question: Why were the Native Americans so far behind cultures on the other continents? The Europeans has ships sailing around the world, agriculture, rode animals (e.g., horses), had firearms, etc., while the Native Americans are usually portrayed as barefoot hunter gatherers with little technology.
comment: I understand the question you're asking, but it's not a very good one. There isn't one timeline of human culture, where some communities are closer to "advanced" than others. Native communities had the technology they needed to cook and communicate, and the knowledge to travel by boat and use plants as medicine. It wasn't important to them to travel far away from home to see what was out there. Their networks were what mattered. Unrelatedly, no large animal native to the americas could be domesticated for riding. This is a problem of biology and the evolutionary timeline, not a failure of a people.
passages: BULLET::::2. There were a number of advanced civilizations in the Americas, but they did lack two important resources: a pack animal large enough to carry a human; and the ability to make steel for tools and weapons.
   After 1492 European exploration and colonization of the Americas revolutionized how the Old and New Worlds perceived themselves. One of the first major contacts, in what would be called the American Deep South, occurred when the conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed in La Florida in April 1513. He was later followed by other Spanish explorers, such as Pánfilo de Narváez in 1528 and Hernando de Soto in 1539. The subsequent European colonists in North America often rationalized their expansion of empire with the assumption that they were saving a barbaric, pagan world by spreading Christian civilization.
   The Norte Chico civilization (in present-day Peru) is one of the defining six original civilizations of the world, arising independently around the same time as that of Egypt. Many later pre-Columbian civilizations achieved great complexity, with hallmarks that included permanent or urban settlements, agriculture, engineering, astronomy, trade, civic and monumental architecture, and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first significant European and African arrivals (ca. late 15th–early 16th centuries), and are known only through oral history and through archaeological investigations. Others were contemporary with the contact and colonization period, and were documented in historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Mayan, Olmec, Mixtec, Aztec and Nahua peoples, had their own written languages and records. However, the European colonists of the time worked to eliminate non-Christian beliefs, and burned many pre-Columbian written records. Only a few documents remained hidden and survived, leaving contemporary historians with glimpses of ancient culture and knowledge.
   A dominant historical narrative exists in U.S. portrayal of Indigenous peoples pre-European contact. Proponents of the counter narrative argue that, through education, cinema, and media, the American society portrays indigenous peoples as far less civilized than their European colonizers. Academia asserts that this notion is in fact a fallacy, perpetuated by a systemic type of xenophobia that labels indigenous cultures as “uncivilized” or “savage.” In attempts to reshape this general misconception, a counter narrative regarding the perception of Indigenous peoples has come to light. For instance, contrary to popular belief, Indigenous peoples had complex, structured societies prior to European contact. Vast infrastructure, extensive trade networks, and governing bodies were already in place. The Muskogees even had a ruling structure strikingly similar to the three branches of government that exist today in the U.S. The Anasazi developed a circuit of roads, and the main commercial areas—Chaco Canyon and Cahokia, present-day New Mexico and Missouri, respectively—facilitated the exchange of the three sisters crops of corn squash, and beans, and tallow, a residue of mutton fat essential to the local pemmican diet. To supporters of this counter narrative, the widespread use of the three sisters crops and tallow across the entire continent demonstrates the efficiency of the Indigenous people’s interconnected trade networks, and further challenges the dominant master narrative depicting the Indigenous peoples as uncivilized.
   BULLET::::- "People of the Lakes" (100 AD): The journey of a band of Hopewell Indians across the Great Lakes.
  
  BULLET::::- "People of the Song Trail" (980 AD): The first contact between Native Americans and Vikings.
  
  BULLET::::- "People of the Masks" (1000 AD): Iroquois culture of the Woodland period.
  
  BULLET::::- "People of the River" (1080 AD): The mound-building Cahokia empire on the Mississippi River.
  
  BULLET::::- "People of the Morning Star, Sun Born, Moon Hunt," and "Star Path" (1100 AD): A tetrology set in the Cahokian empire.
   In northern North America, many hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies thrived in the diverse region. Native American tribes varied greatly in characteristics; some, including the Mississippian culture and the Ancestral Puebloans were complex chiefdoms. Other nations which inhabited the states of the modern northern United States and Canada had less complexity and did not follow technological changes as quickly. Approximately around the year 500 during the Woodland period , Native Americans began to transition to bows and arrows from spears for hunting and warfare. Technological advancement however was uneven. During the 12th century was the widespread adoption of Corn as a staple crop in the Eastern United States. Corn would continue to be the staple crop of natives in the Eastern United States and Canada until the Colombian Exchange.
   BULLET::::- The Four Corners area of the American Southwest suffered severe droughts late in the century, causing many Pueblos to abandon their cliff dwellings for irrigable settlements along the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico.
  
  BULLET::::- 1300: Cliff Palace is abandoned.
  
  BULLET::::- 1200–1400: Middle Mississippian culture in the Eastern Woodlands
  
  BULLET::::- 1315–1317: The Little Brown Ice Age brought a period of severe decline to medieval Europe, causing the Great Famine.
   BULLET::::- "People of the Silence" (1130 AD): The decline of the Chaco Empire of the Southwest.
  
