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by mobilefriendly 3013 days ago
North American pre-Columbian societies were all Stone Age and most were pre-literate. One of the most advanced, the Mayans, collapsed hundreds of years before Columbus. The most advanced Aztecs worked with metals but hadn't discovered the wheel (beyond toys) or bronze. No doubt the collapse from European contact resulted in tragic loss of life, loss of culture and loss of local knowledge of medicine and agriculture, but on net it actually ushered a wave of dramatic technological advancement among indigenous tribes-- particularly adoption of the horse and horse-riding, which the Spanish tried to make illegal. The tribes in North America that adopted the horse (and later, firearms) rapidly conquered the tribes that did not, until they were ultimately displaced in turn by European settlers.