Here is an timeline I found at The Google AH Group. Its pretty good too.
********
In this TL, a rather sadistic and unpleasant civilization occupies the
Mississippi and lower Ohio River valleys. Cannibals, fanatics,
slavers and conquerors, the Mississippians are what might have
happened if OTL's Cahokian mound-builders had picked up
engineering, metalworking, hieroglyphic writing and a lot of bad
habits from a Mesoamerica somewhat more advanced than ours. Think of
them as something like Sumer writ large, crossed with the least
attractive aspects of the Aztecs.
Mississippian civilization has two geographical limiting factors.
One, they're deeply reliant on water transport -- for bringing
in food to feed their towns, for moving stone and wood, and for fish
to supplement an otherwise protein-poor diet. All their towns and
cities are on navigable rivers, and no settlement of any size is more
than half a day's march away from one.
The other limitation is climate. The Mississippians are firmly
creatures of the warm temperate zone. Although they trade and raid
throughout the great river system, they don't even consider
colonizing Minnesota or Nebraska. It's just too miserably cold
in winter. Anything north of the St. Louis - Cincinnati line seems a
bit nippy to them; there are fortified trading posts as far north as
Kankakee and St. Joseph, but they leave the chilly plains and gloomy
forests of the upper Midwest to the barbaric Ho-Chunk and the savage
Alqonquin tribes.
In the other direction, the Mississippians don't much care for
the bayous and backwaters of southern Louisiana and Mississippi. They
like building in stone, which isn't easy in a swamp, and their
rather crude agricultural package can't really take advantage of
the "black belt" soil of the subtropical lowlands.
Finally, while they are consummate rivermen, these alt-Cahokians
don't care for ocean travel at all. Not only have they lost the
habit of blue-water navigation, but their religion connects the ocean
with the less pleasant aspects of the afterlife. The honored dead are
buried or burned, given to the gods of earth or sky; outcasts and
criminals are thrown into the river, to eventually be reincarnated as
alligators or sharks. No Mississippian will voluntarily venture out
upon salt water.
A map of Mississippian settlement, then, outlines the great river
system like a dye. The southern boundary is just below Baton Rouge,
though there are small trapping and trading settlements in the swamps
further south. The northern boundary runs from the Quad Cities to
Kankakee, but these are lightly settled frontier posts rather than
real towns. Priest-bureaucrats who have offended the ruling factions
in Memphis are sent here to trade for tin and amber, collect tribute
from the petty kings of the Ho-Chunk, and contemplate the error of
their ways.
Cincinnati is a fortress city, site of regular slaving and trading
expeditions against the savage woodland tribes to the east. St.
Joseph, at the opposite frontier, starts out much the same; but by the
early 1500s the slave traffic down the Missouri has almost dried up.
The slavers have simply been too successful, and all the Plains
Indians have fled in terror for many days travel all around. (Indeed,
by this time much of the Great Plains has been almost entirely
depopulated. A belt two hundred miles wide and nearly a thousand
miles long, from Nebraska down to Texas, holds nothing but a few
scattered bands of refugees.)
But St. Joe still ships buffalo downriver; the meat is smoked, and the
leather is highly valued. And just above Little Rock an enormous
obelisk, bathed in the blood of a thousand slaves, marks the
empire's southwestern frontier.
At the center of the river system lies the heart of Mississippian
civilization: the House of the Undying King, in Memphis.
* * * * *
Mississippians are excellent record keepers. They use a modified
version of Mesoamerican hieroglyphs. It takes years to learn, so
literacy is the sole possession of the priesthood, but the priests are
fairly compulsive about writing certain things down.
We know, therefore, that the Undying King first took up residence in
Memphis in 1237 AD. The city reached a population of about 10,000
people by 1300, doubled that by 1350, and then stabilized at around
25,000 permanent inhabitants (plus an ever fluctuating number of
pilgrims and other visitors). It continued to grow steadily in
splendor, however, with ever larger and more spectacular temples and
palaces, gardens and monoliths. By 1500 Memphis is a sight to stagger
the eye. (1)
(Somewhere along the line the city's walls get torn down for new
building material. But really, what need do the Undying King and his
court have of physical walls? Memphis is at the very center of
civilization -- the center of the world as far as the Mississippians
are concerned -- and it has not known a military threat in over three
hundred years.)
