Chapter 19 Chapter 18 Collision of Two Hemispheres

The greatest population turnover of the past 13,000 years was caused by recent collisions between New and Old World societies.The most dramatic and decisive moment of this collision, as we saw in Chapter 3, was the capture of the Inca emperor Atahualpa by Pizarro's tiny Spanish army.The capture of Atahualpa, the dictator of the largest, richest, most populous, administratively and technologically advanced Indian nation, became a symbol of the European conquest of the Americas, because of the immutable approximations that made this event factors, and partly why Europeans conquered other Indian societies.Now, let's go back to that collision of the two hemispheres and apply what we've learned since Chapter 3.The fundamental question that needs to be answered is: Why did Europeans reach Indian country and conquer it, and not the other way around?The starting point for our discussion is the comparison of Eurasian and Indian societies up to AD 1492, the year Columbus "discovered" America.

Our comparison begins with food production.Food production was an important determinant of local population size and social complexity—and thus the ultimate factor in achieving conquest.The most striking difference between food production in the Americas and that in Eurasia concerns the types of large mammals that were domesticated.In Chapter 9, we came into contact with 13 large mammals in Eurasia, which became the main source of animal protein (meat and milk), plush and leather in Eurasia, and were the main means of land transportation for people and goods , an indispensable means of warfare and a guarantee of increased crop production (by pulling the plow and providing manure).Before waterwheels and windmills began to replace mammals in Eurasia in the Middle Ages, they were also important "industrial" power sources beyond the power of the human arm—for example, to turn stone mills and lift water-drawing equipment.In contrast, the Americas have only one large domesticated mammal, the llama/alpaca, and this animal is found only in a small area of ​​the Andes and adjacent coastal areas of Peru.Although it was utilized for the transportation of meat, wool, hides, and goods, it never produced milk for human consumption, was never ridden, never pulled a cart or plow, and was never used as a power source sources or instruments of war.

This is where a huge set of differences between Eurasian and Indian societies comes in—differences largely due to the extinction (wipe?) of most of the original large wild mammals of North and South America during the late Pleistocene. Sincerely.Modern history might have played out differently if these animals hadn't gone extinct.When Cortes led his muddy and sweaty mercenaries ashore on the coast of Mexico in 1519, they were likely to be driven into the sea by a few thousand Aztec cavalry mounted on native American horses.It wasn't the Aztecs who died of smallpox, but the Spaniards who might have been wiped out by american germs that the disease-resistant Aztecs had picked up.American civilizations based on animal power might send their own conquerors to ravage Europe.But these hypothetical results were ruled out by the extinction of mammals thousands of years ago.

The extinction of these animals left Eurasia with far more wild animals for domestication than the Americas could provide.Most domesticable wild animals lose their potential eligibility as domesticable animals for any of 6 or 7 reasons.Thus, Eurasia ended up with only 13 species of domesticated large mammals, and the Americas had only one native species.Both hemispheres also had domesticated birds and small mammals—in the Americas turkeys, guinea pigs, and the entirely native American duck and the more common dog; in Eurasia chickens, geese, ducks, cats , dogs, rabbits, bees, silkworms and some other animals.But the role of all these small domesticated animals is insignificant compared with the large ones.

Plant-based food production also differed between Eurasia and the Americas, though not as sharply as in animal-based food production. In 1492, agriculture had become popular in Eurasia.Among the few hunter-gatherer groups in Eurasia that had neither crops nor livestock were the Ainu of northern Japan, the Siberian societies without reindeer, and the hunter-gatherers of the Indian and tropical Southeast Asian rainforests who traded with nearby farmers Collect small groups of ethnic groups.Other Eurasian societies, notably the herders of Central Asia, the reindeer-herding Lapps, and the Samoyeds of the Arctic, all kept livestock but had little or no agriculture.Almost all other Eurasian societies not only herded livestock but also practiced agriculture.

Agriculture was also widespread in the Americas, but hunter-gatherers occupied a larger area in the Americas than in Eurasia.These non-food-producing regions of the Americas included all of northern North America and southern South America, the Canadian Great Plains, and all of western North America, with only small pockets of irrigated agriculture in the southwestern United States.Strikingly, those Indian areas without food production included some of the most fertile farmlands and grasslands in today's North and South America developed after the arrival of Europeans: the Pacific states of the United States, the wheat-growing regions of Canada, the Argentine savannah and Chile's Mediterranean climate zone.The lack of food production in these places was entirely due to the lack of local animals and plants that could be domesticated, but also because of geographical and ecological barriers that prevented the introduction of crops and several domestic animals from other parts of the Americas.Immediately after European settlers introduced suitable livestock and crops, these areas became rich, not only thanks to European settlers but sometimes to Indians as well.For example, in some parts of the Great Plains, in the western United States and the Argentine pampas, Indian societies were known for their horse training and for their expertise in herding cattle and sheep.Mounted warriors of the plains, Navajo shepherds, and weavers now feature prominently in the white American image of the American Indian, but the basis of that image was established after 1492.These examples show that the only missing ingredients required for food production in large areas of the Americas were livestock and the crops themselves.

