AHC: Mississippi River valley supports China-sized civilisation
- Thread starter mlp
- Start date
Driftless
Donor
I don't think there's a clear cut connection between encountering a large animal and thinking it could be ridden or harnessed.
On another thread: Large Domestic Animals in the Americas, there was discussion of other options - Bison, Elk, Caribou, etcHowever, as with the escaped/stolen Spanish horses, the Indians had observed how horses were used, and adapted quite nicely. The same prospect could work with escaped/stolen Norse horses. Plus, the Fjord horses have long been used for both riding and harness work, so the locals may have seen both possibilities in operation.
The link doesn't mention anything on the breed in subtropical climates. I would like to know more about how Fjords and Icelandic horses adapt to warm climates but I've never found much about it.
Fjords have more hair, bigger bodies and smaller nostrils than warm climate horses. The wrong climate can effect how much rest and water they need for given amount of work. It may even depress their fertility. Today you could house them in stables, obviously not suitable for nomads.
Errant Roman cargo vessel lands in the New World spreading plague, seeds, and possibly cultural influence as a starting point? I like Cahokia as a starting point but like China itself having several warring states that are eventually unified under one government would be one possible solution. Remember that the Inka had done just that while the Aztecs were working on it.
Unless you're like a medieval scholar and refer to the Byzantines as the Romans, you're too late. Cahokia rose about 1050 CE. Also, to reach Cahokia you would need to sail up the Mississippi. The Iroqouis would be easier to reach, but they rose either between 1450 and 1550, or 1152, too late. Also, where would a ship be sailing for it to make landfall in the New World?
Driftless
Donor
Info does seem to be scarce. I know there are annual Fjord horse shows in southern Iowa and Illinois and Wisconsin. Summers are often hot and humid here - periodic 90+ days, rare 100+ F days, and of course cold winters. I also found a Florida farm that speciallizes in Fjords & Belgian Ardennes.
I think too that part of the current distribution is based more on where the larger (human) Scandanavian populations are located - northern tier US and southern Canada.
In any case, they do have a modern time track record in the upper Mississippi Valley.
Those were meant to be separate ideas, the Brazilian government has reportedly kept a Roman ship found approx. 10 miles off the Rio coast off-limits from further exploration since the early 1980s. A Roman-influenced civilization in the Pampas and modern Brazil could be quite the entity to contend with in later centuries. There is no return voyage, it would be entirely a one-way trip with the cargo ship and its crew/passengers remaining in the New World indefinitely.
As for Cahokia, it might be interesting to see a stronger, ongoing Mississippian culture that did not decline 50-150 years prior to the arrival of Columbus. I wonder what the indigenous peoples and civilizations of the Western Hemisphere would like have they been given a few more decades or centuries to develop.
It would definitely be an interesting TL to see a Mississippian city-state, Cahokia or otherwise, establish a hegemonic empire similar to the Aztecs, and to see what the effects would be if that empire survived until and encountered the Spanish. I don't know why none of them apparently were able to reach those levels, but it seems like there could be a lot of PoDs possible apart from anything involving horses. Vinland introducing horses to North America is also a good PoD in itself, of course.
Could those Vinland-originating horses have the potential to introduce some sort of disease to the natives that could cause epidemics on the level of those caused by contact with the Europeans? Possibly so that native Americans would have stronger immunity by the time Europeans show up?
Could those Vinland-originating horses have the potential to introduce some sort of disease to the natives that could cause epidemics on the level of those caused by contact with the Europeans? Possibly so that native Americans would have stronger immunity by the time Europeans show up?
Don't know if that's possible with horses. But Vikings did have pigs and swine flu could have the desired effect.
BlondieBC
Banned
Don't we have some evidence from chicken bones and some crop (sweet potatoes maybe) that we have limited Polynesia contact with Peru?
Driftless
Donor
If you accept the more current theories, probably in excess of 100 million in North & South America. Older theories hold to a significantly smaller number 10-20 millions (or even less)
1491 by Charles C Mann
The reason Eurasians looked at horses and thought, "We should use these as work animals and not as food." Is because, "Humbaba said he ate a horse he other day and it tasted really tough and stringy so maybe we should just find a nice ox or something."
