North America was changing before the arrival of the Europeans

Tyler Cowen pointed to the book Native Nations: A Millennium in North America from Kathleen DuVal, professor of early American history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill - link to Amazon is affiliate. 

The excerpts are interesting. Some ideas sound familiar to our time.

Gradually, across Native North America, people developed a deep distrust of centralization, hierarchy, and inequality.  The former residents of North America’s great cities reversed course, turning away from urbanization and political economic centralization to build new ways of living…

Distrust, centralization, hierarchy, inequality...

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