re: What would North America be like today had the American Indians been left alone?

quote:

---

Yep, and by the 16th century they had yet to domesticate animals nor discovered the usefulness of the wheel, regularly practiced human sacrifice and had an economy based on forced slavery usually by kidnapping. The roads you mention were more akin to footpaths than anything else. Lets stop with the revisionist history. If left to their own devices the natives of North America would be the most backwards and uncivilized people on earth. The slums of Rio would look palatial in comparison.

---

At the same time, Europeans were also practicing slavery, and burning heretics at the stake, which looks an awful lot like human sacrifice to me. Most people lived in squalor, and even the nobility stank to high heaven because nobody bathed. No one was particularly civilized by modern standards. Europeans certainly weren't morally superior, and although they had some technological advantages, they conquered North America mostly by accidentally, and sometimes intentionally, introducing fatal diseases to the native population.