[alvarezbjm-hn]

How is a self sufficient society with its own language not a civilization?

Maybe you meant to say "We didn't leave much of that civilization"

[eloff]

I mean they didn't have much in the way of writing, architecture, science, or organization. They were thousands of years behind the more advanced civilizations. They had a primitive civilization.

There wasn't much left of their civilization 120 years ago (thanks to Europeans) and they didn't leave much behind that endured.

[tyler-groves]

Native Americans wrote in an alphabet of their design, organized societies (sometimes at a large scale e.g. Cahokia), they clearly built structures of their own architected design, and they had science depending on your strictness in evaluating its definition.

I am disheartened by your comment.

[eloff]

All of that is pretty cool, but it's nothing compared to what the Greeks accomplished over 2000 years earlier. Or the Romans, or the Chinese, or the Egyptians, or the Incas, etc. The Native Americans were downright primitive by comparison with other civilizations. Especially on the prairies of Canada where they were basically hunter-gatherers living in small bands. I am likewise disheartened by your wilful ignorance of the truth.

[PhasmaFelis]

"the Egyptians did it bigger" is a far cry from your original claim that there was "not much in the way of civilization" there at all.

[eloff]

I see it the same way. Semi nomadic bands of a couple hundred people without permanent structures is "not much in the way of civilization".

[tyler-groves]

This is the fundamental difference in our views. I believe that the permanence of cultural output is arbitrary to the value of the culture, especially to those who participate in that culture.