Controversial Historical Opinions You Have

[Alane1]

Yeah, steel and High Carbon steel was produced in a number of different places around Eurasia from Europe to China though the earliest example of steel apparently comes from middle Bronze Age Anatolia from around 1800 BC. though bronze remained the metal of choice until after the bronze age collapse centuries later when the international systems centered around bronze and its production collapsed.

Though thinking about that Anatolian example, it reminds me even when people had access to let say steel, they might still have preferences affecting what they might actually use.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Though thinking about that Anatolian example, it reminds me even when people had access to let say steel, they might still have preferences affecting what they might actually use.

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The thing is that producing steel is a very fiddly process. Normal pre-industrial iron-making processes will generally not leave enough carbon into the steel, and it's easy to overcompensate and put too much back in. Lots of different places had their own ways to get the job done, but it was very much a precision task requiring a lot of skilled craftsmanship. Because you're doing the kind of thing we'd normally call a job for modern chemical engineering (precisely regulating carbon content) when you don't know what carbon is, what atoms are, how the underlying chemical proceses work, and have no way of precisely measuring temperature or much of anything else. It's all rules of thumb plus experience, and that makes it difficult.

Which ends up making steel objects very expensive and often not worth the trouble. If you just want a spearhead that will be very painful if you stab it into your opponent's fleshy bits, or conversely just want a breastplate that will stop arrows, you may not need to pay the smith enough to go to the trouble of making the thing out of "the finest steel."

Any place where people actually did get "make good steel" down to a very reliable process is an impressive metalworking center in that context! It's just that doing this isn't a case of doing something nobody else understands or inventing a unique supermetal. Even stuff like 'wootz steel' isn't magic, just reliably good in a way a lot of other places' steel wasn't reliably good.

 

[Alane1]

Hmm I know some regions were certainly known for their steel production since like Iberia, southern India and Sri Lanka and Noricum in now what was now modern Austria and Slovenia to name a few though quality steels was also produced elsewhere like Britain and elsewhere.

The thing with the Anatolian example was more that Bronze during the Bronze age had more prestige, copper and tin could travel from long distances sometimes as far as Central Asia and the British Isles and along those copper and tin trade routes other goods like fine wool cloth, amber, fine pottery and various other prestige goods were traveling along the same routes.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I suspect that the quality of a lot of early ironwork was rather hit-or-miss, simply because the traditions weren't as firmed up and people were screwing up their ironworking.

I think ironworking also winds up taking a LOT more fuel total than bronzeworking per unit final product, though I could be wrong.

 

[BalerionTheDrake]

I suspect that the quality of a lot of early ironwork was rather hit-or-miss, simply because the traditions weren't as firmed up and people were screwing up their ironworking.

I think ironworking also winds up taking a LOT more fuel total than bronzeworking per unit final product, though I could be wrong.

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Most of the Iron vs Bronze comparisons, at least during the Bronze Age, isn't the best rule of thumb because when the two metals were being worked side by side, iron smithing was in its infancy while bronze working was at its peak

 

[Simon_Jester]

Most of the Iron vs Bronze comparisons, at least during the Bronze Age, isn't the best rule of thumb because when the two metals were being worked side by side, iron smithing was in its infancy while bronze working was at its peak

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Yeah, that's what I figured.

 

[Chehrazad]

With regards to the conquest, Diamond gets the specifics wrong but he's not wrong in saying the Spanish had a military advantage due to technology n economics, that allowed them to be wooed by native allies. Disease subsequently exterminated the locals to the extent that they could not mount effective resistance in the long term. His book focuses entirely on how they got the guns, the nastier germs and the steel.

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Complete nonsense. Diamond literally says the Inca did not know what an ambush was because they were non-literate, unlike Pizzaro who came from a "literate civilization" despite also being illiterate himself. He barely mentions native allies, does not use any sources which prima facie makes it an unserious academic work because of his failure to follow established academic procedures and characterizes the entire clash at Kashamarka as a meeting of a few Spanish adventurers toppling the Inca Empire, not through clever exploitation of a pre-existing civil war and a long campaign backed by much more numerous local allies.

