Even American Natives

How would you be able to get the Natives of the Americas to be even on technology by the time of Columbus's landfall/ colonization?

I know that there are plenty of threads and TL's about Native americans being more advanced, but for the most part they just give the Naives a better standing, only to end up colonized again. (If you know of any that aren't like that tell me.)

I think it would have been possible to on the level of Europeans, or at least the Far East of the time, but how do you make it happen?

Change the geography of North America.

I'm doing this in my TL Moiciba Guazabara

Malta Shah said:

Change the geography of North America.

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Was the geography really much of a problem? I mean, its more hospitable than the deserts of the Middle East, or the frozen north of Europe.

I understand that a pack animal would help, but they probably could have domesticated one if they really tried.

geography has a great deal to do with the mismatch betwix the Europeans and Native Americans. Europeans had centuries of contact and trade with many cultures, while native americans did not.

Yeah, but that doesn't affect how the technology of the New World grows.

China discovered gunpowder, why couldn't some natives?

they would need a complete agricultural package (grain, livestock, horses) and to get to NA way earlier than they did in OTL.

Have a larger norse expansion into N.A.
Norse were trading with N.A. for nearly 500 years. Have them trading further south and with more settlements, so that there is a larger influx and exchange of ideas and goods. That could get the Natives closer to par with europe...at least in the north east.

Dave Howery said:

they would need a complete agricultural package (grain, livestock, horses) and to get to NA way earlier than they did in OTL.

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Yeah, I agree with the agriculture package, but how do you let them get there any earlier? They had been there 15,000+ when the Norse first made contact.

Zorqal said:

Was the geography really much of a problem? I mean, its more hospitable than the deserts of the Middle East, or the frozen north of Europe.

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Hospitable has nothing to do with it. It's about how the geography conducts the flow of ideas and technologies.

Zorqal said:

China discovered gunpowder, why couldn't some natives?

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What are you implying? Because I'll have you know China and the Amerindian civilizations were simply not at the same level of development and indeed China was an integral piece of the huge Eurasian civilization that Europe benefited so much from being a part of.

I don't think "Geography" had that much do to with it. It was a factor. Minor, in the grand scheme of things I think.

The bigger problems were more along the lines geology and flora/fauna. One will notice the only places that developed Bronze were the places that had both Zinc and Copper close by. While you can get Arsenical Bronze elsewhere, this seems more uncommon. And for some reason it seems difficult to go straight to iron, though I believe it happened once.

Other than that, Potatoes, Beans, and Corn were the only major staple crops, with a bunch of smaller crops to round things out. Llamas were the only large domesticated animal.

North-South trade is entirely doable by going along the coasts with ships. I know Bronze Age New World did this to get the ball rolling.

So to get the best outcome, and to end up with a New World nothing like what we know, you can just push everything to be like the old world. Don't kill off the New World horses, camels, and other such things. Get more lucky breaks with the plants so you can throw Rice in the mix and such. Have some sea-fairing group run up and down the coasts. Get ironworking first, skip bronze in most places. Get gunpowder at some point.

But that all seems a little cheatery to me, because the PoD's would have to be really far back.

Weve discussed this so many times. Sorry, im on my nook and cant copy links.

Salmon and totems
Mississippi Rice
Peccari Rex
and acurrent one with N.Am. llamas
Just off the top of my head
Also a couple of vinland survives tls that tend in that direction.

Zorqal said:

Yeah, I agree with the agriculture package, but how do you let them get there any earlier? They had been there 15,000+ when the Norse first made contact.

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no idea other than "ASB". But it would have to happen, because humans had been in the middle east ever since they left Africa, and had all that time to play with the ancestors of wheat, barley, cattle, pigs, sheep, etc. If you don't get people over to the Americas really early, there's no way in hell they can catch up...

You could get some Amerindian groups more advanced, but not all, afterall their were parts of Eurasia that were at the same level as the Amerindians into the 19th century, indeed their are some that are today even less advanced than Amerindians in the 15th cenutry.

Zorqal said:

, but they probably could have domesticated one if they really tried.

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Native Americans are lazy or stupid? You are implying one or the other.

mowque said:

Native Americans are lazy or stupid? You are implying one or the other.

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They didn't put the effort into domesticating things a much as they could have, is what I'm implying. The Europeans were able to domesticate the Aurochs, I'm no expert on the matter, but couldn't the Americans have tried to domesticate Bison?

Zorqal said:

They didn't put the effort into domesticating things a much as they could have, is what I'm implying. The Europeans were able to domesticate the Aurochs, I'm no expert on the matter, but couldn't the Americans have tried to domesticate Bison?

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Perhaps they tried (or more likely, the domestication of the Aurochs was an accident that hinged on factors that just were not present in the Americas). For that matter, cattle were domesticated by Mesopotamians, not Europeans.

bison are a very different animal than cattle, particularly in social structure; they don't let themselves be dominated by a 'boss' animal that a human can usurp; cattle do. We kinda/sorta semi-tamed bison today by long term confinement in stout pens of modern materials, something that stone age natives couldn't begin to attempt. The big thing that made cattle, sheep, horses, and goats a quick domesticate is that once you've established dominance over them, you can herd them out in the open...

Native Americans are lazy or stupid? You are implying one or the other

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Actually they were very adapt. large sections of central and eastern N.A. were massive centuries old "food forests", that had been carefully thinned and selected for so that every tree provided something useful, etc. It was a kind of "slow", "hands off" farming. Very productive with little input effort required. Also helped keep native animal populations high. Much better then european "forestry" at the time.

So in some ways the natives were more "advanced" then the europeans.

But as I said before, a greater Norse exchange (instead of just trading, resourcing, a few small skirmishes, and a small number assimilating into the native population) is the easiest/most probably way of creating "more advanced" cultures (in the european sense of the word). Cheers.