為什么美洲原住民和歐洲人剛開始交往時，美洲原住民的技術遠不如歐洲人發(fā)達？（一）

John Kelly
Miss Jordan has made several cogent observations. I would also point out that your assumption is not exactly on target. Their technology was a developed as it needed to be for their purposes. Humans arrived in Europe about 50,000 years ago, and a little earlier in the Middle East and Eurasia. Their populations grew to a point where there were far more of them in Europe by the time agriculture arose than there were in the Americas at that time. The sequence of the settlement of the Americas is in a good deal of dispute right now, but it probably only took place about 15,000 years ago. So they didn’t have the population density of Europe. Large cities arise because of population density

喬丹小姐提出了幾個有說服力的觀點。同時我也想指出，你的假設并不完全正確。人類大約在50000年前到達歐洲，稍早些時候到達中東和歐亞大陸。他們的人口量增長到一定程度，到農(nóng)業(yè)興起時在歐洲的人口數(shù)量要比當時的美洲要多得多。美洲的定居順序目前存在很大爭議，但可能只發(fā)生在大約15000年前。因此，他們沒有歐洲那樣的人口密度。大城市的產(chǎn)生是由于人口密度

the cities of central and South America are testimony to the success of agriculture in those areas. Agriculture spread north as well as south, so the tribal civilizations of North America had not developed as much as those in central and South America. The city which is now called Cahokia, on the east bank of the Mississippi River, opposite the present-day location of St. Louis, thrived for 2000 years, and only went into decline about a century before Europeans arrived. It may have had a population of 40,000, including the exurban villages. That’s a respectable performance for what we might call a primitive civilization. In the southeastern part of what is now the United States, there were no real cities, but a great man large towns. Long, long after Cahokia was founded, the Mississippian culture took over, and that was what was responsible for the dramatic expansion of the city about a thousand years ago.
Mississippian culture - Wikipedia

中南美洲的城市就是農(nóng)業(yè)成功的證明。農(nóng)業(yè)向北擴散，所以北美的部落文明沒有像中南美洲那樣發(fā)展?，F(xiàn)在被稱為卡霍基亞的城市位于密西西比河東岸，與現(xiàn)今圣路易斯的位置相對。它繁榮了2000年，在歐洲人到來前的一個世紀才開始衰落。它可能有4萬人口，包括郊區(qū)村莊。對于我們可以稱之為原始文明的城市來說，這是一個可尊敬的表現(xiàn)。在現(xiàn)在美國東南部，沒有真正的城市，但有很多大城鎮(zhèn)。很久很久以后，密西西比文化接管了這個地區(qū)，這就是大約1000年前這座城市發(fā)生巨大擴張的原因。

Unmolested, that civilization would likely have developed in much the same way that middle eastern and European cultures had developed, thousands of years earlier. Basically, Europeans had had a head start in comparison to the American civilizations. Even so, it is not necessarily reasonable to assume that they weren’t technologically advanced. Their technologies served their ends. Agriculture fed them more reliably than hunting and foraging, and so their populations increased just as dramatically as had those of Europe and Asia

如果這個文明沒有受到干擾，它可能會像中東和歐洲文明一樣發(fā)展，早在幾千年之前就已經(jīng)發(fā)展了?；旧?，歐洲人比美洲文明有了一個先發(fā)優(yōu)勢。即便如此，我們不一定可以認為他們在技術上并不先進。他們的技術滿足了他們的需求。農(nóng)業(yè)比打獵和采集更可靠地養(yǎng)活了他們，所以他們的人口增長就像歐洲和亞洲一樣戲劇性地增加了
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it just happened earlier in the “old world.” Population densities lead to cities, cities lead to the concept of city states which wish to dominate their locales, and that leads to war. There is nothing more stimulating to technological development than war. The aboriginal Americans fought one another, but large scale wars were largely restricted to the city states of central America, and the Pacific coast of northwest South America. The technology of the Spaniards did not impress the Nahua peoples of what we now call Mexico. Cortés was only able to conquer Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) because he was able to enlist the other city states of the central plateau to join him in the effort.

