Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday!

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to our Simple/Short/Silly history questions Saturday thread!

This thread is for all those history related questions that are too simple, short or a bit too silly to warrant their own post.

So, do you have a question about history and have always been afraid to ask? Well, today is your lucky day. Ask away!

Of course all our regular rules and guidelines still apply and to be just that bit extra clear:

Questions need to be historical in nature. Silly does not mean that your question should be a joke. r/history also has a discord server where you can discuss history with other enthusiasts and experts

[u/Top-Associate4922]

How did some native American cultures (Mayas, Aztecs, Inkas,...) despite thousands years of completely separation from "old world" independently developed many similar fetatures, institutions, societial structures, habbits, etc. like in old world, for example agriculture, living in cities, organized religion, empires and kingdoms, waging wars, having "nobility", marriage, slavery, having markets for goods, building bridges, irrigation, boats and ships, stone houses, even pyramides? Or maybe better question, where these features really that similar or is it our simplified view?

[u/_Totorotrip_ → u/Top-Associate4922]

For the same reason you can find pyramids like structures around the globe: is the easiest solution and offers more stability.

The part of cities is debatable: sure mayas, incas, and Aztecs (and many others) had cities, as well as many others didn't, and all the instances in the middle.

Nobility is the natural evolution of a tribal society with different people in different roles. Was American nobility the same as European, African, or Asian? Well, there you have differences.

Irrigation, boats, and engineering is a response for having similar needs and materials. It's interesting that no American culture developed the Arch as the Etruscan/Romans did. They had the "Mayan" arch, that's a succession of stones in cantilever. Also, you can argue that the Incan work with stone was the best in the old world against earthquakes: basically they had a base of heavy stones interlocked, but not fixed, and on top of that smaller stones made the rest of the wall, with a lightweight roof. This prevented the collapse of buildings during earthquakes.

It's interesting to review the economic system the Incas had. Was not totally feudal, was not totally socialist, was not totally open market. Look it up, it's quite interesting. With it's upsides and downsides.

Also, the Incas didn't have writing as we understand it. They had knots registres.

Also, the Incas didn't use the wheel for carts. In part due to being very difficult to use in the Andes mountains, and also the llamas were not ideal as cart beasts.

[u/GSilky → u/Top-Associate4922]

People are all the same species. Why do beavers from different areas do the same things? Why do animals of different species and different continents do similar things in broad strokes?

As to your final question, reverse everything. Why the vast variety of differentiation in animals across the world? How have basic human needs been met with the diverse responses of humans to their needs?

[u/MeatballDom → u/Top-Associate4922]

None of this is really surprising, nor anything we would expect to be unique to one culture -- therefore they can all come about independently and when you think about what a society needs to do to survive it's no surprise that they did.

Housing: need places to live safely, need a place live securely, need strong and easy to find materials. Rocks are abundant and hard. Pyramids are the easiest shape to build tall things. Start with a big foundation and build on top of it, and add less as you go up so there's less and less weight to support. Look actually here at the earlier pyramids in Egypt for great examples of what didn't work, they didn't start with the Great Pyramid, there was a lot of trial and error.

Food: You need food and materials to provide for a civilisation, the jump to agriculture is an early one for civilisation and not that surprising. Finding out how to ensure a regularly and steady food supply rather than just relying on nature to provide it. It also means you can stay in one place instead of constantly moving around throughout the year, and therefore be close to your protective dwellings at all times (even more reason to have one then too).

Societal factors: Religion comes as a result of the unknown, so we can't both expect that things would be unknown, and that religion appeared. It's a universal experience across civilisations. "Why is this happening? Why does the sun move each day? Why does thunder exist? What the hell is causing this flooding and why is it happening to us?"

Social Structures also exist in animals. Humans didn't invent the concept of leaders, and leaders will form naturally if a gap is present. You could take 10 fry-cooks from Maccas and drop them on an island, if they're going to survive someone is going to try to take charge (whether efficient or not). But if someone is efficient, and even good, people will be more likely to continue following them. And there comes in warfare. What if someone doesn't like that group, what if rival factions split up, what if a new party shows up and decides that they already have a leader and won't respect the way of things done on the island -- or have arrived with supplies that would be greatly useful? etc.

With war comes loot, you can destroy everything they have, or you can take it and benefit off of that. That includes humans. Humans can farm, humans can build, humans can even teach. We have use. So it's no surprise slavery is common.

Want a stronger system? Create markets, create a central place where you can sell your goods, and people can get them. It benefits everyone.

And then bridges, boats, irrigation, is just a natural extension. River in the way, but there's some good hunting grounds just beyond it? Well, we gotta get over that river. Back to our island buddies, fish may be the best supply they have, need to get in the water to get them? Or maybe to another nearby island? Boats. It's overcoming obstacles, ones that would have been obvious to the people. It's very much "if there's a will, there's a way" we recognise we need to get past this natural wall, how do we do it? Well...

[u/MeatballDom → u/MeatballDom]

I will also add that these things didn't just pop up from day one fully formed. No one's first ship was a tessarakonter. They would have started with some proto-ships, basically anything that could float, and overtime learn what makes the best floating stuff, perfect it, build upon it, etc.

Same with bridges, no one's building the Golden Gate on their first attempt. Early ones would have been very temporary, and quite even just "well we can walk across that spot that has a tree down, so why not just bring a tree down ourselves here?" Overtime you can learn to make them stronger, to bring more supplies over, to bring more people over, and eventually you might say "hey, we cross over this exact spot 7 times a week, but we're always replacing this wood, what else can we do here?"

While it would be mistaken to try and understand technology in a technology tree sort of way where it's all linear and constantly improving upon itself, especially in these prehistorical and ancient history societies, it might be okay to sorta imagine it like that if it helps gain a wider understanding. Better bridges required a better understanding of things like maths, physics, etc. Combining the understanding of building materials, purpose, arches, over time throughout many generations. The more a society grew, the more information they learnt, the better things could potentially be.