much the same way 3000 years ago. So, what's the difference between then and now? 2 percent? Even taken to the extreme of the really ancient cultures, you're still only talking about 5 percent or there about. That's like saying that one child is superior to another because one learned to read 5 years of age and the other at 5 years and 2 months. I don't think many conclusion can be drawn from that. >>>However, that glosses over the fact that these technological advancements >>>would not have occured if they did not have the basic tools. [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] >system. But to take anything other than a syncretic view of technological >advancement is illogical, IMO. I think it's clear that number systems were invented many times over by a host of different peoples. I agree with the syncretic view of technological development, but there is likely a lot of synchronicity going on to. >So, yes, it was an extreme all right, but not very logical :) The point I was making is that everything is built on what comes before, but that is no reason for us to believe that because one person invented something first, that others would not have made the discovery independently. It's difficult to discern however, because once something really useful has been discovered, it's rarely lost. >> Nobody knows who that was. >> [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] >That is assuming that the Indians did not kick out the Islamic invaders and >start on a global expansionist colonial system themselves :) Why do you suppose it would have taken them 500 years to work it out? We don't know precisely what the Indians were up to when they made their discoveries. For all we know a couple of bright guys worked it out over a weekend of drinking beer because they had some pressing, but obscure, need for doing to. >>>To give you a >>>more modern (and less radical) example, consider the mass exodus of German [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] >see the effect of lack of competetion, look at the decrepit state of NASA >today. No vision, just humdrum, unexciting work. Agreed. >>>Remove Hitler and what do you have ? The language of science of >>>mathematics remains German as it was. Germans send a man to the moon [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] >The nuclear weapons program (which the US initiated) would have been >impossible without the help of the German refugees. Not impossible. More difficult. >> He was accomplishing in the late 20's and early 30's what Von Braun >> didn't accomplish until the early 40's. [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] >two (heard of the most unlucky dog in history - 1833 meteor shower ?), but >not much more. Well, I guess the people to ask about that would be the British, who were on the receiving end of a lot of V-1's and V-2's. I don't think they cared for them much. Warheads don't have to be nuclear to be effective. It's true that Germany didn't really have the scale of production to use them effectively. But, we did. >> It would have been a 3 way space race rather than 2 way. > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > >1941 - Germany detonates the first nuclear weapon. Japan attacks the US. Sorry... No way... Not unless Germany starts keeping it's theoretical physics secret around the turn of the century or so, and in that case a lot of other people are going to be looking for some answers on their own. I've no reason to believe they wouldn't have worked things out. Further, scientists or not, Germany had no where near the economy to produce a nuclear weapon in that time frame. One of the reasons that Hitler launched the war when he did was because Germany was approaching bankruptcy and he needed what was in Poland's treasure to pay for the war machine that he already had. There is no way Germany could have kept such a project secret in peacetime because it would have been a monumental drain on their national resources. In the meantime, the west would have gotten wind of the project and dumped everything at our disposal into it. Building the A-bomb was more an exercise in engineering than anything else and we had plenty of capable engineers. >1942 - Peenemunde is the site of the development of the first IRBM. >1944 - Europe (as in the real timeline) splits into two camps - the [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > >Wunderbar ! Hehe... I don't think so Madhusudan. >> The biggest problem associated with getting into space for most >> countries is paying for it, not the lack of ability to figure out how >> to do it. > >That is true today, but you can try telling that to people who were sending >Sputniks into space. It was all a matter of finding the money to pay for the experiments and engineers that solve the problems. >>>Remember the UN would have never come into being if Hitler had not >>>started the war, so the only way of exchange of ideas and peoples would [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] >Since the Germans would have not fought anyone, no one else would have >woken up to their threat until they were already a nuclear power. No. German society wasn't that closed nor could the German economy support it being that closed. Bright people over here and in France and England would have put two and two together and realized what was going on. I've no doubt about that. >> It's comparatively rare that a single individual makes a profound >> contribution to science that others aren't close to duplicating. > >The early 20th century was known for many such individuals - Einstein, >Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Dirac, etc. Barring one, all the above were >Germans / lived close to Germany. But in all those cases, others were working on the same problems. They stopped when the Germans beat them to the punch. Had they not learned of German discoveries they wouldn't have stopped and I've no compelling reason to believe that they wouldn't have succeeded. The Germans weren't supermen nor were they any smarter than anyone else. The success they enjoyed