只是早在“舊世界”就發(fā)生了。人口密度導致城市的產(chǎn)生，城市導致城邦的概念，這些城邦希望統(tǒng)治自己的地區(qū)，這就導致了戰(zhàn)爭。沒有什么比戰(zhàn)爭更能刺激技術發(fā)展了。土著美洲人互相戰(zhàn)斗，但大規(guī)模的戰(zhàn)爭在中美洲的城市國家和南美洲的太平洋沿岸地區(qū)大部分局限于這些地區(qū)。西班牙人的技術并沒有使現(xiàn)在所稱的墨西哥納瓦人感到震驚?？茽柼厮怪阅軌蛘鞣刂Z奇蒂蘭（現(xiàn)在的墨西哥城），是因為他能夠讓中央高原的其他城邦加入他的行列。

Technology follows need. People invent new tools as they perceive a need. The Mississippian civilization and the civilizations of the central and South America differed from the European civilizations only in that they lacked metallurgy. When Cortés landed where Veracruz in Mexico is now located, and the marched inland, his little force (a few more than 400) was attacked by the Tlaxcalans, the people of a city state in the mountains who had never submitted to the Aztecs. They attacked ferociously for three days. According to Bernal Diaz. who was there, every Spaniard (apart from those who had been killed) had been wounded.

技術是根據(jù)需求發(fā)展的。人們發(fā)明新工具是因為他們感到需要。密西西比文明和中南美洲的文明與歐洲文明的不同之處僅在于它們?nèi)狈σ苯?。當科爾特斯降落在如今位于墨西哥港口城市維拉克魯斯的地方，并向內(nèi)陸行進時，他的小隊（400多人）被攻擊了。據(jù)當時在場的伯納爾·迪亞茲（Bernal Diaz）稱，每個西班牙人（除了被殺死的人）都受了傷。

The Tlaxcalans were not frightened by the Spanish firearms. When Cortés had landed at Tabasco, he had a Spanish priest who had been shipwrecked on the Yucatan, and had escaped and joined his expedition. At Tabasco, he met La Malinche, a Nahua woman also called Do?a Marina—who spoke Nahatl. Using the priest and Do?a Marina to translate, he told the Tlaxcalans that he had come to conquer Tenochtitlan for his king. They provided soldiers and porters to carry supplies. Cortés succeeded because of his diplomatic skills, and he could not have done it without the aid of the Nahua city states. The other city states had more than enough soldiers and the logistics to have ended the Aztec empire—what they lacked was the alliances necessary to accomplish that end. The European advantage in conquering the Americas was social organization, not technology.

特拉斯卡蘭人并沒有被西班牙火器嚇倒。當科爾特斯在塔巴斯科登陸時，他遇到了一位在尤卡坦島上遇難并逃脫并加入他的探險隊的西班牙神父。在塔巴斯科，他遇到了瑪琳奇（Malinche），一位講納瓦特爾語的納瓦女性。他利用這位牧師和瑪琳奇來翻譯，告訴特拉斯卡蘭人，他來征服特諾奇蒂蘭為他的國王。他們提供士兵和搬運工來運送補給。科爾特斯成功是因為他的外交技巧，如果沒有納瓦城邦的幫助，他無法做到這一點。歐洲在征服美洲方面的優(yōu)勢是社會組織，而不是技術。

There is one marvelous example of technological development which the Europeans were not able to match, quite literally for centuries. That was the birch-bark canoe. Light-weight, sturdy and made from available resources, this invention of the Algonquians made it possible to travel from Québec to what is now northern Minnesota in a matter of weeks, or from the Great Lakes to Hudson’s Bay. BOth the Northwest Company, a fur-trading company based in Montréal, and the Hudson’s Bay Company found them indispensable. White boys didn’t come up with anything as good until they invented fiberglass in the 1930s

有一個奇妙的例子是技術發(fā)展，歐洲人在幾個世紀之內(nèi)甚至無法達到。這就是白樺樹皮獨木舟。這種由阿爾岡昆人發(fā)明的輕便、堅固且使用可用資源制作而成的發(fā)明，使得從魁北克到現(xiàn)今的明尼蘇達州北部只需要幾周，或從五大湖到哈德遜灣。北西公司，一個總部位于蒙特利爾的毛皮貿(mào)易公司和哈德遜灣公司都認為它們是不可或缺的。直到20世紀30年代，白人發(fā)明了玻璃纖維，才有了更好的替代品

more than 300 years after the French landed in what we now call Canada. Light enough to be carried, they could be used to transport people an goods over very long distances, and they be unloaded, carried to a new watershed, and then travel more long distances. These canoes met a need, and the aboriginal Americans didn’t need anything from Europeans to fill the need—for three centuries, the Europeans had nothing better to offer.

