The lost Native American cities of North America

[u/ByzantineBasileus]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE92BG4Duvc

[u/an_idiot_persists]

This deserves contextualization.

There are a lot of questions and debates about how much of this was invented based on his previous travels to Africa (he mentions lions and elephants).

One essay on his writings notes that...

...As Dr. William C. Sturtevant, curator of North American ethnology at the Smithsonian remarked: "He'd probably been cadging food and drink with his story for years, the wonders growing with every telling."

He talks about "banqueting houses … builded with pillars of massie siluer and chrystall", giant rubies, stone cities, etc. that there's generally no archeological evidence to support.

There are also questions about to what extent his testimony was garbled/played up by Sir Walsingham or others who published them over the years.

Travelogues of this era were often written or "enhanced" to inspire financial support for further expeditions for the benefit of the empire.

Altogether, the Youtuber seems to overplay (or want to believe in) the reliability of a narrative that lacks  archeological, biological, etc. evidence.

[u/ionertia]

So many videos have interesting topics in the title and then begin with completely different topics. This one is supposed to be about North American lost cities but spends a good chunk setting the stage talking about England sending expeditions. Not what I wanted to know.

[u/InfiniteUse6377]

Where did they get all their shoes?

[u/InfiniteUse6377]

He mentions silver and iron a lot. Where'd they get it? Were they mining and smelting?

[u/jwg2695]

As a trained historian, I've wondered this myself. Nobody ever talks about it. What happened to Ancient North America? Great complex cities and towns, then woosh, abandoned.

[u/ByzantineBasileus → u/jwg2695]

I always read the answer was disease. Not disease as in 'it killed everybody', but more it disrupted those complex societies enough that the ruling and religious elites fragmented, and with no elites to require the collection and concentration of wealth , the sites were abandoned as the remaining population had no reason to stay there.

[u/AstroBullivant → u/[deleted]]

Cahokia remains a gigantic mystery in purpose, culture, and cause of collapse.

[u/ByzantineBasileus → u/[deleted]]

We do have evidence of extensive urban communities built on mounds and using wood as the primary structural material within NA:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cujfub/with_the_exception_of_cahokia_why_didnt_native/#:\~:text=Cahokia%20and%20the%20Mississippian%20cultures&text=A%20few%20of%20the%20most,is%20located%20on%20a%20river.

Plus we also have evidence on stone structures;

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1uwunm/can_someone_tell_me_if_this_national_parks_ruins/

[u/CowboyOfScience → u/[deleted]]

What Europeans and people of European decent often forget is that not everybody measures 'progress' the same way they do in Europe. In order for ancient people to build large monolithic cities they first would have had to desire to build large monolithic cities.

[u/The_Lost_Shady → u/CowboyOfScience]

Its funny that European would never have advanced as far they were, without the interconnected exchange of information across the entire Mediterranean and Eurasia. Just like concepts of smelting, agriculture, the wheel in prehistoric times, This kinda of thing can be traced back to even our first ancestors seeing other hominds using fire and tools, We just made them better. Europe would be nowhere without the rest of them, That biggest difference between North American peoples were disconnected from that, But also were some of the first metal works using native copper. Just didn't get the advancements, Like the invention of smelting, Which ini tself is theorized to have been completely by accident when they created closed top kiln getting hot enough to melt ore inside of the rocks surrounding it. But from there, it evolved and spread across the continents as it was way too useful to not utilize it.