Europa Universalis IV Nations - Native Americans: Aztecs (with Quil18!)

[Eh up me duck]

Indeed. The fundamental problem with stone age is that in popular culture today, stone age = cavemen. And while the Natives certainly used stone tools (although from my reading, it would appear the Tarascans were in the process of transitioning to bronze and copper tools by the 1500s), they just as certainly were nowhere near cavemen.

2
They were still stone age though...since they used stone. The fact that the average man on the street has no idea what "stone age" actually entails shouldn't prevent us from making judgements about said culture, especially when it was thousands of years behind Europe at the time, in every single regard. Which is why the idea of them westernising and fighting back against the Europeans is a fantasy scenario that's designed to let the player have some fun, but we shouldn't fool ourselves for a moment into thinking it was actually plausable.

 

[Heatth]

They were still stone age though...since they used stone.

If this is all the term means, then it is a fairly useless term. It doesn't really says much about their civilization or culture other than the material they used predominantly. Furthermore, again, the term 'stone age' implies it will necessarily be followed by a 'bronze age', 'iron age' or whatever, which is not necessarily the truth. It is just a bad term overall. It doesn't says anything useful about them, so why use it?

 

[Evie HJ]

In some cases, Because it allows people to, under the cover of "technically accurate", make exactly the kind of implications we all know they're trying to make, ie "they were primitives".

Not to say that everyone who does want to make those implications. Some use it simply because it's a technical term relevant to what they're saying, ie Jomini.

 

[Eh up me duck]

If this is all the term means, then it is a fairly useless term. It doesn't really says much about their civilization or culture other than the material they used predominantly. Furthermore, again, the term 'stone age' implies it will necessarily be followed by a 'bronze age', 'iron age' or whatever, which is not necessarily the truth. It is just a bad term overall. It doesn't says anything useful about them, so why use it?

It says a lot actually. It says that they lacked a basic knowledge of metalagy, as more or less everywhere else on earth had long ago figured out to mix copper with tin to create bronze, yet the aztecs did not. That's pretty much the basic level of what we would now call science but to the ancients was simply knowledge about the world.

It also means that the hardest materials they had available were either wood or obsidian, neither of which are even remotely suitable substitutes for copper. Note that obsidian was known of in the old world but was used simply as an alternative to slate, either in arrowheads or buildings.

Unless you're genuinely saying that the development of copper/iron within a culture is irrelevant, then we can indeed label the Mesoamerican cultures as stone age. Do you think that metals are irrelivent?

In some cases, Because it allows people to, under the cover of "technically accurate", make exactly the kind of implications we all know they're trying to make, ie "they were primitives"

Well depending on your definition of primatives, they were. I won't go through a checklist of technological advancements that you could use to compare countries, but when you consider they lacked basic arithmatic skills that had been around in the old world since ancient Babylon, had no access to metal - the Aztecs did not even have an actual alphabet. But you can go on hinting I'm a racist if you can't be bothered making logical and coherant points.

 

[VolitionNewlove]

It says a lot actually. It says that they lacked a basic knowledge of metalagy, as more or less everywhere else on earth had long ago figured out to mix copper with tin to create bronze, yet the aztecs did not. That's pretty much the basic level of what we would now call science but to the ancients was simply knowledge about the world.

It also means that the hardest materials they had available were either wood or obsidian, neither of which are even remotely suitable substitutes for copper. Note that obsidian was known of in the old world but was used simply as an alternative to slate, either in arrowheads or buildings.

Unless you're genuinely saying that the development of copper/iron within a culture is irrelevant, then we can indeed label the Mesoamerican cultures as stone age. Do you think that metals are irrelivent?


Well depending on your definition of primatives, they were. I won't go through a checklist of technological advancements that you could use to compare countries, but when you consider they lacked basic arithmatic skills that had been around in the old world since ancient Babylon, had no access to metal - the Aztecs did not even have an actual alphabet. But you can go on hinting I'm a racist if you can't be bothered making logical and coherant points.

Technology isn't linear, I would like to mention.

However, this is rather off topic. I always hate to see any discussion of adding in detail to a region be derailed by a few posters into an argument about how advanced the Mesoamericans were.

 

[Seli]

Technology isn't linear, I would like to mention.

However, this is rather off topic. I always hate to see any discussion of adding in detail to a region be derailed by a few posters into an argument about how advanced the Mesoamericans were.

We actually already had a 70+ page thread on that exact subject, and never got to an agreement.

In the end we have to make some sense of all nations in the linear technology system of EU, warts and all.

 

[Eagle_eye]

Except Mesoamerica *did* have bronze.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_Mesoamerica

And lacked basic arithmetic? Are you joking? The mayans had an abacus-equivalent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus#Native_American

 

[Dafool]

It says a lot actually. It says that they lacked a basic knowledge of metalagy, as more or less everywhere else on earth had long ago figured out to mix copper with tin to create bronze, yet the aztecs did not. That's pretty much the basic level of what we would now call science but to the ancients was simply knowledge about the world.

