>>36100185>>36100865>Forgetting the Mesoamericans and AndeansBoth places formed large urban cities (Mesoamerican outright had comparable population densities and city sizes to europe at the time), had complex goverments with civil adminstrative and legal/judicial systems, had intellectual and artistic traditions with poetry, philsophy, sculpting, murals/frescos, fine tapestry/featherworking, etc. Mesoamerica was outright one of the only 3 places to independently invent writing, alongside the Far East and Mesopotamia, too.
Both basically just got screwed over by geography: their isolation meant that they didn't benefit from the technological competition and interchange that europe/the middle east/asia had, as well as due to a lack of beasts of burden for labor or transporation, and then finally Old World diseases just utterly annihilated 95% of their population, which is what allowed them to fall to Spain.
It's sort of ironic but the single biggest lasting impact the left is that as a result of the Aztecs in particular setting up such a wide reaching empire that it just allowed spain to instantly gain control over much of the region once they toppled it (thanks to dieases and Cortes having insane, stupid levels of dumb luck) also setting the template for how conquer the rest of the americas, enabling European cultural dominance and imperial supermacy that we still have today, which probably wouldn't have happened otherwise (I can go into this further if either of you want)