The priests also record genealogies, the movements of slaves and other
goods up and down the great river, local wars, the deaths of kings,
and other matters of passing interest. They don't record much
astronomical information, as the Mississippians aren't very
interested in the sky beyond the minimum necessary to keep a decent
calendar. They are very, very good at tracking the rise and fall of
the river, though. (2)
The Mississippian system of government is baroque and, to Europeans,
as bizarre as the rest of their society. A sketchy description must
suffice here.
There are four regional god-kings, based at Little Rock, Baton Rouge,
Cahokia, and Paducah. In addition to these, there are a dozen or so
lesser territorial lords who lack divine status. All swear nominal
allegiance to the Undying King in Memphis, while actually exercising
near-complete independence.
Near but not complete. The House of the Undying King is much too
large for its modest agricultural hinterland. Its 25,000 inhabitants
require a constant influx of corn, beans and dried meat just to
survive, let alone carry out the constant and elaborate rituals
required to keep the universe in balance. All the god-kings pay
tribute to Memphis. Though "tribute" is not precisely
correct; the shipments are sent at least semi-voluntarily. To give
greatly shows a ruler's piety and his strength, and so increases
his _mana_. And it also makes the House grateful.
And the gratitude of the House is no small thing. For the inhabitants
of Memphis are the engineers and architects of Mississippian
civilization. They, and they alone, understand the secrets of
building great dams, digging canals, erecting enormous statues and
pillars. They, and they alone, can direct the slaves to build the
levees that hold back the floods, or the irrigation ponds and cisterns
that keep corn and beans growing through the driest summer. And only
they can build great palaces suitable for god-kings to dwell in, or
tombs where they can rest in pride. A ruler who pleases the House can
call on its considerable resources; one who is insufficiently pious
will soon find his levees crumbling, and his bones will rest in a
squalid tumble of stones. (3)
In modern terms, the House holds a technical monopoly, and uses it to
extort bids from the god-kings. But this overstates. Mississippian
civilization is deeply religious, and neither priests nor kings think
in these terms. All concerned sincerely believe that it is the
Undying King (working through his priestly ministers) who keeps the
world in balance; and kings as well as priests are sure that, if the
barges of corn and meat and slaves ever stop coming to Memphis,
universal disaster will result.
The House thereby acts as a referee among the god-kings. It is never
overweening; the priests and the King are careful not to overplay
their hand or push the local rulers into defiance. Local conflicts
are allowed, even encouraged; they provide a regular supply of captive
slaves. As long as the barges of food and tribute keep coming, the
House is not inclined to test the limits of its influence.
The King himself requires at least a passing glance. Young, strong,
and physically perfect, the Undying Kings are meant to be perfect
sacrifices. All of them will be ceremonially strangled and then
buried beneath the fields to make the corn grow. But this is not an
annual occurrence. It happens only when the stars are right, and when
certain proper omens have first occurred. Most Kings rule at least
three or four years, and a few last for more than a decade. And some
of them do actually exercise some influence on events; while they
live, their word is divine Law. The King's court is thus a
swirling center of intrigue, as various factions strive to gain His
notice and approval.
The King alone can wear the royal garb: the bronze eagle helm, the
robes of white buffalo hide studded with thousands of mica chips, the
snakeskin boots. When it is occasionally necessary to send a priest
or courtier to the provinces, he will carry a royal totem to show that
he bears some part of the royal mana: an oaken staff worked with
silver, with an eagle's head on one end and a
rattlesnake's rattle on the other.
* * * * *
Mississippian religion and cosmology are as baroquely complex as every
other aspect of their society. To grossly oversimplify, there is a
sun god, whose symbols are the sunflower and the eagle, and a variety
of serpentine chthonic spirits. (4) Both must be appeased regularly;
sacrifice is good, human sacrifice is better.