It also means that the hardest materials they had available were either wood or obsidian, neither of which are even remotely suitable substitutes for copper. Note that obsidian was known of in the old world but was used simply as an alternative to slate, either in arrowheads or buildings.

Unless you're genuinely saying that the development of copper/iron within a culture is irrelevant, then we can indeed label the Mesoamerican cultures as stone age. Do you think that metals are irrelivent?

First off, you do realize that both the Aztecs and Inca had bronze? It was relatively widespread in the Andes and a rare but known alloy in Mesoamerica. They were not ignorant of metallurgy. Additionally, you suggestion that neither wood or obsidian "are even remotely suitable substitutes for copper" doesn't seem to reflect their historical attitudes. Andean cultures had had metal tools, metal armor, and metal weapons for centuries, but almost universally preferred stone, wood, and obsidian. Why? Because it was easy to produce and in most applications it was more than adequate. Your mistake in using copper, bronze, or iron as a stepping stone away from "primitiveness" is that it's not reflective of transitions in history. The Romans had access to early steel, but generally stuck with iron because it was cheaper to produce and maintain. That though process generally prevailed until the Industrial Revolution.

Well depending on your definition of primatives, they were. I won't go through a checklist of technological advancements that you could use to compare countries, but when you consider they lacked basic arithmatic skills that had been around in the old world since ancient Babylon, had no access to metal - the Aztecs did not even have an actual alphabet. But you can go on hinting I'm a racist if you can't be bothered making logical and coherant points.

What basic arithmetic did they lack? How did they have no access to metals when they used metals extensively? Why would the Aztecs need an alphabet when they had a ideographic and logographic script?

 

[Jomini]

If this is all the term means, then it is a fairly useless term. It doesn't really says much about their civilization or culture other than the material they used predominantly. Furthermore, again, the term 'stone age' implies it will necessarily be followed by a 'bronze age', 'iron age' or whatever, which is not necessarily the truth. It is just a bad term overall. It doesn't says anything useful about them, so why use it?

It says a lot about their ability to perform in battle and their ability to perform certain tasks. For instance, if you are mining bronze and iron are far more useful for breaking rock than stone tools. This is turn tells us something about the potential output of iron and other mines. Likewise, if you are making a fishing hook, using hammered metal is a LOT faster than shaping it from rock or shell (using a stone). This in turns informs us about the likely types of fishing performed (more nets, traps, and spears, fewer hooks & lines). Even shaping wood takes a lot more man hours with stone than metal (and bronze tends to take longer than iron). Cutting edges tell us a lot about the efficiency of a society - how long it will take said society to perform a given task.

It tells us very little about the scale of said society. So you spend 3x as long shaping wood, you can still shape a lot of wood in aggregate if you have a big population. Eventually, you run into trouble keeping people close enough to the food that you start burning calories transporting the food, but lake transport makes that a non-issue. So yeah, man per man a stone age society like the Aztec will be much less efficient at mining gold or cultivating tobacco, but they might be able to do either in greater quantities if they have a larger population base.

It also tells us a lot about their military prospects. Man per man, stone is pretty bad at fighting - it has poor penetration and it prevents armor beyond wood, cloth, and hide. Aztec projectiles could penetrate chain mail, true, but not all the time and even if they hit well, they didn't ensure serious wounds against an armored opponent. Bronze lets you armor up with something that can deflect and turn weapons better than wood. Iron lets you do the same at much lower weight. In an equal numbers battle, even the most skilled peltists and archers are going to have to rely on huge masses of shots in order to get a lucky kill. Archers with steel arrows will decimate unarmored foes. Likewise weapon hafts from the stone age are extremely fragile in comparison to iron or steel hafts. You want durability in your weapons and striking a jaguar sword against either a steel studded shield or armor will eventually develop cracks and fail. Iron takes a lot more damage before it gives.

In short, a poor cutting edge leads to almost universal worse man per man figures in combat against metal. Lest we forget, Spain never sent over more than a small fraction of its manpower to fight the Aztec or Inca (or anyone else). Yes the early battles were carried heavily by native allies and the latter battles had heavy mestizo and assimilated components ... but I strongly suspect that the gold in Tenochtitlan would eventually merit a major Spanish incursion if the conquistadors failed.