Hm. Come to think of it, the Aztecs would probably have been pretty well equipped to make brass cannons or something usable as such, since they had some pretty good Bronze Age metallurgy. Fair point.

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Cortés literally praised the metalworking of the Purepécha which he turned to making cannons as better than European cannon-makers. Bronze Age is a historiographical term for a distinct period in the archaeological record. It should not be applied like this. They did not have "bronze age metallurgy". Europeans also made cannons with bronze, was that bronze age metallurgy too? Come on. I'm trying not to express my frustration at you specifically here, so I apologize if I'm coming off harshly, but at this point I have had this argument so many times. Yeah, the term has real historical value, and this is not that value. If you want to use archaeological terminology, Mesoamerica was in the late postclassic, which is the proper term for it.

 

[Ct613hulu]

Complete nonsense. Diamond literally says the Inca did not know what an ambush was because they were non-literate, unlike Pizzaro who came from a "literate civilization" despite also being illiterate himself. He barely mentions native allies, does not use any sources which prima facie makes it an unserious academic work because of his failure to follow established academic procedures and characterizes the entire clash at Kashamarka as a meeting of a few Spanish adventurers toppling the Inca Empire, not through clever exploitation of a pre-existing civil war and a long campaign backed by much more numerous local allies.

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Mind providing a source on this? It has been a while since I read his books but I do not recall it being anything like you are describing. My recollection much more closely matches what Painrock is describing with a focus on technology, economics, and native allies.

PS: Ok, I checked the book and found the exact source. It turns out that you are flat out wrong on Diamond not using any sources as he explicitly discusses how the battle was very well documented and outright quotes a selection of primary excerpts from participants who witnessed the battle. This in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" pages 67 - 83.

I believe that these are the two specific paragraphs that you were referencing as it is where Diamond briefly discusses the advantage of literacy in regards to why Native American leaders were so susceptive to being deceived by Europeans. Note that literacy wasn't presented as the sole or primary explanation for why Pizarro was able to win such a decisive victory against overwhelming forces at Cajamarca as you claimed.

Spoiler: Quote from Page 80 of Guns, Germs, and Steel

On a mundane level, the miscalculations by Atahuallpa, Chalcuchima, Montezuma, and countless other Native American leaders deceived by Europeans were due to the fact that no living inhabitants of the NewWorld had been to the Old World, so of course they could have had n ospecific information about the Spaniards. Even so, we find it hard to avoidthe conclusion that Atahuallpa "should" have been more suspicious, ifonly his society had experienced a broader range of human behavior.Pizarro too arrived at Cajamarca with no information about the Incasother than what he had learned by interrogating the Inca subjects heencountered in 1527 and 1531. However, while Pizarro himself happenedto be illiterate, he belonged to a literate tradition. From books, the Spaniards knew of many contemporary civilizations remote from Europe, andabout several thousand years of European history. Pizarro explicitly modeled his ambush of Atahuallpa on the successful strategy of Cortes.

In short, literacy made the Spaniards heirs to a huge body of knowledge about human behavior and history. By contrast, not only did Atahuallpahave no conception of the Spaniards themselves, and no personal experience of any other invaders from overseas, but he also had not even heard(or read) of similar threats to anyone else, anywhere else, anytime previously in history. That gulf of experience encouraged Pizarro to set histrap and Atahuallpa to walk into it.

This chapter discusses the role of cavalry as a military force the Incans were unable to effectively counter and how this led to several overwhelming victories which then let the Spanish invaders attract native allies. Diamond explains that this was coupled with a smallbox epidemic ravaging the Incan Empire and a bureaucratic paralysis as the centralized power structure was unable to effectively respond to the capture of Atahuallpa.

