It appears that at the time of European exploration/colonisation of the Americas that European civilisations were at a greater technological level than those civilisations in the Americas, using metals, ocean faring and so on. Furthermore in Europe there (at face value) seems to have been a relatively rapid increases in technology over a few hundred years but less so in America where it seems they had been in an extended dark ages.
Why didn't the American civilisations have congruent technologies to that of the Europeans, such as ocean faring ships, metal work, etc? Had the Americas been in an extended dark ages without much technological advances compared to Europe and why? Or am I simply wrong and there was large amounts of change over time in America before the arrival of Europeans?
Sorry if this doesn't come across clear
It is true that in many ways the Americas live in a, what we would call a stone age culture. The still managed, inpressive societys, with large organsiations and buildings.
There is no agreement on, why. Some people argue that humans have not lived in the americas as long. Some people blame the fact that there where not as many, as good plantes and animals to domesticat. Some people blame geography.
One thing that can be said, is that in Asia/Europe you had a lot of technolgy that moved between very diffrent cultures. So in greek they figrue out greek fire, in china the invented gun powder based on greek fire, then in europe the develop gunpower to a even more effective weapon.
The same kind of thing can be done for many technologys on Eurasia. Diffrent cultures that are not strongly enougth connect the have all that much incommon but strong enougth for technology to flow in both directions.
In the americas, you simple dont have this many diffrent cultures because there at not as many places where you could have urban based civilisations. For that one might again blame geography.
But really there is no agreement on this.