Ritual torture is common, although it arises out of a different
tradition; victims are often volunteers. A deep
sadomasochistic streak runs through Mississippian psychology, and
finds expression in public ceremony in a variety of alarming ways.
Warfare is a curious mixture of the ceremonial and the deadly serious.
Combat is the exclusive province of the aristocracy, and they make it
both a full-time career and an art form. Battles are usually small,
and almost always begin with a series of challenges and single
combats; casualties are generally low. Defeated enemies can usually
choose between ransom, ritual humiliation, or one-time opportunity to
participate in various religious ceremonies. Face is important enough
that many choose the latter.
Once in a great while, though, wars will turn ugly. For some reason
these lethal wars are invariably associated with sieges. These can
drag on for years. Successful sieges are quite rare, but tend to end
with spectacular massacres.
Arms and armor show clear Mesoamerican influence: jagged-edged swords,
elaborately plumed helmets, breastplates worked with elaborate
designs, feathered capes. Arrows and slings are known, but are
considered more as hunters' tools than the proper weapons of a
warrior.
* * * * *
Mississippian engineering is at about the level of the pre-Hellenistic
Near East. They lack the wheel and the arch, but they are very good
at moving large quantities of wood and stone around. They don't
need to bother much with aqueducts, but they're very good with
hydraulics otherwise. Their levees, dams, and irrigation systems are
excellent; they have the cofferdam, float valves, and even plumbing in
the houses of the aristocracy. (5) Obelisks, megaliths, pyramids,
and elaborately columned temples decorate every large town. Massive
public works are both a religious duty and a status symbol.
The *Arawak blue-water navigation package has been lost, as the
Mississippians have chosen to focus on river navigation instead. This
is excellent; barges and keelboats run up to several hundred tons of
capacity, and river pilots are a special caste, exempt from taxation
and most religious duties. (6)
Mathematics lags; the Mississippians are uninterested in it beyond the
very basic algebra and trigonometry needed for construction. They
don't care what the shape of the world is, and they're not
much interested in the movements of the planets either.
Medicine is very crude. Oddly enough, though, it does deal
effectively with the major epidemiological threat -- pneumonic Rocky
Mountain Spotted Fever. Anyone who displays the symptoms of pRMSF is
considered to be "married to the Earth Spirits". The marriage
ceremony involves being slammed on the head with a stone maul, cooked
in a clay oven for a day, and served piping hot to all comers; and
while this has its drawbacks, as a plague control mechanism it works a
treat.
Trade within the Mississippian world is very intense. Between Memphis
and Cairo, the central river is positively thronged with boats, from
tiny fishing skiffs to huge freight barges and the great painted
keelboats of the aristocracy.
External trade is curiously stunted, though. Some tin, lead and amber
with the northern tribes, the occasional swap of bronze tools for
slaves in Oklahoma and east Texas, and a single trade route across the
Cumberland Gap more or less sum it up. This is partly because of
geographical and technological constraints, but more because the
Mississippians simply aren't that interested. The great river
system holds everything they need.
There isn't much literature, nor a bardic tradition either
There is a lot of rather terrifying sculpture.
* * * * *
By the early 1500s, Mississippian civilization has grown to dominate
everything between the Appalachians and the Rockies. Although the
Mississippians do not rule far from their rivers, their influence
stretches far into the continental interior. Metalworking, and
primitive engineering have spread as far north as Wisconsin and
Minnesota; Mississippian slave raids have depopulated vast regions.
But the Mississippians are coming under a variety of stresses.
Archeological digs show an increasing proportion of skeletons
displaying symptoms of malnourishment after about 1460. The various
Mississippian cities come up against the carrying capacity of their
environment. Their agricultural package lags behind their
engineering.
Their social system requires a large slave caste, and the supplies of
easily accessible slaves have dried up. Meanwhile, the aristocracy
and the priests press on to build ever larger and more elaborate
temples, tombs and palaces.
By the 1520s, the Mississippians themselves can tell that something is
going wrong. And the obvious remedy, ever bloodier and more
complex religious rites, to restore the balance of the universe,
doesn't seem to be working very well.