——這比法國人在現(xiàn)在所謂的加拿大登陸時晚了300多年。它們足夠輕便，可以用來運送人和貨物，可以在很長的距離上卸下，搬到新的流域，然后再行駛更長的距離。這些獨木舟滿足了一項需求，美洲土著人不需要歐洲人的任何東西來滿足這個需求——在三個世紀內(nèi)，歐洲人沒有更好的東西可以提供。

French voyageurs and aboriginal Americans carrying the fur trade deep into North America.

法國航海家和美洲原住民將毛皮貿(mào)易帶入了北美洲深處。
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James Krog
The disparity in technological levels between native Americans and Europeans stems from several issues. Some have been pointed out well in other answers, but I would like to try to pull them all together in one place.

美洲土著人和歐洲人技術水平差距的根源有幾個問題。其他答案中已經(jīng)指出了一些問題，但我想試著把它們都集中在一起。

One chronic problem which the native Americans could not escape, through no fault of their own was the lack of draft animals to help with heavy labor. When you have to haul, carry, drag and tote on your own back with your own arms everything you do is a lot harder, takes longer and is less efficient then having it done with help. Read “Energy through world history” by Vaclav Smil. Dogs were used to drag stuff, but compared to horses they just are not much help. LLamas and alpacas were available in south America, but never exported to other regions. So many more man hours were spent by native Americans on hard labor less efficiently then by Europeans with the help of draft animals. This meant those people were not free to work at other pursuits.

一個長期存在的問題是，美洲土著人無法擺脫的，且并非他們自己的錯，就是缺乏用于輔助重體力勞動的牲畜。當你不得不親自背負、拖拉和搬運一切，所有工作就會變得更加艱難、耗時更長，效率也會降低。請閱讀瓦茨拉夫·斯米爾（Vaclav Smil）的《能源通過世界史》（Energy through world history）。狗被用來拉東西，但與馬相比，它們幫助不大。南美洲有羊駝和驢馬，但從未被輸出到其他地區(qū)。因此，美洲土著人花費了更多的人力在辛苦勞作上，效率不如歐洲人依靠牲畜助力那么高。這意味著這些人沒有空閑去從事其他活動。

Another side affect of lack of domestic animals is limited travel. This limits communication, trade, exchange of ideas and resources. In Europe from early periods due to trade with horse and oxen people were able to make use of resources from mies, hundreds of miles or even the other side of the continent and do so in quantity. North American trade was heavily limited to the rivers and of much lower volume.

缺乏馴化動物的另一個副作用是旅行受限。這限制了溝通、貿(mào)易、思想和資源交流。在歐洲，由于早期與馬和牛的貿(mào)易，人們能夠大量利用來自數(shù)百英里甚至整個大陸另一邊的資源。北美的貿(mào)易嚴重受限于河流，而且規(guī)模也較小。

City size and permanence was a limiting factor in America. Due to the lack of draft animals towns and cities in America were generally limited in the size they could reach and keep for the long term. There is a limit to how far you can expand your fields when you have to walk out to harvest, harvest by hand and carry the harvest back on your back in your arms after harvesting. The further you push your fields out from town the farther away the woods are. That matters when almost all of your meat comes from hunting. It matters also when it is time to cook the meat you hiked to hunt. The more people you cram in a town to build a city the more wood you cut for firewood, tools, building material, until the woods are gone and too far to bring back for use. This happened at Cahokia, where at the end the people were suffering malnutrition due to lack of firewood to cook their food. And so cities were infrequent and ended up abandoned when the logistical bottle neck was hit. Native Americans were not stupid and so most of them adopted a more dispersed smaller town culture as opposed to the civilization cultural model. But it comes at a price of loss of the ability to concentrate all that energy and the mental resources together where they can work together in cooperation in ways that would never happen in isolation.

城市規(guī)模和永久性在美國是一個限制因素。由于缺乏牲畜，美國的城鎮(zhèn)和城市一般受到了大小和長期保持方面的限制。當你不得不親自走出去收割、徒手收割并背負收成回來時，你擴展田地的距離就受到了限制。當你將田地推向城鎮(zhèn)以外時，樹林就越來越遠。這對幾乎所有的肉類都來自狩獵的情況有影響。當是時候烹飪你遠道而來狩獵的肉時，這就顯得更為重要。你將更多的人擠進一個城鎮(zhèn)來建造一個城市，你就會砍更多的木材做為柴火、工具、建筑材料，直到樹林被砍光，而且也太遠無法搬回來使用。這在卡霍基亞發(fā)生過，在那里人們由于缺乏柴火烹飪食物而遭受營養(yǎng)不良。因此，城市是罕見的，并最終在遇到后勤瓶頸時被廢棄。美洲土著人并不愚蠢，所以他們中的大多數(shù)人采納了更分散的小型城鎮(zhèn)文化，而不是文明文化模式。但這付出了集中所有能量和心智資源的代價，在這種方式下，人們可以在合作中一起工作，這在孤立中是永遠不可能發(fā)生的。

