AHC large domestic animals in Americas?
- Thread starter Gog (♀)
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The first one that comes to mind are horses. Maybe if they go more south they can survive and become domesticated by the natives.
Driftless
Donor
Couple of others: Caribou & Bison, as much for their herd instincts. Both would require extensive generations of selective breeding to make them domesticated.
Bison & Elk are raised commercially today, but it's not an easy task.
*edit* Behavior can be problematic and they a big very powerful animals, so tall heavy gauge steel mesh fence, or very heavy wood fence is required. There have been local ranches raising both animals close by, and the fence posts are railroad ties. Gates are steel tube rails. Not quite Jurassic park, but not the petting zoo either...
Bison & Elk are raised commercially today, but it's not an easy task.
*edit* Behavior can be problematic and they a big very powerful animals, so tall heavy gauge steel mesh fence, or very heavy wood fence is required. There have been local ranches raising both animals close by, and the fence posts are railroad ties. Gates are steel tube rails. Not quite Jurassic park, but not the petting zoo either...
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Possibly a giant ground sloth or some form of mastodon, only because no one knows anything about their behavior to rule them out. There are sheep and goats, but so far as I know, they are about as tameable as deer.....bring up the Muisca people in South America, who semi-domesticated deer by killing all their predators and feeding them.
Kingpoleon
Banned
In 1463, the Incan general Pactuel Divyto saw the Muisca people domesticating deer. He presented the Incan leader Viztoro Deloro(placedholder name) with the idea of fully domesticating them. A Bi-Sohn, an animal recently brought to the Incan court as a herd of nearly two hundred, also starts to become domesticated for military purposes. By 1475, the average government member has two to four deer, and the richest 25% have a bison.
In 1493, rumors of a Kristoforo Columbo reach the Inca, and the military begins speedily building up the bison reserve. By 1500, 2,500 bisons are ready to be used, and over a thousand more are owned by the aristocrats. 17,500 deer and some 40 to 60 thousand infantry may be raised in a year.
Capybaras are semiaquatic, which complicates things, though people do keep them as pets. I believe they also have territorial issues. If you have horses, you can farm semi-domestic rheas, just like the Texas ranches were based on wild cattle.
Also, they're harvested (traditionally using horses) in the grassier parts of Venezuela. Locally, at least, the Roman Catholic church agreed that because they're semi-aquatic they can be counted as 'fish' for dietary/fasting purposes...
All that you said regarding domestication of Pleistocene fauna is hard to happen.
When first humans arrived in America, they found a lot of open space plenty of relatively easy game. Why domesticate when plain hunting was easier? That's why domestication did not happen then, and that's why many species went extinct (along with other collateral factors).
Domestication (anywhere) only was triggered when there was enough competence for the hunting areas or when humans settled in places where there were little available prey. Both causes did not happen at the first milennia of human settlement in America, so forget about domestication of Pleistocene fauna.
When first humans arrived in America, they found a lot of open space plenty of relatively easy game. Why domesticate when plain hunting was easier? That's why domestication did not happen then, and that's why many species went extinct (along with other collateral factors).
Domestication (anywhere) only was triggered when there was enough competence for the hunting areas or when humans settled in places where there were little available prey. Both causes did not happen at the first milennia of human settlement in America, so forget about domestication of Pleistocene fauna.
The best way would be delay the spread of humans to the new world until perhaps 5,000 BC, and have the settlers from NE Asia at least be familar with the concept of domestic animals. Without the massive OTL extinctions caused at least partially by humans during the 12,000-10,000 BC period, most of the Pleistocene megafauna in the Americas would still be present, with horses and camels being the most likely candidates for domestication. With a later spread of people to the new world, they may be more likely to see the large animals they encounter as potential domestic animals instead of only food to be hunted.
Either that or have some less 'advanced' (and less skillful at hunting) form of hominid get there significantly earlier on, probably Homo erectus (a possibility about which IIRC, Turtledove has written...) so that the megafauna have time to get accustomed to hunting more gradually before the proto-indians also arrive?