Possibly this civilization would have moved naturally from decadence
to collapse within another generation or two. But beginning in 1527,
the Mississippians found themselves faced with a new and completely
unexpected challenge
Doug M.
(1) By way of comparison, OTL's Cahokia had at least 10,000
inhabitants, and some estimates go as high as 40,000.
(2) A civilization in the central Mississippi-Ohio valley faces many
of the same challenges and opportunities as the hydraulic
civilizations of the Old World. One big difference, though, is that
floods on the Mississippi tend to be much less regular than on the
Nile or the Euphrates. This would (IMO) tend to encourage a certain
sort of empirical mind-set (what's the river doing _now_,
and how does this resemble what it has done before?). Good for
record-keeping and certain sorts of engineering; less good for
mathematics and other abstractions.
(3) The House's monopoly on engineering expertise is of course
incomplete. Renegade priests, treacherous slaves, clever locals who
carefully watch how the dam is built; inevitably, knowledge
gradually trickles outwards. However, no local ruler can match _all_
of the House's skills; if his people learn how to raise
obelisks, say, they still won't know how to dig deep wells or
build cofferdams. And religious awe deters them from trying,
somewhat. Raising obelisks without the House's blessing is
blasphemous and sure to bring no good.
Subsequent historians will speculate that the institution of the House
explains the rapid development of engineering and architecture among
the Mississippians after about 1200 AD: since the priests need
secrets to maintain their power, useful innovations are sought after
and eagerly seized upon, while the priests themselves serve as a sort
of central academy. Perhaps.
(4) Lifted straight from Cahokia-OTL. Surviving Cahokian art shows a
lot of human-animal mixtures (men with bird heads or snake
bodies) more than a little reminiscent of Ancient Egypt.
Almost certainly convergent cultural evolution (there are only so many
ways one can depict the union of the human and supernatural worlds),
but it has led to the usual crank-y speculation.
(5) Same as the ancient Cretans and Chaldeans. Bronze pipes, not
lead.
(6) And notorious blasphemers, too. But harming them is most
strictly forbidden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
********
In this TL, a rather sadistic and unpleasant civilization occupies the
Mississippi and lower Ohio River valleys. Cannibals, fanatics,
slavers and conquerors, the Mississippians are what might have
happened if OTL's Cahokian mound-builders had picked up
engineering, metalworking, hieroglyphic writing and a lot of bad
habits from a Mesoamerica somewhat more advanced than ours. Think of
them as something like Sumer writ large, crossed with the least
attractive aspects of the Aztecs.
Mississippian civilization has two geographical limiting factors.
One, they're deeply reliant on water transport -- for bringing
in food to feed their towns, for moving stone and wood, and for fish
to supplement an otherwise protein-poor diet. All their towns and
cities are on navigable rivers, and no settlement of any size is more
than half a day's march away from one.
The other limitation is climate. The Mississippians are firmly
creatures of the warm temperate zone. Although they trade and raid
throughout the great river system, they don't even consider
colonizing Minnesota or Nebraska. It's just too miserably cold
in winter. Anything north of the St. Louis - Cincinnati line seems a
bit nippy to them; there are fortified trading posts as far north as
Kankakee and St. Joseph, but they leave the chilly plains and gloomy
forests of the upper Midwest to the barbaric Ho-Chunk and the savage
Alqonquin tribes.
In the other direction, the Mississippians don't much care for
the bayous and backwaters of southern Louisiana and Mississippi. They
like building in stone, which isn't easy in a swamp, and their
rather crude agricultural package can't really take advantage of
the "black belt" soil of the subtropical lowlands.
Finally, while they are consummate rivermen, these alt-Cahokians
don't care for ocean travel at all. Not only have they lost the
habit of blue-water navigation, but their religion connects the ocean
with the less pleasant aspects of the afterlife. The honored dead are
buried or burned, given to the gods of earth or sky; outcasts and
criminals are thrown into the river, to eventually be reincarnated as
alligators or sharks. No Mississippian will voluntarily venture out
upon salt water.