In all seriousness, horses are just not good food, but they are good work animals, so although it's possible that they would be used as food anyway, it's more likely they will be used as beasts of burden.
In all seriousness, horses are just not good food, but they are good work animals, so although it's possible that they would be used as food anyway, it's more likely they will be used as beasts of burden.
To me the sweet potato constitutes pretty good evidence of contact. The plant couldn't have floated between polynesia and South America as the tubers die in seawater. Someone must have carried the tubers with them across the ocean. Furthermore, the name for the sweet potato is very similar in Peru and Maori. That's good linguistic evidence for a shared origin. The chicken bones part has been disputed by a genetic study of the chickens in question.
There's also evidence in the form of the resin used to preserve a Peruvian mummy coming from a tree which only grows in Oceania.
Personally, I'm convinced by this, and other pieces of evidence, that there was contact between Polynesia and South America
The only non-ASB way to have a roughly Chinese-sized civilization in the Mississippi River draiange by AD1100-1300 (the era of Cahokia dominance OLT) is to bring the Chinese here...and lots of them. Put a PoD or PoDs in place as early as 3000 BC that gives Chinese a reason to expore and exploit the Pacific, discover a new continent several thousand years ago, and decide it would be a good thing to set up settler colonies here. Bring over advanced metallurgy, old world draft animals, old world crops to supplement the native cultigens, the entire trappings of Chinese civilization, and eventually, a thousand years later establish their capital on the abandoned platform mounds of Cahokia after the local population has been largely Sinicized.
Sorry, there is simply no way an indigienous civilization that rivals China would even evolve on its own in the Mississippi Valley, given what we know about the time-depth, population densities, environment, and advanced cultures of prehistoric North America.
Sorry, there is simply no way an indigienous civilization that rivals China would even evolve on its own in the Mississippi Valley, given what we know about the time-depth, population densities, environment, and advanced cultures of prehistoric North America.
....Here in Central Asia, people use horses as both draft animals and a food source, and the meat is quite good. Very lean-tasting. I've had it fresh-roasted over an outdoor fire pit at a Kyrgyz festival, and the best is a Kazakh dish of smoked horse sausage sauteed with sliced onions and wide ribbon noodles, called narin.
As for the question of whether or not people would choose to eat all of the horses instead of domesticating them, you only need to look as far as the Plains cultures in early post-contact times: When stray Spanish horses first appeared in their lands, they didn't need someone to teach them how to use them - they simply captured them and made larger versions of the travois they used on dogs. All it really takes is one culture, or even one person, to get the ball rolling.
What if 11th century China sent expeditions to the Pacific Northwest? Suppose they travel down the Missouri River Lewis-and-Clark style and join the natives near Cahokia. After all, the eastward trip only took six months in 1806. In 1500, the population of China was 103 million, Mexico, 7 million, and US/Canada only 2 million. Could an Iron Age Renaissance in the central US area in the 11th century grow the population to 100 million by 1500?
Its extraorinarily implausible, but compared with scenarios that have such a huge civilization developing in the Mississippi valley essentially from indigenous origins in the time frame proposed in the OP is even more so.
Horse is still eaten in many countries, and not just Central Asian ones. Its just all but non-existent in Anglophone countries, and very uncommon in Spanish and Portuguese countries. Those are the areas in which horse meat is the least common.
Riain
Banned
That's the one, but the book is in the library on the other side of town and I'm not motivated enough to get it, read it and comment here.
But IIRC the high counters suggest that there might have been tens of millions of people living in North America and a good portion of those were the Mississippian culture which was concentrated around the Mississippi more or less. However from memory "three sisters" agriculture reached the area quite late so societies didn't really have a chance to solidify, like Mesoamerican and Andean cultures over several millennia, before the Columbian-exchange virgin-field epidemic thinned them out to insignificance.
I've often wondered about what an American 'silk road' between the Andean and Mesoamerican civilisation centres by land and sea in the millennia prior to Columbus would have on the hemisphere.