What if China found Mexico first?

1.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_American_indigenous_peoples

---this wiki link has an very good discussion on the conflicting and wide ranging estimates of collective population of indigenious peoples.

2.  I think you need to look at the situation in the Carribean:

European groups that may have tried to enslave them. The first indigenous group encountered by Columbus were the 250,000 Tainos of Hispaniola who were the dominant culture in the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas. Later explorations of the Caribbean led to the discovery of the Aruak peoples of the lesser Antilles. Whoever wasn't killed by the widespread diseases brought in from Europe or the many conflicts against European soldiers were enslaved, and the culture was extinct by 1650. Only 500 had survived by the year 1550, though the bloodlines continued through the modern populace. Link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas

I don't know the accuracy of the above claims, but without question, there are very few Amerindians in the Carribean and the Bahamas.

Originally posted by TranHungDao ... Eh, Africans were brought here in chains.

Originally posted by Mixcoatl Originally posted by pinguin Current studies has show the Tainos of the Caribbean didn't become extinct but assimilated to the Europeans. If they are assimilated that means they are extinct. Otherwise you can just as well say that the Visigoths still exist.

Originally posted by pinguin Now, for the myth of the extinction of Amerindians, thanks God, that genetical research is showing light to what really happens. It seems that White Americans have more Amerindian blood in them that they want to admite.

They have more black blood in them then they want to admit too. 

According to the Jim Crow era's one drop rule, this makes America not 12.5% black, but probably about 50% black. 

I wouldn't be the least bit suprised if there are plenty of Klansmen and Neo Nazi skinheads who are categorically "black" according to the one drop rule.

Originally posted by TranHungDao ... No offence, but I'd still need to see some sources for your assertions on the Tainos of the Carribean and the the Native American's of the US.

Originally posted by Byzantine Emperor  It has always remained a mystery to me why China lagged behind by the 15th century in gunpowder technology.  Since they invented gunpowder weapons you would think that there would be continuity in their development.  Was it that Europe had made advances independently that surpassed anything that Ming China was producing?

Easy.  This is easy to explain. 

One Word:  Confucianism

Confucianism emphasizes regurgitation, whereas with the West, which inherits its intellectual tradition from the Greeks emphasizes innovation.  This is why traditional Chinese science was never more than about creating nifty tinker toys (early/primitive printing press, basic gunpowder, and the magnetic compass...) rather than abstract mathematics and the natural sciences (Newtonian Mechanics, computers, general relativity...).  The West wast constantly innovating whereas East Asia was constantly copying the Chinese classics.

For centuries, even millenia, those ultra competitive civil service exams tested ambitious students on their ability to regurgitate the classics.  Japan, Korea and Vietnam are also Confucian.
 
Even nowadays if you look at those math, computer science (IOI), biology, chemistry, Robocon, physics, etc. olympiads, China, Vietnam, S. Korea, and Japan are dominant.  China, mostly by virtue of it sheer size, almost always wins the math olympiads.  Vietnam, with the exception of the last two years, often creams both S. Korea and Japan.  S. Korea is doing strong now, and so is Japan.   Western European countries, including France and Britain, are almost never on the radar; the Scandinavian countries and Israel are too small to compete effectively; Russia and former East block contries are often very strong.  Lol, wealthy countries like UK, France, US, Japan, have kids who'd rather go to rock or rap concerts than do math.

However, when you look at Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the Confucian countries are pathetic underachievers, including the wealthy Japanese who industrialized, via Western technology, way back in the 1850's.   Think about it:  The Japanese are good at improving the sh*t out of  everything that America invents.

The point here is the best test takers are generally not the most brilliant minds.  James Joyce was lousy at math so he turned to literature where his only peer is no less than Shakespeare himself.  The amazing actor Ed Norton couldn't pass his physics courses at Yale.  The vast majority of olympiad gold medalists go on to have mediocre careers in their respective fields.  Prior to the twentieth century, China's most brilliant mathmatician (I forget his name) couldn't pass the his madarinate exams.  We can safely assume that despite their earth-shattering brilliance Shakespeare, Kant, Newton, Gauss and Einstein could not have passed the equivalent of the Confucian civil service exams if it were written in their respective languages and the topics were on their respective histories and literature.

