The Water Engine

[cthulu2016]

22. I considered getting into this in the OP

Not everyone will develop guns. To do so you have to have a culture of metallurgy and chemistry.

It is not that every culture will invent guns, but rather that within a culture where guns are invented the invention of guns would come naturally to a lot of people within that culture.

If you lack electricity and glass blowing and vacuum pumps the fact that a filament will glow when a current passes through it, and will be slow to burn up in a vacuum, won't occur to anyone. But a culture that has already developed those things will leap to the light-bulb quickly.

Though the North American indians did not ride animals, as soon as some escaped European horses came along they quickly became innovative horsemen without being taught. They used dragged sleds to have horse's carry cargo which seems silly, versus using the wheel. But wheeled carts are not obvious until there are roads (developed first for horse riders).

If indians had roads and wheeled carts pulled by people they would have figured out how to train buffalo to pull the carts because it would be an idea whose time had come. But for a zillion reasons, their cultures did not develop along the same lines as others.

One the other hand, for a different variety of reasons (many natural and geographical), they were incredible at domesticating plants. So much so that when Europeans got a hold of indian-developed plants the population of Europe expanded greatly.