As has been pointed out the Americas were settled later then the Eurasian landmass and so Europe simply had a head start and this helps. Also cropwise Europe had a head start as agriculture was much older in Eurasia then in the western hemisphere. Here we get to the north/south vs east/west axis issue. It isn’t a big deal for simple human travel. It is a big deal for animals and a huge one for plants. It has to do with climate zones. Corn is old in central America it’s homeland. It is much newer , even recent in parts of North America. Corn was a tropical plant and it took ages to develop cultivars that could handle colder climates. Each move north took it to a new climate zone and meant time to develop a strain that was worth growing for the locals. Going south to north from southern Mexico to New England there are a lot of climate zones to adapt to.

正如已經(jīng)指出的那樣，美洲的定居時間比歐亞大陸晚，所以歐洲就會有了一個先發(fā)優(yōu)勢，這對他們有幫助。此外，在農(nóng)作物方面，歐洲也領先，因為農(nóng)業(yè)在歐亞大陸比在西半球更古老。這里涉及到南北和東西軸線問題。對于簡單的人類旅行而言，這并不是什么大問題。但對于動物和植物來說，這是一個很大的問題，對于植物來說更是如此。這與氣候帶有關。玉米在中美洲是古老的，是它的故鄉(xiāng)。而在北美的一些地區(qū)，玉米則要新得多，甚至是最近的。玉米是一種熱帶植物，需要很長時間才能培育出適應寒冷氣候的品種。每一次向北移動都意味著進入一個新的氣候帶，需要時間培育出適合當?shù)胤N植的品種。從墨西哥南部到新英格蘭向北移動，需要適應許多不同的氣候帶。

In Eurasia with its east west axis, climate zones make long bands that allow travel for long distances and fewer zones going north south making less time to adapt from south to north. Europe may not have developed many of its own crops but it was in a position to receive and utilize many of the ones from other regions and the people were smart enough to jump on every good idea they saw.

在歐亞大陸的東西向軸線上，氣候帶形成了長條，使得長距離旅行變得容易，而南北方向上的氣候帶變少，從南到北的適應時間也較短。歐洲可能沒有發(fā)展出許多自己的作物，但它處于接收和利用其他地區(qū)許多作物的位置，并且人們足夠聰明，以接受他們看到的每一個好主意。
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One stumbling block in native American culture was the poor quality of tools they had. They were stone and wood. In Eurasia they had developed metal early on and it makes everything easier. Oddly enough the metal problem seems to stem from their approach to pottery. They never developed the kiln. Native Americans made their pots and fired them in a pit with a terrible loss rate. This was horribly wasteful in clay, firewood and man hours. It also meant that they never found metal accidentally smelted in the ores they used as was the way the Egyptians found metal in the Sinai. Apparently art gave birth to metal working when the ores used for colorful dyes on pottery left metal nuggets behind as clixer in the Egyptian kilns. Metal use allows for more efficient farm implements, axes and carpentry tools for wood working, weapons and many other human works. Without the high temperatures of kilns the metal resources of the Americas remained out of reach. Without metals work was far harder and the ability to harness other resources was limited.

美洲土著文化的一個障礙是他們所擁有的工具質(zhì)量很差。它們是由石頭和木材制成的。在歐亞大陸，他們早期發(fā)展了金屬，這使一切變得更容易。奇怪的是，金屬問題似乎源于他們對陶器的處理方式。他們從未開發(fā)窯。美洲土著人制造他們的陶器并在坑里燒制，損失率很高。這不僅在粘土、柴火和人力上浪費，而且意味著他們從未像埃及人在西奈半島上那樣偶然地在使用的礦石中發(fā)現(xiàn)金屬。顯然，藝術誕生了金屬加工，當埃及窯爐中用于彩色染料的礦石在燒制過程中留下金屬塊時。金屬使用可以為更高效的農(nóng)具、斧頭和木工工具、武器和許多其他人類作品提供條件。沒有窯爐的高溫，美洲的金屬資源仍然無法觸及。沒有金屬，工作就會更加艱難，利用其他資源的能力也有限。

The lack of domestic animals applied not only to draft animals, but to food animals as well. Europe had a wealth of animals to hunt, but also had chickens, geese, sheep, goats, pigs, cows, rabbits, doves, pigeons, and other animals for food stuffs. They also had those animals for hides, fur, feathers, bones, dung for fertilizer and other ingenious uses.

