Pre Columbian New World Naval Powers: When, who, where, and how?

I've been discussing this scenario with some friends, preferably without Viking involvement. The ultimate goal would be to get one of these powers to reach Europe.

Here's the few scenarios I've got so far.

1. PoD: 400-500 AD Have a local tribe gradually grow to prominence. This tribe is somewhat warlike, and makes some enemies on the mainland. These enemies begin raiding their villages similarly to the Vikings. These enemies are able to pull out successful raid after raid. In response, the Newfoundlanders work on improving their own navy to protect themselves. Gradually, the Newfoundlanders develop quite advanced ships, allowing them to successfully defend their villages and cities. Have these boats inadvertently discover the Grand Banks. Looking for similar resources, they send out expeditions east. One of these expeditions finds the eastward ocean current, which leads them to landing in either Spain or Ireland. Alternatively, the Vikings find them, but things go as swimmingly as OTL. From knowing of the people from the east, they send off fleets to find them. Potentially island hopping from Greenland to Iceland?

2. Similarly to 1., but their naval increases come from their raiding of mainland tribes.

3. PoD: 100-200 AD, potentially even further back. Have two powers come to prominence on both Cuba and Hispanolia. When they come into contact with each other, a rivalry develops. Both groups focus their efforts on navy building, with this eventually degrading into war. Eventually, a fleet from Cuba is disoriented by a storm, and...


So, do my ideas have any merit? Too late PoDs? Too fast tech development? Unbelievable reactions to events?

Personally, 3. is the most implausible.
As well, any other spots that could create naval powers in the New World?

A couple problems, unless they get out of the stone age this is extremely unlikely, secondly you need larger political entities, one tribe is going to need a big push to become controller of Cuba or Newfoundland. Here is a possibility, the thing that drove the large-scale barbarian confederations that invaded into Roman territory was the Huns (at least partially) could something similar happen here? Could a conqueror causes confederations to form, and a drive resulting in a proper iron age result? (Dripping into the ASB, perhaps the mongol hoard heres of a large land mass over the Bering Strait?)

Agreed. By one tribe coming to prominence, I do mean a confederation, or a people forming. Not just one tribe. Perhaps the Beothuk? Although I'm not sure if they existed that far back...

As for the tech problem. If perhaps people come across some of what Newfoundland has for gold deposits or somehow come into contact with Mesoamerica (extremely implausible), and given that the people did work with copper around the timeframe of the PoD, they begin working with the gold or start looking for it, and then start looking for other metals, finding iron?

Alternatively, one of the only other options I can think of would be to have Vinland survive long enough to allow the Vikings to start looking for iron themselves, which eventually falls into the hands of the natives?

Doing that approach would also give the natives ship building techniques, as well as knowledge about Greenland, possibly Europe.

There's my TL, which has dolphin cavalry reach Europe early indeed.

Well there is that one legend that a certain Inca Emperor discovered the Galpagos.

I feel like some of the Pacific Northwestern peoples might be one of the better options to develop as a naval power, but they'll have a hard time getting to Europe. One element in their favor is that I seem to recall they had a fairly dense population, based largely on seafood--if you can some get the Newfoundland tribes to exploit the Grand Banks, they might see a similar population boost.

Beothuks, eh? They had rather interesting canoes, apparently their canoes were built to be better than others in rough waters, though they weren't that large. And there weren't many Beothuks either at any given time. They could certainly use a population boost, it would be interesting to have at the very least a surviving "Red Indian" culture. They were also possibly related to the first guys to meet Europeans, the idea of them making the first contact on Europeans' turf is rather intriguing.

From the fury of the Skraelings, O Lord, deliver us!

Seriously, for something like this, I think you need an earlier POD. I don't see a North American or South American polity being able to achieve rough technological parity, sufficient population and force projection ability in the time frames stated. OTL, the most advanced civilizations in the Western hemisphere were barely in the Bronze Age at the time of Columbus. You are talking about three thousand years of advancement in around one thousand years. Not impossible, I suppose, but highly unlikely.

Rridgway said:

3. PoD: 100-200 AD, potentially even further back. Have two powers come to prominence on both Cuba and Hispanolia. When they come into contact with each other, a rivalry develops. Both groups focus their efforts on navy building, with this eventually degrading into war. Eventually, a fleet from Cuba is disoriented by a storm, and...

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So, a Classic era Taino civilization?
That's a pretty easy POD technically. You could easily build a Kanoa to fit a hundred or so people for a decently long duration IOTL.
Have them discover lapstrake hulls (which they weren't far off from,) and adapt to using Southern Live Oak along with tropical hardwoods build some cogs, and improve the sailing package, and you've got your Pre-Columbian Vikings.

