Otherwise, great timeline so far, just wish it was updated more often. I'm keen to see what happens first with Maori-Aboriginal contact and then later when the Europeans arrive.
Understandable about wanting updates more often, but there is sadly this thing called "real life." I don't have a lot of spare time these days, what with one thing and other. I figure it's better to make regular but less frequent updates than try to release all of the written updates in a short time, then have people waiting around indefinitely for the next instalment.
With Maori-Aboriginal contact, what will mostly be described is the effects, rather than the short-term contact. The next post which will be shown is one which is effectively "The Rise and Fall of the Empire." The one after that is an overview post which shows the broad history of Australasia in LoRaG, and then a brief overview of the main cultures which exist in 1618. After that, it's on to individual cultures, starting with the Atjuntja in Western Australia. (Who are not Gunnagalic, and who are also quite... weird, in some respects.)
This seems like the sort of broad timeline that would also support allo-allo-historical speculation, particularly of the "WI Asian-Aboriginal early contact?" variety within the timeline itself.
There's certainly a lot of scope for that, although I don't think that I'll have much time to explore it. Writing about the main timeline will keep me busy enough as it is.
How is the flavor of emu flesh and eggs? Is it good enough to create a demand around the world, Or are emus more likely to follow the way of the guinea pig. Domesticated as a food source in it's homeland (and still enjoyed as such there) but kept as a pet in the rest of the world?
I can't speak directly for the flavour of emu; I've tried kangaroo and (saltwater) crocodile, but not emu. From what I understand in general, though, it sells well enough, but it's not enough to create a brimming worldwide demand.
realistically I don't see emus being kept as pets, maybe more along the lines of ornamental birds such peacocks and swans.
Most likely, the emu goes the way of the llama or alpaca, I think. The predominant use is in the area of original domestication, and while it's taken up occasionally elsewhere (as ornamental bird or food source), it's not a major domesticate.
I've had Emu meat and it is quite good. It's a red meat, but much more tender than beef, lamb, or game. I could see it becoming a fad delicacy in the Netherlands and perhaps the rest of Europe. Maybe it lasts longer and becomes an occasional treat. I assume the eggs taste like eggs, but who knows?
I could also see it becoming popular with cultures forbidden certain types of meat for religious purposes. Non-Vegetarian Hindus, perhaps (mmmm...Emu Vindaloo!). Perhaps it's seen as an acceptable alternative to fish on Fridays for Catholics? Perhaps Emus get known as "Friday Beef" or even "Lent Birds"?
For Lentan alternatives, I suspect emus would be treated in the same category as chickens. I have no idea about how chickens are categorised in Catholic tradition, though, so I'm not sure whether they would acceptable at Lent or on Fridays. Emu vindaloo would be wonderful taste-wise, although again I don't know enough about Hinduism to judge what they'd make of it.
I can certainly see a sustained migration of Han settlers to China's drier Western provinces once that crop package becomes available. This, in turn, may not be without social and ultimately political consequences, if it can alleviate the home provinces' rural overpopulation to such an extent that the uprisings that took place in the 19th century in OTL are butterflied away.
That would be interesting, although quite long-term in its effects. (I'm not even sure how I'm going to depict the 19th century ITTL.) I just took a quick glance at China's precipitation levels, and there may be a few areas which will greatly benefit from Australian crops. The limiting factor will be the elevation; the Tibetan plateau may be much too high. But it looks like much of Ningxia, Gansu and parts of Shanxi would do well.
Interesting last installment, Jared...It seems the Europeans will be in a world of Hurt once the land upon the "continent". Keep it comming
Well, things certainly won't be pleasant for Europeans in Australia, disease-wise. The disease exchange is less one-sided than in OTL, although the proportional effects will be much worse in Australia.
There's a brief bit about Western Australia as part of the overview post (#10), and the post after that (#11) is about what south-western Australia becomes in 1618.
Also, how affected will the northernmost and inner desert regions be by the time of European arrival? Will they be different in any paticularly relevant way?(I mean I know butterflies and all will change individuals/minor events, but will their be substantial changes?)
There will be changes, but the peoples in northern and desert Australia will remain predominantly hunter-gatherer, and mostly nomadic (in the Australian sense of the word). There will be a few permanent mining settlements in some parts of the interior. There will be a lot of metal tools which get traded throughout Australia; the occasional bronze implement will make it to the northern reaches of Australia. There may be some occasional cultivation of wattles north of the Tropic of Capricorn - some of the domesticated species will grow there, although red yams and murnong won't - which may allow a slightly higher population growth. And in much of Queensland, the last couple of hundred years before European arrival will be a time of agricultural expansion, too - a couple of new crops will arrive which mean that the Tropic of Capricorn is no longer a barrier to agriculture.
It's an Eastern Australian civilisation.
Indeed, but the main domesticated crops do spread to south-western Australia eventually.
Hrm.... I'm curious.
This is the first section where the changes wrought in Australia by the rise of a civilization seem.... decided upon, rather than inevitable. What grounds exactly do we have for saying that the Australian civilization would produce these diseases (here I refer to lost last two plague-ish ones)?
A longer history of high population density than in the Americas, mostly. Transmission of diseases doesn't happen instantaneously; a lot of Eurasian diseases seem to have arisen a long time after the development of large urban centres. Smallpox first hit Europe during Roman times, for instance. The diseases do ultimately come from domesticated animals, but it can take a while for them to appear even after the domestication of animals.
Australia is also somewhat more plugged into the Asian disease environment than the Americas, although ATL only blue-sleep/influenza became an epidemic disease as a result. Northern Australia in OTL actually has a few diseases of Asian origin (malara and scrub typhus, for example) and migratory birds do bring avian influenza to Australia. (I'm not sure what strains of influenza are native to the New World).
As far as I'm aware, there were only two disease "zones" before the modern era: The sub-Saharan one, which had developed largely as a fluid progression out of the primate disease-and-parasite ecology. And the Eurasian network.
Well, there were a variety of infectious diseases existing elsewhere. The Americas had a few, although probably not epidemic ones. Chagas disease, Bolivian haemorrhagic fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, plus maybe syphilis and TB (those last two being perpetually argued about, as you mentioned below). It's just that the Eurasian and African networks were by far the largest.
Now obviously you don't need something that size to produce an infectious disease - in the end it only takes one transmission to start the process. All these diseases arose in small local zones - southeast Asia and southern China for many forms of flu, some cattle herding community or other for smallpox, etc. The record is clear that diseases can pop up in lots of places where people live in close proximity to their livestock.
That begs the question why it didn't happen in either Mexico or Peru. Both had ongoing civilizations for thousands of years, but the most they've produced is scholarly controversies over whether maybe they had TB or syphilis. There are certainly enough endemic diseases in just the primate populations of central and south america, and these people lived with dogs and turkeys in Mexico, and in the Andes and Amazon llamas, alpacas, guinea pigs, dogs, and in some places ducks.
Where were the plagues?
The question of why the Americas had no such plagues is an interesting one, and the short version is that we don't have a full answer. Part of it seems to be that some domesticated animals seem to have more communicable diseases than others. Cattle seem to have contributed the biggest proportion of human epidemic diseases by far - smallpox (from cowpox), measles (from rinderpest), tuberculosis (from bovine tuberculosis), and several others. Pigs, sheep, chickens and goats seem to have contributed fewer epidemic diseases, and horses and dogs none, as far as I know. It may be that the particular animals domesticated in the Americas did not have as many transmissible diseases. Messr Diamond wondered why llamas and alpacas, in particular, hadn't been the source of epidemic diseases.
The other part of the answer does seem to be the length of time in which the cultures had large urban centres and the sort of high population density which could sustain epidemic diseases. Urban life in Eurasia goes back much further than in the Americas; while there was some agriculture in the Americas quite early, the larger population centres did not start to emerge until relatively later than in Eurasia. It may just be that more time was needed for epidemic diseases to make the jump.
For the civilization in *Australia, what I have happening is that a couple of epidemic diseases arise, but they take a while to do so. The early urban centres (Formative era) had large populations and some domesticated animals (ducks), but were free of epidemic diseases. The first epidemic disease (blue-sleep) appears 2800 years after the first large urban centre, and the relatively worse Marnitja after about 3700 years. This is a function of more time for the diseases to evolve into an epidemic form which is transmissible amongst humans. It's also because the population density is relatively higher, with a higher percentage of the population as urban population than in comparable pre-Columbian cultures (cities seem to be particularly prone to breeding epidemics).
Few domestic animals in Mexico, lowish population density in Peru, I suspect.
That probably plays a part, particularly in Mesoamerica. All they really had there were dogs and turkeys. Dogs don't seem to be reservoirs of many diseases which infect humans. (Dogs can get rabies, but weren't the original reservoir.) I'm not sure about turkeys, but it would appear that they aren't, either, or at least there hasn't been long enough for something to make the jump to humans.
Note that at least one of Jared's diseases is an avian flu that originated in Asia, and was kept alive by the sizeable duck/human populations.
Having so many diseases does seem to be pushing it, true.
Of epidemic diseases, there's only two of consequence. One of those I regard as inevitable (avian flu) given the geography. Marnitja is more contingent, but given the long history of large urban populations and contact with various deadly bat diseases, I figured that it was highly likely that something would become transmissible between humans. Australian bat lyssavirus, Hendra virus and Menangle virus are all real bat-borne diseases, and which are classed as emerging diseases today. (There's also a wide variety of other bat-borne viruses in Australia which seem to be less likely to infect humans - Adelaide River virus and Berrimah virus, for example.)
In an *Australia with a longer history of high population density cultures than in the Americas, I think that it's likely that some diseases will make the jump. In the end I depicted one epidemic disease of bat-borne origin (Marnitja), and one which became endemic (Drongo disease) but which is not a significant killer.
I did also depict some non-epidemic diseases, yes. One of those is the real Australian bat lyssavirus, which is such a close relative of rabies that rabies vaccine actually protects against it. This virus has killed people in Australia in recorded history, and presumably did so occasionally amongst Aboriginal peoples. With a larger population density and more domesticated dogs, I figured that it would make the jump to being a human/dog infectious disease in pretty short order.
The other main endemic disease I depicted, swamp rash (Barmah Forest virus) is an example of a process which has happened over and over again historically - an originally minor malady evolved into a more virulent form. With all of the artificial wetlands in close proximity to humans, I thought that it was likely that there would be something which evolved there.
This is Australia, you know. It just wouldn't be the same if there weren't at least a few things horrifyingly lethal to humans roaming about.
Heh. Australia does have a reputation for that. And it does, in fact, have a surprising number of emerging diseases today. I've mentioned a few already, and there are a couple of others (e.g. Ross River fever). It's by no means as bad as some of the emerging tropical diseases, but there are several potential killer diseases lurking in Australia.