Why aren’t there any ancient structures of civilization in North America?

by eusticebahhh

I know Mexico and Central America have pyramids but why not further north in the continental US?

Trevor_Culley

I'm not the one to provide a detailed answer to this, but fortunately excellent answers have been written in the past. u/Snapshot52 wrote a very detailed answer here, which links to many other related posts on AskHistorians and elsewhere. u/retarredroof also wrote a detailed answer in this post.

The short answer is that there are equally ancient structures in the continental US, even though they are less well known and not as obvious as stone monuments.

hannahstohelit

Hey there,

Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.

If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!