Metal working for nails might be the only hard part, but given what the Tarrascans were playing with, that might not be a problem either.

I recall reading somewhere that Mayan artifacts were uncovered in places like Cuba and Georgia.

This insinuates to me that the Maya had some sea-going capability, at least for trade. I think the Maya would be your best bet. They are on a peninsula that juts out into the ocean, they already have trade with the peoples of Cuba and the Southeast. I don't think it would be that much of a stretch for them to start constructing larger ships and start sailing to different, far off lands.

And are any of us really going to contest what the classical Maya were capable of building...

Errnge said:

I recall reading somewhere that Mayan artifacts were uncovered in places like Cuba and Georgia.

This insinuates to me that the Maya had some sea-going capability, at least for trade. I think the Maya would be your best bet. They are on a peninsula that juts out into the ocean, they already have trade with the peoples of Cuba and the Southeast. I don't think it would be that much of a stretch for them to start constructing larger ships and start sailing to different, far off lands.

And are any of us really going to contest what the classical Maya were capable of building...

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Yeah, except that's Taino territory, and areas in what we know was part of the Caribbean trade network.

Errnge said:

I recall reading somewhere that Mayan artifacts were uncovered in places like Cuba and Georgia.

This insinuates to me that the Maya had some sea-going capability, at least for trade. I think the Maya would be your best bet. They are on a peninsula that juts out into the ocean, they already have trade with the peoples of Cuba and the Southeast. I don't think it would be that much of a stretch for them to start constructing larger ships and start sailing to different, far off lands.

And are any of us really going to contest what the classical Maya were capable of building...

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Actually that's a Terminal Classic/Postclassic temple, a more iconic classic one would be this:


In any case though, it does annoy me somewhat how in these kinds of discussions the place that already IOTL had millions of people in organized states gets glossed over at best in favor of discussing a bunch of tribal dudes in a much less developed society and acting like it's more likely for them to suddenly build an empire on the scale of the Aztecs or something than it is for the aforementioned states to just journey a bit father.

9 Fanged Hummingbird said:

In any case though, it does annoy me somewhat how in these kinds of discussions the place that already IOTL had millions of people in organized states gets glossed over at best in favor of discussing a bunch of tribal dudes in a much less developed society and acting like it's more likely for them to suddenly build an empire on the scale of the Aztecs or something than it is for the aforementioned states to just journey a bit father.

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That would be the point I'm trying to make. Clearly the Maya were capable of building large ships, if they didn't already. I think the only thing needed is more stability. If there was just enough stability for a Mayan state to not have to worry about the city-state next door, they could potentially become huge maritime powers.

But then, thinking about it, the city-state system worked for the Greeks, so why shouldn't it work for the Mayans.

They did in fact build very large canoes that went far enough for none other than Columbus himself to meet on his last voyage. The one Columbus saw carried somewhere between 40-70 people, I can't remember exactly, and they could build vessels carrying a hundred or possibly more. And yeah, I think a no-Collapse scenario would be perfect for giving them the impetus and chance to venture out further into the Caribbean and possible along the South American coast as well. Especially if a stable state formed this would be particularly easy. OTOH, even a more marginalized less successful kingdom could do it, and might even be more likely to take up the sea-trade while their rivals control the land routes, leading to more extensive voyaging.

9 Fanged Hummingbird said:

They did in fact build very large canoes that went far enough for none other than Columbus himself to meet on his last voyage. The one Columbus saw carried somewhere between 40-70 people, I can't remember exactly, and they could build vessels carrying a hundred or possibly more. And yeah, I think a no-Collapse scenario would be perfect for giving them the impetus and chance to venture out further into the Caribbean and possible along the South American coast as well. Especially if a stable state formed this would be particularly easy. OTOH, even a more marginalized less successful kingdom could do it, and might even be more likely to take up the sea-trade while their rivals control the land routes, leading to more extensive voyaging.

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That's a good one. Say, could the PoD be Mayan leaders realizing their trade network is losing effectiveness, and deciding to invest in sea routes?

Rridgway said:

That's a good one. Say, could the PoD be Mayan leaders realizing their trade network is losing effectiveness, and deciding to invest in sea routes?

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That, and maybe they end up conquering say the Taino (easy enough for Coba and Tulum,) expanding into Western Cuba, which is a bit dryer, and then grow from there? Then you've got easy access to pretty much everywhere in the Gulf/Caribbean basin except Barbados (which is just a bitch to sail to.)