I found the size and structure of the three civilizations that we discussed that "collapsed" very interesting. I had always wondered why the native civilizations of South America were able to build such large structures and maintain large cities, while I wondered why the Native Americans in our area or near our area seemed to be more of a "nomadic" civilization. After hearing about the mound building civilizations that existed in places like modern day St. Louis I can see that my earlier pre-conceptions about Native Americans in this area not having large population centers was incorrect.
I think the climate change, specifically the drought that took place was major the cause for those large societies not being able to stay with their structures, and caused them disperse into the tribes that I was more familiar with hearing about that lived in our region. After hearing about the mound builders and seeing the artist's rendering of them on the power point in class I can't help but wonder how much more advanced the civilizations would have become had the drought not affected them so drastically. I also wonder how differently the Europeans that eventually settled in North America would have perceived the natives if they would have seen such large structures and cities.
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I too was amazed at the sheer size of the cities that we discussed. I didn't know that there were large communities other than the ones that were in the southeast. I am also interested in how different it would have been had the Europeans encountered the Native peoples in these large settlements rather than spread out across the region. A few questions come to mind. would the Native people been better accustomed to resisting the europeans had they been more unified and centralized? And would the Europeans have seen them as a more "Civilized" people had they encountered these large cities with modern accomodations such as irregation? It seems that there were multiple acts conspiring to help the Europeans conquer the New World.
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