In these parts of the Americas, although Indian agriculture also existed, it was limited by five major disadvantages compared with Eurasian agriculture: extensive reliance on corn with low protein content, instead of Eurasian variety, protein-rich grains; seeds planted one by one by hand, rather than scattered; land plowed by hand instead of animal power, which enabled one man to till much larger plots and to till some hard-to-use fields. Loamy, hard soil and grass-rooted soils cultivated by hand (like those found in the North American Great Plains); lack of animal manure to increase soil fertility; activities such as threshing, milling, and irrigation that are done using human power rather than animal power such as farm work.These differences suggest that Eurasian agriculture by 1492 produced, on average, more calories and protein per labor hour than Indian agriculture.

These differences in food production constitute an important ultimate cause of the differences between Eurasian and Indian societies.Among the resulting proximate factors for conquest, the most important include differences in germs, technology, political organization, and writing.Among them, the differences most directly related to the differences in food production are pathogens.Many Eurasians developed immunity or genetic resistance to infectious diseases that frequented crowded Eurasian societies.These epidemics included all of history's deadliest diseases: smallpox, measles, influenza, plague, tuberculosis, typhus, cholera, malaria, and others.Against this daunting list of diseases, the only mass epidemic that can be safely attributed to pre-Columbian Indian societies is the non-pallidal treponemosis. (I said in Chapter 11 that whether syphilis originated in Eurasia or in America is still uncertain. As for the statement that human tuberculosis existed in America before Columbus, it is my opinion that has not yet been proven. .)

Strange to say, this difference between continents in harmful germs should arise from differences in useful livestock.Most of the germs that cause infectious disease in crowded human societies evolved from closely similar ancestral bacteria that caused infectious diseases in livestock with which food producers began interacting daily about 10,000 years ago. made close contact.Eurasia raises many kinds of domestic animals, and thus breeds many such germs, while America has few domestic animals or germs.Other reasons why Indian societies evolved so few deadly germs are that villages that provided ideal breeding grounds for infectious diseases arose thousands of years later in the Americas than in Eurasia; The region (the Andes region, Central America, and the southeastern United States) had never had anything to do with the rapid and massive trade that brought plague, influenza, and possibly smallpox from Asia to Europe.Thus even malaria and yellow fever were not American diseases at all, but were caused by germs that originated in the tropics of the Old World and were brought to the Americas by Europeans.These infectious diseases eventually became the main obstacle to European immigration to tropical America, and became the biggest obstacle to the construction of the Panama Canal.

Among some of the immediate factors that helped Europe conquer the Americas, there are gaps in every aspect of technology that can be compared to germs.These disparities are ultimately due to Eurasia's much longer history of densely populated, economically specialized, politically centralized, interacting, and competing societies that depended on food production.There are 5 technical areas that can be singled out for discussion: First, metals—beginning with copper, then bronze, and finally iron—were used as tools in all complex Eurasian societies by 1492.In contrast, while copper, silver, gold, and some alloys have been used as ornaments in the Andes and elsewhere in the Americas, stone, wood, and bone remained the primary materials for making tools in all Native American societies. The society made limited use of copperware only in localized areas.