was due to putting more emphasis on the subject and spending more time at solving the problems. But others were also interested in the answers and they would almost certainly have been discovered independently. >> Off hand, I can't really think of anyone who we can say with certainty >> provided a totally unique contribution to science. > >Einstein would be a necessary choice in that list. He certainly comes to mind, but there were others who we're working on the same problem and they had all the same building blocks he had available. Of course we can't know for certain, but had Einstein been prematurely struck by a truck, it's almost inconceivable to me that someone else wouldn't have worked it out. Obviously that theoretical someone wouldn't be me. >> Even when it comes to basic mathematics, each generation contains some >> people who are heads above everyone else. If the guy who discovered [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] >However, the development of such concepts takes time. Its easy to talk of >accelerating when you have the basic toolset ready. Frequently time is a matter of the resources devoted to the problem and resources are allocated on the basis of need. It's not a panacea. Some things still defy solution. Especially if there is a finite time limit to making the discovery. >> In Eurasia, India included, there is an unbroken chain of knowledge >> about such things that goes back... I don't know how far. [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] >would have been radically different had the Spaniards had to do all the >work that people before them did. That's true of all cultures, isn't it? Even the Indians who developed the advanced mathematics that you speak of were building on past achievement to some degree. >> How many times have we studied ancient cultures and been surprised to >> learn that they had discovered the same things we have? > >Too often to feel smug about the current state of affairs. That's for sure. >> >> When a need arises, people start working on the problem and the more [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] >that - a theory. It explained the Michelson-Morley experiment, but that was >a post-facto issue. It's the only theory that explained all the pieces of the puzzle. I can't believe another wouldn't have figured out how to put those pieces together also. It may have taken a few years, but I've little doubt that today we would still have special relativity, even had Einstein not been the one to discover it. >> The same goes for just about everything else. The Wrights were only >> marginally ahead of others in figuring out how to fly. Edison barely [quoted text clipped - 26 lines] > >Take that away, and you might have India as a superpower today. I'll accept that. >In a sense, it was similar to 1930's Germany, only that there was no US to >receive the fruits of Indian intellect. So it just died out. There is no denying that the U.S. benefited form Germany's intellectual flight. But I don't accept that they were irreplaceable. >> Later when Europeans got to the point that they had the resources to >> spare, they weren't exactly lax about trying to discover how the world >> works themselves. > >You will note that Spain and England had a stable political system that >could even encourage such development. Yes. That is certainly a factor. >Which is why I see neo-cons with such trepidation - barring the short term >moral and economic cost of that approach of fighting / displeasing almost [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] >liberties, a non-intrusive government etc. were values that made this >country what it is today. These are being lost now. I know what you mean. Here is an example. Some years back a scientist got curious as to how bulls can maintain an erection, considering the huge size of their member. So, somehow he managed to get funding and look into the matter. When I heard about that, I could almost see some conservative congressman on the hill, with the paperwork for the funding in his hand, raging against the stupidity of studying how bull get hard-ons. Yet from that guys work, I wish I could recall his name, we got viagra, a host of new blood pressure medications and a far better understanding of how the human body regulates it's internal systems. Those are the fruits of basic research. One never knows what will be discovered. Frequently, it's nothing particularly useful, but one never knows until one has a look. >>>> For example, when the Europeans got sick of their calendar getting out >>>> of sink with the seasons every so many years, it lead to the people [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] >It had worked for 500 years, who are we to say that it would have not worked >indefinitely ? Well, the Europeans decided that it wouldn't. I'm not sure exactly what lead them to that conclusion, but it was the Catholic Church that put Copernicus to the task of figuring out a better system. As it happens they didn't particularly like his answer, but that's the way it goes. >>>And many people like Copernicus paid for their impudence with their lives >>>or very nearly so. Think where Europe might have been if you remove the [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] >Correct. Northern Europe broke away from the Church. The beginning of the >decline of Spain can also be traced to this point in time. Yea, they were slow in getting with the program. >> When technology reached a certain point, things could no longer be >> explained within the context of Church doctrine. > >That had been true for a long time. True, but it was starting to have a real practical impact. >> People like Francis Bacon basically told the Church to go to hell, he >> had a problem to solve and if the solution to that problem didn't fit >> with Church doctrine, to bad for the Church. > >No wonder, he is seen as a positive force. Yep... Hehe >>>> Discoveries on gravity had their roots in trying to figure out where >>>> to point ones cannon to make a cannon ball go where it was