  BULLET::::- "People of the Moon" (1150 AD): The collapse of the Chaco Empire's frontier, from the perspective of a subject people in what is now southern Colorado.
  
  BULLET::::- "People of the Mist" (1200 AD): A murder mystery set among the Algonquian people of the Chesapeake Bay region.
  
  BULLET::::- "People of the Weeping Eye" and "People of the Thunder" (1200 AD): The mound-building culture around Moundville, Alabama.
   Before contact with Europeans, the natives of North America were divided into many different polities, from small bands of a few families to large empires. Modern anthropology assigns some larger divisions into various "culture areas", regions within which a particular set of cultural, political, subsistence and/or linguistic traits predominated. These pre-Columbian American culture areas may also roughly correspond to particular geographic and biological zones of the continent. During the thousands of years of native inhabitation on the continent, cultures changed and shifted. One of the oldest cultures yet found is that of the Clovis peoples. Upon the arrival of the Europeans in the "New World", Native American population declined substantially, primarily due to the introduction of European diseases to which the Native Americans lacked immunity.
   North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge approximately 40,000 to 17,000 years ago. The so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago (the beginning of the Archaic or Meso-Indian period). The Classic stage spans roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era ended in 1492, with the beginning of the transatlantic migrations—the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery and the Early Modern period. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants.
   Bourgmont wrote that the Padouca maintained permanent villages. They sent out regular hunting parties, in groups of 50-100 households. As one hunting party returned, another would leave, so that the village was occupied at all times. They journeyed up to five or six days travel from their village to hunt. The Padouca sowed corn and pumpkins. They obtained tobacco and horses from trade with the Spanish in New Mexico in exchange for tanned buffalo skins. The explorer noticed that some of the Apache still used flint knives for skinning buffalo and felling trees, an indicator that not much European trade had reached them.
   Cultural traits brought by the first immigrants later evolved and spawned such cultures as Iroquois on North America and Pirahã of South America. These cultures later developed into civilizations. In many cases, these cultures expanded at a later date than their Old World counterparts. Cultures that may be considered advanced or civilized include Norte Chico, Cahokia, Zapotec, Toltec, Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Chimor, Mixtec, Moche, Mississippian, Puebloan, Totonac, Teotihuacan, Huastec people, Purépecha, Izapa, Mazatec, Muisca, and the Inca.After the voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1492, Spanish and later Portuguese, English, French and Dutch colonial expeditions arrived in the New World, conquering and settling the discovered lands, which led to a transformation of the cultural and physical landscape in the Americas. Spain colonized most of the Americas from present-day Southwestern United States, Florida and the Caribbean to the southern tip of South America. Portugal settled in what is mostly present-day Brazil while England established colonies on the Eastern coast of the United States, as well as the North Pacific coast and in most of Canada. France settled in Quebec and other parts of Eastern Canada and claimed an area in what is today the central United States. The Netherlands settled New Netherland (administrative centre New Amsterdam - now New York), some Caribbean islands and parts of Northern South America.
   In addition to having an untamed landscape, America was portrayed as a place of savagery by virtue of the people who inhabited it. This can be seen in the woodcut as America is depicted as much more warlike than the other three continents. As Claire Le Corbeiller explains, America “was usually envisioned as a rather fierce savage – only slightly removed in type from the medieval tradition of the wild man."
   BULLET::::- Poverty Point culture, 2200 BC–700 BC, Lower Mississippi Valley and surrounding Gulf coast
  
  BULLET::::- Post-archaic period, 1000 BC–onward
  
  BULLET::::- Southwest:
  
  BULLET::::- Ancestral Pueblo culture, 1200 BC–1300 AD, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico—one of these cultural groups referred to as Anasazi
  
  BULLET::::- Fremont culture, 1 AD–1300 AD, Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado
  
  BULLET::::- Hohokam, 1 AD–1450 AD, Arizona
  
  BULLET::::- Eastern Woodlands
  
  BULLET::::- Woodland period, 1000 BC–1000 AD
  
  BULLET::::- Adena, 1000–200 BC, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, and parts of Pennsylvania and New York.
  
  BULLET::::- Hopewell culture, 200 BC–500 AD, Southeastern Canada and eastern United States
   Greco-Roman society flourished between 250 BC and 480 AD and commanded successive waves of conquests that gripped more than half of the globe. But because already existent populations within other parts of Europe at the time of classical antiquity had more in common culturally speaking with the Greco-Roman world, the intricacies involved in expansion across the European frontier were not so contentious relative to indigenous issues.
   Section::::History.:European exploration and colonization.
  
  After 1492, European exploration and colonization of the Americas revolutionized how the Old and New Worlds perceived themselves. Many of the first major contacts were in Florida and the Gulf coast by Spanish explorers.
  