Second, military technology in Eurasia was far more effective than that in the Americas.European weapons are steel knives, spears and daggers, supplemented by small firearms and cannons, and body armor is also made of pure steel or made of chain mail.Instead of steel, the Indians used clubs, axes of stone or wood (and occasionally copper in the Andes), slings, bows, and armor of soft padding, both for protection and offense. , the effect is much worse.In addition, Indian armies did not have any livestock that could compete with the horse, whose value for offense and rapid transport gave Europeans an overwhelming advantage until some Indian societies later adopted horses as well. Third, Eurasian societies had a huge advantage in using power sources to run machinery.The earliest advances beyond human power were the use of animals—oxen, horses, and donkeys—to pull plows in place and to turn wheels to grind grain, lift water, irrigate, or drain water.Water wheels appeared in Roman times, and then increased in number in the Middle Ages, when tidal mills and windmills appeared.These water- and wind-powered machines combined with drive-wheel systems were used not only to grind grain and carry water, but also for a variety of manufacturing purposes, including squeezing sugar, pulling bellows for blast furnaces, crushing ore, making paper, Grinding stones, pressing oil, making salt, weaving cloth and sawing wood.It is customary to arbitrarily set the industrial revolution as the beginning of the use of steam power in Britain in the 18th century, but in fact an industrial revolution based on water power and wind power had already begun in many parts of Europe in the Middle Ages.Until 1492, all the work that was done by animal, water, and wind in Eurasia was still done by human hands in America. Long before the wheel began to be used for power conversion in Eurasia, the wheel formed the basis of much of Eurasia's land transportation—not only in carts pulled by cattle, but also in wheelbarrows pushed by human power.A unicycle enables one or more people to move much greater weight than would otherwise be possible without a unicycle, even if they were still relying on their own strength.Wheels were also used in pottery and clocks in Eurasia.None of these uses of wheels has been adopted in the Americas. According to research, only Mexican ceramic toys have adopted wheels in the Americas. The remaining technical area worth mentioning is maritime transport.Many Eurasian societies developed large sailing ships, some capable of sailing upwind and across oceans, equipped with sextants, magnetic compasses, stern rudders, and cannons.In capacity, speed, maneuverability, and weather resistance, these Eurasian ships were far superior to the rafts used to trade by the most advanced societies of the New World, those of the Andes and Mesoamerica.These rafts are driven by the wind along the Pacific coast.Pizarro's ship capsized and captured such a raft without difficulty on its maiden voyage to Peru. In addition to differences in germs and technology, Eurasian and Indian societies also differed in political organization.By the late Middle Ages or the Renaissance, much of Eurasia was under the rule of organized states.Among them, the Habsburg Dynasty, the Ottoman Empire, the successive dynasties of China, the Mughal Empire in India, and the Mongol Empire, which reached its heyday in the 13th century, were all multilingual national fusions formed by conquering other countries from the beginning.Therefore, they are often said to be empires.Many Eurasian states and empires had official religions that served to strengthen national cohesion, legitimize political leadership, and sanction wars against other peoples.Tribal and ethnic societies in Eurasia were largely limited to isolated small groups of reindeer herders in the Arctic, Siberian hunter-gatherers, Indian subcontinent and tropical Southeast Asian hunter-gatherers. There were two empires in the Americas: the Aztec Empire and the Inca Empire.They resembled some of the Eurasian empires in size, population, multilingual composition, official religion, and source of conquest of small states.In America, these two empires were the only two political units able to mobilize human and material resources for public works or war on the scale of many Eurasian countries, while the seven European countries (Spain, Portugal, England, France, Holland, Sweden and Denmark) were able to establish colonies in the Americas from 1492 to 1666.There were also many chiefdoms (some of which were almost tiny states) in tropical South America, Mesoamerica outside the Aztec Empire, and the southeastern United States.The rest of the Americas have only a few tribal and ethnic groups. The last immediate factor to be discussed is text.Most Eurasian countries have administrative bodies composed of literate people, and in some countries, a considerable part of the civilian population other than officials is also literate.Writing enabled European societies to facilitate administration and economic exchange, to inspire and