American Indian's lack of gold

Of course it's beach rock, but it could have been formed into squares by being surrounded by a wooden structure which held sand and rocks in place. The sand and rocks mineralized before the wood structure rotted away.

Like I mentioned, the Aztec causeways across Lake Texcoco were built that way. The sand bore the load and the wooden pilings held it in place. The whole structure was collapsible in the event of enemy attack.

One thing is almost certain. Since there is gold but none of it is lying around in riverbeds to be easily picked up, someone must have picked it up.

Whether the North American tribes were being victimized by the Central American cultures or whether they were visited by other powers, someone picked up the easy-to-find gold. The rest is still locked up in the ground and the mountains, waiting to be eroded into riverbeds, too sparse to effectively mine.

Perhaps the Mongols in the 13th century found some way to reach America, possibly via the Aleutian kayakers. Perhaps they traded opium or people for gold and fueled their world conquest. The Zuni have entire words of Japanese in their native language and their name is also their word for "flesh."

a reply to: Solvedit

The US was bulldozed by at least five major ice ages. Ohio is known as not having gold because of this. Everything east of the Mississippi is both more stable and older geologically speaking. Which is why the Appalachian Mountains are lower and rounded compared to other mountain ranges like the Rockies.

originally posted by: Ahabstar
a reply to: SolveditThe US was bulldozed by at least five major ice ages. Ohio is known as not having gold because of this.

I can't see why there wouldn't be gold along with the other debris. Rocks would seem to be easier to carry away by a glacier than small flecks of metal.

Glaciers don't actually retreat. They melt when the ice age ends or declines in severity. Why wouldn't a glacier leave behind whatever it picked up? If anything, the eroding action of the ice age would seem to accelerate the process of breaking tiny bits of metal out of the rock.

a reply to: Ravenwatcher

They aren't greedy.

I remember reading that an experiment was done where they had someone handing out lollipops, 2 at a time. Native American children handed 2 lollipops ran to the 1st kid they saw without one and handed them 1. Whereas their Caucasian counterparts kept both. I may even have read about that on here.

a reply to: Solvedit

Glacier advance will gouge the ground. The ice was about 1 mile thick in Cleveland. A moraine is the name of piled glacial dirt. Moraine, Ohio is just south of Dayton.

The lands in western Ohio are rather flat in the North, hills and valleys in the South. All of Central Ohio is either flat with broad gentle hills until you enter the river valleys. Eastern Ohio is flat to the north and builds into foothills and enters Outer Appalachia. I-70, while mostly flat area is roughly considered the north/south line.

Look up Kelley’s Island to see pics of the glacier grooves.

a reply to: Solvedit

They actually do push stuff in front of them. It's called Push Moraine. I've found a half dozen large agates and other rock specimens I know came from hundreds of miles to the north. Native artifacts though would be ground to dust. Most of it ends up washed away after the glacier melts.

Glaciers actually grind the tops off mountains and leave obvious striations in the rock. We get dust storms in the early summer that are terminus dust. No artifact will survive that. Ice and water are the most powerful forces on earth.

originally posted by: Blaine91555
a reply to: SolveditNo artifact will survive that.

No artifact, yes, but glacier action might help expose gold in the right circumstances, by crushing the ore.

One thing that comes to mind is that silver is reflective across most of the visible spectrum.

byjus.com...

They could use a hunk of silver to signal each other over distances, by making it flicker in the other person's direction. It would be similar in principle to smoke signals.

In European history, that doesn't matter as much, because as an iron/steel aged culture, they had a lot of reflective substances available, but for the plains natives, a hunk of any brightly reflective substance would be a genuine novelty.

originally posted by: Blaine91555Native artifacts though would be ground to dust. Most of it ends up washed away after the glacier melts.

The Native Americans only had a few thousand years of ice age and 10,000 years of no ice age.

Glacial action might tend to destroy artifacts but it would also tend to expose more gold dust by crushing rock.

The entire continent wasn't covered by glaciers.

In my opinion, pirates knew about the Americas before Columbus, and would periodically scour the place for signs of gold. Perhaps the natives knew not to pick gold up or talk about it.

Natives further South, in Columbia were known to use gold for ritual purposes.

It's likely the real "El Dorado" has been found. It was a tribe that would coat a guy they called El Dorado in gold and offer the gold to the nearby lake. They acquired the gold by trading salt to local miners.

But they didn't consider it currency, and didn't even bother to purify it.

originally posted by: Solvedit


In my opinion, pirates knew about the Americas before Columbus, and would periodically scour the place for signs of gold. Perhaps the natives knew not to pick gold up or talk about it.

I wonder if North American natives would have been afraid of pirates, prior to the advent of gun powder weapons?

But if the pirates were traveling inland looking for gold, they must not have brought any pigs with them. Or else small pox would have arrived then instead of later.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelousBut if the pirates were traveling inland looking for gold, they must not have brought any pigs with them. Or else small pox would have arrived then instead of later.

