Durring the last ice age, the so called "Clovis" people settled North America by way of the Berring land bridge. Evidence showed that they even had considerible success hunting the native megafuana, even nearly causing the American Elephant and Ground Sloth to go extinct. Then they mysteriosly vanish from the fossil record, allowing the megafunal populations to recover, and by the time Europeans first came to the Americas, the continents where completly uninhabited by humans, and still home to a variety of Ice age animals that went extinct elsewhere. So what if the "Clovis" people survived?
DBWI: The Clovis people survived?
- Thread starter ArKhan
- Start date
Flubber
Banned
No slave trade, I suppose, or wide scale European colonization either.
Given a time period dating from the last Ice Age, a surviving Clovis population would have undoubtedly domesticated several plant and animal species then developed their own civilizations. European explorers would have contacted Clovis civilizations and traded with them rather than importing slaves for labor on the tropical sugar islands and later the interior mines.
Given a time period dating from the last Ice Age, a surviving Clovis population would have undoubtedly domesticated several plant and animal species then developed their own civilizations. European explorers would have contacted Clovis civilizations and traded with them rather than importing slaves for labor on the tropical sugar islands and later the interior mines.
Flubber
Banned
Forgot about that. The diseases could go both ways too. Yuck.
Then again, what's to stop the Clovis civilizations from crossing the Atlantic first?
I think the North-South orientation of the Americas would remove much of a need to travel east or west for trade. There could be other causes, but the European drive for the Indies would push them across the Atlantic first, IMHO.
That still assumes faster European development. Then again, given that there are no real crops in the New World (the false-cereals and rag-weed families might yield something with a lot of effort, but it won't be nearly as good as Eurasian cereals), the most advanced Clovoid cultures might be pastoralists, raising horse or a domesticated strain of bison or pronghorn on the High Steppe. There's no reason such a people can't develop iron, but their population density would likely be far lower than that of their European counterparts.
You must be from the south. Up here we call them Elephants and Knife-Lions. It might have something to do with us calling them Mountian Lions and Lions instead of Cougars and, well, Lions.
So stuff like sweet potato or corn grass might've been discovered earlier?
I hadn't thought of that. Are talking Black Plague level here?
If a civilization did devolop in the Americas after European settlement of the continents, then we have to assume that a civilization could be possible in the same regions.
That's true, Potatos/Sweet Potatos, Corn Grass, and a few native fruit wheren't agriculturally devoloped, until much later then the european's own, similar to how they perfered European horses to native horses, and European Cattle to Native Aurochs.**
OOC:
*OTL Buffalo the modern surviving animal, as compared to the larger extinct in OTL variety called bison in TTL.
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A thought occurs. Look how badly later Europeans treated, and in some cases, continue to treat the Vinish, when vinland was only issolated from Europe for about 500 years, Imagine how they'd react to a completly alien culture. Also, would there be as many Indians living in the Americas? With out native elephants to train, would there be as much a drive to bring over laborers from India to try and domesticate them, or was indentured Indian labor and African slavery unavoidable?
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twovultures
Donor
I think a surviving Clovis culture could strengthen the Vinish a lot. After all, many of the early settlements in the Americas ended with the starvation of the settlers. If they had local people to help them (or rob food from, as the case may be) they may have gotten luckier.
Indians? So you are suggesting some group from Hindustan would end up settling North America after the Clovis?
I find that kinda implausible.I don't think there are any real founder crops in the Americas, and without that there would be no civilizations. They would have been strong enough to fight off the original Viking colonizations, however, and Polinesians from Easter Island would have had no more inclination to stick around in an inhabited South America than those from New Zealand had to stick arround in Australia when they (very probably) made the journey, so the landmasses would probably have been less civilized than they were IOTL when they were discovered in 1501.
Building on the work already done by these native peoples is the only reason colonization happened as quickly as it did. If there was nothing but horse nomads from coast to coast and north to south, we'd still be trying to settle the place, I'd wager.
But I will say that a large part of the persecution of Vinns comes from this crazy idea they cling to about the sanctity of personal liberty. Comes from having a culture that developed in a place where if you don't like your lord you can just go find some unclaimed land somewhere, I guess.
Building on the work already done by these native peoples is the only reason colonization happened as quickly as it did. If there was nothing but horse nomads from coast to coast and north to south, we'd still be trying to settle the place, I'd wager.
But I will say that a large part of the persecution of Vinns comes from this crazy idea they cling to about the sanctity of personal liberty. Comes from having a culture that developed in a place where if you don't like your lord you can just go find some unclaimed land somewhere, I guess.
I think he's referring to the natives of India brought over by the British to train native elephants/mastodons. They adapted to the new land rather well and Britain ended up importing thousands as indentured servants. Once they had worked off their indentures, they stayed on to settle along the frontiers, first in King George Mountains (OOC Appalachians) and then along the New Thames River (OOC Mississippi River).Indians? So you are suggesting some group from Hindustan would end up settling North America after the Clovis?
ETA: I should add that Irish and Scottish indentured servants were also common in the early days of colonization and provided a number of frontier settlers as well. However, IIRC most of them opted to stay closer to established settlements and took up trades and merchant life rather than carving farms from wilderness.
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OOC: Sorry to break this to you, but there is evidence out there that says that the Clovis people weren't the only people who came to the Americas.....(besides,, what else logically explains the many vastly different Native American languages?)...you may want to edit the OP to "DBWI: There were Native Americans before Europeans Came?" or something like that.
The lack of large, sucessful empires to get everyone speaking the same language in the first place?
Anyway, whatever is the case, there's no reason the OP's character would know better than the OP themself whether or not there were contemporary peoples at the time of Clovis.
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Would the later day clovis diet be similar to the Vinish one? For example Potato Alchohol, Blueberry Wine, and Mead is still called a "Vinish Cocktail" in these parts, and Sausage with Elephant meat and Sweet Potato in it is called "Vinish Sausage" becuase both where, and still are Staples of the Vinish Diet, and where adopted by British settlers.
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Not in North America, someone suggested corn-grass (ooc: the weed form which corn was bred) but I don't think it would do. Neither does the american wild rice. But nightshade tubers (potato) and sweet root (sweet potato) could potentially be used as an alternative starch. They were discovered by early Polynesian settlers and then widely used by the Basques in New Navarre (Peru) once they moved in. We now eat these all over the place, and many historias have suggested that if Europe had adopted them earlier event like the Irish wheat famine could have been avoided.
However because these tubers were found in south America, the Clovis people would first have to reach South America, domesticate the crop - evidence suggest the Polynesians hadn't fully developed it as a crop by the time of European arrival - and once they did the crop would have to reach North America. Because of the North-South orientation of the New World, it is likely this would take very very long.
Yeah, but they kinda like to be call Americans since they got their independence. After all they've been out of Hindustan for over 400 years now.
While we're on the topic of the Vinish, has anyone heard of a game called "Skyrim". It's baised on the legendary "Skyrim" (litterally, the rim of the sky) a land the Vinish Sagas say is located far to the west over the King George Mountains, (forget what they called them though, Something hard to spell or pronounce in English) and is the western edge of the world. The game's a bit obscure I know, but really fun, and quite accurate in it's portrayal of Vinish Era North America. That being said, I do find the elephants and lions to be overpowered early on.