 

[Mandemon]

Complete nonsense. Diamond literally says the Inca did not know what an ambush was because they were non-literate, unlike Pizzaro who came from a "literate civilization" despite also being illiterate himself.

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Csn you quote where he says that? VecausetI certainly don't remember him making such claim.

 

[Ct613hulu]

Csn you quote where he says that? VecausetI certainly don't remember him making such claim.

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It seems to be something of a oversimplifation of how Diamond seeks to answer the question "Why did Atahuallpa walk into the trap at Cajamarca".

I went over this above but here is the full portion for ease of reference and greater clarity.

Spoiler: Why did Atahuallpa walk into the trap?

In hindsight, we find it astonishing that Atahuallpa marched into Pizarro's obvious trap at Cajamarca. The Spaniards who captured him were equally surprised at their success. The consequences of literacy are prominent in the ultimate explanation

The immediate explanation is that Atahuallpa had very little information about the Spaniards, their military power, and their intent. He derived that scant information by word of mouth, mainly from an envoy who hadvisited Pizarro's force for two days while it was en route inland from the coast. That envoy saw the Spaniards at their most disorganized, told Atahuallpa that they were not fighting men, and that he could tie them all up if given 200 Indians. Understandably, it never occurred to Atahuallpa that the Spaniards were formidable and would attack him without provocation.

In the New World the ability to write was confined to small elitesamong some peoples of modern Mexico and neighboring areas far to thenorth of the Inca Empire. Although the Spanish conquest of Panama, a mere 600 miles from the Incas' northern boundary, began already in 1510,no knowledge even of the Spaniards' existence appears to have reached the Incas until Pizarro's first landing on the Peruvian coast in 1527. Atahuallpa remained entirely ignorant about Spain's conquests of Central America's most powerful and populous Indian societies.

As surprising to us today as Atahuallpa's behavior leading to his capture is his behavior thereafter. He offered his famous ransom in the naive beliefthat, once paid off, the Spaniards would release him and depart. He hadno way of understanding that Pizarro's men formed the spearhead of aforce bent on permanent conquest, rather than an isolated raid

Atahuallpa was not alone in these fatal miscalculations. Even after Atahuallpa had been captured, Francisco Pizarro's brother Hernando Pizarro deceived Atahuallpa's leading general, Chalcuchima, commanding a large army, into delivering himself to the Spaniards. Chalcuchima's miscalculation marked a turning point in the collapse of Inca resistance, a moment almost as significant as the capture of Atahuallpa himself. The Aztec emperor Montezuma miscalculated even more grossly when he took Cortes for a returning god and admitted him and his tiny army into the Azteccapital of Tenochtitlan. The result was that Cortes captured Montezuma, then went on to conquer Tenochtitlan and the Aztec Empire.

On a mundane level, the miscalculations by Atahuallpa, Chalcuchima, Montezuma, and countless other Native American leaders deceived by Europeans were due to the fact that no living inhabitants of the New World had been to the Old World, so of course they could have had no specific information about the Spaniards. Even so, we find it hard to avoid the conclusion that Atahuallpa "should" have been more suspicious, if only his society had experienced a broader range of human behavior. Pizarro too arrived at Cajamarca with no information about the Incas other than what he had learned by interrogating the Inca subjects he encountered in 1527 and 1531. However, while Pizarro himself happened to be illiterate, he belonged to a literate tradition. From books, the Spaniards knew of many contemporary civilizations remote from Europe, and about several thousand years of European history. Pizarro explicitly modeled his ambush of Atahuallpa on the successful strategy of Cortes.