Suppose they were Barbary pirates.

originally posted by: BlueJacketThe gold question is really quite interesting. Being a placer miner myself, that’s a widely available resource in some areas, definitely pure enough to be hammered.

But do you have to have some knowledge to know where it is in order to find it? Hadn't they picked up all the gold that was on the surface?

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

originally posted by: Solvedit
In my opinion, pirates knew about the Americas before Columbus, and would periodically scour the place for signs of gold. Perhaps the natives knew not to pick gold up or talk about it.

I wonder if North American natives would have been afraid of pirates, prior to the advent of gun powder weapons?

There is some evidence the residents ot Chaco canyon (the "Anasazi cliff dwellers") may have been cooked and eaten by tribes from the South. Perhaps when a less developed tribe had gold, they'd get raided for it in a similar vein.

The genetic record of the pre-Columbian Americas shows they were terrible to one another. There is much turnover and bloodlines going extinct.

They could have raided one another. Perhaps the coasts were scoured clean first, not that I know whether there is much gold in the Eastern seaboard, then the tribes on the coast could be paid or bribed into assisting raids on inland tribes by pirates or someone.

There should probably have been gold on the Eastern and central parts of the Rockies as well as California. Maybe it was picked up, then stolen by a larger tribe long ago.

Columbus found gold on the first island he visited but he had to force the natives to spend much time looking for it and even then they only scoured up a little dust.

originally posted by: Solvedit

originally posted by: bloodymarvelousBut if the pirates were traveling inland looking for gold, they must not have brought any pigs with them. Or else small pox would have arrived then instead of later.

Suppose they were Barbary pirates.

Lol. That's pretty good! I forgot that Muslims don't eat pork.

It seems like they would have brought back some as slaves, though. Which.... maybe they did and we don't notice in when we see it in the genetic record because later raids after Columbus provide a plausible alternative explanation for any genetic mingling we might see in North African slave populations.

originally posted by: Solvedit

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

originally posted by: Solvedit
In my opinion, pirates knew about the Americas before Columbus, and would periodically scour the place for signs of gold. Perhaps the natives knew not to pick gold up or talk about it.

I wonder if North American natives would have been afraid of pirates, prior to the advent of gun powder weapons?

There is some evidence the residents ot Chaco canyon (the "Anasazi cliff dwellers") may have been cooked and eaten by tribes from the South. Perhaps when a less developed tribe had gold, they'd get raided for it in a similar vein.

The genetic record of the pre-Columbian Americas shows they were terrible to one another. There is much turnover and bloodlines going extinct.

I guess there is no point in mining for a trade good if the other side isn't going to trade with you. Just hack your head off and take it.

That's the problem with systems based on brutality. Nobody voluntarily brings you anything.

originally posted by: BlueJacket
a reply to: Ravenwatcher
Well they did build pyramids. Cahokia is the largest pyramid in North America: pyramidomania.com...

Only a site with a name like "pyramidomania" would call the earth mounds at Cahokia a "pyramid."


Harte

originally posted by: Solvedit
Of course it's beach rock, but it could have been formed into squares by being surrounded by a wooden structure which held sand and rocks in place. The sand and rocks mineralized before the wood structure rotted away.

Like I mentioned, the Aztec causeways across Lake Texcoco were built that way. The sand bore the load and the wooden pilings held it in place. The whole structure was collapsible in the event of enemy attack.

Consider the absence of an ancient city on Bimini.
You think there would have been a dock on an island that had no city for the dock to serve?
What would the dock be for? Sightseeing?

Harte

originally posted by: HarteConsider the absence of an ancient city on Bimini.
You think there would have been a dock on an island that had no city for the dock to serve?
What would the dock be for? Sightseeing? Harte

What if they were only using Bimini as a staging area to travel to Central America for the gold the natives had gathered up? The actual Aztec causeways across Lake Texcoco were designed to be collapsible in the event of a foreign invasion. The Bimini road might have been one of several, perhaps even one of hundreds of docks designed to serve to export gold and resources and then be taken apart in order to keep the secret of where the gold was coming from. Perhaps that one dock failed to be taken apart in time due to some emergency among the crew, or maybe it was the last one standing when the Spanish fleet came.

a reply to: Solvedit
Why would there be a dock on an island with no village?
Take a moment to use your brain. People don't just "have docks" on islands without living there.

Harte

originally posted by: Harte
a reply to: Solvedit
Why would there be a dock on an island with no village?
Take a moment to use your brain. People don't just "have docks" on islands without living there.

Harte

biminiroad.weebly.com...

That part of the island has no natural water supply - so a suckie place to anchorage ship escpecially one that has come from the old world. ""Bimini long survived on captured rainwater and limited use of private wells, which mostly produced water unsuitable for drinking. With the high cost of safely storing already unreliable supplies of stormwater, an alternative was sought, and a pioneering reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant was commissioned in Bimini in 1970, just five years after the launch of the technology’s first pilot program. Since then, the technology has continued to progress, and now in the Bahamas, Bimini is one of the districts most reliant on desalination""