How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity by Stark Rodney

Author:Stark, Rodney [Stark, Rodney]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781497603271
Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Published: 2014-03-16T20:00:00+00:00

Why Were the Americas Behind?

These days, whenever anyone asks why the inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere were so far behind Europe, at least in terms of science and technology, the usual response is insulting: Indians were far too wise to pursue such a foolish and wicked path. Kirkpatrick Sale assured his readers that Indians “certainly could have developed [advanced technologies] if they felt any need to do so.… If they did not anywhere use the plow, for instance, that may have been because their methods of breaking the soil with a planting stick worked just as well with a tenth the effort, or because they had learned that opening up and turning over whole fields would only decrease nutrients and increase erosion, or because their thought-world would not have allowed such disregardful violence.” In the same paragraph Sale touted the bow and arrow as “far easier, faster, and safer than the musket.”81 Sale’s knowledge of farming equals his knowledge of weaponry. The Indians did not plow because it is impossible to do so with wooden implements.

The question persists: why did none of the many pre-Columbian societies of the Western Hemisphere ever learn to work metal other than gold and silver, which are too soft to use for tools or weapons? This is especially hard to explain since both North and South America are abundant in iron ore, copper, and tin (for making bronze), and since a number of pre-Columbian cultures knew how to mine. Nevertheless, when the conquistadors arrived, it was wooden clubs against steel cutlasses.

What seems even more remarkable is that this has become a semitaboo topic. It is taken up only in books by generalists having secure circumstances (as in the present instance); there is no ongoing discussion in scholarly journals, an outlet sustained by academics, many of them lacking tenure and most of them vulnerable to politically correct criticism.

In any event, among those who have addressed the topic, there is widespread agreement that a major factor in the lack of progress in the Western Hemisphere was the absence of large, domesticated mammals, chiefly cattle, sheep, horses, donkeys, camels, and water buffalo. In the more advanced parts of the globe these animals supplied a great deal of animal protein as well as the power to pull plows, carts, and chariots. They also provided mounts for cavalry as well as messengers. Jared Diamond insightfully noted that although the Spanish had been established in Panama for more than twenty years before Pizarro marched against the Incas, and although he had made two previous sorties into Incan territory, the Incan leaders remained ignorant of the existence of Spaniards until Pizarro marched inland in 1532. Diamond attributed this ignorance to the lack of communication within the Incan empire resulting from its having no written language and no mounted messengers.82 As Thomas Sowell pointed out, horses and camels had connected Europe and China, thousands of miles apart over the Silk Road, but given the animals’ absence in the Western Hemisphere, it was not

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