A map of Mississippian settlement, then, outlines the great river
system like a dye. The southern boundary is just below Baton Rouge,
though there are small trapping and trading settlements in the swamps
further south. The northern boundary runs from the Quad Cities to
Kankakee, but these are lightly settled frontier posts rather than
real towns. Priest-bureaucrats who have offended the ruling factions
in Memphis are sent here to trade for tin and amber, collect tribute
from the petty kings of the Ho-Chunk, and contemplate the error of
their ways.
Cincinnati is a fortress city, site of regular slaving and trading
expeditions against the savage woodland tribes to the east. St.
Joseph, at the opposite frontier, starts out much the same; but by the
early 1500s the slave traffic down the Missouri has almost dried up.
The slavers have simply been too successful, and all the Plains
Indians have fled in terror for many days travel all around. (Indeed,
by this time much of the Great Plains has been almost entirely
depopulated. A belt two hundred miles wide and nearly a thousand
miles long, from Nebraska down to Texas, holds nothing but a few
scattered bands of refugees.)
But St. Joe still ships buffalo downriver; the meat is smoked, and the
leather is highly valued. And just above Little Rock an enormous
obelisk, bathed in the blood of a thousand slaves, marks the
empire's southwestern frontier.
At the center of the river system lies the heart of Mississippian
civilization: the House of the Undying King, in Memphis.
* * * * *
Mississippians are excellent record keepers. They use a modified
version of Mesoamerican hieroglyphs. It takes years to learn, so
literacy is the sole possession of the priesthood, but the priests are
fairly compulsive about writing certain things down.
We know, therefore, that the Undying King first took up residence in
Memphis in 1237 AD. The city reached a population of about 10,000
people by 1300, doubled that by 1350, and then stabilized at around
25,000 permanent inhabitants (plus an ever fluctuating number of
pilgrims and other visitors). It continued to grow steadily in
splendor, however, with ever larger and more spectacular temples and
palaces, gardens and monoliths. By 1500 Memphis is a sight to stagger
the eye. (1)
(Somewhere along the line the city's walls get torn down for new
building material. But really, what need do the Undying King and his
court have of physical walls? Memphis is at the very center of
civilization -- the center of the world as far as the Mississippians
are concerned -- and it has not known a military threat in over three
hundred years.)
The priests also record genealogies, the movements of slaves and other
goods up and down the great river, local wars, the deaths of kings,
and other matters of passing interest. They don't record much
astronomical information, as the Mississippians aren't very
interested in the sky beyond the minimum necessary to keep a decent
calendar. They are very, very good at tracking the rise and fall of
the river, though. (2)
The Mississippian system of government is baroque and, to Europeans,
as bizarre as the rest of their society. A sketchy description must
suffice here.
There are four regional god-kings, based at Little Rock, Baton Rouge,
Cahokia, and Paducah. In addition to these, there are a dozen or so
lesser territorial lords who lack divine status. All swear nominal
allegiance to the Undying King in Memphis, while actually exercising
near-complete independence.
Near but not complete. The House of the Undying King is much too
large for its modest agricultural hinterland. Its 25,000 inhabitants
require a constant influx of corn, beans and dried meat just to
survive, let alone carry out the constant and elaborate rituals
required to keep the universe in balance. All the god-kings pay
tribute to Memphis. Though "tribute" is not precisely
correct; the shipments are sent at least semi-voluntarily. To give
greatly shows a ruler's piety and his strength, and so increases
his _mana_. And it also makes the House grateful.
And the gratitude of the House is no small thing. For the inhabitants
of Memphis are the engineers and architects of Mississippian
civilization. They, and they alone, understand the secrets of
building great dams, digging canals, erecting enormous statues and
pillars. They, and they alone, can direct the slaves to build the
levees that hold back the floods, or the irrigation ponds and cisterns
that keep corn and beans growing through the driest summer. And only
they can build great palaces suitable for god-kings to dwell in, or
tombs where they can rest in pride. A ruler who pleases the House can
call on its considerable resources; one who is insufficiently pious
will soon find his levees crumbling, and his bones will rest in a
squalid tumble of stones. (3)
In modern terms, the House holds a technical monopoly, and uses it to
extort bids from the god-kings. But this overstates. Mississippian
civilization is deeply religious, and neither priests nor kings think
in these terms. All concerned sincerely believe that it is the
Undying King (working through his priestly ministers) who keeps the
world in balance; and kings as well as priests are sure that, if the
barges of corn and meat and slaves ever stop coming to Memphis,
universal disaster will result.
