Subject: Re: [OT] Natural History (was Cannibal Society) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 20:09:43 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 A couple of people have asked for specific examples of Diamond being sloppy. Two f'rinstances -- one from _Third Chimpanzee_, one from GG&S. 3rd Chimp: Diamond comes down hard against the "man the hunter" hypothesis, and rejects the idea that big game hunting was a major part of early human diets. In doing so, he cites his own experience with New Guinea aborigines -- most particularly, an amusing anecdote about going out on a "hunt" with them. Unfortunately, he distorts the opposing view (there are not a lot of paleontologists claiming what he claims they claim) and his anecdote is not particularly apposite (most early humans lived in an environment quite different from New Guinea, which is pretty impoverished WRT large ). Most irritating, though, is that he ignores a fairly enormous body of conflicting data. Things like radioisotope data on human fossils and microscopic examination of coprolites have painted a much more complex picture of early human diets. At this point it appears that, yep, big game was an important element from fairly early on. There's still plenty of room for controversy and argument, but Diamond's position is more likely to be wrong than right. And the data in question was all coming available by the early '90s, when he was writing _Chimpanzee_. Guns, Germs -- He's got plenty of valid points about why the New World was relatively disadvantaged WRT domesticable plants and animals, compared to the Old. However, he goes way, way too far with his claims that the Old World suffered from a "vertical" geographical orientation rather than a "horizontal" one. Given the technological level of the American civilizations -- late Neolithic -- domestic plants and animals were spreading just about as quickly as they had been at the equivalent point in Old World history. When Old World civilizations were in the late Neolithic -- say, in the fourth millenium BCE -- most of the Old World crops and domestic animals that Diamond goes on about were not even close to being universally spread throughout the civilized belt of Eurasia. The post-Conquest history of the New World suggests yet another hole in Diamond's "vertical orientation" theory. The Spanish quickly built up water transportation networks in the Caribbean and along the Pacific coasts of Central and South America. By the 17th century, these had resulted in a startling degree of ecological uniformity across a very wide area; all the major food crops were growing everywhere they could grow, and Eurasian domestic animals were everywhere from Patagonia to Colorado. The Native Americans were already starting to build water trade networks; South Americans sailed along the Pacific coast up to Central America, and Mesoamerican trade goods reached as far north as the Ohio. Several food crops, most notably corn, had already spread along these trade routes... often undergoing considerable changes along the way. The best that can be said of Diamonds argument here is that he simplifies a complex interweaving of cause and effect (fewer domesticable plants and animals --> slower development of cities and advanced technology --> less trade and slower development of advanced travel technology --> slower diffusion of what plants and animals there were) and reduces it to a fairly simplistic, and seriously flawed, piece of geographical determinism. ObWI. OTL the Indians of the Caribbean were startlingly retrograde -- it's not clear why. WI they'd developed an advanced navigational package, comparable to what the Polynesians had? I don't think this is too wild a leap -- they're at roughly the same technological level, and there'd be fairly large and immediate payoffs for any Caribbean group that adopted it. If (say) the Arawaks** had cobbled together such a package around 500 AD, then by 1000 AD they'd have been sitting in the middle of a trade network stretching from the mouth of the Amazon to Chesapeake Bay. Development of all the civilizations in contact with them would be accelerated; bigger, earlier Mesoamerican empires, and towns and cities in North America. Thoughts? Doug M. **Yeah, the Caribs are a better bet than the Arawaks -- better canoes, better weaving techniques, more aggressive. But they were late arrivals in the region -- 11th century -- and, also, they seem to have been more or less pure evil; these were guys who made the Aztecs look nice. So I'd just rather not. Subject: Re: [OT] Natural History (was Cannibal Society) Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 17:44:36 -0700 From: Ian Lundall Samuels Organization: University of Calgary Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Douglas Muir wrote: [snip; re: Diamond's GG&S] > However, he goes way, way too far with his claims that the Old World suffered > from a "vertical" geographical orientation rather than a "horizontal" one. Ah. I was expecting something a bit more technical; hadn't thought in terms of the whole vertical vs. horizontal business (which I completely agree is, umm, problematic). [snip] > ObWI. OTL the Indians of the Caribbean were startlingly retrograde -- it's > not clear why. > > WI they'd developed an advanced navigational package, comparable to what the > Polynesians had? [snip] > If (say) the Arawaks** had cobbled together such a package around 500 AD, then > by 1000 AD they'd have been sitting in the middle of a trade network > stretching from the mouth of the Amazon to Chesapeake Bay. Development of all > the civilizations in contact with them would be accelerated; bigger, earlier > Mesoamerican empires, and towns and cities in North America. An interesting thought -- it's just possible this could accelerate the early development of metal tools and weapons as well. This might blunt one of the key Old World advantages of OTL, perhaps to some extent slowing conquest and colonization... on the other hand, the presence of large, rich civilizations in interior North America could feasibly accelerate the race to explore and colonize that continent (perhaps fueled by "lost civilization" legends like Spain's Cibola of OTL). Is there the possibility of trans-Atlantic networks here as well? It seems feasible, given the distances are far less daunting than those of the Pacific. [snip] > **Yeah, the Caribs are a better bet than the Arawaks -- better canoes, better > weaving techniques, more aggressive. But they were late arrivals in the > region -- 11th century -- and, also, they seem to have been more or less pure > evil; these were guys who made the Aztecs look nice. So I'd just rather not. Assuming our reports of the Caribs are accurate, the solution to me would seem to be some kind of intermediate group (a little handwaving, yes -- the Cariwaks?) entering the region in the 5th or 6th century -- perhaps experiencing a meteoric rise to power and establishing a maritime trade pattern that subsequent Caribbean (or Cariwakean) civilizations build on later. -ian Subject: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 23:09:18 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 Ian Lundall Samuels wrote: > > ObWI. OTL the Indians of the Caribbean were startlingly retrograde -- it's > > not clear why. > > > > WI they'd developed an advanced navigational package, comparable to what the > > Polynesians had? > > An interesting thought -- it's just possible this could accelerate the > early development of metal tools and weapons as well. I wasn't thinking of that so much (though it's possible) as spreading agriculture, writing, and architecture. With a bit of modification, the Mesoamerican package would work just fine as far north as, say, the lower mid-Atlantic region. Regions with good onshore fishing banks would probably be the first to develop cities, using a mixed farming-and-fishing package. Simplified Mesoamerican heiroglyphs for record-keeping allow social stratification and specialization, and also accurate and fair food storage. I see several regional civilizations arising -- maybe, say, one in the Caribbean, one up the Mississippi (Mound Builders Pro) and one in Virginia and Chesapeake Bay. All of these would be, at their height, roughly comparable to the Olmecs or the Maya. > This might blunt one > of the key Old World advantages of OTL, perhaps to some extent slowing > conquest and colonization... on the other hand, the presence of large, > rich civilizations in interior North America could feasibly accelerate the > race to explore and colonize that continent (perhaps fueled by "lost > civilization" legends like Spain's Cibola of OTL). Okay, let's generate some random numbers. [breaks out ten-sided dice] I'll assign variables for... oh, Duration, Aggression, Size, Technological Advance, and Wealth. Let's start with the Polynesian/Arawaks. [rolling] 9, 8, 9, 8, 5 So, this civilization lasts for about 900 years, from 500 to around 1400. Very aggressive and expansionist -- colonies all over the damn place, from South Carolina to the Atlantic coast of Brazil. Viking raids on the Mesoamericans. Very advanced Neolithic technology. The lowish Wealth score suggests that their cities hit an upper limit, though -- probably because they never quite shift to pure agriculture, as opposed to agriculture-plus-fishing; coastal cities only. They collapse due to overpopulation and internal war; the Spanish find monstrous stone ruins all over Hispaniola and Cuba. Then the Mississippians [rolling] 9, 10, 5, 3, 2. Hmm. These guys look like a somewhat nastier, longer-lasting version of OTL's Mound Builders. Say they get started as an Arawak colony that makes the shift to agriculture and moves upriver from the Gulf. Mean as hell, they capture Plains Indians for human sacrifice and the occasional snack. They radiate up the various tributaries of the Mississippi, with stimulus-diffusion causing small fortified towns to be built as far north as Minnesota. They're still around by the early 1500s, though growing rather decadent. Hernando de Soto meets an unpleasant end at their hands; Pablo Narvaez escapes, but just barely. Finally, the *Chesapeakes. 10, 3, 1, 10, 8. Okay, this is interesting. A very stable, durable, not very warlike civilization. Small -- a collection of city-states stretching from about Norfolk to Baltimore. But very technologically advanced and quite wealthy. [Looks at map] Yeah, there are both copper and tin within trading range. So, they're Bronze Age... let's say they hit that point around 1000 AD. The *Arawak civilization granted them the potato and sweet potato before collapsing, so they have those to supplement corn, pumpkins, fish and domesticated turkeys. Lots of beautiful metalwork; ritual warfare. No human sacrifice, and no god-kings either, but lots of impressive architecture, both wood and stone. Drastically simplified syllabic writing system, not quite a true alphabet but close. Birchbark and animal-hide parchment to write on. Great calendars, and astronomy/astrology at roughly a classical level. Lots of pots -- goodness knows this region doesn't lack for clay. They're not as enthusiastic navigators as the *Arawak, but they occasionally sail as far south as the Okefenokee and as far north as Cape Cod (for whaling). When Europeans arrive (who'd get there first? Cabot? the French?), their civilization is at or near its height -- limited in area, but wealthy, confident, and (relatively) technologically advanced. European diseases will wreak mayhem with them, as it did with the Aztecs OTL... but this, by itself, will not be enough to topple them; it'll require some conquistador to deliver the final blow. Who may be French, Dutch or English as easily as Spanish... > Is there the possibility of trans-Atlantic networks here as well? It seems > feasible, given the distances are far less daunting than those of the > Pacific. I'm going to say no. It's not just distances, but winds and currents. The best way across the Atlantic from the Caribbean is to head north to middle latitudes and let the trades carry you east. I'm going to arbitrarily rule that the *Arawaks are tropical -- although their trade networks stretch far, they themselves never venture above about 30 North (the Chesapeake civilization is generated by stimulus-diffusion, not expansion from a daughter colony). I think the Spanish get sucked in a little faster (all those intriguing ruins in the Caribbean). Then, eastern North America looks very different -- someone, French or Dutch or whoever, gets a huge hit of wealth from looting the treasures of the Chesapeake, and then develops a Latin-American style colony on its ruins, with Europeans lording it over creoles, a mestizo middle class, and the surviving *Chesapeake Indians a new peasant class, hoeing potatoes and sowing wheat amidst the ruins of their grandparents' cities. Thoughts? Doug M. Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 06:26:49 -0600 From: "Robert J. Kolker" Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 Douglas Muir wrote: > > I think the Spanish get sucked in a little faster (all those intriguing ruins > in the Caribbean). Then, eastern North America looks very different -- > someone, French or Dutch or whoever, gets a huge hit of wealth from looting > the treasures of the Chesapeake, and then develops a Latin-American style > colony on its ruins, with Europeans lording it over creoles, a mestizo middle > class, and the surviving *Chesapeake Indians a new peasant class, hoeing > potatoes and sowing wheat amidst the ruins of their grandparents' cities. > > Thoughts? An Execellent what-if. Even if it isn't the case it sound as though it * could * have been the case. The elements you have woven together resemble events and processes that did, in fact, happen in OTL. It is just that the details differ. Bob Kolker Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 16:21:53 GMT From: terrence@unlikeminerva.com (terrence marks) Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 On Wed, 21 Mar 2001 23:09:18 -0400, Douglas Muir wrote: >Okay, let's generate some random numbers. [breaks out ten-sided dice] I'll >assign variables for... oh, Duration, Aggression, Size, Technological Advance, >and Wealth. > >Let's start with the Polynesian/Arawaks. [rolling] 9, 8, 9, 8, 5 [marvels at the simplicity and utility of the new system. Brilliant. Sheerly brilliant.] Doug, I'm going to have to play around with this for a while. Can't fit it into the TL I'm (theoretically) working on, but I'm gonna try and have fun with it. Terrence Marks Unlike Minerva (a comic strip) http://www.unlikeminerva.com HCF (another comic strip) http://www.mpog.com/hcf Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 11:53:40 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 terrence marks wrote: > > On Wed, 21 Mar 2001 23:09:18 -0400, Douglas Muir > wrote: > > >Okay, let's generate some random numbers. [breaks out ten-sided dice] I'll > >assign variables for... oh, Duration, Aggression, Size, Technological Advance, > >and Wealth. > > > >Let's start with the Polynesian/Arawaks. [rolling] 9, 8, 9, 8, 5 > > [marvels at the simplicity and utility of the new system. Brilliant. > Sheerly brilliant.] [blush] Give the credit to Steve Jackson, Terrence. Or maybe Dave Arneson. Doug M. Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 12:48:59 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 > > Is there the possibility of trans-Atlantic networks here as well? It seems > > feasible, given the distances are far less daunting than those of the > > Pacific. > > I'm going to say no. It's not just distances, but winds and currents. The > best way across the Atlantic from the Caribbean is to head north to middle > latitudes and let the trades carry you east. I'm going to arbitrarily rule > that the *Arawaks are tropical -- although their trade networks stretch far, > they themselves never venture above about 30 North (the Chesapeake > civilization is generated by stimulus-diffusion, not expansion from a daughter > colony). 'scuse me for responding to my own post, but I was thinking about this last night. You /can/ cross the Atlantic to Europe at low northern latitudes -- Columbus did it, on voyages two through four -- but it's much harder than it is further north. These are the so-called Horse Latitudes; the winds are erratic, and you're in danger of ending up in the Sargasso Sea or the Doldrums. Still, if our *Arawaks have the Polynesian navigational package, they're going to at least make a shot at it. So... 1) They reach Bermuda. At 32 North, and well out into the Atlantic, it's at the bleeding edge of their sphere of expansion. Uninhabited in OTL, Bermuda becomes the *Arawak Easter Island, where an isolated population develops an eerie, unique civilization. 2) They don't reach the Azores -- a little too far north (37 degrees). They don't reach Europe. 3) Incredibly, a few boatloads of *Arawaks, half mad with thirst, do make it through the Doldrums to reach the Old World. The only place where they have any impact, though, is in the Canary Islands, off the coast of Morocco. When the Genoese and Portuguese arrive in the 13th Century, they'll find the mysterious Guanches as in OTL... a blonde, dark-eyed people as strange as the Basques, completely unrelated to their neighbors or any other modern stock. However, the Guanches of this TL will be even stranger; a few of them will have a copper tint to their skin, and they'll navigate among their islands in catamarans with wishbone sails... Subsequent research will discover about 5% Native American genes among the Guanches; there will also be loan words and other evidence to confirm a slight but unmistakeable *Arawak influence. The great debate, never firmly resolved, will be whether contact between the Canaries and the Caribbean was strictly one-way, or whether a few shiploads managed to make a round trip of it. In any event, the Neolithic Guanches and their distant islands are not particularly interesting to the *Arawaks, so any commerce eventually falls off after the end of their Age of Expansion (late 12th century). 4) At least one group of *Arawaks reaches Africa! A particularly large canoe makes it across the Atlantic in decent shape, passes north of the Canaries, and makes landfall on the coast of Morocco around Agadir. Unfortunately, they arrive in 1148, one year after the tolerant and cosmopolitan Almoravid dynasty has been overthrown by the puritanical, fanatical, and highly xenophobic Almohads. The *Arawaks, obviously not Muslims, don't last a week. Caught onshore, half are massacred by Almohad cavalry. The rest are sold into slavery, where they soon die of disease or despair. Their great canoe, with its animal carvings and the great face painted on its sail, is obviously a piece of idolatry and an offense to Allah; wailing with triumphant delight, the Almohads burn it on the beach. A few oddly shaped pots and gold ornaments end up for sale in the great market at Rabat, but otherwise no trace remains of this transatlantic contact. Thoughts? Doug M. Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 11:05:04 -0700 From: Ian Samuels Organization: University of Calgary Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Douglas Muir wrote: [snip] > You /can/ cross the Atlantic to Europe at low northern latitudes -- Columbus > did it, on voyages two through four -- but it's much harder than it is further > north. These are the so-called Horse Latitudes; the winds are erratic, and > you're in danger of ending up in the Sargasso Sea or the Doldrums. > Still, if our *Arawaks have the Polynesian navigational package, they're going > to at least make a shot at it. So... [snip; the Arawaks reach Bermuda, the Canary Islands and the shores of Morocco but have no significant impac apart from slightly altering Guanche society and building their own "Easter Island" on Bermuda] A plausible picture of Arawak ocean voyaging... but this is where the Weird Coincidence Factor may or may not manifest itself. The question for me becomes: how many of these boatloads are there? And do they make any impact in stories or legends about the Atlantic Ocean? Particularly interesting in the case of Morocco... such stories have a way of mutating from a few strange savages on the seashore into Lost Civilizations with the Key to the Fountain of Youth. Supposing such tales reach the ears of later Moroccan monarchs and fire their imagination? -ian Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 15:58:44 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 Ian Samuels wrote: > [snip; the Arawaks reach Bermuda, the Canary Islands and the shores of > Morocco but have no significant impac apart from slightly altering > Guanche society and building their own "Easter Island" on Bermuda] > > A plausible picture of Arawak ocean voyaging... but this is where the > Weird Coincidence Factor may or may not manifest itself. The question for > me becomes: how many of these boatloads are there? A total of a couple of hundred *Arawaks reach the Canaries. There actually are a few round-trip voyages, but only a few. Given the technologies involved, a round trip from (say) the Bahamas to the Canaries has about one chance in four of ending up stranded in the Doldrums -- everyone dies of thirst, 100% fatalities. > And do they make any > impact in stories or legends about the Atlantic Ocean? Particularly > interesting in the case of Morocco... such stories have a way of mutating > from a few strange savages on the seashore into Lost Civilizations with > the Key to the Fountain of Youth. Supposing such tales reach the ears of > later Moroccan monarchs and fire their imagination? They may circulate in Morocco, but they never cross the cultural boundary between it and Spain. This border, highly permeable during the early Middle Ages, was becoming more and more opaque in the 12th and 13th centuries; the Spanish and Portuguese were becoming more ardently religious and more focussed on the Reconquista, while the North African Arabs were going through a nasty bout of Taliban-like fundamentalism -- the aforementioned Almohads -- from the 1120s on. Spaniards and Iberian/North African Muslims actually got along pretty well at one time, back in the 10th and 11th centuries, but those days were rapidly drawing to a close. If you were a Caribbean Indian trying to reach the Old World at this time, it'd actually be rather hard to find a hospitable landfall. Sub-saharan Africa? You'll die of disease. Also the natives, while not the bloodthirsty cannibal savages of popular stereotype, are not particularly friendly either. A bit further north, and you hit... the Sahara. Not too welcoming for mariners from the green Caribbean. A bit further north still, and you're in the Arab world. And this particular corner of it (Morocco and Iberia) was brilliant and open-minded once, but now is turning insular, xenophobic and thoroughly nasty. Funny-looking foreigners will probably be killed or enslaved, not traded with. Christian Iberia is your best bet, but at this date you have to swing all the way up to 40 North to reach it -- the Arabs still hold the southern part of the penninsula. As for the Moroccans having their imagination fired, I fear not. Both the Almoravids and their Almohad successors were resolutely land-bound; they had little interest in the Mediterranean, let alone the Atlantic. (This was a contributing factor to the success of the Reconqista, BTW -- poor coordination between Iberia and Africa. As early as the 1200s, much of the carrying trade across the Gulf of Gibraltar was in the hands of Genoese, Aragonese, or other Christians.) The Moroccans of this period had access to, but apparently no interest in, the great Arabic maritime tradition. OTL they never even managed to reach the Canary Islands, just barely out of sight across the western horizon. They traded across the Sahara with African kingdoms to the South, but did so by camel caravan through the interior, not by ships along the coast. -- They would, very eventually, get interested in the sea; Moroccans were well represented among the Barbary corsairs. But this wouldn't happen until a few centuries later... early 1500s, say. No, I think that the few *Arawak visitors would, at most, generate some distorted Arabian Nights-style legends... and then be forgotten. Doug M. Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 19:47:46 -0700 From: Ian Samuels Organization: University of Calgary Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Douglas Muir wrote: > Ian Samuels wrote: > > > > [snip; the Arawaks reach Bermuda, the Canary Islands and the shores of > > Morocco but have no significant impac apart from slightly altering > > Guanche society and building their own "Easter Island" on Bermuda] > > > > A plausible picture of Arawak ocean voyaging... but this is where the > > Weird Coincidence Factor may or may not manifest itself. The question for > > me becomes: how many of these boatloads are there? > > A total of a couple of hundred *Arawaks reach the Canaries. There actually > are a few round-trip voyages, but only a few. Given the technologies > involved, a round trip from (say) the Bahamas to the Canaries has about one > chance in four of ending up stranded in the Doldrums -- everyone dies of > thirst, 100% fatalities. There are more pleasant ways to go, I suppose. > > And do they make any > > impact in stories or legends about the Atlantic Ocean? Particularly > > interesting in the case of Morocco... such stories have a way of mutating > > from a few strange savages on the seashore into Lost Civilizations with > > the Key to the Fountain of Youth. Supposing such tales reach the ears of > > later Moroccan monarchs and fire their imagination? To clarify, by "later" I mean "much later" -- 16th century. > They may circulate in Morocco, but they never cross the cultural boundary > between it and Spain. Probably not, since that cultural boundary solidifies during the Reconquista as you note. I was thinking more in terms of stimulating Moroccan sea voyaging... the Almohads themselves certainly aren't good candidates for this, but the Sa'did Morocco of the late 16th century is a very different place -- moreover, it's a kingdom in direct and intense conflict with Christian Portugal and one hungry for conquests (an urge which manifested itself in al-Mansur's largely wasteful "conquest" of the Songhay empire in 1591). Orientation toward the sea remains a big problem, of course, especially since the dynasties ruling Morocco from the 12th century on originate in desert Berber culture and are built around the trans-Saharan trade. But by the Sa'did era this trade has declined -- al-Mansur's pseudo-Napoleonic sally across the Sahara was in fact a desperate attempt to revive and control it. Moreover, Moroccan interest in the sea was on the upswing (they were indeed well-represented among the corsairs of the 16th century, as you note). So it might not be unfeasible for al-Mansur's alternate to try chancing the sea routes instead -- but IMO it's only likely to happen if there are enough legends, however oblique, circulating about the Arawaks to make risking the New World seem a more attractive prospect than beating up on the Songhay. On the face of it, of course, a couple hundred Arawaks don't seem likely to do the trick -- OTOH, pervasive legends can often sprout from weird and obscure sources. [snip; the problems with going to the Old World from the New -- in Africa you die of disease or are killed by locals] Of course, dying of disease happens pretty much anywhere the Arawaks land. But unfriendly as the West African coast may be, people landing without attempts at conversion or pretensions to conquest are likely to fare better than anywhere north of the Sahara. All depends on who you run into, of course. > A bit further north still, and you're in the Arab world. And this particular > corner of it (Morocco and Iberia) was brilliant and open-minded once, but now > is turning insular, xenophobic and thoroughly nasty. Funny-looking foreigners > will probably be killed or enslaved, not traded with. Agreed. > Christian Iberia is your best bet, but at this date you have to swing all the > way up to 40 North to reach it -- the Arabs still hold the southern part of > the penninsula. Why, incidentally, would Christian Iberia be a better bet than the Almohads? I would have expected them to be pretty much similar, at least in terms of encountering foreigners. (The Almohads, of course, have all the fervor of the recently-converted and are in the midst of jihad -- but this has more consequence for their internal politics than for the mentality of their frontiers.) [snip] > (This was a contributing factor to the success of the Reconqista, BTW -- poor > coordination between Iberia and Africa. As early as the 1200s, much of the > carrying trade across the Gulf of Gibraltar was in the hands of Genoese, > Aragonese, or other Christians.) Not surprising considered the Almohads had just destroyed the Almoravid empire and had no experience with sea voyaging themselves. Be interesting to see what the picture is around the Ottoman era, though... [snip] -ian Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 01:54:29 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 Ian Samuels wrote: > > > > impact in stories or legends about the Atlantic Ocean? Particularly > > > interesting in the case of Morocco.. > > They may circulate in Morocco, but they never cross the cultural boundary > > between it and Spain. > > Probably not, since that cultural boundary solidifies during the > Reconquista as you note. I was thinking more in terms of stimulating > Moroccan sea voyaging... the Almohads themselves certainly aren't good > candidates for this, but the Sa'did Morocco of the late 16th century is a > very different place -- moreover, it's a kingdom in direct and intense > conflict with Christian Portugal and one hungry for conquests (an urge > which manifested itself in al-Mansur's largely wasteful "conquest" of > the Songhay empire in 1591). As noted, the Sa'dids did indeed take to the sea in a modest way; they were junior partners in the whole Barbary Pirate enterprise that got under way in the 16th century (and lasted into the 19th). Problem is, they went in for maritime designs specialized for piratical and semi-piratical work in the Mediterranean... galleys (including copies of earlier Italian designs) and high-speed, low freeboard lateen ships. Great for chasing down infidel ships and the occasional coastal raid, not so good for crossing the Atlantic. > Orientation toward the sea remains a big problem, of course, especially > since the dynasties ruling Morocco from the 12th century on originate in > desert Berber culture and are built around the trans-Saharan trade. Yep. And they continued to make a very handsome living off of this, again clear into the 19th century. > But by > the Sa'did era this trade has declined -- al-Mansur's pseudo-Napoleonic > sally across the Sahara was in fact a desperate attempt to revive and > control it. Moreover, Moroccan interest in the sea was on the upswing > (they were indeed well-represented among the corsairs of the 16th century, > as you note). One problem that they faced by the 16th century (indeed, by the middle 15th) was Christian dominance of the sea. The Moroccans could build galleys and light ships for raiding, but they couldn't build the heavy, full rigged carracks and galleons. They didn't have the wood, for one thing. Probably more to the point, they didn't have the skill sets and institutional infrastructure. So while they could raid shipping and the occasional coastal village, they couldn't slug it out toe-to-toe in formal naval battles... and they couldn't undertake long voyages of trade or exploration, either. If the Moroccans had sent galleys down the African coast, the first Portuguese trading expedition to come along would have blown them out of the water. Notice how the Spanish had forts and presidios all over the Moroccan and Algerian coasts in this period? The hinterlands remained stubbornly hostile, so the Spanish had to supply them by sea. This made them hellishly expensive... but at no time were any of them ever taken from the sea, or cut off from resupply; the corsairs weren't up to attacking an armed relief convoy, nor either to a slugging match with land-based cannon. > [snip; the problems with going to the Old World from the New -- in Africa > you die of disease or are killed by locals] > > Of course, dying of disease happens pretty much anywhere the Arawaks land. Ayup. > But unfriendly as the West African coast may be, people landing without > attempts at conversion or pretensions to conquest are likely to fare > better than anywhere north of the Sahara. All depends on who you run into, > of course. No, SS Africa is the worst. _Europeans_ died wholesale from the diseases there. "The Bight of Benin, the Bight of Benin..." Remember, our *Arawaks have never met malaria before. > Why, incidentally, would Christian Iberia be a better bet than the > Almohads? I would have expected them to be pretty much similar, at least > in terms of encountering foreigners. (The Almohads, of course, have all > the fervor of the recently-converted and are in the midst of jihad -- but > this has more consequence for their internal politics than for the > mentality of their frontiers.) At this point, the Christian Iberians are a little less xenophobic and a little more curious about the world generally (a little... and this isrelative to the Almohads). They'd be more likely to approach the *Arawaks cautiously, learn their language, trade with them a bit... and /then/ try to convert them, attack and kill them, and/or make slaves of the survivors. And they might try to examine the canoe and do a bit of reverse-engineering before burning it. Or, maybe not. The very best bet for an *Arawak would be to head south instead of east. Cross the Caribbean to the Guyanas, then work his way down the Atlantic coast of Brazil. Reach the mouth of the Amazon and keep going, another thousand miles east and south to the Cabo de Sao Roque, the "bulge" of South America. Work around that... and then, somewhere below Recife, strike SE and straight out to sea. If you catch the southern trades, woo hoo; you'll be in South Africa in a month or so. Great climate, lightly populated, and the natives are actually less technologically advanced than you are. Unfortunately, this requires a long, long trip to the jumping off point, some luck catching the trades, and then a frickin' huge reach across some very blue water. An *Arawak (or anyone with Polynesian tech and Polynesian nerves) could do it once the route was known. But asking them to find it blind... no. Doug M. Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 09:44:09 -0500 From: Old Toby Organization: The University of Michigan Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 Douglas Muir wrote: > > An *Arawak (or anyone with Polynesian tech and Polynesian nerves) could do it > once the route was known. But asking them to find it blind... no. Hmm, I think it's actually rather unrealistic to transplant the Polynesian navigational package into the Caribbean (unless the Polynesians some how manage to colonize America themselves...). The Caribbean is a very different set-up from the South Pacific, it consists of a crescent shaped chain of fairly close together islands, with a few more islands a little bit off the chain, but still very close. The only real major exceptions are the Netherlands Antilles, and they are right off the coast of South America. In short, there is no reason for the *Arawaks to develop techniques for finding and settling distant islands. This is not to say that they won't be experts at their own brand of navigation, but this will be based more on hopping between close islands, maybe with techniques for cutting across the Caribbean to the other end of the crescent, or distant (but known) coasts. Old Toby Least Known Dog on the Net Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 10:20:55 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 Old Toby wrote: > Hmm, I think it's actually rather unrealistic to transplant the > Polynesian navigational package into the Caribbean (unless the > Polynesians some how manage to colonize America themselves...). Nope, that's not the case here. > The Caribbean is a very different set-up from the South Pacific, it > consists of a crescent shaped chain of fairly close together islands, > with a few more islands a little bit off the chain, but still very > close. [snippage] Well, actually, I agree. I'm using "Polynesian" here as shorthand for a navigational and ship design package that will let them cross blue water in good sized boats. I think it would be fascinating to sit down and try to design an alternative Neolithic navigation package. The Northwest Indians were on their way to one in OTL -- they had some startlingly large canoes, and regularly took them far out of sight of land. Hmm, let's see. My guess is that the *Arawaks wouldn't be quite as good at navigation per se -- fewer stretches of open water to cross, as you say. Ship design... let's give them double-hulled canoes, like the Polynesians; it's a fairly easy and obvious model (though AFAIK no Indians ever came up with it, and for that matter Europeans and Chinese avoided it too). Instead of the Polynesian wishbone sails, though, let's give 'em the Viking Big-Ass Square Sail model. That should be interesting. Let's give them a sharp bowsprit on the canoe, and bowlines (which the Vikings never had). And, just to be weird, a bowsail. Very large ships have two sails, like the Polynesians... but since they've never figured out the lateen rig, it's just one smaller square sail on a mizzen. Not terribly efficient, but a modest step forward. Burn-shape-scrape dugouts for the hulls -- Native Americans will reach the Bronze Age in this TL, but not until after the *Arawak civilization has collapsed. Woven leather cords for rigging. A big steering oar. That's a long range trade-and-exploration ship. For short range travel (and for inter-island raids), monster canoes paddled by guys with oars... a cross between a NW Indian canoe and an Anglo-Saxon oar-ship. Thoughts? Doug M. Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 23:02:38 -0800 From: Conrad Hodson Organization: Oregon Public Networking Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Douglas Muir wrote: > > I think it would be fascinating to sit down and try to design an alternative > Neolithic navigation package. The Northwest Indians were on their way to one > in OTL -- they had some startlingly large canoes, and regularly took them far > out of sight of land. They had some startlingly big trees to work with--"dugout" technology gets you a long way when old-growth trees run up to twenty feet in diameter and three hundred long! I've played around a bit with NW cultures as a base for a seafaring civilization. One key contrast for them with most other cultures is the sheltered immensity of the Inside Passage country with the stark and deadly harborlessness south of Cape Flattery. It's one of the world's most dangerous killer coasts, directly adjacent to one of the world's great maritime "nurseries" of sheltered water offering rich fishing and trade. In European terms, it's as if Norway and Portugal were right next to each other! The Portuguese, however, became a great maritime people in spite of having almost no harbors. Fishermen launched boats through the surf, and built boats that could ride out storms because they died if they sought "shelter" on shore if bad weather blew up. When large ships came along, Portuguese sailors were very good at handling them. Now, what if we have a NW culture in isolation, either because it got an earlier start or because something happened to delay Eurasian preemption? Just on its southern fringe is the open coast of Washington, Oregon, and northern California. OTL, the people here were lower tech than those around Juan de Fuca and north--but they were in contact to some extent, and took their notions of luxury from the high cultures to the north. Their trees are as big as anybody's though--and bigger when you get down to redwood country. So imagine what happens when some of the open-coast people start imitating the huge canoes of the Makah or Salish? The Makah are a good bet--OTL they were the real blue-water men (including hunting grey whales, which are by far the most likely to fight back of any cetacean). The Makah also lived in the main area producing the _Dentalium_ shells, which were traded as far south as Mendocino, and inland as far as the Klamath Basin. So some tribe with a bay and a halfway gentle bar (Coos Bay springs immediately to mind) or even a less gentle one, emulates the Portuguese and learns to fish and trade. On this deadliest of lee shores, they have a hard school; I could see them eventually surpassing the Inside Passage peoples as bluewater navigators. They would also have some reason to learn celestial latitude sighting--the smart way to sail off the open NW coast is a hundred miles or more offshore, missing the vicious gusts off the headlands and leaving yourself room to ride out a blow without being driven onto the rocks. Latitude observations from Polaris, without instruments, can be done accurate to thirty miles or so, and would tell them when they needed to turn in for their destinations. After a couple of centuries of this, we might see giant canoes of Douglas Fir and coast redwood probing down as far as Mexico, though the slog back offers a bitter choice of bucking headwinds or risking a ride back on the SW gales of late autumn. An incentive to make their ships even more seaworthy--adding planks to the bulwarks or decking them over, perhaps. Meanwhile, the Inside Passage people face a great temptation to stay with the known conditions of sheltered water--"When you pass Waada, forget your home!" Conrad Hodson Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 22:29:27 -0800 From: Conrad Hodson Organization: Oregon Public Networking Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Old Toby wrote: > Hmm, I think it's actually rather unrealistic to transplant the > Polynesian navigational package into the Caribbean (unless the > Polynesians some how manage to colonize America themselves...). > The Caribbean is a very different set-up from the South Pacific, it > consists of a crescent shaped chain of fairly close together islands, > with a few more islands a little bit off the chain, but still very > close. The real difference is that the Caribbean is _tiny_ compared to the Pacific (so is everything else!); you can see the next island down the chain in most places. In fact, you can go from Trinidad to Florida without being out of sight of land for long at all. The only real major exceptions are the Netherlands Antilles, > and they are right off the coast of South America. In short, there > is no reason for the *Arawaks to develop techniques for finding and > settling distant islands. This is not to say that they won't be > experts at their own brand of navigation, but this will be based > more on hopping between close islands, maybe with techniques for > cutting across the Caribbean to the other end of the crescent, or > distant (but known) coasts. Given that long string of islands blocking the Trade Winds swell, I wonder if they'd pick up the Micronesian trick of keeping track of island positions by the intersecting wave patterns created by islands and the gaps between them? Could be useful at night or in poor visibility--except of course that visibility there is generally good and the islands are close enough that sailors would beach their canoes each night for better rest and to reduce waterlogging. (Every rowing or paddling culture in the world, AFAIK, beaches their vessels whenever possible because they're so much easier to row or paddle when they're dried out and light. Greek triremes, Viking _drakar_, Pacific Island canoes, all seem to have this in common. Of course, one doesn't want them _too_ dry, since that can crack the dugouts or open leaks in planked vessels--so you see boats on the beach in boathouses, shaded by mats, hauled up to the treeline.) But you're right; Caribbean navigation might be too easy to foster the very difficult development of no-instrument celestial navigation and sophisticated dead reckoning. Conrad Hodson Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 14:48:04 -0700 From: Ian Samuels Organization: University of Calgary Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Douglas Muir wrote: > Ian Samuels wrote: > > [snippery] > As noted, the Sa'dids did indeed take to the sea in a modest way; they were > junior partners in the whole Barbary Pirate enterprise that got under way in > the 16th century (and lasted into the 19th). > > Problem is, they went in for maritime designs specialized for piratical and > semi-piratical work in the Mediterranean... galleys (including copies of > earlier Italian designs) and high-speed, low freeboard lateen ships. Great > for chasing down infidel ships and the occasional coastal raid, not so good > for crossing the Atlantic. [Doug later notes, correctly, that OTL Moroccans lacked the materials, skill-sets and institutional supports to seriously compete with their Christian counterparts at sea] Which means my trans-Atlantic Moroccan empire idea is probably going to have to wait for an earlier, less tenuous POD. Drat. Not entirely unexpected, but still... drat. [snippitude] > > [snip; the problems with going to the Old World from the New -- in Africa > > you die of disease or are killed by locals] > > > > Of course, dying of disease happens pretty much anywhere the Arawaks land. > > Ayup. > > > > But unfriendly as the West African coast may be, people landing without > > attempts at conversion or pretensions to conquest are likely to fare > > better than anywhere north of the Sahara. All depends on who you run into, > > of course. > > No, SS Africa is the worst. _Europeans_ died wholesale from the diseases > there. "The Bight of Benin, the Bight of Benin..." Of course, since the Europeans had no immunity to local diseases. This says nothing, however, about the relative death rate among *Arawaks landing in SS Africa vs. Europe or North Africa -- the disease set is merely different, not inherently more destructive, and both situations are equally alien to the *Arawaks. In SS Africa it's malaria, in Europe it's smallpox & plague. In any case the above was a reference to political situation, not so much disease. Esp if one lands on the west coast of the Sahel -- here the Takrur have been in long-standing contact with Berber traders through the Ghanaian state, & the religious and cultural environment isn't quite as forbidding. The Arawaks wouldn't even look quite so bizarre in this context. [snip] > > Why, incidentally, would Christian Iberia be a better bet than the > > Almohads? I would have expected them to be pretty much similar, at least > > in terms of encountering foreigners. (The Almohads, of course, have all > > the fervor of the recently-converted and are in the midst of jihad -- but > > this has more consequence for their internal politics than for the > > mentality of their frontiers.) > > At this point, the Christian Iberians are a little less xenophobic and a > little more curious about the world generally (a little... and this isrelative > to the Almohads). Hmmm... we might be giving the Almohads too little credit here. Religious zealots they may be, but they're also from tribes that have been on the trans-Saharan routes for a long time -- and thus exposed to a wide range of funny-looking people and customs to a much greater degree than the Christian Iberians of the period. I can see them being just as nasty as the Spaniards (on account of their unique circumstances in the 12th century), but not more so. [snip] > The very best bet for an *Arawak would be to head south instead of east. > Cross the Caribbean to the Guyanas, then work his way down the Atlantic coast > of Brazil. Reach the mouth of the Amazon and keep going, another thousand > miles east and south to the Cabo de Sao Roque, the "bulge" of South America. > Work around that... and then, somewhere below Recife, strike SE and straight > out to sea. > > If you catch the southern trades, woo hoo; you'll be in South Africa in a > month or so. Great climate, lightly populated, and the natives are actually > less technologically advanced than you are. Mmmm? Why would the climate be "great" for the *Arawaks, who presumably would be more acclimated to a tropical environment like the Sahel or the Akan? And unless we're talking about enclaves of Khoisan, southern Africa is mostly Iron Age Bantu cultures by the early 11th century. > Unfortunately, this requires a long, long trip to the jumping off point, some > luck catching the trades, and then a frickin' huge reach across some very blue water. > > An *Arawak (or anyone with Polynesian tech and Polynesian nerves) could do it > once the route was known. But asking them to find it blind... no. Too true, too true. -ian > > Doug M. > > Subject: Islam and the Atlantic (was Polynesian Arawaks) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 20:56:24 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 Ian Samuels wrote: > > [Doug later notes, correctly, that OTL Moroccans lacked the materials, > skill-sets and institutional supports to seriously compete with their > Christian counterparts at sea] > > Which means my trans-Atlantic Moroccan empire idea is probably going to > have to wait for an earlier, less tenuous POD. Drat. Not entirely > unexpected, but still... drat. Hum. The problem here (IMO) is that from, ohhhh, the mid 12th century onward you have a steadily growing volume of Christian trade going around Gibraltar. This has several cause; one is that pre-existing weakness in Islamic carrying capacity, and another is general Almohad conservatism. Whatever the reasons, though, the long-term results were all bad from an Islamic POV. One, it roughly doubled the size of the Christian maritime and trade world, and made shipbuilding more profitable generally. Two, once the Genoese and Venetians and Aragonese -- and, a bit later, the Portuguese and French -- had those trade routes in their hands, they were willing to fight to keep them... and they had the advantages of incumbency. Since a trade network involves significant startup costs, the Christians gained an edge that they never surrendered. Three, and the real killer in the long run, is that beginning in the 13th century you start getting cross-fertilization of Mediterranean and Northern European ship designs, with the final results being the first true full-rigged ships... the carrack in the mid 15th century, and the galleon about 80 years later. Big, sturdy, and capable of carrying immense weights of cannon, these brutes could catch and destroy any Islamic ship of comparable weight. As frosting on the cake, note that deforestation had been progressing in North Africa slowly but steadily for a long, long time. The Atlas Mountains were heavily forested in Roman times; this was not the case by the 15th century. And as a cherry on the frosting, the expansion of the Christian maritime world (#1, above) meant that Christian ships could draw on ever wider markets for naval stores and for skilled labor. By the middle 1500s, Spanish galleons might contain pine from the Baltic, British oak and ash, hemp from Aragon, and sails woven of Neapolitan linen; it might have a Castilian captain, a Flemish pilot, and a crew of Portuguese and Sicilians. The Islamic world never could muster equivalent resources in the Mediterranean (though the Turks made a respectable effort in the age of Barbarossa). The western Med was worse off than the east in this regard, and they were never even in the game WRT the Atlantic. They could and did put resources into piracy and raiding, and this gave them respectable payoffs (enough so that they kept it going for 300 years)... but that's a dead-end line of development as far as crossing the Atlantic goes; wrong ship designs, wrong resource allocations. So I think your POV would have to be no later than 1150, and possibly much earlier. Aborting the Almohads might be good, although that alone probably wouldn't prevent Christian dominance of the western Mediterranean... just slow the Islamic decline a bit. Not sure what the answer is, but it's an interesting question. > > > But unfriendly as the West African coast may be, people landing without > > > attempts at conversion or pretensions to conquest are likely to fare > > > better than anywhere north of the Sahara. All depends on who you run into, > > > of course. > > > > No, SS Africa is the worst. _Europeans_ died wholesale from the diseases > > there. "The Bight of Benin, the Bight of Benin..." > > Of course, since the Europeans had no immunity to local diseases. This > says nothing, however, about the relative death rate among *Arawaks > landing