Were they more primitive? Well that depends on what you mean by primitive. If you mean lacking in culture, no not at all (though I hold their culture to be extremely repugnant). If you mean lacking in technological skills? Then yes. Just about everything that was ever done in the American civilizations was already being done somewhere else in Eurasia. China had vast terraced agriculture. Roman stone work was handily superior in many respects (e.g. load/weight) than anything in Mesoamerica. Math was more developed in old Babylonia (all of the concepts of which I am aware from Mesoamerican math were in use in Babylon, the reverse is not true). Compared to Eurasia, the new world civilizations were quite technologically primitive. Again that isn't an intrinsic value judgment, just that they lacked many abilities that would have been useful that the old world had mastered centuries before.

 

[Eh up me duck]

First off, you do realize that both the Aztecs and Inca had bronze? It was relatively widespread in the Andes and a rare but known alloy in Mesoamerica. They were not ignorant of metallurgy. Additionally, you suggestion that neither wood or obsidian "are even remotely suitable substitutes for copper" doesn't seem to reflect their historical attitudes. Andean cultures had had metal tools, metal armor, and metal weapons for centuries, but almost universally preferred stone, wood, and obsidian. Why? Because it was easy to produce and in most applications it was more than adequate. Your mistake in using copper, bronze, or iron as a stepping stone away from "primitiveness" is that it's not reflective of transitions in history. The Romans had access to early steel, but generally stuck with iron because it was cheaper to produce and maintain. That though process generally prevailed until the Industrial Revolution.



What basic arithmetic did they lack? How did they have no access to metals when they used metals extensively? Why would the Aztecs need an alphabet when they had a ideographic and logographic script?

Just so that we're all clear on this, if I can prove

a)Use of bronze by Mesoamericans was not widespread

b)Mesoamerican mathematics was less advanced than antiquarian Europe

c)New World alphabets were less efficient than the Latin script

Then you will concede that the Aztecs were primitive?

 

[unmerged(584823)]

Just so that we're all clear on this, if I can prove

a)Use of bronze by Mesoamericans was not widespread

b)Mesoamerican mathematics was less advanced than antiquarian Europe

c)New World alphabets were less efficient than the Latin script

Then you will concede that the Aztecs were primitive?

Once again, it's not because your technology is inferior to European ones than your primitives, it just means your technology is less evolved.

 

[Dafool]

a)Use of bronze by Mesoamericans was not widespread

Widespread? No. But "widespread" isn't not the same thing as non-existent. Your claim was false.

b)Mesoamerican mathematics was less advanced than antiquarian Europe

In what ways? You claimed that they did not have basic arithmetic. Your claim was false.

c)New World alphabets were less efficient than the Latin script

True, but that's because they used a logographic system like the Chinese. That is not the same as having no script. Your claim was false.

Then you will concede that the Aztecs were primitive?

Of course not. The only thing you've managed to prove is that you're terrible at making arguments. You make claims that are untenable and then dance around the facts when they're presented. When you can provide me with a concrete definition of primitive, then maybe you'll have a starting point to make an actual argument.

 

[Eh up me duck]

I was asking you to clarify what you were asking...and you found a way to attack me on it. This is why everyone left that last thread, and why I'm leaving this one.

 

[Dafool]

I was asking you to clarify what you were asking...and you found a way to attack me on it. This is why everyone left that last thread, and why I'm leaving this one.

The only thing I'm asking is for you to explain your reasoning. You're saying "They didn't have X, so they're primitive." That argument is very weak.

First, sometimes they did have X and you didn't know it, or they had something very similar to X. I've heard it said that Native Americans had no seaworthy ships. This is false. The Inca had large balsa ships capable of carrying many men, tons of cargo, and were quite capable of sailing on the open ocean.

Second, it's using a highly specific set of criteria to make a very broad assumption and this leaves your argument open to plenty of exceptions. The Mayans had understanding of 0 and positional notation, both important mathematical developments. The Romans did not. However, it doesn't follow that the Romans were primitive relative to the Mayans because of this.

Third, you're not defining primitive. Were the Romans primitive if compared with Early Modern Europeans? What about the Chinese? Or what about the Mongols? I think we could all agree that these cultures had technological differences from Early Modern Europeans, but at what point does that difference qualify them as primitive?

Basically Joe, I'm asking you to provide the criteria under which you would label them as primitive. You keep saying things like "They were Stone Age civilizations", but fail to understand that no modern scholar uses terms like that for the New World. You need to form an argument from factual knowledge, not vague 19th century terminology.

 

[Eh up me duck]

People far more articulate than I have answered all of those points. You don't like the word "primitive" because your liberal background forbids you from objectively judging cultures and civilisations. Now there's nothing wrong with that but political correctness is not endemic.

I've outlined above why I judged the aztecs as primative. The fact that they had a small amount of bronze is hardly relevant when Europe had been making arms and armour out of bronze for millenia - the Mesoamericans clearly did not, this makes them objectively inferior to European heavy infantry from hoplites through to legionarries through to the knights of the EU 3 era.