In short, literacy made the Spaniards heirs to a huge body of knowledgeabout human behavior and history. By contrast, not only did Atahuallpa have no conception of the Spaniards themselves, and no personal experience of any other invaders from overseas, but he also had not even heard(or read) of similar threats to anyone else, anywhere else, anytime previously in history. That gulf of experience encouraged Pizarro to set his trap and Atahuallpa to walk into it.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

On a mundane level, the miscalculations by Atahuallpa, Chalcuchima, Montezuma, and countless other Native American leaders deceived by Europeans were due to the fact that no living inhabitants of the New World had been to the Old World, so of course they could have had no specific information about the Spaniards. Even so, we find it hard to avoid the conclusion that Atahuallpa "should" have been more suspicious, if only his society had experienced a broader range of human behavior. Pizarro too arrived at Cajamarca with no information about the Incas other than what he had learned by interrogating the Inca subjects he encountered in 1527 and 1531. However, while Pizarro himself happened to be illiterate, he belonged to a literate tradition. From books, the Spaniards knew of many contemporary civilizations remote from Europe, and about several thousand years of European history. Pizarro explicitly modeled his ambush of Atahuallpa on the successful strategy of Cortes.

In short, literacy made the Spaniards heirs to a huge body of knowledgeabout human behavior and history. By contrast, not only did Atahuallpa have no conception of the Spaniards themselves, and no personal experience of any other invaders from overseas, but he also had not even heard(or read) of similar threats to anyone else, anywhere else, anytime previously in history. That gulf of experience encouraged Pizarro to set his trap and Atahuallpa to walk into it.

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This is a fat load of nonsense.

People managed oral transmission of vast swathes of culture and folklore and even history (albeit often semi-mythologized) without needing to invent writing.

It's certainly possible that the Incas were caught off guard by things outside their cultural expectations, but tying this to literacy is nonsense.

We have records of many oral histories and traditions from pre-literate societies talking about ambushes and betrayals. People are perfectly capable of conceptualizing these things without having to write it down.

Perhaps pizzaro benefited from Cortez writing down his experience, sure. But to say that the Incas never anticipated treachery because of lack of literature is nonsense. You don't need a book to teach you the idea of not keeping your word. You just need to interact with people for a few years.

 

[Mandemon]

It seems to be something of a oversimplifation of how Diamond seeks to answer the question "Why did Atahuallpa walk into the trap at Cajamarca".

I went over this above but here is the full portion for ease of reference and greater clarity.

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In other words, Diamond didn't argue that Incas didn't know concept of ambush. His argument is, to TL;DR longer text, is "Spaniards had a framework which to use, where as Incas were dealing with outside context problem"

 

[Mandemon]

It seems to be something of a oversimplifation of how Diamond seeks to answer the question "Why did Atahuallpa walk into the trap at Cajamarca".

I went over this above but here is the full portion for ease of reference and greater clarity.

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In other words, Diamond didn't argue that Incas didn't know concept of ambush. His argument is, to TL;DR longer text, is "Spaniards had a framework which to use, where as Incas were dealing with outside context problem"

We have records of many oral histories and traditions from pre-literate societies talking about ambushes and betrayals. People are perfectly capable of conceptualizing these things without having to write it down.

Perhaps pizzaro benefited from Cortez writing down his experience, sure. But to say that the Incas never anticipated treachery because of lack of literature is nonsense. You don't need a book to teach you the idea of not keeping your word. You just need to interact with people for a few years.

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Diamond never argues that non-literate societies don't have concept of ambush or betrayal. He argues that Pizarro could draw from framework that was written down, and thus easier to access that oral tradition.

I think this should answer a question that was made for me earlier:

People have repeatedly told you he ignores the science and misread secondary sources without ever questioning their biases. Why are you so committed to defending it?

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It's less "defending" and more "calling out blatant lies and BS accusations"

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

He argues that Pizarro could draw from framework that was written down, and thus easier to access that oral tradition.

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This is also nonsense. Oral tradition and literature are equally inaccessible in the middle of a violent confrontation.

Pizzaro having a playbook to crib off of was because he had the initiative as the invader and knew to prepare, well in advance. The incas didn't know what was coming for them. If they had, oral transmission may well have sufficed to provide useful information given equivalent prep time.