in SS Africa vs. Europe or North Africa -- the disease set is > merely different, not inherently more destructive, Ah, no. It's both different /and/ more destructive. In a tropical environment, you not only have bacteria and viruses, but parasites of every kind... from single-celled ones like malaria and trypanosomes to nasties like the bilharzia fluke and the guinea worm. > In any case the above was a reference to political situation, not so much > disease. Esp if one lands on the west coast of the Sahel -- here the > Takrur have been in long-standing contact with Berber traders through the > Ghanaian state, & the religious and cultural environment isn't quite as > forbidding. The Arawaks wouldn't even look quite so bizarre in this > context. Okay. Interesting. The problem here, though, is you're now crossing the Atlantic in about the worst way possible -- between 5 and 15 North, right through the uckiest part of the Doldrums (and the middle of the Sargasso Sea to boot). > Hmmm... we might be giving the Almohads too little credit here. Religious > zealots they may be, but they're also from tribes that have been on the > trans-Saharan routes for a long time -- and thus exposed to a wide range > of funny-looking people and customs to a much greater degree than the > Christian Iberians of the period. Call me an Almoravid sympathizer. The "Islam was a horrible mistake, Muslims are howling fanatics" stereotype is popular everywhere in the West these days, and this NG is no exception. It's pretty irritating. However, it's also true that there have been a few Islamic groups whom this particular shoe more or less fits, and the Almohads are very high on that list. I mean, they really _were_ howling fanatics -- aggressive, xenophobic, narrow-minded and destructive. They did little good and much damage. Before the Almohads, Morocco and Islamic Iberia were centers of civilization (if getting a bit decadent); after the Almohads, they were backwaters. They weren't even particularly good at the one thing they /should/ have been good at, viz., waging holy war against the infidel. T'was they who lost Las Navas de Tolosa, the climactic battle of the Reconquista and the one that sealed the ultimate fate of Islam in Iberia. As to the Almohads having seen more funny-looking strangers than Iberian Christians, mmm, honors about even there -- the Portuguese were already trading regularly with England, Galicia still held the ruins of towns destroyed by Viking raids, and everybody knew someone who'd been to the Holy Land with the Crusaders. Doug M. Subject: Re: Islam and the Atlantic (& diseases 'n such... was Polynesian Arawaks) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 01:55:26 -0700 From: Ian Samuels Organization: University of Calgary Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Douglas Muir wrote: > Ian Samuels wrote: > > > > [Doug later notes, correctly, that OTL Moroccans lacked the materials, > > skill-sets and institutional supports to seriously compete with their > > Christian counterparts at sea] > > > > Which means my trans-Atlantic Moroccan empire idea is probably going to > > have to wait for an earlier, less tenuous POD. Drat. Not entirely > > unexpected, but still... drat. > > Hum. The problem here (IMO) is that from, ohhhh, the mid 12th century onward > you have a steadily growing volume of Christian trade going around Gibraltar. > This has several cause; one is that pre-existing weakness in Islamic carrying > capacity, and another is general Almohad conservatism. > [Christian trade doubles in size, & the Christians gain advantages as incumbents on these trade routes -- further fortified by advantages in naval technology] > As frosting on the cake, note that deforestation had been progressing in North > Africa slowly but steadily for a long, long time. The Atlas Mountains were > heavily forested in Roman times; this was not the case by the 15th century. > > And as a cherry on the frosting, the expansion of the Christian maritime world > (#1, above) meant that Christian ships could draw on ever wider markets for > naval stores and for skilled labor. By the middle 1500s, Spanish galleons > might contain pine from the Baltic, British oak and ash, hemp from Aragon, and > sails woven of Neapolitan linen; it might have a Castilian captain, a Flemish > pilot, and a crew of Portuguese and Sicilians. > > The Islamic world never could muster equivalent resources in the Mediterranean > (though the Turks made a respectable effort in the age of Barbarossa). The > western Med was worse off than the east in this regard, and they were never > even in the game WRT the Atlantic. They could and did put resources into > piracy and raiding, and this gave them respectable payoffs (enough so that > they kept it going for 300 years)... but that's a dead-end line of development > as far as crossing the Atlantic goes; wrong ship designs, wrong resource allocations. > > So I think your POV would have to be no later than 1150, and possibly much earlier. Probably right. The only workable POD I can think of offhand involves the survival of the Caliphate of Cordoba averting the Reconquista -- or, even further back, a more successful Arab conquest of Iberia and southern France in the 8th century. Ideas explored on this NG waaay back, but they might be worth revisiting a bit; the original "al-Andalus" threads were focussed mainly on producing an Islamic Spain as a latter-day superpower, which seems less interesting now than the possibility of dynamic conflict and interaction between a group of western Mediterranean Islamic kingdoms in competition with Christian powers in the north and Italy. [snip] > > > No, SS Africa is the worst. _Europeans_ died wholesale from the diseases > > > there. "The Bight of Benin, the Bight of Benin..." > > > > Of course, since the Europeans had no immunity to local diseases. This > > says nothing, however, about the relative death rate among *Arawaks > > landing in SS Africa vs. Europe or North Africa -- the disease set is > > merely different, not inherently more destructive, > > Ah, no. It's both different /and/ more destructive. In a tropical > environment, you not only have bacteria and viruses, but parasites of every > kind... from single-celled ones like malaria and trypanosomes to nasties like > the bilharzia fluke and the guinea worm. Well, malaria and the trypanosomes are the real "nasties" from the *Arawak point of view, since they're the fatal ones. Not so much bilharzia fluke, guinea worm & assorted other parasites -- however grotesque and unpleasant they might otherwise be. Compare and contrast with the nastier vector-borne diseases like typhus and plague or host-to-host epidemics like tuberculosis, measles and esp. smallpox, which could reach up to 20% mortality rates in host populations _with immunities_. Almost all of these are far more prevalent in temperate environments in the period we're talking about. [snip] > > Hmmm... we might be giving the Almohads too little credit here. Religious > > zealots they may be, but they're also from tribes that have been on the > > trans-Saharan routes for a long time -- and thus exposed to a wide range > > of funny-looking people and customs to a much greater degree than the > > Christian Iberians of the period. > > Call me an Almoravid sympathizer. Oh, I'm not an Almohad apologist by any means. They were pretty much a disaster for the already declining Islamic world of the western Med (although to be fair, the Almoravids contributed significantly to that decline in many ways themselves). [snip] > They weren't even particularly good at the one thing they /should/ have been > good at, viz., waging holy war against the infidel. T'was they who lost Las > Navas de Tolosa, the climactic battle of the Reconquista and the one that > sealed the ultimate fate of Islam in Iberia. It could be argued, though, that the fate of Islam in Iberia had been sealed well before the Almohads came on the scene -- the economic and military balance was already well in the Christians' favour even by the time the Almoravids arrived. > As to the Almohads having seen more funny-looking strangers than Iberian > Christians, mmm, honors about even there -- the Portuguese were already > trading regularly with England, Galicia still held the ruins of towns > destroyed by Viking raids, and everybody knew someone who'd been to the Holy > Land with the Crusaders. Yeah, fair enough. -ian Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 23:15:48 -0800 From: Conrad Hodson Organization: Oregon Public Networking Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Ian Samuels wrote: > Of course, since the Europeans had no immunity to local diseases. This > says nothing, however, about the relative death rate among *Arawaks > landing in SS Africa vs. Europe or North Africa -- the disease set is > merely different, not inherently more destructive, and both situations are > equally alien to the *Arawaks. In SS Africa it's malaria, in Europe it's > smallpox & plague. No--the Arawaks die in droves if they touch Europe, they die to a man if they touch tropical West Africa. Essentially, West Africa had all the Eurasian childhood diseases, _plus_ malaria and yellow fever, _plus_ all the uniquely African nasties. South America was a relatively healthy place before Iberians and their African slaves came in with the ailments of both eastern continents. The first European to explore the Amazon from the Andes to the sea remarked on dense populations of healthy Indians along the river--something that would certainly _not_ have been observed a century later! Chagas' disease and Montezuma's Revenge just don't match Lassa and Ebola and falciparum malaria and Yellow Jack and sleeping sickness and all the European stuff that seems to have found its way into Africa often enough to be endemic there. Malaria, incidentally, is available in Europe as well; it used to be a problem as far north as England. Conrad Hodson Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 10:40:45 -0700 From: Ian Samuels Organization: University of Calgary Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Conrad Hodson wrote: > > On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Ian Samuels wrote: > > Of course, since the Europeans had no immunity to local diseases. This > > says nothing, however, about the relative death rate among *Arawaks > > landing in SS Africa vs. Europe or North Africa -- the disease set is > > merely different, not inherently more destructive, and both situations are > > equally alien to the *Arawaks. In SS Africa it's malaria, in Europe it's > > smallpox & plague. > > No--the Arawaks die in droves if they touch Europe, they die to a man if > they touch tropical West Africa. Essentially, West Africa had all the > Eurasian childhood diseases, _plus_ malaria and yellow fever, _plus_ all > the uniquely African nasties. _Minus_ plague and smallpox -- major European killers which thrive mainly in temperate zones. (Notice how neither disease was a major mortality factor in tropical Africa -- there's a reason for this.) Yellow fever is a factor in both African _and_ European contexts right up to the beginning of the 20th century. [snip] > Chagas' disease and Montezuma's Revenge just don't match > Lassa and Ebola Red herrings in this context, surely - these diseases only manifest in the late twentieth century. [snip] and sleeping > sickness Trypanosomiasis is probably the closest African counterpart to bubonic plague, but it fills a niche that the plague bacteria _can't_ fill in tropical regions. And its mortality rate isn't as high. and all the European stuff that seems to have found its way into > Africa often enough to be endemic there. So what you have are overlapping disease sets, distinguished by the greater prevalences some diseases in specific environments and the total absence of certain diseases from others. This is a far cry from declaring tropical disease to be "worse" than its temperate counterparts. -ian Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 22:48:47 -0800 From: Conrad Hodson Organization: Oregon Public Networking Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Ian Samuels wrote: > > _Minus_ plague and smallpox -- major European killers which thrive mainly > in temperate zones. (Notice how neither disease was a major mortality > factor in tropical Africa -- there's a reason for this.) This is simply wrong. India is as tropical as Africa, and has been the site of many severe plague epidemics. Plague broke out in _Panama_ during canal construction, and it hit Greenland in the 1300's. In fact, one of the two sites where plague is believed to have originated (before being carried far and wide across the world by people) is the African Great Lakes area--right on the Equator. Plague is utterly indifferent to latitude and climate. Smallpox is the same story. _Very_ common in the tropics, including Africa. Check out the epidemiology of smallpox "eradication"--the last "wild" case was _in_ Africa, Somalia as I recall. Smallpox may well have originated as a human disease in India, not a temperate country either. Both diseases play a major role in European history, but not because they're somehow confined to temperate zones. Both are quite unaffected by climate, because they can live anywhere people (and rats) do. Yellow fever is a > factor in both African _and_ European contexts right up to the beginning > of the 20th century. Yellow fever has a dramatically recognizable set of symptoms--where is it in Hippocrates, or Galen? AFAIK, yellow fever _was_ confined to the tropics of West Africa before European sailors spread it on their ships. It can't vector to humans without _Aedes aegypti_ mosquitos which are killed by cold weather. On the other hand, _Aedes_ prefers artificial bodies of water--from a mud puddle to a water keg on a sailing ship. You had your diseases reversed here--yellow fever really is tied to the tropics. Outbreaks beyond the tropic zone happened in hot-summer areas after arrival of ships from Africa or the Caribbean, hitting places like Barcelona and Marseilles in Europe, or striking up the "temporarily tropical" Atlantic coast of North America in summertime. A further factor tying yellow fever to the tropics is it's need for wild primates as a reservoir. This has kept it from being endemic to tropical places such as Jamaica or Cuba, where it used to flare up periodically after a ship arrived from the Latin American mainland, or a slave ship from West Africa. Yellow fever, like many viruses, creates lifetime immunity in those who survive an attack. Human epidemics tend to have long intervals between them; enough susceptibles have to be born before the disease can revisit an area in a major way.