Admiral Matt
Gone Fishin'
Suppose Europe suffers some huge damage or distraction at the outset of the age of exploration, say around 1400, that forces the continent to turn inwards (or face some *waves hand* Threat From The East). Fourteen hundred is early enough that the proper POD would cut off the Portuguese who were the drivers behind the whole process for the critical first century.
Critical, of course, because for most of it the returns were marginal, and for long failed to inspire competition.
Whatever the cause, Europe and Asia and everybody-else-you-were-about-to-say, has no involvement with the Americas for a further half millenium beyond OTL. What then?
Some preliminary thoughts:
North America was very much a continent in flux at the time. In the old civilized centers, it seems likely that a succession of relatively short-lived Nahuatl empires would continue to dominate the Valley of Mexico, shifting at least every hundred years or so, but maintaining some level of continuity with previous empires as in the Triple Alliance. The Tarascans to their west would continue to be hereditary opponents. This would last at least until the next major outside invasions.
Such invasions were probably inevitable. The Mixtecs to the northeast seem to have had a lead on most of Mexico in military, and a deficit in political organization. The Mexica (Aztecs) were themselves the descendants of the most recent invasions from the northwest, and far from the first. The west coast of Mexico north of the Tarascans appears to have played a similar role for the Ute-Nahuans to that of the Eurasian steppe for the Turkic peoples, and Indo-Europeans before them. A war fought near the southern fringes of the modern US would drive the losing tribe south to merge with or conquer the next tribe in line, the resulting ripple effect reaching into the Vally of Mexico.
That trend might even accelerate, as the Apache, who were living somewhere near the far end of the domino effect, seem to have developed bow technology superior to any of their neighbors, and were poised to undergo expansion. There also seem to have been in the Arizona/New Mexico region dogs bred large (by American standards) to draw travois, which again could increase a trend toward volkswanderung.
Further east, the Mayans would eventually have stumbled out of their dark age and experienced a revival - possibly under the rule of a class of foreign kings. I am imagining something akin to the Mitanni here, but honestly the evidence suggests that even the first Mayan golden age was initiated by invasion by a foreign conqueror. I should probably emphasize that I don't mean incorporation into the western empires. Given the canoe-and-shoulder logistics of the empires of the Valley I believe they were too far away to exert control. Instead I suspect large Mayan states to reappear (whatever their rulers), with slightly better social structures for maintaining the soil and surviving ecological turbulence. Part of this process would likely include a gradual, continued demographic expansion over the native peoples of Honduras and El Salvador.
What really interests me, however is the eastern (and perforce, northern) half of the continent. The Mississipi and Ohio river valleys, Alabama and Georgia, were all rife with the sort of village urbanization and burial prestige projects that predated civilizations the world over. You can see similar developments in the Middle Eastern highlands before the first Sumerian state, in Egypt leading up to the Two Kingdoms, northern China before the first empire (which still practiced human sacrifice), and.... Ireland, just before nothing happened forever.
So fine, such developments aren't always two steps ahead of empire, but the broad trend does head in a clear direction. Corn had spread through the North American interior, and with it the odd Mexican crop. On top of that the locals had domesticated their own plants, and had had the domesticated turkey for as much as 2,000 years before Columbus, about as long as the Meso-Americans. There's also the use of copper around Lake Superior to consider. I've never found a really certain source on whether the Old Copper Complex went under naturally before Europeans arrived on the scene, or if it collapsed in the diseases and reorganizations of their presence. Either way, though, there is still a lot of easy to find, easy to work copper sitting in Wisconsin, just waiting for someone to have a lot of corn, and thus a lot of time on their hands.
I think we could expect a diffuse sort of Copper Age gradually spanning the Mississippi and St. Lawrence basins. Copper at least would be something the Meso-Americans never properly developed. On top of that, 500 years could net us a scattering of Olmec-scale or maybe Indus-level civilizations. That wouldn't matter too much, except that at a certain size, such states could conceivably be conquered and assimilated in one go as happened in Mexico and Peru, instead of being out-bred and brushed aside.
An examination of the zone around the Appalachians would also be of interest. In OTL, the Iroquoian peoples seem to have been on the losing side of history until corn became available. They inhabited at least the span from upstate New York to the southern tip of the Appalachians, where the first explorers placed the Cherokee. A range that big strongly argues that they had once been the dominant linguistic group east of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, it's also suggestive that there were so few populations away from the mountains. Only the Tuscarora seem certain to have been flatlanders, and their backs were to the foothills. As a rule, mountainous areas are the last refuge of remnant peoples, as witness the Welsh, and Basques, and Albanians.
Corn, and later the epidemics, turned things around. The Iroquoian presence in Ontario and along the St. Lawrence, seems to have been the result of colonization only a few hundred years previous. The St. Lawrence river valley was prime farmland, and the Algonquins on it were still hunter-gatherers. That sort of situation goes only one way. On top of these trends, the Iroquoians seem to have responded to the increase in military conflict brought by corn cultivation by formalizing tribal political federations into potentially very strong units. The Iroquois are the obvious example, but the Huron seem to have had a similar system as well.
That would all still happen, possibly guaranteeing the north Iroquoians a future, but I am not certain. Anyway, the southern Iroquoians are the real question. Isolation in the mountains suddenly became an advantage when the plagues started coming through. Without them, the Cherokee are stuck in the mountains unless they migrate piece-meal toward other Iroquoian groups.