  Section::::History.:European exploration and colonization.:Impact on native populations.
   Many pre-Columbian civilizations established characteristics and hallmarks which included permanent or urban settlements, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first permanent European arrivals (c. late 15th–early 16th centuries), and are known only through archeological investigations. Others were contemporary with this period, and are also known from historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya, had their own written records. However, most Europeans of the time viewed such texts as pagan, and much was destroyed in Christian pyres. Only a few hidden documents remain today, leaving modern historians with glimpses of ancient culture and knowledge.
   As complex civilizations arose in the Eastern Hemisphere, the indigenous societies in the Americas remained relatively simple and fragmented into diverse regional cultures. During the formative stage in Mesoamerica (about 1500 BCE to 500 CE), more complex and centralized civilizations began to develop, mostly in what is now Mexico, Central America, and Peru. They included civilizations such as the Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Moche, and Nazca. They developed agriculture, growing maize, chili peppers, cocoa, tomatoes, and potatoes, crops unique to the Americas, and creating distinct cultures and religions. These ancient indigenous societies would be greatly affected, for good and ill, by European contact during the early modern period.
   Other powers to arrive in the Americas were the Swedes, Dutch, English, and French. The Dutch, English, and French all established colonies in the Caribbean and each established a small South American colony. The French established two large colonies in North America, Louisiana in the center of the continent and New France in the northeast of the continent. The French were not as intrusive as the Iberians were and had relatively good relations with the Amerindians, although there were areas of relatively heavy settlement like New Orleans and Quebec. Many French missionaries were successful in converting Amerindians to Catholicism. On North America's Atlantic coast, the Swedes established New Sweden. This colony was eventually conquered by the nearby Dutch colony of New Netherland (including New Amsterdam). New Netherland itself was eventually conquered by England and renamed New York. Although England's American empire began in what is today Canada, they soon focused their attention to the south, where they established thirteen colonies on North America's Atlantic coast. The English were unique in that rather than attempting to convert the Amerindians, they simply settled their colonies with Englishmen and pushed the Amerindians off their lands.
   Section::::The Americas.:North America.
  
  As a continent there was little unified trade or communication. Advances in agriculture spread northward from Measoamerica indirectly through trade. Major cultural areas however still developed independently of each other.
  
  Section::::The Americas.:North America.:Norse Contact and the Polar Regions.
  
  While there was little regular contact between the Americas and the Old World the Norse Vikings explored and even colonized Greenland and Canada as early as 1000. None of these settlements survived past Medieval Times. Outside of Scandinavia knowledge of the discovery of the Americas was interpreted as a remote island or the North Pole.
   European colonization of the Americas had a major impact on Native American culture through what is known as the Columbian exchange. The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, and ideas between the Americas and the Old World in the 15th and 16th centuries, following Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage. The Columbian exchange generally had a destructive impact on Native American culture through disease, and a 'clash of cultures', whereby European values of private property, the family, and labor, led to conflict, appropriation of traditional communal lands and changed how the indigenous tribes practiced slavery.
   During the thousands of years of native habitation on the continent, cultures changed and shifted. One of the oldest yet discovered is the Clovis culture (c. 9550–9050 BCE) in modern New Mexico. Later groups include the Mississippian culture and related Mound building cultures, found in the Mississippi river valley and the Pueblo culture of what is now the Four Corners. The more southern cultural groups of North America were responsible for the domestication of many common crops now used around the world, such as tomatoes, squash, and maize. As a result of the development of agriculture in the south, many other cultural advances were made there. The Mayans developed a writing system, built huge pyramids and temples, had a complex calendar, and developed the concept of zero around 400 CE.
   European impact was immediate, widespread, and profound—more than any other race that had contact with Native Americans during the early years of colonization and nationhood. Europeans living among Native Americans were often called "white indians". They "lived in native communities for years, learned native languages fluently, attended native councils, and often fought alongside their native companions."
   The story told by John Smith of his rescue by the daughter of Powhatan is generally agreed to be untrue. Pocahontas would have been eleven or twelve at the time, so this popular tale of the "Indian Princess" and the Englishman has no basis in known facts.
  
  Section::::American Indians / Native Americans.:Cultural and ethnic misconceptions.
   Over time, indigenous cultures in North America grew increasingly complex, and some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture in the southeast, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. The Mississippian culture flourished in the south from 800 to 1600 AD, extending from the Mexican border down through Florida. Its city state Cahokia is considered the largest, most complex pre-Columbian archaeological site in the modern-day United States. In the Four Corners region, Ancestral Puebloans culture developed as the culmination of centuries of agricultural experimentation, which produced greater dependence on farming. Three UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the United States are credited to the Pueblos: Mesa Verde National Park, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, and Taos Pueblo. The earthworks constructed by Native Americans of the Poverty Point culture in northeastern Louisiana have also been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. In the southern Great Lakes region, the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee) was established at some point between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.
  
presuppositions: There is one timeline of human culture with respect to advancement.
corrections: Human culture is not all on one timeline and each communities had what each community needed. 
raw_presuppositions: There is one timeline of human culture with respect to advancement. There is one timeline of human culture with respect to advancement.
raw_corrections: Human culture is not all on one timeline and each communities had what each community needed.  There is no one timeline of human culture depicting some cultures as more advanced than others.