guide exploration and conquest, and to draw upon a range of information and human experience from distant and ancient times.In the Americas, by contrast, writing was used only among the upper classes in a small area of ​​Mesoamerica.The Inca Empire used an accounting system and mnemonics based on knotted ropes (called kipus), but as a means of conveying detailed information it was not yet possible to function as words. Thus, Eurasian societies in the age of Columbus had enormous advantages over Indian societies in terms of food production, germs, technology (including weapons), political organization, and writing.These are the main factors that play a decisive role in the collision results after Columbus.But these differences up to 1492 are just a snapshot of a historical trajectory that spans at least 13,000 years in the Americas and much longer in Eurasia.For the Americas in particular, this snapshot of 1492 captures the end of the independent trajectory of the Indians.Now, let's map the early stages of these trajectories. Table 18.1 summarizes the approximate chronology of major developments in the largest "centres" of each hemisphere (the Fertile Crescent and China in Eurasia, the Andes region of the Americas, the Amazon region, and Mesoamerica).The table also shows the development trajectory of the smaller center of the New World in the eastern part of the United States, as well as the development trajectory of Great Britain, which, although not a center at all, is listed to illustrate the development results from the Fertile Crescent. The velocity of the earth's outward propagation. This table is sure to turn off any knowledgeable scholar because it reduces an extremely complex history to a few seemingly accurate dates.Actually, all these dates are just to mark some arbitrary points on a continuum.For example, more important than the age of the first metal tool found by a given archaeologist is the age at which a significant proportion of all tools were made of metal, but how common metal tools need to be to qualify as "common" of"?The age of the same development results will be different in different regions of the same center.For example, pottery on the coast of Ecuador in the Andes region appears about 1300 years earlier (3100 BC) than in Peru (1800 BC).Some dates, such as those of chiefdoms, are harder to infer from the archaeological record than artifacts such as pottery or metal tools.Some of the dates in Table 18.1 are very uncertain, especially when food production began in the Americas.However, as long as we understand that this table is the result of simplifications, it is still useful for comparing the histories of the continents. This table shows that food production began to provide a large portion of human food about 5,000 years earlier in the heart of Eurasia than in the heart of the Americas.An immediate reminder is that while the age of food production in Eurasia is beyond doubt, the beginning of food production in the Americas is debated.In particular, archaeologists often heavily cite the dates of the domestication of plants earlier than those listed in the tables, as found in Coxcatlan caves in Mexico, Guitariro caves in Peru, and in the Americas. other archaeological sites.These declared dates are now being re-evaluated for several reasons: recent direct carbon-14 dating of some crop residues has, in some cases, yielded more recent dates; , is based on the charcoal unearthed together in the site. These charcoals are considered to belong to the same period as the crop residues, but they may not be; some of the earlier plant residues were originally crops or just collected wild plants. Its identity has yet to be ascertained.However, even though plant domestication in America began earlier than the dates listed in Table 18.1, there is no doubt that agriculture in the Americas did not capture most of the caloric intake and sedentary life of humans in the American center until much later than in the Eurasian center. Provides the basis. As we saw in Chapters 5 and 10, only a few smaller regions in each hemisphere served as "centres" where food production first arose and then spread outward from there.These centers are the Fertile Crescent and China in Eurasia, the Andes region of the Americas, the Amazon region, Central America and the eastern United States.Because of the number of archaeologists working in Europe, the speed at which some major developments spread was especially self-evident for Europe.As Table 18.1 outlines for England, once food production and village life were introduced from