Edit: thinking on this, really the thing to compare is that information could flow from Cortez to Pizarro because the Spanish had ships. Meanwhile information could not flow from the Mexica or any of the groups conquered in that area to the Inca due to lack of ships or even overland trade routes along which information could pass. So really this is a transportation advantage, not a literacy advantage.

 

[Mandemon]

This is also nonsense. Oral tradition and literature are equally inaccessible in the middle of a violent confrontation.

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Except oral traditions travel slower. Because, as you might now, person 1 needs to tell person 2, who then needs to memorize it and tell person 3, who needs to memorize it and tell person 4 and so forth.

Incas might hear "those guys up north got slammed by their enemies after they allied with new group" but that is not exactly much use when dealing with this other group invading you. Also, you are wrong. Death of storyteller ends the information, permanently, unless he has managed to teach a new person. A book can be passed to next person, as is, even if the previous reader dies.

The information is passed significantly easier. Also, books are much easier to proliferate and keep consistency (assuming you have printing press).

There is a reason why books became our primary means to spreading information.

 

[PainRack]

I didn't read earlier on that @hydra1234 requested proof of diseases helping to confine China.


But on googling the internet to provide the sources, it seems that the Black Death emerged from Mongolia to plague Shanxi and depopulate it, thus the cause of Black Death to Europe is now disputed.


Ah well.

I leave the question of if it's the Black Death that started in China to the scientists historians but

Black Death migration - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

The epidemic of 1344-46 was called a "great pestilence."[19] On the heels of the European epidemic, a widespread disaster occurred in China during 1353–1354. Chinese accounts of this wave of the disease record a spread to eight distinct areas: Hubei, Jiangxi, Shanxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Henan, and Suiyuan.[a] More than two thirds of the population in part of Shanxi died and six or seven out of ten in Hubei died. Epidemics afflicted various provinces from 1356 to 1360. In 1358, over 200,000 in Shanxi and Hubei died.[20] In Hebei and Shandong, the population fell from 3.3 million in 1207 to 1.1 million in 1393, however the population in the southern Yangzi region continued to grow from 1210 to the mid-1350s and only fell by less than 10 percent by 1381.[21

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The plague helped ensure that the Yuan dynasty attempts to influence the Mongols was permanently cut off and the resulting troubles led to the Red Turban rebellion, which sparked the swan song of the Yuan dynasty.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Cortés literally praised the metalworking of the Purepécha which he turned to making cannons as better than European cannon-makers. Bronze Age is a historiographical term for a distinct period in the archaeological record. It should not be applied like this. They did not have "bronze age metallurgy". Europeans also made cannons with bronze, was that bronze age metallurgy too? Come on. I'm trying not to express my frustration at you specifically here, so I apologize if I'm coming off harshly, but at this point I have had this argument so many times. Yeah, the term has real historical value, and this is not that value. If you want to use archaeological terminology, Mesoamerica was in the late postclassic, which is the proper term for it.

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Sorry for frustrating you, but I must at least defend myself thus far:

My understanding is that "Bronze Age" does not mean "stupid" or "objectively bad at metalworking." My understanding is that the term means "has substantial copper-based metalworking, but does not have a robust tradition of specifically iron metalworking."

I sincerely do not know whether Cortez's Purepécha-made guns were made out of brass, bronze, some other copper alloy, or out of iron. Given that the Purepécha expertise and experience would likely have lent itself to the first three rather than the last, and that in European experience of the time a bronze cannon was preferable anyway (but more expensive), I'm guessing "copper alloy of some kind."

What I do know, or rather know that I do not know, is this. I know of no reason to expect that Cortez would not have been impressed by the skill of bronze-crafting experts at making bronze objects had he been transported, not to Mesoamerica, but to some historical Eurasian center of bronze working from antiquity. This is not an area where progress is necessarily linear, and it may well be that people were casting bronze rams for war galleys more expertly in the Mediterranean of 500 BCE than they were casting bronze cannon in 1500 CE.