缺乏家畜不僅適用于耕作動物，還適用于食用動物。歐洲有大量的狩獵動物，但也有雞、鵝、羊、山羊、豬、牛、兔子、鴿子、鴿子和其他動物可用于食品。它們還有這些動物的皮革、毛皮、羽毛、骨頭、肥料和其他巧妙的用途。

The climate of Europe combined with some of the crops they had made food storage easier then in much of the Americas. This is important not only for surviving the winter and bad times, but for embarking on large scale projects requiring mass and/or protracted labor.

歐洲的氣候結(jié)合一些作物使得食品儲存比美洲的大部分地區(qū)更容易。這不僅對于度過冬天和困難時期很重要，而且對于進行需要大規(guī)模、長期勞動的大型項目也很重要。

The Europeans were also close to the development center of writing and had reached a cultural development to benefit from it. It took root early and enhanced the ability to organize, exchange ideas and preserve them.

歐洲人也靠近書寫的發(fā)展中心，并達到了受益于它的文化發(fā)展。它早期扎根并增強了組織、交換思想和保護它們的能力。

So the Europeans had the right combination of resources in foodstuffs, raw materials in metals, building stone, timber, livestock, and were at a good point on trade routes to receive and embrace new ideas, plants and animals. Once you have basic tools, a food supply, and concentration of people, energy, and resources to create a trade class of craftsmen and merchants you can get anywhere barring cultural barriers to change being imposed.

因此，歐洲人擁有食品、金屬原材料、建筑石材、木材、家畜等方面的正確資源，并處于接收和接受新思想、植物和動物的貿(mào)易路線上的良好位置。一旦你擁有基本的工具、食品供應和人口集中、能源和資源來創(chuàng)建一個工匠和商人階級，你就可以到達任何地方，除非強加文化障礙。
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The Americas lacked many of the necessary components in terms of resources, and energy to build the self sustaining towns and cities to bootstrap up to the European level of technology. Without the importation of those items they were not going to make it. So they adapted to the environment they lived in and developed cultures to make the most out of it and did it well.

在資源和能量方面，美洲缺乏許多必要的組成部分，無法建立起自給自足的城鎮(zhèn)和城市，以達到歐洲技術水平。如果沒有這些物品的進口，他們將無法生存。因此，他們適應了他們生活的環(huán)境，并發(fā)展了文化來最大限度地利用它，并且做得很好。

Joseph Boyle
The best summary is still Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel".
Mesoamerican and Andean cultures were populous, urbanized, and advanced in many ways. Their quick conquest was due to mounted warfare (developed by central Eurasians who lived near wild horses, who then ravaged the rest of Eurasia for millenia), deadly diseases (developed because Eurasia and Africa had more animal hosts supplying pathogens to evolve, then suffered for millenia), and metal weapons and armor (not quite as geographically determined, though of course access to ores varied).

目前最好的總結(jié)仍然是賈里德·戴蒙德的《槍炮、病菌和鋼鐵》。美洲中美洲和安第斯文化在許多方面都非常發(fā)達，人口眾多、城市化程度高。他們迅速被征服是由于騎兵戰(zhàn)爭（由居住在野馬附近的中亞人發(fā)展而來，然后在幾千年間蹂躪了歐亞大陸其他地區(qū)）、致命疾?。ㄓ捎跉W亞大陸和非洲有更多提供病原體進化所需宿主的動物，因此遭受了數(shù)千年的痛苦）和金屬武器和盔甲（并非完全受地理因素制約，盡管當然礦石的獲取存在差異）。

The wheel was not used because those areas were mountainous and draft animals were not available.
Would they have advised their ancestors entering the New World 10000 years ago not to hunt all the large animals unused to humans, but domesticate some of them? Eurasians' use of animals made them tougher and made some things easier, but at the cost of much suffering over thousands of years.

輪子沒有被使用，因為這些地區(qū)多山，沒有牲畜可用。
他們是否會建議他們的祖先在一萬年前進入新世界時不要獵殺所有對人類不習慣的大型動物，而是馴養(yǎng)其中的一些？歐亞人對動物的利用使他們變得更強壯，使一些事情變得更容易，但代價是經(jīng)歷了幾千年的許多苦難。