the Fertile Crescent after a long lag (5,000 years), Britain subsequently adopted the patterns of chiefdoms, states, writing, and especially metal tools. The lag time is much shorter: the earliest common use of copper and bronze metal tools is 2,000 years later, and only 250 years later than the common use of iron.Clearly, it was much easier for a society that was already a sedentary peasantry to "borrow" metallurgy from another such society than it was for nomadic hunter-gatherers to "borrow" food production from (or be replaced by) sedentary peasantry. Why did the trajectories of all major developmental outcomes be later in America than in Eurasia?There are 4 sets of reasons for this: a late start, a more limited range of wild animals and plants available for domestication, larger dispersal barriers, and dense populations living in areas that may be smaller in the Americas than in Eurasia, or possibly larger than in Eurasia. isolated. As far as Eurasia's lead is concerned, humans have occupied Eurasia for about 1 million years, much longer than they have lived in the Americas.According to the archaeological evidence discussed in Chapter 1, humans entered the Americas in Alaska only around 12,000 BC, spread south of the Canadian Ice Sheet as Clovis hunters a few hundred years before 1,100 BC, and reached South America The southern end of it was no later than 10,000 BC.Even if some of the controversial claims of earlier human habitation sites in the Americas proved to be valid, for some unknown reason these presumed pre-Clovis inhabitants were only sparsely distributed, not as In the Pleistocene there was a huge increase in the number of hunter-gatherer societies as population, technology and skills developed in the Old World.Food production arose in the Fertile Crescent just 1,500 years after hunter-gatherers descended from the Clovis people arrived in southern South America. Several possible outcomes of this head start in Eurasia are worth considering.First, did humans take a long time to fully occupy the Americas after 11,000 BC?As long as the relevant reliable figures can be calculated, it will be found that this result has only a small impact on the situation that the food-producing villages in the Americas appeared 5,000 years later.The calculations in Chapter 1 tell us that even if only 100 pioneer Indians crossed the Canadian border into the southern United States and increased by one percent a year, within a thousand years the Hunter-gatherer populations may have populated the Americas.If these pioneers had only traveled south one mile a month, they would have reached Nari, South America, just 70 years after crossing the Canadian border.The rates of population dispersal and population growth assumed here are very low compared with the known actual rates at which people occupy previously uninhabited or sparsely populated areas.Thus, the Americas may have been fully occupied by hunter-gatherers within a few centuries of the arrival of the first settlers. Second, did the earliest Americans have to spend a good portion of this 5,000-year lag in getting acquainted with the new species of native flora and fauna and stones they encountered?Hunter-gatherers and farmers from New Guinea and Polynesia also occupied previously unfamiliar environments, such as the Maori settlers in New Zealand or the Tudahui settlers in New Guinea's Kailimoi Basin.If we can reason again by analogy with these peoples, it is probable that in far less than a century these settlers in America also found the best stone and learned to combine useful wildlife with Toxic wild flora and fauna are distinguished. Third, what about the Eurasian head start in developing locally appropriate technologies?Early farmers in the Fertile Crescent and China are the heirs of a technique that behaviorally modern Homo sapiens developed over tens of thousands of years to exploit the local resources of these regions.For example, stone scythes, underground burrows, and other technologies that hunter-gatherers of the Fertile Crescent gradually developed to exploit wild grains were readily available to the earliest Fertile Crescent grain farmers.In contrast, the earliest settlers in the Americas arrived in Alaska with only equipment suitable for use in the Siberian arctic tundra.Wherever they went, they had to invent for themselves devices suitable for the new environment.This technological lag may have played a major role in the slow development of the Indians. An even more obvious factor in this slowness is the availability of wild plants and animals for domestication.As