> > > Chagas' disease and Montezuma's Revenge just don't match > > Lassa and Ebola > > Red herrings in this context, surely - these diseases only manifest in the > late twentieth century. For all epidemiologists can tell, those diseases have been regional hazards in Africa for thousands of years. Until the 1960's, and later in many areas, deaths from a huge variety of pathogens were just listed as "jungle fever" or "tropical typhus"--when they came to the attention of a western doctor at all. Many of these ailments need sophisticated immunological analysis for a solid diagnosis, and _that_ is the only thing that's unique to the late twentieth century. > > [snip] and sleeping > > sickness > > Trypanosomiasis is probably the closest African counterpart to bubonic > plague, but it fills a niche that the plague bacteria _can't_ fill in > tropical regions. And its mortality rate isn't as high. > > and all the European stuff that seems to have found its way into > > Africa often enough to be endemic there. > > So what you have are overlapping disease sets, distinguished by the > greater prevalences some diseases in specific environments and the total > absence of certain diseases from others. This is a far cry from declaring > tropical disease to be "worse" than its temperate counterparts. > But worse it is--because you are in error about the tropics being immune to the sorts of diseases that affect Europe. The most severe European epidemics are person-to-person infections, and those go literally anywhere that people do. Once they're introduced, of course; they weren't in Australia or the Americas or the Pacific islands until the Age of Discovery, but tropical Africa was never quite that isolated from world trade. Arab ships connected Zanzibar and the coast from Somalia to the Rufiji River with India and the Middle East, every year for about three millenia. (The trade was old when a European first reported it, in the 2nd Century BC.) In any case, there's not a single European dangerous disease that hasn't hit Zanzibar, Singapore or the Amazon--and how do you get more tropical than the Equator? The reverse is not true at all. Conrad Hodson Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 03:36:41 -0700 From: Ian Samuels Organization: University of Calgary Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Conrad Hodson wrote: > On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Ian Samuels wrote: > > > > _Minus_ plague and smallpox -- major European killers which thrive mainly > > in temperate zones. (Notice how neither disease was a major mortality > > factor in tropical Africa -- there's a reason for this.) > > This is simply wrong. No, it isn't, although perhaps I've been oversimplifying a tad. (But note that I said _mainly_ in temperate zones... see below.) India is as tropical as Africa, and has been the > site of many severe plague epidemics. Well, actually, Indian climate runs a gamut from subtropical to temperate. In any case, the thing about the plague bacterium is that, in order to be transmitted to humans, temperatures have to drop low enough for a blood clot to form in the gut of the fleas concerned -- thereby they starve and start biting everything in sight, including humans. This is much _less_ likely to happen in tropical regions than in subtropical regions (like Somalia) or in temperate regions (like Europe, hence a 30% death rate during the Black Death that pretty much could never have occurred in a tropical region). The bacteria probably did _originate_ in Africa, as you note (it first reached Constantinople through an ivory trade originating in the Zairean highlands) but it's far, far less likely to be lethal in that context. Plagues, esp bacterial ones, are hardly "utterly indifferent" to climate -- they are _organisms_ like any other. [snip] > Smallpox is the same story [actually, quite a different story...]. > _Very_ common in the tropics, including Africa. This I'll concede -- I was forgetting that smallpox and measles are viral diseases and hence much less affected by climate than their bacterial or parasitical counterparts. But it's worth noting that even given this, tropical disease appears not to be appreciably more lethal to the non-immunized than its temperate counterparts. To illustrate, let's take the problem from a different angle. If African tropical disease is crudely European + African disease sets, and the combination is pretty much 100% fatal (as you seem to be arguing), we would expect to see total extinction of native peoples in the New World where both these disease sets would have theoretically been operative at once (e.g. Mexico and the Caribbean). This simply isn't the case. The Caribs and Arawaks suffer the 90% death rate universal to first contact in the New World and are then, like the Micmac in North America, hunted to extinction. The natives in other tropical regions of the New World suffer massive diebacks, but no more so than those in temperate regions. Why? > Yellow fever is a > > factor in both African _and_ European contexts right up to the beginning > > of the 20th century. But only starting via transmission by European ships in the 15th century, you're quite right. [snip] > > Red herrings in this context, surely - these diseases only manifest in the > > late twentieth century. > > For all epidemiologists can tell, those diseases have been regional > hazards in Africa for thousands of years. Or not. Detailed evidence is rather hard to come by. In any case, both Lassa and Ebola are distinctive in their modern incarnations as _unsuccessful_ disease organisms that are too virulent, and hence kill their hosts too quickly, to achieve widespread dispersion. This is why they're so _rare_. Ascription of "jungle fever" to these diseases is iffy at best. [snip] > > So what you have are overlapping disease sets, distinguished by the > > greater prevalences some diseases in specific environments and the total > > absence of certain diseases from others. This is a far cry from declaring > > tropical disease to be "worse" than its temperate counterparts. > > > But worse it is--because you are in error about the tropics being immune > to the sorts of diseases that affect Europe. Partly so -- viral diseases like measles and smallpox are successful in both environments, contra my original contention. Bacteria and parasite-related diseases much less so, however. And overall it doesn't seem to have made a significant difference in mortality rates. [snip] -ian Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 23:39:38 -0800 From: Conrad Hodson Organization: Oregon Public Networking Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Ian Samuels wrote: > India is as tropical as Africa, and has been the > > site of many severe plague epidemics. > > Well, actually, Indian climate runs a gamut from subtropical to temperate. > In any case, the thing about the plague bacterium is that, in order to be > transmitted to humans, temperatures have to drop low enough for a blood > clot to form in the gut of the fleas concerned -- thereby they starve and > start biting everything in sight, including humans. This is much _less_ > likely to happen in tropical regions than in subtropical regions (like > Somalia) or in temperate regions (like Europe, hence a 30% death rate > during the Black Death that pretty much could never have occurred in a > tropical region). You keep asserting this, but I'm not inclined to let you beg the question. Your climate-oriented model for rat-flea-human transmission ignores the most important fact about plague--and it's the difference between a match and a forest fire. The great plague outbreaks that cause widespread human death--including the one that killed four million people in thoroughly tropical-monsoon Bombay and its hinterland--spread person-to-person as a respiratory infection; fleas are not involved. The flea-bitten human may become seriously or lethally ill--but is only rarely infective to his neighbors. The few percent of this sort of plague victim whose lungs are invaded by the bacterium, however, is the match that occasionally lights an enormous fire; the pneumonic plague epidemics are what has given this disease its reputation as a mass killer. And pneumonic plague has struck with fine impartiality from Greenland to the Equator; there are many historical examples, including the way it seems to have spread _down_ the Nile from the more tropical Sudan, and the way that Chinese epidemics have spread _north_ from tropical areas into the temperate parts of China. > > The bacteria probably did _originate_ in Africa, as you note (it first > reached Constantinople through an ivory trade originating in the Zairean > highlands) but it's far, far less likely to be lethal in that context. I'd like to see a cite on this--it's directly contrary to everything I've ever studied about plague. > Plagues, esp bacterial ones, are hardly "utterly indifferent" to climate > -- they are _organisms_ like any other. > Parasitic organisms, whose "habitat" is the inside of their hosts, not out in the breeze. There are bacteria which do seem to be confined to one climate zone--but this can lead to a false sense of security when the right kind of adaptation or transportation simply hasn't happened yet. Often it's no limit of the bacterium at all--but of a vector or reservoir host species--and the _only_ thing plague seems to require are rodents that form large interconnected colonies. Rats in cities, of course, but prairie dogs and ground squirrels work equally well in North America, and there are equivalent species in South America, SE Asia, Siberia and equatorial Africa. > > To illustrate, let's take the problem from a different angle. If African > tropical disease is crudely European + African disease sets, and the > combination is pretty much 100% fatal (as you seem to be arguing), we > would expect to see total extinction of native peoples in the New World > where both these disease sets would have theoretically been operative at > once (e.g. Mexico and the Caribbean). This simply isn't the case. The > Caribs and Arawaks suffer the 90% death rate universal to first contact in > the New World and are then, like the Micmac in North America, hunted to > extinction. The natives in other tropical regions of the New World suffer > massive diebacks, but no more so than those in temperate regions. Why? You seem to have an error in your demographics. "First contact" has actually been observed within the last century, with remote Amerindian tribes. _Extinction_ within three generations is quite common, even in the absence of warfare, in areas where the African scourges of malaria and yellow fever can reinforce the Eurasian childhood diseases. If you take a look at Central America--ever notice how many of the African-descended people are down on the coasts, and how surviving Indians are mostly way up in the highlands? The sickle-cell gene gives West African peoples a major survival advantage in areas of chronic malaria--it's the only reason that gene has survived, because its side effect of severe anemia in the homozygous children is very costly. > > > > > For all epidemiologists can tell, those diseases have been regional > > hazards in Africa for thousands of years. > > Or not. Detailed evidence is rather hard to come by. In any case, both > Lassa and Ebola are distinctive in their modern incarnations as > _unsuccessful_ disease organisms that are too virulent, and hence kill > their hosts too quickly, to achieve widespread dispersion. This is why > they're so _rare_. Ascription of "jungle fever" to these diseases is iffy > at best. > These and many, many others. Primates have been living in tropical Africa for about sixty million years--there are more primate diseases there than in all the rest of the world put together. It is also highly unlikely that we have even identified most of them yet. The point about Lassa and Ebola is that they are only a small part of a dreadful total burden of disease; just look at how many deaths honest African doctors end up ascribing to simple "FUO"--jargon for "fever of unknown origin". It's not just theory or speculation--check out accounts of what happened to immigrants, laborers and soldiers brought into tropical Africa--even from other tropical areas. The old sailors' warning of: "Lad you steer clear of the Bight of Benin, there's three men comes out where a hundred went in" was passed on by people who knew what they had seen. Conrad Hodson Subject: Re: Bring Out Your Dead! Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 13:57:05 -0700 From: Ian Samuels Organization: University of Calgary Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Conrad Hodson wrote: > On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Ian Samuels wrote: [snip] > Your climate-oriented model for rat-flea-human transmission ignores the > most important fact about plague--and it's the difference between a match > and a forest fire. The great plague outbreaks that cause widespread human > death--including the one that killed four million people in thoroughly > tropical-monsoon Bombay and its hinterland-- Okay, you seem to be missing my point. To repeat, I'm _not_ arguing that there are never plague outbreaks in tropical regions, or the plague never spreads from tropical environments to temperate ones. I'm arguing that historically plague has been _less_ likely in tropical regions to make the transition from morbidity to widespread mortality. This point would seem to be fairly self-evident -- how commonly was plague cited as a "tropical disease" in colonial European narratives obsessed with climatic determinism and classifying disease in these terms? Now, of course, in modern times plague _has_ occurred more frequently in tropical regions -- but then, modern times have witnessed the creation of unprecedented medical technologies and infrastructures in the Western world that aren't replicated in places like Kenya, Somalia, China or Bengal. It's particularly dangerous in epidemiology to telescope modern circumstances into imagining the past. The vast majority of our _premodern_ reports of plague seem to establish it historically as a mainly temperate scourge. (Of course, there's another wrinkle to the situation -- which is that biases and gaps in the available sources may have left us with a badly distorted and flawed picture of premodern tropical disease environments. I don't discount that. I keep in mind, though, that even our imperfect premodern sources from, say, Africa, don't encode plague as the massive, pervasive threat that premodern Europe lives with from the 6th century onward.) > spread person-to-person as a > respiratory infection; fleas are not involved. This strikes me as simply wrong. Laying aside the involvement of fleas as the initial vector of disease for the moment, the relative importance of person-to-person and flea-borne cases in the great historical plagues is far from a settled question -- and in any case fleas can hardly be said to be "not involved" in the process. The discovery of the flea as a vector in the 19th century was based on the fact that during serious plague outbreaks, the disease often spread from sick to healthy persons who had _no_ direct contact. (frex cf. Gross, Ludwik. _How the Plague Bacillus and its Transmission Through Fleas were Discovered..._ Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America, Vol. 92, No. 17. (Aug 15, 1995), pp. 7609-7611). Indeed, some would contend that person-to-person contagion theory is a good deal more important as a Renaissance trope than as a factor in transmission of the disease. (cf. Carmichael, Ann G. _Contagion Theory and Contagion Practice in Fifteenth-Century Milan_. Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 2. (Summer, 1991), pp. 213-256. And though I wouldn't play down person-to-person transmission to quite the extent that Carmichael does, I think she has a valid point.) [snip] > > The bacteria probably did _originate_ in Africa, as you note (it first > > reached Constantinople through an ivory trade originating in the Zairean > > highlands) but it's far, far less likely to be lethal in that context. > > I'd like to see a cite on this--it's directly contrary to everything I've > ever studied about plague. I'm taking the argument most directly from David Keys' interdisciplinary study _Catastrophe_, which in part presents an archaeological case for the Great Plague in 6th century Constantinople (AFAIK the first recorded instance of bubonic plague) having reached the Roman Empire from East African ports built around the gold and ivory trade. _Catastrophe_ is of course presenting a much larger thesis about volcanology and the evolution of history that can't remotely be called conclusive, but his argument about the plague struck me as quite valid. (Sorry no page reference, I don't have a copy to hand, but if you like I can dig up some quotes later.) [snip; re: the complex question of climatic limitations on bacterial and parasitical infections] > Often it's no limit of the bacterium at all--but of a vector or > reservoir host species-- Which is a pretty crucial limit, wouldn't you say? > and the _only_ thing plague seems to require are > rodents that form large interconnected colonies. Well, there is the fairly critical question of flea biology as well, as I mentioned earlier. (I'm also taking this most directly from Keys, incidentally, so again I'll have to borrow another copy if you want a more precise cite.) [snip] > You seem to have an error in your demographics. "First contact" has > actually been observed within the last century, with remote Amerindian > tribes. _Extinction_ within three generations is quite common, even in > the absence of warfare, in areas where the African scourges of malaria and > yellow fever can reinforce the Eurasian childhood diseases. I guess I'm going to have to ask for some cites now. Ideally ones that demonstrate that these extinctions can in fact be traced to disease alone and differentiated from similar extinctions on, say, the eastern coast of North America at most latitudes. Extra marks if they can account for why similar extinctions don't occur among, say, the Maya, who would seem ideal candidates. > If you take a look at Central America--ever notice how many of the > African-descended people are down on the coasts, and how surviving Indians > are mostly way up in the highlands? Surviving Amerindian populations have tended to be in remote regions, and vulnerable to destruction through epidemic, _throughout_ the Americas. Of course, approaches in dealing with the outbreaks are probably considerably different between societies. [snip remedial lesson on sickle-cell anemia] > > Or not. Detailed evidence is rather hard to come by. In any case, both > > Lassa and Ebola are distinctive in their modern incarnations as > > _unsuccessful_ disease organisms that are too virulent, and hence kill > > their hosts too quickly, to achieve widespread dispersion. This is why > > they're so _rare_. Ascription of "jungle fever" to these diseases is iffy > > at best. > These and many, many others. Primates have been living in tropical Africa > for about sixty million years--there are more primate diseases there than > in all the rest of the world put together. It is also highly unlikely > that we have even identified most of them yet. It's probably certain we haven't identified most of them yet. That the disease environment of tropical Africa is very _diverse_ I don't dispute. That it's inherently more _fatal_ -- this is the sense in which I'm understanding you to be using the term "worse" -- is a different question entirely, particularly in the 12th century (where this discussion started). Much of the "dreadful total burden of disease" in Africa consists of illnesses that achieve widespread diversion by being largely nonfatal to their hosts. > The point about Lassa and > Ebola is that they are only a small part of a dreadful total burden of > disease; just look at how many deaths honest African doctors end > up ascribing to simple "FUO"--jargon for "fever of unknown origin". Well, let's look. How many deaths? Does FUO claim a significant share of African mortality? > It's not just theory or speculation--check out accounts of what happened > to immigrants, laborers and soldiers brought into tropical Africa--even > from other tropical areas. These are cases of people with no immunities travelling to a different disease environment. High mortality rates should not surprise us. The old sailors' warning of: "Lad you steer > clear of the Bight of Benin, there's three men comes out where a hundred > went in" was passed on by people who knew what they had seen. Which is a fair illustration of a healthy European wariness of going in to an environment to whose diseases they enjoyed no immunitry. But of course, one should be wary of interpreting old sailors' warnings as precise statistical reports. -ian Subject: Bring Out Your Dead! (was Polynesian Arawaks) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 12:27:47 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 Conrad Hodson wrote: > > > India is as tropical as Africa, and has been the > > > site of many severe plague epidemics. > > > > Well, actually, Indian climate runs a gamut from subtropical to temperate. > > In any case, the thing about the plague bacterium is that, in order to be > > transmitted to humans, temperatures have to drop low enough for a blood > > clot to form in the gut of the fleas concerned -- thereby they starve and > > start biting everything in sight, including humans. This is much _less_ > > likely to happen in tropical regions than in subtropical regions (like > > Somalia) or in temperate regions (like Europe, hence a 30% death rate > > during the Black Death that pretty much could never have occurred in a > > tropical region). > > You keep asserting this, but I'm not inclined to let you beg the question. > > Your climate-oriented model for rat-flea-human transmission ignores the > most important fact about plague--and it's the difference between a match > and a forest fire. The great plague outbreaks that cause widespread human > death--including the one that killed four million people in thoroughly > tropical-monsoon Bombay and its hinterland--spread person-to-person as a > respiratory infection; fleas are not involved. [snippage] Conrad, I agree with your general point, viz., that the African tropics are about the nastiest disease environment in the world, far worse than Europe. Also that tropics generally are worse than temperate zones. Also that most "temperate zone diseases" travel through the tropics perfectly well, with smallpox as Exhibit A. But I'm not sure if you're right about _pasturella pestis_, though. The proportions between bubonic and pneumonic plague, and the different vectors (fleaborne and airborne), are still somewhat controversial and confused; at a minimum, they seem to have shifted curiously from one outbreak to another. And while it's certainly true that plague has killed many millions in the tropics, historically speaking, over a span of centuries, it seems to have been more of a temperate-zone scourge. I also note that, in the great 14th century outbreaks, there was a crude north-south gradient of lethality. Europe north of the Mediterranean suffered worse than the Islamic world, and Scandinavia suffered the worst of all -- the total mortality rate seems to have been 40%-50%, instead of the 30%-35% of the rest of Europe. Scandinavia had been falling into relative eclipse for a while at that point, but the disproportionate impact of the plague helps explain why they more or less disappear from general European history books until the Reformation. > > The bacteria probably did _originate_ in Africa, as you note (it first > > reached Constantinople through an ivory trade originating in the Zairean > > highlands) but it's far, far less likely to be lethal in that context. > > I'd like to see a cite on this--it's directly contrary to everything I've > ever studied about plague. Agreed. Last I heard, plague had a central Asian origin. IIRC the big colonies of burrowing rodents in Mongolia and southern Siberia (marmots or something, local analogs to prairie dogs) were the prime suspects for being the original hosts. > It's not just theory or speculation--check out accounts of what happened > to immigrants, laborers and soldiers brought into tropical Africa--even > from other tropical areas. The old sailors' warning of: "Lad you steer > clear of the Bight of Benin, there's three men comes out where a hundred > went in" was passed on by people who knew what they had seen. Yep. Incidentally, there are still some corners of the world that are no-go areas for people with the wrong genes. Travelling around SE Asia in 1998, I was repeatedly warned away from northern Thailand and Laos -- a region that was suffering an outbreak of cerebal malaria just then. It was a drug-resistant strain that wasn't much worse than a bad flu for locals (who'd been living with its precursors for centuries, and had inherited