Even if you have some point here, it does not guarantee it. Polynesians were familiar with some domestic animals like dogs or chicken, but when they arrived in New Zealand, they conducted massive hunting of moas and other birds. As long as keeping domestic animals would require more effort than hunting easy prey, domestication would rarely happen.
Elk are almost certainly the best bet.
The bison is too aggressive and unpredictable; and they have much more agility than any animal that size has any business having (they can jump six feet), as well as a propensity to take off running at 40 mph whenever they feel like it. Elk are demonstrated at Yellowstone to readily congregate into oversize herds when fed by humans, their regular rutting cycle makes them reliably breed in captivity (just kill the unrulier bulls and let the survivors mate with all the elkettes they can), the calves grow up in two years, they are primarily grazers like cattle, and have a dominance hierarchy which humans could co-opt (and young bulls tend to live with female herds. Breed for neoteny, which you'd want to do anyway to get them mature faster, and boom, mixed-gender herds). The major minuses are that they too are very agile so you need strong and tall fencing. But they can be ridden:
The bison is too aggressive and unpredictable; and they have much more agility than any animal that size has any business having (they can jump six feet), as well as a propensity to take off running at 40 mph whenever they feel like it. Elk are demonstrated at Yellowstone to readily congregate into oversize herds when fed by humans, their regular rutting cycle makes them reliably breed in captivity (just kill the unrulier bulls and let the survivors mate with all the elkettes they can), the calves grow up in two years, they are primarily grazers like cattle, and have a dominance hierarchy which humans could co-opt (and young bulls tend to live with female herds. Breed for neoteny, which you'd want to do anyway to get them mature faster, and boom, mixed-gender herds). The major minuses are that they too are very agile so you need strong and tall fencing. But they can be ridden:
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Llama's are native to southern America, if you can get them to either migrate or be transported north, I think they would fit in great.
The great mammoth steppe, stretched across northern Eurasia, into North America, you could try keeping these in Canada?
Bears are common in America and they aren't that small, just make them larger.
The great mammoth steppe, stretched across northern Eurasia, into North America, you could try keeping these in Canada?
Bears are common in America and they aren't that small, just make them larger.
No, llamas are just the domesticated version of the wild guanaco and never existed as wild animals.
Anyway, I think both the wild or the domesticated version of the species would have suffered too much for crossing the Central American jungles, as llamas/guanacos are very restricted to Andean climate. Hot and wet jungles would probably kill them.
Some modern breeds of llamas are more resistant, but we are talking about relatively recent breeds.
Driftless
Donor
Llamas are raised in the US Midwest (a few Alpacas too I believe), more as pets and not so much as livestock. They deal with the hot, humid summers and cold (sub zero Farenheit), snow & sleet of winter pretty well. As you point out, the intense heat and humidity of the tropics might be too much though.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
and/or a later wave of humans come in who grew a little faster than the Clovis people, and have this and previous background as motive.
They might even take the viewpoint, Look, we're not going to push the Clovis off their land. But there's plenty of land which is not being used by anyone. This land is plenty big enough for all of us. (they might even follow this philosophy most of the time!)
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Lieutenant, it sounds like you're doubting whether Harrington did it at all.
It's very confusing, sir. I mean, why would a man buy a gun and keep the receipt if he was planning to commit a murder?
Well, maybe he didn't know what he was going to do with it when he bought it.
I doubt that. Usually, -- usually when someone buys a gun they have a pretty good idea of what they're going to use it for.
A couple of comments on Llamas;
- I live in central Florida and there are several farms locally which raise llamas successfully, they seem happy in the hot humid summers and quite comfortable with the periods of surprising cold we experiece.
- There were giant camelids related to llamas resident in Florida and much of America until the megafauna die-off. Had the early settlers had need of domesticates they would have been a viable alternative to the horse (some were bigger).
The key point is that they no need to.