I discussed in Chapter 6, hunter-gatherers adopted food production not because it might benefit their descendants, but because early food production began to show advantages over the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.Early competition between food production and hunter-gatherers was less intense in the Americas than in the Fertile Crescent and China, in part because there were few domesticable wild mammals in the Americas.Thus, early American farmers still depended on wild animals for animal protein and so must still have been hunter-gatherers part of the time, whereas in the Fertile Crescent and China, domestication of plants was followed by domestication of animals, thus developing in time A full set of food production was produced, and finally won the victory over hunting and gathering activities.Furthermore, Eurasian livestock made Eurasian agriculture more competitive by providing manure and eventually pulling the plow. The characteristics of wild plants in the Americas also contributed to the poor competitiveness of Indian food production.This conclusion is seen most clearly in the eastern United States, where only 10 species were domesticated, including cereals with small kernels but not large kernels, legumes, fiber crops, or cultivated fruit or nut trees.This is also clear for maize, the staple crop in Mesoamerica, as its spread made it a staple crop elsewhere in the Americas as well.While wild wheat and barley in the Fertile Crescent evolved into crops with little change over centuries, wild teosinte may have taken thousands of years to evolve into crops, requiring a combination of reproductive biology and Seedset undergoes dramatic changes in energy distribution, causing the seeds to lose their hard outer shells and greatly increasing cob size. Therefore, even accepting the late assumption of the start of plant domestication in the Americas, in Mesoamerica, the interior of the Andes, and the eastern United States, from the start of plant domestication (around 3000-2500 BC) to the widespread appearance of year-round settlements (1800-500 BC), probably about 1,500 or 2,000 years in between.Agriculture in the Americas had long been a minor supplement to hunter-gatherers in terms of obtaining food, and could only support small populations.If the conventional account of the earlier start of plant domestication in the Americas is accepted, it took 5,000 years, not 1,500 or 2,000, for food production to sustain year-round settlements.In contrast, in a large part of Eurasia, the emergence of villages was closely tied in time to the emergence of food production. (The hunter-gatherer lifestyle itself was quite productive enough to sustain settled villages, in some places in both hemispheres, such as Japan and the Fertile Crescent in the Old World, coastal Ecuador and the Amazon region in the New World, even before the adoption of agriculture villages already existed.) The limits imposed on the existing domesticated plants and animals native to the New World are best illustrated by the changes that occur in American society itself when other crops or animals are introduced, regardless of their origin Other places, or from Eurasia.Examples of this are the impact of the introduction of maize into the eastern United States and the Amazon region, the domestication of llamas in the southern Andes and their adoption in the northern Andes, and the horse in many parts of North and South America Appear. In addition to Eurasia's leading edge and wildlife species, the accelerated pace of development in Eurasia is also due to the fact that the exchange of animals, plants, ideas, technologies, and people is easier in Eurasia than in the Americas, and the ease of exchange is due to the existence of The result of several sets of geographic and ecological factors.Unlike the north-south axis of America, the east-west axis of Eurasia makes this communication not subject to changes in latitude, and there is no problem of relationship with environmental variables.Unlike the consistent east-west width of Eurasia, the Mesoamerican stretch of the New World narrowed, especially in Panama.In particular, the Americas were divided by regions unsuitable for food production and dense populations.These ecological barriers include: the Isthmus rainforest of Panama, which separates Mesoamerican societies from those of the Andes and the Amazon; the deserts of northern Mexico, which separate Mesoamerican the arid regions of Texas separating the southwest from the southeast; and the deserts and mountains separating areas of the