I do not know how 1500-era European copper/bronze/brass/etc metallurgy compared to that of other times and places in Eurasia. The observation that the Mesoamericans were better at such metallurgy than Europeans does not surprise me, since to Mesoamericans it was the dominant known form of metallurgy (along with working in gold and silver, of course). Meanwhile, to Europeans, it was a sideline, as their economy and metalworking traditions had so heavily shifted to favor iron.

...

From where I sit, to some extent, you appear to be projecting opinions onto me, and then becoming irritated with me when my use of what so far as I know is relatively non-derogatory language 'proves' to you that I am implicitly holding those opinions.

I would understand if I were using a phrase like "the Aztecs were in the Stone Age" or "Dark Age Europe," because that has a history of being used as a 'haha, what primitives.'

My honest impression is that 'Bronze Age' largely does not have such a history of being used as an insult, though.

Still, I suppose I should either memorize the separate set of terms applied to pre-conquest American civilizations' historical periods. Or possibly just never participate in conversations regarding those civilizations again, and stop trying to follow them in enough detail to make participation appealing.

I've been feeling a bit fatigued lately of trying to jump through hoops, for reasons that have nothing to do with this conversation, and the option that involves jumping through fewer hoops has a certain attractiveness to it.

 

[Mandemon]

Going to add here from my experiences, while bronze age is seen more "primitive", it is not in sense of "haha backwater people", but more in "these people have not yet figured out a widescale manufacturing of suitable steel". A lot of people, when asked of bronze age civiliations, think of Egypt and such, which I don't thin anyone thinks are "primitive".

Hell, one of the most enduring images of ancient Egypt is bronze khopesh. Not iron, not steel, specifically bronze.

 

[Simon_Jester]

This is a fat load of nonsense.

People managed oral transmission of vast swathes of culture and folklore and even history (albeit often semi-mythologized) without needing to invent writing.

It's certainly possible that the Incas were caught off guard by things outside their cultural expectations, but tying this to literacy is nonsense.

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There is a difference between saying "oral transmission of information exists" and saying "oral transmission of information actually performs this function." In this case, the relevant "this function" would be to provide the Incas with knowledge of the Aztecs' suffering at the hands of the Spanish, or with knowledge of Cortez's deeds.

It is obvious that the Inca knew perfectly well how to set up robust networks of messengers and kept records of their own.* They're famous for it. The question is whether reliance on oral transmission (and quipu) actually did result in the relevant information about current events getting transmitted from one place to another.
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*(Diamond may have been aware of quipu or he may be ignorant of it, I don't remember, and yes that is a damning remark)

We have records of many oral histories and traditions from pre-literate societies talking about ambushes and betrayals. People are perfectly capable of conceptualizing these things without having to write it down.

Perhaps pizzaro benefited from Cortez writing down his experience, sure. But to say that the Incas never anticipated treachery because of lack of literature is nonsense. You don't need a book to teach you the idea of not keeping your word. You just need to interact with people for a few years.

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Notably, what Diamond said was not 'the Incas never anticipated treachery' or 'the Incas had no concept of treachery.'

What Diamond said was 'the Incas were not aware that the Spanish had conquered Mexico, with the ruthless and treacherous conduct of Cortez's expedition being the spearhead for this conquest.'

If true, this proposition is significant. Because there is a difference between the questions:

1) "Will some unknown group of random adventurers from Northeast Outer Fuckistan betray and murder me, the very wealthy emperor?"
2) "Will an expedition sent by a nation that has been methodically conquering any bits of this continental landmass it can grab, an expedition suspiciously similar to the one ten years ago, an expedition led by literally the second cousin of the guy in front of me, an expedition that conquered the very vaguely similar empire 1000 miles to my north after betraying and murdering their very wealthy emperor, betray me and murder me, the emperor?"

The answer to the former question is "good question." The answer to the latter question is "ahahaha YES."