This is a suit of Gothic Plate Armour, produced around the fifteenth century:

This will stop literally anything that the aztecs could throw it it. It is a serious piece of equipment.

The aztecs by contrast were rolling around in this:

Which clearly, is going to do bugger all against a broadsword or a pole axe, or an arrow from a crossbow or longbow.

Again when it comes to weapons, the Aztecs are woefully behind the rest of the world. Almost entirely wooden, or wooden with obsidian shards, they would have simply shattered against chain mail, in fact obsidian would wear out very quickly even cutting through flesh, when metal weapons simply wouldn't.

Their ranged weapons don't seem to be more advanced than in antiquarian times - hunting bows and slings/darts, certainly nothing like the longbow, let alone a crossbow (which was a far, far more advanced piece of tech).

So in warfare alone, we can see that the Aztecs were *way* behind Europe. It seems to me that had one of the MesoAmerican cultures had developed the capacity to produce a large amount of bronze weapons would have quickly dominated the surrounding states - who would in turn have adapted themselves. Such an event never happened, so either the Native Americans don't bother competing with each other for land and resources, or they lacked the capacity to do so. And this is something that happened elsewhere 2000 years prior. Yet in EU they start off more or less the same level as the rest of the world, which is rather generous.

tldr; Aztecs had primative warfare. Can't be arsed going over any other areas, other people have already done it better.

 

[lemonsquid]

But the Aztecs invaded Europe in CK2, so they are obviously still very powerful

 

[Eagle_eye]

Plate armor is really not as effective as you're thinking. Yes, it'll generally stop an obsidian blade, but if you hit someone in the head hard enough, it doesn't matter what sort of armor they're wearing, they're going to be incapacitated. Inversely, cloth armor is a lot more effective than you seem to think. It's not like going out into battle with a t-shirt and jeans. It was thick enough, and impregnated with enough salt, that it could frequently avoid being cut by an obsidian blade, which are quite a bit sharper than metal blades. Is plate armor going to be generally superior? Yes. But it's not slings versus tanks.

As for weaponry, they had atlatls, which were used in a similar manner to Roman pila, and a definite improvement over throwing spears by hand. Does that mean that the Romans were even more primitive than the Aztecs? They also had bows that, while not English longbows, were definitely not suited for hunting. They had war bows five+ feet long. There are records of their slings proving effective against heavily armored Spaniards.

The difference is one that could be overcome with sufficient manpower or superior tactics. That's simply not the case in EU3. European armies in that game can consistently wipe out native ones five times their size. For the time period of victoria, that's potentially accurate. In the late middle ages/beginning of the early modern period, not so much.

 

[Bard of Reveran]

By the time the Spaniards arrived in Mesoamerica, I don't think they were wearing a full plate armour. Even if they were wearing, in a battle you don't really need to kill someone, a broken leg can even be enough to get the soldier out of fight.

 

[Eh up me duck]

Obsidian striking metal will simply shatter, yes you could do a powerful enough blow to concuss the person wearing it, but then you may as well use a club. Cloth armour by contrast, would be useless against Western weapons - greatswords, lances, flails and maces wouldn't give a damn about padding, nor would anything with a metal point. It may have been useful against contemporary weapons, but it was no good against knight's weaponry or a musket shot.

Atlatls are simply javelins - well made yes, but still just sharpened wooden shafts. How you can call it a "definite improvement" over a Roman pilum, a javelin with a sharpened iron shank that was designed to break off and lodge in the opponent's sheild, I do not know. Their bows were still simply larger versions of hunting bows, we don't even know if they were composite.

The arrival of a mere handful of Spanish troops was enough to crush the Aztecs with the help of the Tlaxcalans. Years earlier the Axtecs defeated the Tlaxcalans in a protracted war, during which many of the Tlaxcalans' best warriers were captured and executed. Despite this, with the help of the Spanish they utterly crushed the Aztecs within two years. That is one hell of a force multiplier, I think that "five to one" is very, very generous all things considered.

By the time the Spaniards arrived in Mesoamerica, I don't think they were wearing a full plate armour. Even if they were wearing, in a battle you don't really need to kill someone, a broken leg can even be enough to get the soldier out of fight.

Tell you what...I'll put on a suit of plate armour, and you bash my leg with a club. We'll see what breaks first, your club or your shoulder.

 

[Bard of Reveran]

Tell you what...I'll put on a suit of plate armour, and you bash my leg with a club. We'll see what breaks first, your club or your shoulder.

Why would I confront someone with a plate armour face to face? I'd use different tactics. Think about how fast I would be and how slow you'd be as well. Besides;

"By the time the Spaniards arrived in Mesoamerica, I don't think they were wearing a full plate armour. Even if they were wearing, in a battle you don't really need to kill someone, a broken leg can even be enough to get the soldier out of fight."