This is why confucianist Asians are so good at test taking, but mediocre when it comes to achieving major scientific innovations, such as general relativity or string theory. 

The funny thing is that many Chinese want to throw the baby out with the bath water:  For about 100 years now, many Chinese as well as other confucians, have blamed confucianism for China's backwardness relative to the West--particularly since the Chinese invented gunpowder over 2000 years ago but failed to take full advantage of it.  This is a mistake.  Why?  Because Confucianism strength over the West is that it has a stronger work ethic than the West's Protestant Work Ethic/Calvinism:  Hence there us a stereoytpe that Asians are hard working and good at math--that is they get good grades in highschool and college, and own restaurants.

Nearly all of the Asians who've won Noble Prizes and Fields Medals were trained and/or worked their entire careers in the West, where they were taught to think outside the box, rather than to constantly regurgitate what their profs told them.  (Vietnam and S. Korea only have Nobel Peace prizes, so I'm really talking about the 1.3 billion Chinese and the very rich and technologically advanced Japanese.)  Even now it is incredible that in Asian universities, students dare not question the authority of their professors.  Oh, by the way, authoritarianism is a key aspect of Confucianism, which is very anti-thetical to innovative thinking. 

If you haven't noticed, Jews, who've lived in Europe for 1000 or even 2000 years, have the best of both worlds.  They can match the "Confucian work ethic" and possess the Western penchant for creative thinking, which is why they win way too many Nobels and Fields medals.  I guess we should all strive to be like them, but without that silly penchant for oppressing Palestinians. 

I suspect it will take another 100 to 200 years before East Asians can match the West in innovative thinking.  It will happen, but it will take a giant cultural paradigm shift.  But mind you, Japan, S. Korea, and Taiwan are economic powerhouses despite having yet to go thru this shift.  This should inform you as to what the "Asian century" will be like.   China will make Japan look like nothing.  China has about twice the population of Europe, America, Canada and Austrailia combined!

Better start learning Chinese! 

For the West to keep up, it better strengthen the Calvinist work ethic. 

Note:  When it comes to this kind of stuff, think in terms of centuries and not decades.  However, the solely economic aspect should be viewed in terms of decades.

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There are people who believe in that "geography is destiny" hypothesis:  Where you live, you're environment, determines what you become.  They claim the Greeks became individualistic, i.e. innovative, because of their maritime merchant political economy.   And they say that East Asians who grew rice needed to think collectively, i.e. rice growing required massive the irrigation schemes which in turn required collectivisation:  Social Conformity.  Social conformity is the opposite of individuality, or innovation.

On a tangential note, I think the "geography is destiny" hypothesis can explain why the Mongols and Vikings, among others, became so violent in their hey-day.  They both lived in very unforgiving climates, so that when the population density increased exhausting the respective lands' ability to support them with their then primitive farming/pastoral technologies, constant warfare was all but inevitable to break out.  And sooner rather than later, the law of the jungle took over:  Kill or be killed.  Hence they became extremely violent.

Originally posted by Byzantine Emperor You mentioned the European conquest of India.  It seems that Indians had cannon and firearms of a quality that measured up to what Europe had.  Did they eventually become antiquated sometime in the 15th century?  There is a good book on the subject:   Iqtidar Alam Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Sorry, don't know anything about India.  But thanks for the comparisons with India and the Ottomans.

Pinguin wrote-

To Red Clay and TranHungDao:

When you think in this topic you guys inevitable have a North American, more clearly, an U.S. point of view. My comments are more continental-wise, considering regions like the Caribbean, Brazil, Canada and Hispanic America.

If you allow me to say it, and follow me a second, you will notice that since the arrival of the Spaniards intermarriage was mainly European and Indigenous, rather than African and Indigenous. All the hierarchies, and the largest group of the Americas were made mainly of European-Indigenous people that become "dilluted" after the large waves of European immigrants that never stopped to come.

Originally posted by pinguin To Red Clay and TranHungDao:

Arrgh!  I said you were right and I was wrong several times now, didn't I?