Now, this proposition about the Incas knowing or not knowing this may or may not be true. I don't claim to know. Frankly, I'm not sure Diamond should either given that as I understand it he doesn't read Spanish, let alone Native American languages.

But it's not the same as "the Incas were too ignorant to understand the concept of betrayal lol."

Diamond is attackable enough without strawmanning his arguments.

 

[Mandemon]

Altough I would note one thing about quipu, we are still not exactly sure what they could record and how they would be read. There are a lot of theories from "they are just books but with strings" to "they are just memory aids", and nobody is truly sure. So it is not exactly sure if Incas could record and transmit information about Aztecs with quipu itself, like one could transfer with a written letter.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Altough I would note one thing about quipu, we are still not exactly sure what they could record and how they would be read. There are a lot of theories from "they are just books but with strings" to "they are just memory aids", and nobody is truly sure. So it is not exactly sure if Incas could record and transmit information about Aztecs with quipu itself, like one could transfer with a written letter.

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Whether narrative information about "what happened to the Aztecs" could be recorded on quipu or not isn't really the thing I was getting at.

What I was getting at is that the Incas clearly had a reasonably robust system of moving around information internally, but were largely unaware of developments well outside their empire, and that this had bad consequences for them. That much is true.

Whether those consequences are due to lack of literacy in particular, whether quipu qualify as 'literacy' for these purposes, whether the Inca could have gotten the "have the information" benefit without something that would qualify as 'literacy,' all that tends to complicate the picture beyond what I'm really trying to center on here.

 

[Chehrazad]

PS: Ok, I checked the book and found the exact source. It turns out that you are flat out wrong on Diamond not using any sources as he explicitly discusses how the battle was very well documented and outright quotes a selection of primary excerpts from participants who witnessed the battle. This in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" pages 67 - 83.

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A translation of primary excerpts from participants in the battle who had a vested political interest in how to portray it is not a serious source, come on. This is basic academic practice. Do you take Herodotus' numbers for the Achaemenid army of three million uncritically too? I have addressed all of this before.

Except oral traditions travel slower. Because, as you might now, person 1 needs to tell person 2, who then needs to memorize it and tell person 3, who needs to memorize it and tell person 4 and so forth.

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This entire argument seems like a distraction. At the timescale the conquistadores were operating at, no one would have written a book that Atawallpa could have conferred with, even if he could read, not to mention we don't even (as you address yourself later!) know whether the Inkas were illiterate in the first place. Pizzaro's stratagem was very clever and daring, but connecting it to literacy in the first place is a mistake.

From where I sit, to some extent, you appear to be projecting opinions onto me, and then becoming irritated with me when my use of what so far as I know is relatively non-derogatory language 'proves' to you that I am implicitly holding those opinions.

I would understand if I were using a phrase like "the Aztecs were in the Stone Age" or "Dark Age Europe," because that has a history of being used as a 'haha, what primitives.'

My honest impression is that 'Bronze Age' largely does not have such a history of being used as an insult, though.

Still, I suppose I should either memorize the separate set of terms applied to pre-conquest American civilizations' historical periods. Or possibly just never participate in conversations regarding those civilizations again, and stop trying to follow them in enough detail to make participation appealing.

I've been feeling a bit fatigued lately of trying to jump through hoops, for reasons that have nothing to do with this conversation, and the option that involves jumping through fewer hoops has a certain attractiveness to it.

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Nah, it's all fair man, you didn't deserve my ire but you do deserve my apologies. Using the term "bronze age", associated with earlier periods to describe an early modern empire presiding over a period of incipient merchant capitalism very similar to the one in Europe does have a note of primitivism to it which aroused my frustration, and I considered going back to edit it but decided to just go to sleep instead. By all indications, mesoamerican metalworking was very advanced but highly specialized, because the monopoly held by obsidian for warfare could not be easily broken- it was too useful, cheap and practical. Spanish sources generally don't seem to portray the macana or macuahuitl as anything less but an equal for the sword, and indeed their texts almost never refer to them as anything but "broadswords".