wanted. [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] >Galileo's early experiments were mostly to demonstrate the equivalence of >falling of two bodies with different masses. Right. Gunners were discovering that when they aimed their guns, the shot didn't hit where Aristotle said it should. They wanted to know why because shot is expensive. >> It was later that Newton successfully reconciled what had been >> observed about the nature of gravity from the science of ballistics [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > >You might want to read up some book like Goldstein's Classical Mechanics. I don't recall all the details, but I know the science of ballistics played a big role in prompting people to actually sit down and figure everything out. >>>I think that Columbus went out with a desire to find an western route to >>>the then richest country in the world - India. [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > >Wealth, being a versatile tool of power, is often an end in itself. Well, power is the goal. Wealth is the means. >>>Hence, the unfortunate naming of native Americans as being "Indians". But >>>in a way it was "good" - it saved the eastern coasts of Asia from an early [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] >Certainly not the Chinese who had invented gunpowder, but I am not so sure >about the coastal Indians. They were a pacifist people at that time. You don't suppose a meeting with the Spanish might have persuaded them that in certain instances pacifism isn't always called for? >> A couple of bloody noses, which is exactly what they would have gotten >> had they tried to treat either of those populations as they did the >> Amer-indians, might have taught the Spanish some better manners. > >Very likely, but it would have ended with a large scale disruption of the >Indian (and Chinese / Japanese) way of life. Perhaps you're right. Alternate history really isn't my forte. >>>> I do know that the Aztecs certainly weren't especially charitable to >>>> tribes that were weaker than themselves. Those tribes were their main [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] >heretics in the general populace with a fine tooth comb and then >systematically torturing them and killing them in the name of religion. Actually, the Aztecs were fighting wars specifically to get captives to sacrifice. That was a big part of the booty. >Occasional savagery vs constant savagery. I think the Aztecs were pretty constantly savage, considering how many sacrifices their gods demanded. One account suggest that they killed some 10,000 people in one spree. >Furthermore, there is the little matter of the invasion. The Spaniards, by >invading lands that belonged to another placed themselves in a morally >inferior position from the first instant. Given that the Aztecs were fairly recent invaders themselves (less than 200 years prior to the Spanish) and were a militarily aggressive and expansive empire, what real difference was there? They seem to be two equally unpleasant peoples. > > > The conquistadors were small as atoms compared to a whole nation!!! > > > Were the incas and aztecs just retarded or something? This is a [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > NL Go read <i>Guns, Germs and Steel</i>. > Go read <i>Guns, Germs and Steel</i>. I did. It provided perhaps the worst explanation i've ever read Mr. Singh obviously does not have any knowledge of the Aztecs. Rather than being "peaceful", they were a very warlike culture, steeped in perpetual citystate conflict. Their religion gave the Spanish a distinct advantage. The Aztecs believed that prophesied light complexioned, bearded gods, wearing suits of light, were to arrive, at about the time the Spaniards arrived. After giving the Spaniards a welcome worthy of gods, and believing they were, the Spanish technology and tactics plus the misconception of the Aztecs, carried the day. LE > The conquistadors were small as atoms compared to a whole nation!!! > Were the incas and aztecs just retarded or something? This is a > serious question, it just boggles the mind! How else do you subjugate native peoples - divide and rule, The Spanish had loads of Indian allies. NL its a famous story. first they welcome the conquistadors like expected gods...as if by phrophesy.....and the horses were the clincher not to mention ths startling shining steel armor of the conquistadors......its a bit of an absurd story actually. The reality was a bit different...both the peruvian empires and the aztec empires were surrounded by a lot of disinfranchised tribes...many of whom were little more than livestock waiting to be used as food in the various sacrificial ritiuals (at least in the aztec empire) These other tribes had different languages and customs and were ever happy to join the smaller brigade of spanidards in attacking the very much hated empire based in mexico city...(sorry im unfamiliar with the pizzaro brothers story in peru) Cortez was a tactical master in the art of warfare deceit and cunning. Once i discovered the truth about the mass canibalism of aztec society I started changing my mind about the horrible reputation cortez also deserves and I think that it was more or less inevitable that the aztec civilization was doomed. The enemies of the aztecs could not wait to take several centuries of revenge on the aztec people. Cortez armed them and organized them and when he came into mexico city...he apparently made a few false promises to the people in charge. I think having the armies of the aztec food supply surrounding mexico helped get him into the center of things there....and he then took the center of power and those people as hostages. the rest of the story is probably true. Small pox then reduced most of the native population to a mass die off for lack of immunity and those tribes foolish to make themselves allies of cortez suffered the same fate of the die off from small pox and other european diseases only to find the survivors become spanish slaves. More and more spaniards arrived there after and slaves from africa were also imported. the spanards had definate technological superiority with muskets and such. Im willing to bet that the real life three stooges could have over run the aztecs in a short period of time. Aztec civilization was currupt and immoral and very top heavy . if you go and look at the ancient iconography you see that people dressed in the garb of serpents and jaguars were the royals and the highest priests....these were the chief canibals, Its interesting when you look at sacrifice in the ancient meditaranian sea areas ..