Hrm.... that's all I've got. Thoughts?
Critical, of course, because for most of it the returns were marginal, and for long failed to inspire competition.
Whatever the cause, Europe and Asia and everybody-else-you-were-about-to-say, has no involvement with the Americas for a further half millenium beyond OTL. What then?
Some preliminary thoughts:
North America was very much a continent in flux at the time. In the old civilized centers, it seems likely that a succession of relatively short-lived Nahuatl empires would continue to dominate the Valley of Mexico, shifting at least every hundred years or so, but maintaining some level of continuity with previous empires as in the Triple Alliance. The Tarascans to their west would continue to be hereditary opponents. This would last at least until the next major outside invasions.
Such invasions were probably inevitable. The Mixtecs to the northeast seem to have had a lead on most of Mexico in military, and a deficit in political organization. The Mexica (Aztecs) were themselves the descendants of the most recent invasions from the northwest, and far from the first. The west coast of Mexico north of the Tarascans appears to have played a similar role for the Ute-Nahuans to that of the Eurasian steppe for the Turkic peoples, and Indo-Europeans before them. A war fought near the southern fringes of the modern US would drive the losing tribe south to merge with or conquer the next tribe in line, the resulting ripple effect reaching into the Vally of Mexico.
That trend might even accelerate, as the Apache, who were living somewhere near the far end of the domino effect, seem to have developed bow technology superior to any of their neighbors, and were poised to undergo expansion. There also seem to have been in the Arizona/New Mexico region dogs bred large (by American standards) to draw travois, which again could increase a trend toward volkswanderung.
Further east, the Mayans would eventually have stumbled out of their dark age and experienced a revival - possibly under the rule of a class of foreign kings. I am imagining something akin to the Mitanni here, but honestly the evidence suggests that even the first Mayan golden age was initiated by invasion by a foreign conqueror. I should probably emphasize that I don't mean incorporation into the western empires. Given the canoe-and-shoulder logistics of the empires of the Valley I believe they were too far away to exert control. Instead I suspect large Mayan states to reappear (whatever their rulers), with slightly better social structures for maintaining the soil and surviving ecological turbulence. Part of this process would likely include a gradual, continued demographic expansion over the native peoples of Honduras and El Salvador.
What really interests me, however is the eastern (and perforce, northern) half of the continent. The Mississipi and Ohio river valleys, Alabama and Georgia, were all rife with the sort of village urbanization and burial prestige projects that predated civilizations the world over. You can see similar developments in the Middle Eastern highlands before the first Sumerian state, in Egypt leading up to the Two Kingdoms, northern China before the first empire (which still practiced human sacrifice), and.... Ireland, just before nothing happened forever.
So fine, such developments aren't always two steps ahead of empire, but the broad trend does head in a clear direction. Corn had spread through the North American interior, and with it the odd Mexican crop. On top of that the locals had domesticated their own plants, and had had the domesticated turkey for as much as 2,000 years before Columbus, about as long as the Meso-Americans. There's also the use of copper around Lake Superior to consider. I've never found a really certain source on whether the Old Copper Complex went under naturally before Europeans arrived on the scene, or if it collapsed in the diseases and reorganizations of their presence. Either way, though, there is still a lot of easy to find, easy to work copper sitting in Wisconsin, just waiting for someone to have a lot of corn, and thus a lot of time on their hands.
I think we could expect a diffuse sort of Copper Age gradually spanning the Mississippi and St. Lawrence basins. Copper at least would be something the Meso-Americans never properly developed. On top of that, 500 years could net us a scattering of Olmec-scale or maybe Indus-level civilizations. That wouldn't matter too much, except that at a certain size, such states could conceivably be conquered and assimilated in one go as happened in Mexico and Peru, instead of being out-bred and brushed aside.
An examination of the zone around the Appalachians would also be of interest. In OTL, the Iroquoian peoples seem to have been on the losing side of history until corn became available. They inhabited at least the span from upstate New York to the southern tip of the Appalachians, where the first explorers placed the Cherokee. A range that big strongly argues that they had once been the dominant linguistic group east of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, it's also suggestive that there were so few populations away from the mountains. Only the Tuscarora seem certain to have been flatlanders, and their backs were to the foothills. As a rule, mountainous areas are the last refuge of remnant peoples, as witness the Welsh, and Basques, and Albanians.
Corn, and later the epidemics, turned things around. The Iroquoian presence in Ontario and along the St. Lawrence, seems to have been the result of colonization only a few hundred years previous. The St. Lawrence river valley was prime farmland, and the Algonquins on it were still hunter-gatherers. That sort of situation goes only one way. On top of these trends, the Iroquoians seem to have responded to the increase in military conflict brought by corn cultivation by formalizing tribal political federations into potentially very strong units. The Iroquois are the obvious example, but the Huron seem to have had a similar system as well.
That would all still happen, possibly guaranteeing the north Iroquoians a future, but I am not certain. Anyway, the southern Iroquoians are the real question. Isolation in the mountains suddenly became an advantage when the plagues started coming through. Without them, the Cherokee are stuck in the mountains unless they migrate piece-meal toward other Iroquoian groups.
Hrm.... that's all I've got. Thoughts?
Last edited:
