AHC: Mississippi River valley supports China-sized civilisation

As it says in the title.
Here is a geographical map of the US.
physical_Geography_of_US.jpg

Here is the rainfall map of the US.
us_precip.gif

Is the geographical feature adequate for supporting a population as large as China, around the central plains area?
Discuss!
 

SinghKing

Banned
As it says in the title.
Here is a geographical map of the US.
physical_Geography_of_US.jpg

Here is the rainfall map of the US.
us_precip.gif

Is the geographical feature adequate for supporting a population as large as China, around the central plains area?
Discuss!

Might be useful to have a similar map for China, from which to draw a comparison. IMHO, it may conceivably be capable of supporting a population as large as the Pearl River Delta. As large as the whole of China? Not a chance.
 
Cahokia survives and becomes an Aztec or Inca-style organized state. It would be much more difficult for Europeans to take because of supply lines, and they might be past the first really bad pandemics by the time Europeans actually arrive in force. Surviving native civilization in North America plays a Japan-like role in world politics, becoming a great power and multiplying like rabbits in the fertilizer boom.
 
Cahokia survives and becomes an Aztec or Inca-style organized state. It would be much more difficult for Europeans to take because of supply lines, and they might be past the first really bad pandemics by the time Europeans actually arrive in force. Surviving native civilization in North America plays a Japan-like role in world politics, becoming a great power and multiplying like rabbits in the fertilizer boom.
You would need to get the crops, agriculture and animals from China and/or Europe to eastern North America. It would need to happen more than 1000 years ago and the maritime technology was not there. More intense Viking crossings would help, but they would not bring southern European crops. On the Pacific side, the Polynesians did make it to Hawaii. How plausible could have been a Pacific Rim spread?
 
Why? I think corn's enough.

Having a large crop package and livestock package is better in every possible way. You're able to rotate crops better, you're able to make use of different climates/soils better, you're able to get a better variety of nutrients.

Depending on one staple crop is a very bad strategy.
 
Having a large crop package and livestock package is better in every possible way. You're able to rotate crops better, you're able to make use of different climates/soils better, you're able to get a better variety of nutrients.

Depending on one staple crop is a very bad strategy.

American populations actually had a very strong crop-package, arguably better than Eurasia's. The Columbian Exchange is a strong indicator of that: Corn, potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, squash, and many other fruits and vegetables that dominate the food market today were native american.

What they lacked was domesticates. Horses would be very useful for a trans-Mississippi civilization, opening up the plains to the West for use. This could happen, as others have pointed out, by a stronger Vinland effort. Some horses escape, feral populations spread across North America (not unlike how they did when the Spanish arrived), and, though I think a surviving Vinland is highly implausible, the Great Lakes/ St. Laurence River would be the main highway for a Mississippian Culture to trade with the Vinlanders.
 
Norse horses would do well in the temperate Great Lakes region, but in subtropical Mississippi they would need a long time to adapt to the climate.
 
Why? I think corn's enough.

Nope. Absolutely not.

At a minimum, you need balanced amino acids, so corn/maize and beans may suffice. But e.g. Cahokia didn't have beans yet, so their diet got quite impoverished.


You REALLY want draft animals, although that's probably not strictly necessary. You NEED to learn to spread manure on the fields. (Again, that's easier if you have draft animals and carts, the former partly to provide the manure.) Plowing (again using those draft animals) helps, too, but wouldn't be strictly necessary.

You also need all this in place thousands of years ago.

Part of the problem is that it took quite a while for northern cultivars of beans and corn to make it north to the Mississippian areas. Whereas, rice is native to southern China (or nearby, anyway), and wheat was domesticated at about the same latitude as China. Not the case with the American crops.


So. Get the 'three sisters' package up to Ohio in 2000BC (how? I don't know), bring Llamas up from South America, while using Muscovy ducks and turkeys as poultry, and it would be theoretically possible to get that kind of development in the Mississippi basin by now.

However. Look at Europe. THEY had the crops, and the time, and never developed the population density that China did, so there's got to be other factors involved.


Edit: Oh. And you need clothing, too. Having domestic mammals (like Llamas) helps there, as does having breeds that produce wool (Alpacas, say). Cotton would be another great idea. Unfortunately, I don't believe that there's anything in North America like flax/linen - that produces decent cloth in the north.
 
Even if horses are introduced, is there anything that says the Mississipians won't just use them as food and nothing else? I have to imagine it's partly just good luck that Europeans chose to domesticate horses instead of hunting them to extinction. That or I am missing some major mechanism that would work across all unconnected humans here.
 
Even if horses are introduced, is there anything that says the Mississipians won't just use them as food and nothing else? I have to imagine it's partly just good luck that Europeans chose to domesticate horses instead of hunting them to extinction. That or I am missing some major mechanism that would work across all unconnected humans here.

I don't think there ever was a civilization that used horses as a food source only.
 
Even if horses are introduced, is there anything that says the Mississipians won't just use them as food and nothing else? I have to imagine it's partly just good luck that Europeans chose to domesticate horses instead of hunting them to extinction. That or I am missing some major mechanism that would work across all unconnected humans here.

Even using them as food would be a major change, but I don't think it would be too hard to get native Americans to think of maybe putting these big tasty animals in a pen so they'll be easier to get, and then to think of attaching them to things and making them pull them, or putting things on top of them, or getting on top of them and riding them around, etc.
 
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