The House thereby acts as a referee among the god-kings. It is never
overweening; the priests and the King are careful not to overplay
their hand or push the local rulers into defiance. Local conflicts
are allowed, even encouraged; they provide a regular supply of captive
slaves. As long as the barges of food and tribute keep coming, the
House is not inclined to test the limits of its influence.
The King himself requires at least a passing glance. Young, strong,
and physically perfect, the Undying Kings are meant to be perfect
sacrifices. All of them will be ceremonially strangled and then
buried beneath the fields to make the corn grow. But this is not an
annual occurrence. It happens only when the stars are right, and when
certain proper omens have first occurred. Most Kings rule at least
three or four years, and a few last for more than a decade. And some
of them do actually exercise some influence on events; while they
live, their word is divine Law. The King's court is thus a
swirling center of intrigue, as various factions strive to gain His
notice and approval.
The King alone can wear the royal garb: the bronze eagle helm, the
robes of white buffalo hide studded with thousands of mica chips, the
snakeskin boots. When it is occasionally necessary to send a priest
or courtier to the provinces, he will carry a royal totem to show that
he bears some part of the royal mana: an oaken staff worked with
silver, with an eagle's head on one end and a
rattlesnake's rattle on the other.
* * * * *
Mississippian religion and cosmology are as baroquely complex as every
other aspect of their society. To grossly oversimplify, there is a
sun god, whose symbols are the sunflower and the eagle, and a variety
of serpentine chthonic spirits. (4) Both must be appeased regularly;
sacrifice is good, human sacrifice is better.
Ritual torture is common, although it arises out of a different
tradition; victims are often volunteers. A deep
sadomasochistic streak runs through Mississippian psychology, and
finds expression in public ceremony in a variety of alarming ways.
Warfare is a curious mixture of the ceremonial and the deadly serious.
Combat is the exclusive province of the aristocracy, and they make it
both a full-time career and an art form. Battles are usually small,
and almost always begin with a series of challenges and single
combats; casualties are generally low. Defeated enemies can usually
choose between ransom, ritual humiliation, or one-time opportunity to
participate in various religious ceremonies. Face is important enough
that many choose the latter.
Once in a great while, though, wars will turn ugly. For some reason
these lethal wars are invariably associated with sieges. These can
drag on for years. Successful sieges are quite rare, but tend to end
with spectacular massacres.
Arms and armor show clear Mesoamerican influence: jagged-edged swords,
elaborately plumed helmets, breastplates worked with elaborate
designs, feathered capes. Arrows and slings are known, but are
considered more as hunters' tools than the proper weapons of a
warrior.
* * * * *
Mississippian engineering is at about the level of the pre-Hellenistic
Near East. They lack the wheel and the arch, but they are very good
at moving large quantities of wood and stone around. They don't
need to bother much with aqueducts, but they're very good with
hydraulics otherwise. Their levees, dams, and irrigation systems are
excellent; they have the cofferdam, float valves, and even plumbing in
the houses of the aristocracy. (5) Obelisks, megaliths, pyramids,
and elaborately columned temples decorate every large town. Massive
public works are both a religious duty and a status symbol.
The *Arawak blue-water navigation package has been lost, as the
Mississippians have chosen to focus on river navigation instead. This
is excellent; barges and keelboats run up to several hundred tons of
capacity, and river pilots are a special caste, exempt from taxation
and most religious duties. (6)
Mathematics lags; the Mississippians are uninterested in it beyond the
very basic algebra and trigonometry needed for construction. They
don't care what the shape of the world is, and they're not
much interested in the movements of the planets either.