Pacific coast of the United States that might otherwise be suitable for food production.Thus, between the centers of the New World of Mesoamerica, the eastern United States, the Andes, and the Amazon, there was no communication at all in terms of livestock, writing, and political entities, and only a limited and slow exchange in crops and technology. Some specific consequences of these barriers in the Americas are worth mentioning.Food production never spread from the American Southwest and the Mississippi Valley to California and Oregon, America's modern breadbaskets, where Indian societies still lived as hunter-gatherers simply because of a lack of suitable domesticated plants and animals.The llamas, guinea pigs, and potatoes of the Andes highlands never reached the Mexican highlands, so Mesoamerica and North America never had domesticated mammals other than dogs.In turn, sunflowers cultivated in the southeastern United States never reached Mesoamerica, and turkeys domesticated in Mesoamerica never reached South America or the eastern United States.It took Mesoamerican corn and beans 3,000 and 4,000 years, respectively, to cover the 700-mile distance from Mexican farmland to eastern U.S. farmland.Another 700 years after maize was introduced to the eastern United States, a high-yielding type of maize bred in North American climates gave rise to the grainlands of the Mississippi Valley.It may have taken thousands of years for corn, beans, and squash to spread from Mesoamerica to the American Southwest.While the rapid east-west spread of Fertile Crescent crops precluded the independent domestication of plants of the same variety, or else precluded the domestication of closely related plants elsewhere, those barriers in the Americas led to crop There are many opportunities for such parallel domestication. As striking as these effects of ecological barriers on the spread of crops and livestock are their effects on other features of human societies.Alphabets that eventually originated in the Eastern Mediterranean spread from England to Indonesia to the complex societies of Eurasia, with the exception of East Asia, where scripts derived from the Chinese writing system became dominant.By contrast, the only writing systems of the New World, those of Mesoamerica, never spread to the complex societies of the Andes and the eastern United States that would have adopted them.The wheel, invented in Mesoamerica as a toy part, never met the llamas domesticated in the Andes to produce wheeled transport for the New World.From east to west in the Old World, the Macedonian and Roman empires spanned 3,000 miles, while the Mongol empires stretched a little over 6,000 miles.But the empires and states of Mesoamerica had no political relations with, and apparently had not even heard of, the chiefdoms of the eastern United States 700 miles to the north, or the empires and states of the Andes region 1,200 miles to the south. The Americas are more geographically fragmented than Eurasia, and this is reflected in the distribution of languages.Linguists agree that the languages ​​of Eurasia can be divided into, with a few exceptions, a dozen or so language families, each of which includes as many as several hundred relative languages.For example, the Indo-European language family includes not only French, Russian, Greek, and Hindi, but also English, and is made up of about 144 languages.Of these, only a few are spread over large contiguous areas—in the case of the Indo-European language family, which covers most of Europe and eastwards through a large part of Western Asia to India.A combination of linguistic, historical, and archaeological evidence makes it clear that the contiguous distribution of each such large tract of language arose from the historical expansion of an ancestral language and was subsequently Languages ​​diverge to form a family of related languages ​​(Table 18.2).Much of this expansion appears to be attributable to the advantage that speakers of this ancestral language had over hunter-gatherers in food-producing societies.We have discussed this historical expansion of Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, and other East Asian language families in Chapters 16 and 17.Among the major linguistic expansions of the past 1,000 years have been those that brought Indo-European languages ​​from Europe to the Americas and Australia, Russians from eastern Europe to all of Siberia, and Turkish (Altaic)中的一种语言）从中亚向西带到土耳其的语言扩张。 除了美洲北极地区的爱斯基摩—阿留申语系和阿拉斯加、加拿大西北部与美国西南部的纳迪尼语系，美洲没有为语言学家普遍承认的大规模语言扩张的例子。专门研究印第安语言的大多数语言学家，除了爱斯基摩语系和纳迪尼语系，看不出还有其他大的明确的语言分类。