The Maya Establish Contact with the Western World

TudorQueen

Banned
During the classical period of the Maya (250 - 900 AD), the rules of the Empire decide to set their sights on sea travel. The Maya slowly expand their empire by establishing massive cities around the Gulf of Mexico, in what today would be know as the southern United States, as well as on the Caribbean islands. The Maya eventually decide to send an expedition across the Atlantic, to discover what is upon the horizon. The expedition sails and arrives in what today would be considered Spain in or around the 400's, and returns to the Americas. What impact could this interaction have had on the Mayan Empire and the Western world?
 
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Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

Banned
1: Mayans discover iron and horses.
2: Columbian exchange with Old World and New World standing eye-to-eye.
3: the 400s were the time when the Western Roman Empire was declining and the Eastern Roman Empire was rising. Cultural cross-pollination between the Maya and the Romans will occur.
4: Mayans steamroll the Americas with their monopoly on iron and on cavalry- in short, Mayan conquistadors, 1100 years before the OTL Spaniards.
5: Mayan civilization lasts longer, due to learning about crop rotation.
6: Soy and/or Legumes are introduced to Mexico, butterflying out the Classical Mayan collapse.
7: A Maya-wank without ASB involvement occurs.

Notes on 1, 3, and 4: These 'Mayan Conquistadors' may or may not be imitations of the contemporary Roman Comitatenses Legions- nowhere near the Spanish Tercios of the 16th century, but light-years ahead of the rest of the Americas.
 
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9 Fanged Hummingbird

9 Fanged Hummingbird

What Maya Empire? There weren't no such thing, especially not in the Classic Period. The Maya have always consisted of various kingdoms scattered all over the area that just so happen to be speaking closely related languages and sharing more similar cultural traits with each other than the westerners in Oaxaca and so on.

Furthermore, you'd need a much further back POD to actually give them the technology to be able to make a transoceanic voyage, Europe couldn't make it until the 11th Century and even that one more or less consisted of island-hopping around the northernmost bit of the ocean, whereas with more advanced sailing technology Columbus still barely managed the voyage several centuries later. You'd also have to actually have a tangible reason for crossing the ocean, something most people positing pre-Columbian contacts one way or the other don't put enough thought into.
 

zoomar

As Hummingbird noted, there never was a Mayan Empire, so first you have to figure out a plausible way for that to happen.

Leaving aside the fact that there would also have be a huge number of technological innovations before the Classic Period to make transatlantic voyages possible for a people without bronze or ferrous metallurgy, wheels, compasses, or any tradition of long-distance sea travel other than coastal or island trade, it is inconceivable that a civilization that (using your dates) just began in AD 250 would suddenly just "decide" to become sea travelers and land in Spain in less than 200 years.

Your best bet would be to have something really bad happen to the development of civilization in the old world so the Mesoamerican civilizations have another 500 or 1000 years to evolve in isolation to the point where transatlantic voyages are at least technologically feasible, and something like a true Mayan Empire might have developed. But also as Hummingbird noted, you need to create a reason they would want to sail across the eastern sea.

But at least you are now in a completely alternate history and you have a lot more freedom to imagine and speculate.
 
Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

Banned
zoomar said:
As Hummingbird noted, there never was a Mayan Empire, so first you have to figure out a plausible way for that to happen.

Leaving aside the fact that there would also have be a huge number of technological innovations before the Classic Period to make transatlantic voyages possible for a people without bronze or ferrous metallurgy, wheels, compasses, or any tradition of long-distance sea travel other than coastal or island trade, it is inconceivable that a civilization that (using your dates) just began in AD 250 would suddenly just "decide" to become sea travelers and land in Spain in less than 200 years.

Your best bet would be to have something really bad happen to the development of civilization in the old world so the Mesoamerican civilizations have another 500 or 1000 years to evolve in isolation to the point where transatlantic voyages are at least technologically feasible, and something like a true Mayan Empire might have developed. But also as Hummingbird noted, you need to create a reason they would want to sail across the eastern sea.

But at least you are now in a completely alternate history and you have a lot more freedom to imagine and speculate.
Click to expand...

Well, it takes just one audacious captain and one or two (or three) ships to make first contact with someone on the other side of the ocean.
 

Mongo

The lack of an empire is not an impediment, in my opinion. The Greeks were huge colonizers and innovators, but were divided into numerous city-states forming several larger rival coalitions -- much like the Classic Maya.

The problem is that the Maya were principally land-based rather than sea-faring, unlike the Greeks. Maybe if the coastal Maya adopted the technology of the sea-faring groups of the Caribbean at that time, they would turn to the sea and make colonization of the Gulf coast and the Caribbean plausible. Don't know about trans-Atlantic interchanges, though.
 
9 Fanged Hummingbird

9 Fanged Hummingbird

Pennsylvania said:
Well, it takes just one audacious captain and one or two (or three) ships to make first contact with someone on the other side of the ocean.
Click to expand...
One audacious captain still has to have a good reason, otherwise he's just a suicidal moron going out into the blue nothingness and nobody would want to sail with him, let alone fund him the price of all those ships and the necessary supplies. Columbus had a reason to travel around the world besides just plain audacity, and even so he only found America more out of luck than anything else because he made some drastic miscalculations. The Greenlanders similarly had good reasons to hop on over to Markland and Vinland.

That said, colonization of the Caribbean and whatnot isn't implausible IMO, especially if there's no Classic Collapse.
 
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