Medicine is very crude. Oddly enough, though, it does deal
effectively with the major epidemiological threat -- pneumonic Rocky
Mountain Spotted Fever. Anyone who displays the symptoms of pRMSF is
considered to be "married to the Earth Spirits". The marriage
ceremony involves being slammed on the head with a stone maul, cooked
in a clay oven for a day, and served piping hot to all comers; and
while this has its drawbacks, as a plague control mechanism it works a
treat.
Trade within the Mississippian world is very intense. Between Memphis
and Cairo, the central river is positively thronged with boats, from
tiny fishing skiffs to huge freight barges and the great painted
keelboats of the aristocracy.
External trade is curiously stunted, though. Some tin, lead and amber
with the northern tribes, the occasional swap of bronze tools for
slaves in Oklahoma and east Texas, and a single trade route across the
Cumberland Gap more or less sum it up. This is partly because of
geographical and technological constraints, but more because the
Mississippians simply aren't that interested. The great river
system holds everything they need.
There isn't much literature, nor a bardic tradition either
There is a lot of rather terrifying sculpture.
* * * * *
By the early 1500s, Mississippian civilization has grown to dominate
everything between the Appalachians and the Rockies. Although the
Mississippians do not rule far from their rivers, their influence
stretches far into the continental interior. Metalworking, and
primitive engineering have spread as far north as Wisconsin and
Minnesota; Mississippian slave raids have depopulated vast regions.
But the Mississippians are coming under a variety of stresses.
Archeological digs show an increasing proportion of skeletons
displaying symptoms of malnourishment after about 1460. The various
Mississippian cities come up against the carrying capacity of their
environment. Their agricultural package lags behind their
engineering.
Their social system requires a large slave caste, and the supplies of
easily accessible slaves have dried up. Meanwhile, the aristocracy
and the priests press on to build ever larger and more elaborate
temples, tombs and palaces.
By the 1520s, the Mississippians themselves can tell that something is
going wrong. And the obvious remedy, ever bloodier and more
complex religious rites, to restore the balance of the universe,
doesn't seem to be working very well.
Possibly this civilization would have moved naturally from decadence
to collapse within another generation or two. But beginning in 1527,
the Mississippians found themselves faced with a new and completely
unexpected challenge
Doug M.
(1) By way of comparison, OTL's Cahokia had at least 10,000
inhabitants, and some estimates go as high as 40,000.
(2) A civilization in the central Mississippi-Ohio valley faces many
of the same challenges and opportunities as the hydraulic
civilizations of the Old World. One big difference, though, is that
floods on the Mississippi tend to be much less regular than on the
Nile or the Euphrates. This would (IMO) tend to encourage a certain
sort of empirical mind-set (what's the river doing _now_,
and how does this resemble what it has done before?). Good for
record-keeping and certain sorts of engineering; less good for
mathematics and other abstractions.
(3) The House's monopoly on engineering expertise is of course
incomplete. Renegade priests, treacherous slaves, clever locals who
carefully watch how the dam is built; inevitably, knowledge
gradually trickles outwards. However, no local ruler can match _all_
of the House's skills; if his people learn how to raise
obelisks, say, they still won't know how to dig deep wells or
build cofferdams. And religious awe deters them from trying,
somewhat. Raising obelisks without the House's blessing is
blasphemous and sure to bring no good.
Subsequent historians will speculate that the institution of the House
explains the rapid development of engineering and architecture among
the Mississippians after about 1200 AD: since the priests need
secrets to maintain their power, useful innovations are sought after
and eagerly seized upon, while the priests themselves serve as a sort
of central academy. Perhaps.
(4) Lifted straight from Cahokia-OTL. Surviving Cahokian art shows a
lot of human-animal mixtures (men with bird heads or snake
bodies) more than a little reminiscent of Ancient Egypt.
Almost certainly convergent cultural evolution (there are only so many
ways one can depict the union of the human and supernatural worlds),
but it has led to the usual crank-y speculation.
(5) Same as the ancient Cretans and Chaldeans. Bronze pipes, not
lead.
(6) And notorious blasphemers, too. But harming them is most
strictly forbidden.
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