他们最多认为，现有证据只够把其他印第安语言（估计的数目从600种到2000种各不相同）分为100个或更多的语族或孤立的语言。一个有争议的属于少数派的观点，是语言学家约瑟夫·格林伯格所持有的观点，他把爱斯基摩—阿留申诸语言和纳迪尼诸语言以外的所有印第安语言归人一个大语系叫做美印语系，包括大约十几个语族。 格林伯格的这些语族中的某些语族，以及得到比较传统的语言学家承认的某些语言分类，可能证明是在某种程度上由粮食生产推动的人口扩张的遗产。这些遗产可能包括中美洲和美国西部的犹他—阿兹特克诺语言、中美洲的奥托—曼格安诸语言、美国东南部的纳齐兹—马斯科吉诸语言，以及西印度群岛的阿拉瓦克诸语言。但语言学家们在商定对印第安诸语言进行分类时所碰到的因难，反映了印第安复杂社会本身在新大陆扩张时所碰到的困难。如果任何从事粮食生产的印第安族群带着他们的作物和牲口成功地向远处扩张，并在广大地区内迅速取代狩猎采集族群，他们可能会留下如同我们在欧亚大陆看到的那样容易辨认的语系遗产，而印第安诸语言之间的关系也就不会那样引起争论了。 因此，我们已经找到了3组有利于欧洲人人侵美洲的终极因素：欧亚大陆人类定居时间长的领先优势；由于欧亚大陆可驯化的野生植物尤其是动物的资源比较丰富而引起的比较有效的粮食生产；以及欧亚大陆范围内对传播交流的地理和生态障碍并非那样难以克服。第四个，也是更具推测性的终极因素，是根据美洲的一些令人费解的没有发明而提出来的：安第斯山脉地区的复杂社会没有发明文字和轮子，虽然这些社会同作出这些发明的中美洲复杂社会在时间上差不多一样久远；轮子只用在玩具上并且后来竟在中美洲失传了，而推测起来轮子在中美洲是会像在中国一样用在人力独轮车上的。这些谜使人想起了在—些孤立的小社会中同样令人费解的要么没有发明要么发明了又失传了的情况，这些社会包括塔斯马尼亚土著社会、澳大利亚土著社会、日本、波利尼西亚诸岛和美洲北极地区。当然，美洲的面积加起来并不算小：整整占欧亚大陆面积的76％，美洲的整个人口到1492年止大概也相当于欧亚大陆人口的很大一部分。但我们已经看到，美洲被分割成一些社会“孤岛”，彼此之间几乎没有什么联系。也许，美洲的轮子和文字的历史，反映了真正的孤岛社会以一种比较极端的形式来予以说明的那些原则。在各自独立发展了至少13000年之后，先进的美洲和欧亚大陆社会终于在过去的几千年中发生了碰撞。在这之前，新旧大陆人类社会的唯一接触一直是白令海峡两边狩猎采集族群的接触。 没有任何美洲人试图向欧亚大陆移民，只有一小批来自阿拉斯加的伊努伊特人（爱斯基摩人）渡过了白令海峡，在海峡对面的西伯利亚海岸定居下来。最早有文献证明的试图向美洲移民的是北极地区和亚北极纬度地区的古挪威人（因18.1）。古挪威人于公元874年从挪威向冰岛移民，然后于公元986年从冰岛向格陵兰移民，最后从大约公元1000年到1350年屡屡到达北美洲的东北部海岸。在美洲发现的唯一的关于古挪威人的考古遗址是在纽芬兰岛上，可能就是古挪威人传说中的文兰地区，但这些传说还提到了一些显然还要更北面的登陆地点，就是在拉布拉多海岸和巴芬岛的一些地方。 冰岛的气候使放牧和极其有限的农业成为可能，它的面积也够大，足以养活源自古挪威人而一直绵延到今天的人口。但格陵兰的大部分地区都覆盖着冰帽，甚至那两个条件最好的海岸边的峡湾也只能让古挪威人进行最起码的粮食生产。格陵兰的古挪威人口从未超过几千。它始终依靠从挪威运进粮食和铁器，从拉布拉多沿海运进木材。与复活节岛和其他偏远的波利尼西亚岛屿不同，格陵兰无法维持一个自给自足的进行粮食生产的社会，虽然它在古挪威人占领之前、占领期间和占领结束之后，确曾养活了一些自给自足的伊努伊特狩猎采集群体。冰岛和挪威本身的人口太少、太穷，不可能继续养活格陵兰的古挪威人口。 在13世纪开始的小冰川期间，北大西洋的变冷使格陵兰的粮食生产和古挪威人从挪威或冰岛前往格陵兰的航行变得甚至比以前更加勉为其难了。已知的格陵兰岛民与欧洲人的最早后的一次接触发生在1410年，当时一艘冰岛船被风吹离了航线，靠上了格陵兰海岸。当欧洲人最终又于1577年开始访问格陵兰时，岛上古挪威人的殖民地已不复存在，显然在15世纪便已消失而没有留下任何记录。 但是，考虑到公元986年至1410年这一时期古挪威人的造船技术，如果船只直接从挪威本土开航，那事实上是无法到达北美海岸的。古挪威人要想到达北美海岸，就得从格陵兰的殖民地出发，因为格陵兰与北美只隔着宽200英里的戴维斯海峡。然面，要使这样一个勉强够格的殖民地去支持对美洲的探险、征服和殖民，其希望等于零。甚至位于纽芬兰的古挪威人的唯一遗址，显然不过是几十个人住过几年的一个过冬的营地。古挪威人的传说描写了他们在文兰的营地遭到叫做斯克里林人的袭击，显然这些人或者是纽芬兰的印第安人，或者是多西特爱斯基摩人。 中世纪欧洲最遥远的前哨基地纽芬兰殖民地的命运，始终是考古学的传奇性的神秘事件之一。格陵兰的最后一批古挪威人是饿死了呢，是试图扬帆远去了呢，是与爱斯基摩人通婚，或是死于疾病或爱斯基摩人的弓箭之下呢？虽然这些关于直接原因的问题仍然无法回答，但古挪威人在格陵兰和美洲殖民失败的终极原因是非常清楚的。它的失败是由于发起者（挪威）、目标（格陵兰和纽芬兰）和时间（公元984—1410年）必然使欧洲在粮食生产、技术和政治组织方面的潜在优势无法得到有效的运用。在对很大一部分粮食生产都不相宜的纬度太高的地区，在欧洲穷国之一的无力支持下，几个古挪威人手中的铁器没有斗得过爱斯基摩人和印第安狩猎采集族群手中的石器、骨器和木器，要知道这后两种人是世界上掌握在北极地区生存技巧的最伟大的专家！ 欧亚大陆人第二次向美洲移民的企图成功了，因为这一次在发起者、目标、纬度和时间方面都使欧洲的潜在优势得以有效地发挥。和挪威不同，西班牙富有而又人口众多，足以支持海外探险和对殖民地进行资助。西班牙人在美洲的登陆处的纬度是非常适于粮食生产的亚热带地区，那里粮食生产的基础起先主要是印第安的作物，但也有欧亚大陆的家畜，特别是牛和马。西班牙横渡大西洋的雄心勃勃的殖民事业开始于1492年，这时欧洲远洋船只建造技术为时达一个世纪的迅速发展宣告结束，它吸收了旧大陆社会（伊斯兰世界、印度、中国和印度尼西亚）在印度洋发展起来的先进的航海术、风帆和船舶设计。在西班牙建造和配备人员的船只能够航行到西印度群岛；类似于格陵兰岛上妨碍古挪威人殖民的那种情况不复存在了。西班牙在新大陆建立了殖民地之后，很快又有6、7个欧洲国家加入到开拓殖民地的行列中来。 欧洲在美洲的第一批殖民地在西印度群岛，以哥伦布于1492年建立的殖民地为其开端。西印度群岛的印第安人在他们被“发现”时估计人口超过100万，但大多数岛上的印第安人很快就被疾病、驱逐、奴役、战争和随便杀害消灭了。1508年左右，美洲大陆上的第—个殖民地在巴拿马地峡建立。随后分别在1519—1520年和1532—1533年发生了对美洲大陆上两个大帝国阿兹特克帝国和印加帝国的征服。在这两次征服中，欧洲人传播的流行病（可能是天花）起了主要的作用，不但杀死了大批人口，而且还杀死了皇帝本人。其余的事则是由一小撮西班牙骑兵在军事上的压倒优势和他们利用当地人口的内部分歧的政治技巧来完成的。在16世纪和17世纪中，接着又发生了欧洲人对中美洲和南美洲北部其余土邦的征服。 至于北美洲的那些最先进的土著社会，即美国东南部和密西西比河水系地区的社会，它们的毁灭主要是由病菌独立完成的，病菌由早期的欧洲探险者带来，但却走在他们的前面。随着欧洲人的足迹踏遍美洲，其他许多土著社会，如大平原的曼丹人社会和北极地区的萨德勒缪特爱斯基摩人社会，也是不用军事行动就被疾病消灭了。没有被疾病消灭的人口众多的土著社会，则遭到了与阿兹特克人和印加人的同样命运，被一些全面的战争摧毁了，发动战争的越来越多的是欧洲职业军人和他们在当地的盟友。作为这些军人的后盾的，先是欧洲母国的政治组织，后来是新大陆的欧洲殖民地政府，最后是继承殖民地政府的独立的新兴欧洲国家。 较小的土著社会则被私人组织的小规模的袭击和屠杀更随便地消灭了。例如，加利福尼亚的土著狩猎采集族群起初总共有20万人，但他们分散在100个小部落中，耍打败其中任何一个小部落根本用不着战争。在1842-1852年的加利福尼亚淘金热期间或其后不久，大多数这样的小部落被杀光的杀光，被赶走的赶走，同时大批的移民涌入了该州。举一个例子，加利福尼亚北部的亚希小部落，人数在2000左右，也没有火器。他们被武装的白人移民的4次袭击消灭了：一次是1865年8月6日17个移民在黎明时对一个亚希人的村庄发动的袭击；一次是1868年在一个深谷中对亚希人出其不意的屠杀；一次是1868年左右跟踪到一处洞穴对33个亚希人的屠杀；最后一次是1868年左右对被4个牛仔诱进另一个洞穴的大约30个亚希人的屠杀。在19世纪末20世纪初的割胶热中，亚马孙河地区的许多印第安群体被白人移民用同样的方式消灭了。这种征服的最后几出戏是在当前的这10年中演完的，如始终独立的雅诺马马人社会和亚马孙河地区其他的印第安人社会，或是死于疾病，或是被矿工杀害，或是放置于传教士和政府机构的控制之下。 最终结果是：在适合欧洲的粮食生产和欧洲人生理机能的气候最温和的地区，人口众多的印第安社会被消灭了。在北美洲，相当大的保存下来的完整社会，现在多半生活在居留地里或其他一些被认为不适于欧洲的粮食生产和采矿的地方，如北极地区和美国西部的贫瘠地区。许多热带地区的印第安人已被来自旧大陆热带地区的移民所取代（尤其是非洲黑人以及亚洲的印度人和苏里南的爪哇人）。 在中美洲和安第斯山脉的一些地区，印第安人本来人数很多，即使在流行病和战争之后，人口中的很大一部分今天仍然是印第安人或混血人。在安第斯山脉的高纬度地区情况尤其如此，那里的欧洲妇女甚至在生育方面也有遗传性的生理障碍，那里的安第斯山脉本地的作物仍是粮食生产的最合适的基础。然而，即使在印第安人生存的地方，他们的文化和语言也已被旧大陆的文化和语言所取代了。原先在北美洲使用的几百种印第安语言，除187种外，全都不再使用，而就是在这最后的187种语言中，也有149种奄奄一息，就是说只有老人还在使用，儿童已不再学了。在大概40个新大陆国家中，现在全都把某种印欧语或。作为官方语言。甚至在那些现存印策安人口最多的国家中，如秘鲁、玻利维亚、墨西哥和危地马拉，只要看一看政界和商界领袖的照片，就可以看出，他们很多都是欧洲人，而几个加勒比海国家的领袖是非洲黑人，圭亚那的领导人则是印度人。 原来的印第安人口已经减少了，至于减少了多少，则是一个有争论的问题：据估计在北美洲最高可达95％。但由于旧大陆的人（欧洲人、非洲人和亚洲人）的到来，现在美洲的总人口大概是1492年的10倍。现在美洲的人口是来自除澳大利亚外所有大陆的人们的混合体。这种在过去500年中发生的人口变迁——除澳大利亚外任何大陆上最大的人口变迁——的最早的根。

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Notes: