alt Hacker NewsHighly literate? From your britannica reference:
"No native writing system was known among Indigenous peoples of North America at the time of first European contact"
And yes, I was referring to the North American Indians. I know the Mayans had writing. I even have a book on the Mayan writing system.
> they didn't have strictly hierarchical institutions that utilized this data for controlling their population
People did not write letters and keep diaries in order to control their population.
The book "Empire of the Summer Moon" which is a history of the Commanche empire, and the book laments that their only sources were diaries and letters written by colonists.
I wonder if one could group Central American and North-Central-American civilizations and peoples into two gross and very approximate groups:
1: Sedentary farmers like Aztecs and possibly Pueblos and those doing Three Sisters farming, some of them like the Aztecs having significant civilizational achievements all considered.
2: Hunting nomads, first doing fire-stick farming to create good conditions for hunting animals as well as gather certain plants, and later utilizing horses after their introduction from Europe.