[surgical_fire]

Er, Aztecs and Incans definitely had agriculture. They actually had highly complex societies.

What they mostly lacked were antibodies against the numerous diseases brought by the Europeans. Measles, Mumps, Cholera, Tuberculosis, and so on.

[jstanley]

They had agriculture, yes, but they hadn't had it long enough to bootstrap an advanced civilisation before the Europeans arrived.

If they had, perhaps Europe would have been conquered by South Americans instead of the other way around.

[AngryData]

What do you mean they didn't have an advanced civilization? They had city densities above the best in Europe and their gold work put European goldsmiths to shame. They had the abacus, pain medications, aqueducts, armor, dams, beer, gold plating along with sintering soldering and lost wax casting, roads, the concept of zero in mathematics, advanced astronomy, plumbing, the suspension bridge, multiple unique writing systems, and tons of food preservation techniques. That is a far cry from some dudes tieing rocks to sticks.

[vessenes]

Friend, this is just not true. Thousands of years of large sophisticated governments and civilizations in what is now Mexico and farther south. Its reductive to the point of being completely wrong to think of the Americas in this way.

Teotihuacan shows excellent astronomy, civil engineering, and a very large implied economy built so long ago the name of the people group is not recorded.

Did Europe rock the Americas, hard? Yes. Was it because they were more advanced? In wartime tech, and psyops, yes. The rest? I would be cautious.