 

[Simon_Jester]

This entire argument seems like a distraction. At the timescale the conquistadores were operating at, no one would have written a book that Atawallpa could have conferred with, even if he could read, not to mention we don't even (as you address yourself later!) know whether the Inkas were illiterate in the first place. Pizzaro's stratagem was very clever and daring, but connecting it to literacy in the first place is a mistake.

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One has to wonder if a habitual flow of messages and contact from place to place might have helped the various native societies (the Inca being an obvious example among them) resist, though. Forewarned is forearmed and all that. Writing would tend to expedite such a flow of information, but is not strictly required for it, I suppose.

Nah, it's all fair man, you didn't deserve my ire but you do deserve my apologies. Using the term "bronze age", associated with earlier periods to describe an early modern empire presiding over a period of incipient merchant capitalism very similar to the one in Europe does have a note of primitivism to it which aroused my frustration...

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Understandable. I suppose I just don't see social development and tool development as being in lockstep; there is no reason obvious to me why you can't get an agricultural revolution or a merchant-capitalism boom in an economy with no iron working.

Assuming, of course, that the existing tools- not so much the weapons of war but the tools- are a satisfactory substitute for iron. I'm a bit unclear on how that worked out for the Mesoamericans. Medieval European farmers didn't use a lot of iron, but where they did use it, it was pretty helpful, and many of those applications were for things obsidian doesn't seem like it'd help for.

I accept that the Mesoamericans managed, I'm just not entirely sure how.

 

[Ct613hulu]

A translation of primary excerpts from participants in the battle who had a vested political interest in how to portray it is not a serious source, come on. This is basic academic practice. Do you take Herodotus' numbers for the Achaemenid army of three million uncritically too? I have addressed all of this before.

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There is a pretty fundamental difference between recognizing the existence of bias and completely invalidating the relevance as a source. Saying that the direct testimony of primary participants in a battle is completely invalid as a historical source on the grounds that they will state events in a way that favors them seems completely ridiculous to me. By this standard you would have to disregard any form of human testimony on significant events as there will almost always be a high of bias for the people who could serve as witnesses.

On a related note: Do we have any records from the Incan perspective on the Battle of Cajamarca? I do recognize that our understanding this battle would be improved with the inclusion of sources of all sides. My concern as that this is simply not possible do to the lack of a written language. It seems like the only means of record would be translation by the Spanish and that would suffer from the same problem of pro-Spanish bias.

You have a point on the usefulness of understanding the Native language of the source but I don't think it is particularly relevant in this circumstance given the tremendous extent to which the excerpts on the Battle of Cajamarca have already been analyzed by native speakers and the fact that there is absolutely no controversy over the key point of Spanish forces winning an overwhelming military victory against overwhelming odds. The questions you presented don't matter in the context of Diamond's exploration of how the Spanish Conquistadors were able to regularly achieve such victories if they were outnumbered 100 to 1 or 500 to 1.

It also seems illogical to characterize Pizzarro transforming a confrontation with a military force that vastly outnumbered them and was fighting on their own territory into a slaughter of defenseless people as something less than a great military accomplishment. Making your enemy unable to resist you is the very definition of an overwhelming military victory. This is something that exists irrespective of the morality of the given conflict or the manner in which it is conducted.

Why do you think that Pizzaro winning the Battle of Cajamarca shouldn't be considered a "great" achievement of military power?

 

[Cetashwayo]

It's pretty incredible to assert with confidence about how Cajamarca has been analyzed given you don't know that Titu Cusi Yupanqui, who was at Cajamarca, did in fact dictate an Inca version of events which make clear, by their position, it was not even a battle because they weren't armed with weapons of war. Which is why many contemporary historians don't credit it as an actual engagement.

You can find this by just going to wikipedia. I edited out the last part since I don't want to be mean but if you're going to have this conversation please take a bit of initiative.