(not necessarily northern europe though) that sacrifices of animals was part ritual and part butcher shop...no part of most sacrificed animals was wasted. The same was going on in meso america (not necessarsily peru) there are some interesting things to think about here...the human population of pre columbian meso america was perhaps higher than that of europe at the time...mexico city had at least a million resients when cortez arrived and that was just in the central city. prior to cortez there were virtualy NO major domesticated animals in meso america and one can imagine how over hunted mexico would have been with all so many people who never developed any domestic animal cultures, save dogs. dogs. there were no llamas and no alpacas and no cows and no horses, no goats , no sheep, no chickens, no pigs.. they did have deer and iguana, various water fowl fish and various other wild creatures...but only dogs appear to be domesticated in pre columibian times ....imagine now how you feed a non vegitarian population of millions with out farms...hunting will quickly deplete wild food sources in the immediate valley as it did not to mention that the priests and royals probably gave wild animals protected status for their own personal hunting enjoyment..a very similar hunting park thing developed for royalty in europe at the same time...and later even became the theadore roosevelt model for perseravation and national parks in the usa...retention of hunting stocks...even the teddy bear is a reference to a bear the president shot... .the meso americans had an amazing array of developed horitcultural food crops but no domestic animals save dogs....and their enemy tribes....its was one ugly twisted society and cortez probably gave them what they deserved. So the real mystery of the aztecs is why their warrior class survived as long as they did with so many enemies...christianity saved a few of the aztecs from being sacrificed and eaten by neigboring tribes....that was a great improvement.... I was recently reading that the story of abraham in the bible has a strange little tale of abraham planning to sacrifice his son and he is gathering fire wood for the sacrifice....this too could have been some ancient evidence of canibalism.... GO TO HELL: http://www.hell.com There is a wonderful book that deals with this subject. The title is "Guns, Germs and Steel" . I forget the authors name but he won a Pulitzer prize. Ken > The conquistadors were small as atoms compared to a whole nation!!! > Were the incas and aztecs just retarded or something? This is a > serious question, it just boggles the mind! > There is a wonderful book that deals with this subject. The title is "Guns, > Germs and Steel" . I forget the authors name but he won a Pulitzer prize. > > Ken I looked it over it sucks. It provides a terrible explanation of how the conquistadors conquered. his explanation was little more than a fancy way of saying "it was inevetable", which while probably true, is still a pretty retarded way to find an explanation. Its nothing more than speculatory bullshit with some wishful thinking. I didnt read the book overall but i didnt find it particularly exceptional on how civilizations rise, or i would have bought it. I think that you missed the point of the book. If you look at a map of the world, there is a similar climate stretching from northern India, through the northern parts of the Middle East, throughout the entire Mediterranean to Spain. Throughout this entire region the same plants and animals thrive and have supplied a stable food source, thereby allowing many great civilizations and empires to flourish. Agricultural and technological advances in one area could easily be adapted to others. This was impossible in the Western Hemisphere because of the North/South orientation of the geography. Added to this was the adaptation of a Chinese concoction that we call gunpowder, but that they only used for firecrackers and the like. At the time that Marco Polo brought gunpowder back to Europe, the crossbow was in popular use. Someone put two and two together and guns emerged. It is a fact that most of the population of the New World died of diseases that Europeans and their Middle Eastern predecessors had caught from the various animals that we domesticated. Since these animals did not exist in the New World, the native people had no immunity to such diseases. I believe that smallpox was the biggest killer. The idea of the book is to show that the dominance of Europeans has nothing to do with any kind of racial superiority. Rather it is because of geography and the chance of being born in a region more supportive of massive amounts of human beings. The author, Jared Diamond, has done extensive field research on primitive cultures in Papua New Guinea and various Pacific islands and is an expert in his field. If you read the book with an open mind you will be fascinated by his thesis. He did not speak of the inevitability of the conquest of the New World, rather he explained why it was so easy and why it didn't happen the other way around. It's a very scholarly work, backed up with a huge bibliography and decades of scientific research. Ken > > There is a wonderful book that deals with this subject. The title is "Guns, > > Germs and Steel" . I forget the authors name but he won a Pulitzer prize. [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > I didnt read the book overall but i didnt find it particularly > exceptional on how civilizations rise, or i would have bought it. |
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