how come Native North Americans didn’t have vast empires of wealth and cities like Montezuma had down in Mexico?
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There was a documentary I watched in World History in college that talked about this (or rather, why some cultures propelled into the bronze/Iron Age/industrial eras and others seemed stuck in the Stone Age).
The theory the documentary focused on was effectively reliable and consistent access to nutrient-rich carbohydrates usually via farming (soil needs to be just right). Such as Rice (Asia, Middle East and North Africa), Wheat/Barley (Europe), and Beans (Middle and South America).
South and Middle America had reliable and consistent access to beans which are nutrient dense. Cultures like the Great Plains peoples were nomadic because their primary food source was animal meat, not carbohydrates.
To contrast, many African (like Papua New Guinea) peoples didn’t have soil to sustain farming well, as since jungle and rainforest soil is notoriously low nutrients and thin, which prevented the people from progressing as quickly (I think we can get around this today with advanced cultivation and fertilizer).
To compound that effect, Middle and South American cultures traded with North American cultures for food and other resources (IIRC, it’s been a while), I believe through the Pueblo peoples, which I think concentrated valuable resources (like turquoise and beads, things with intrinsic value) into Middle and South America while North Americans received food (which while definitely valuable, it wasn’t “permanent”). The peoples of North America largely remained hunter-gatherers because it was the easiest food source for them.
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