resistance), but was very, very dangerous to Europeans -- brain damage and death. There was stuff up there that I wanted to see, but having experienced tropical fevers firsthand already (a brief bout of dengue fever a couple of years earlier), I decided that it really wasn't worth It, and went west towards Burma instead. Dunno if this particular strain is still up there, or if it gradually burned out, or if they've found a drug cocktail to deal with it (unlikely)... but, point is, the Bight of Benin is still out there, albeit smaller than it used to be. Doug M. Subject: Re: Bring Out Your Dead! (was Polynesian Arawaks) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 14:11:32 -0700 From: Ian Samuels Organization: University of Calgary Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Douglas Muir wrote (in reply to Conrad Hodson, but perhaps this is a chance to usefully clarify some points): [snip] > Conrad, I agree with your general point, viz., that the African tropics are > about the nastiest disease environment in the world, far worse than Europe. > Also that tropics generally are worse than temperate zones. Also that most > "temperate zone diseases" travel through the tropics perfectly well, with > smallpox as Exhibit A. I downplayed the fecundity of Africa's disease environment too much in my early posts -- although IMO the contemporary European situation, largely the product of modern medicine, has a way of obscuring the diversity of its own historical disease environment. But I've yet to be convinced of its being a necessarily more _fatal_ one, esp in the period that was under discussion in the "Polynesian Arawaks" thread. > But I'm not sure if you're right about _pasturella pestis_, though. The > proportions between bubonic and pneumonic plague, and the different vectors > (fleaborne and airborne), are still somewhat controversial and confused; at a > minimum, they seem to have shifted curiously from one outbreak to another. > And while it's certainly true that plague has killed many millions in the > tropics, historically speaking, over a span of centuries, it seems to have > been more of a temperate-zone scourge. I agree. > I also note that, in the great 14th century outbreaks, there was a crude > north-south gradient of lethality. Europe north of the Mediterranean suffered > worse than the Islamic world, and Scandinavia suffered the worst of all -- the > total mortality rate seems to have been 40%-50%, instead of the 30%-35% of the > rest of Europe. > > Scandinavia had been falling into relative eclipse for a while at that point, > but the disproportionate impact of the plague helps explain why they more or > less disappear from general European history books until the Reformation. In subsequent history, this gradient starts to reverse -- through the 18th and 19th centuries North Africa hosts the biggest plague outbreaks -- but this is only after the Renaissance, when emerging modern medicine starts to become a factor in the West. [snip] -ian Subject: Re: Bring Out Your Dead! (was Polynesian Arawaks) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 21:56:10 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 Ian Samuels wrote: > > I also note that, in the great 14th century outbreaks, there was a crude > > north-south gradient of lethality. Europe north of the Mediterranean suffered > > worse than the Islamic world, and Scandinavia suffered the worst of all -- the > > total mortality rate seems to have been 40%-50%, instead of the 30%-35% of the > > rest of Europe. > > > > Scandinavia had been falling into relative eclipse for a while at that point, > > but the disproportionate impact of the plague helps explain why they more or > > less disappear from general European history books until the Reformation. > > In subsequent history, this gradient starts to reverse -- through the 18th > and 19th centuries North Africa hosts the biggest plague outbreaks -- but > this is only after the Renaissance, when emerging modern medicine starts > to become a factor in the West. Not sure if it was modern medicine per se, so much as improvements in nutrition, hygeiene, and general health. Modern medicine, let's face it, is not much more than 150 years old; as Stephen Maturin could tell you, a doctor in 1815 was doing much the same things that his remote ancestor had in the days of Elizabeth and Philip. But nutrition and whatnot could easily account for the observed facts. As a _very_ gross generalization, Europeans got slowly but steadily richer and better fed from about 1500 onwards, while North Africans got poorer and more malnourished. I'm not talking Paul Kennedy "relative decline" stuff here, either. I mean, North Africans got poorer in absolute terms. I don't have a single cite, but I do have a lot of pieces that all point in that direction. To give just one example, Max Rodenbeck's chatty _Cairo: The City Victorious_ describes the downward decline of Egypt generally, and its capital in particular, after the Ottoman conquest. What had once been a thriving center of culture and commerce steadily declined into a stagnant backwater. Poverty and disease spread steadily, and large areas of the city were actually abandoned. What's interesting is that Egypt's population seems to have remained stable, or even declined slightly, over the 300 years between the Ottoman conquest and the fall of the Mamelukes. Early 19th century Europeans considered Egypt to be _under_ populated! This suggests some alarming things about the general state of health in the region... and, indeed, contemporary European travel accounts repeatedly emphasize the filth, malnourishment and disease that were regular parts of both urban and rural life. It's quite clear that the region's disease environment got worse from a European POV -- the Crusaders reported no more episodes of fever and illness than comparable armies did in Europe, but Napoleon's army was quickly crippled by disease. To give just one example, many French soldiers reported that they had started menstruating. In fact, they were urinating out a combination of blood and the clotted dead bodies of thousands of blood flukes. The flukes had been endemic to Egypt since dynastic times, but by 1800 public health had declined to the point where they were literally everywhere; everyone had at least a mild infestation of them, and all water sources were infected. Anyhow, the point here is, I'm not sure if it's any fairer to point to North Africa (getting steadily poorer and sicker) than to Europe (getting richer and healthier) when discussing disease environments in early modern times. In the 14th century, there was probably very rough parity of general health across most of the Islamic and European worlds -- the Europeans might have had a slight edge in nutrition, Islam in sanitation and cleanliness, but overall they were roughly equal. This was most certainly not the case by 1800, when the average Moroccan or Egyptian was much poorer, badly fed, and more sickly than the average European. Doug M. Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 04:57:17 GMT From: Scott Carter Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 Douglas Muir wrote: > > Ian Samuels wrote: > > > As noted, the Sa'dids did indeed take to the sea in a modest way; they were > junior partners in the whole Barbary Pirate enterprise that got under way in > the 16th century (and lasted into the 19th). > > Problem is, they went in for maritime designs specialized for piratical and > semi-piratical work in the Mediterranean... galleys (including copies of > earlier Italian designs) and high-speed, low freeboard lateen ships. Great > for chasing down infidel ships and the occasional coastal raid, not so good > for crossing the Atlantic. Hmm, what did the Algerians use for their big raid on Iceland (in 1657)? Though nothing directly says they didn't make stops along the way, it seems improbable that such stops wouldn't attract rather a lot of unwelcome attention from people with much better blue water naval capability, from whence I infer that it was a direct trip from Morocco. Still, it does indicate a willingness to go pretty far into blue water. > Doug M. Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 07:29:33 GMT From: Scott Carter Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 Sorry about the self-followup. I wrote with a certain lack of reference materials to hand: > > Douglas Muir wrote: > > > > Ian Samuels wrote: > > > > > > > > As noted, the Sa'dids did indeed take to the sea in a modest way; they were > > junior partners in the whole Barbary Pirate enterprise that got under way in > > the 16th century (and lasted into the 19th).> > > > Problem is, they went in for maritime designs specialized for piratical and > > semi-piratical work in the Mediterranean... galleys (including copies of > > earlier Italian designs) and high-speed, low freeboard lateen ships. Great > > for chasing down infidel ships and the occasional coastal raid, not so good > > for crossing the Atlantic. > > Hmm, what did the Algerians use for their big raid on Iceland (in 1657)? Looks like that should be 1627, not 1657. > Though nothing directly says they didn't make stops along the way, it > seems improbable that such stops wouldn't attract rather a lot of > unwelcome attention from people with much better blue water naval > capability, from whence I infer that it was a direct trip from Morocco. > > Still, it does indicate a willingness to go pretty far into blue water. > > > > Doug M. Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 20:48:02 GMT From: "enitel" Organization: Enitel Internet Public Access Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 Scott Carter wrote in message news:3ABC4CEF.6560A09D@yahoo.com... > Sorry about the self-followup. > > I wrote with a certain lack of reference materials to hand: > > > > Douglas Muir wrote: > > > > > > Ian Samuels wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > As noted, the Sa'dids did indeed take to the sea in a modest way; they were > > > junior partners in the whole Barbary Pirate enterprise that got under way in > > > the 16th century (and lasted into the 19th). > > > > > > Problem is, they went in for maritime designs specialized for piratical and > > > semi-piratical work in the Mediterranean... galleys (including copies of > > > earlier Italian designs) and high-speed, low freeboard lateen ships. Great > > > for chasing down infidel ships and the occasional coastal raid, not so good > > > for crossing the Atlantic. > > > > Hmm, what did the Algerians use for their big raid on Iceland (in 1657)? > > Looks like that should be 1627, not 1657. > > > Though nothing directly says they didn't make stops along the way, it > > seems improbable that such stops wouldn't attract rather a lot of > > unwelcome attention from people with much better blue water naval > > capability, from whence I infer that it was a direct trip from Morocco. > > > > Still, it does indicate a willingness to go pretty far into blue water. > > > > > > > Doug M. Island?? It would be a very long voyage. What do they do on Island, not Eire? Magne Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 05:43:58 GMT From: Scott Carter Reply-To: Scott_Carter@VitalCom.com Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 enitel wrote: > > Scott Carter wrote in message > news:3ABC4CEF.6560A09D@yahoo.com... > > Sorry about the self-followup. > > > > I wrote with a certain lack of reference materials to hand: > > > > > > Douglas Muir wrote: > > > > > > > > Ian Samuels wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > As noted, the Sa'dids did indeed take to the sea in a modest way; they > were > > > > junior partners in the whole Barbary Pirate enterprise that got under > way in > > > > the 16th century (and lasted into the 19th). > > > > > > > > Problem is, they went in for maritime designs specialized for > piratical and > > > > semi-piratical work in the Mediterranean... galleys (including copies > of > > > > earlier Italian designs) and high-speed, low freeboard lateen ships. > Great > > > > for chasing down infidel ships and the occasional coastal raid, not so > good > > > > for crossing the Atlantic. > > > > > > Hmm, what did the Algerians use for their big raid on Iceland (in 1657)? > > > > Looks like that should be 1627, not 1657. > > > > > Though nothing directly says they didn't make stops along the way, it > > > seems improbable that such stops wouldn't attract rather a lot of > > > unwelcome attention from people with much better blue water naval > > > capability, from whence I infer that it was a direct trip from Morocco. > > > > > > Still, it does indicate a willingness to go pretty far into blue water. > > > > > > > > > > Doug M. > > Island?? > It would be a very long voyage. What do they do on Island, not Eire? AFAIK, mostly they grabbed ~400 people off of isolated coastal settlements as slaves. A few (37) were ransomed in 1636 and thirteen eventually made it back. One, a pastor whose name isn't mentioned in any reference I can find at the moment, wrote about his experiences. > Magne Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 20:13:09 GMT From: "enitel" Organization: Enitel Internet Public Access Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 Scott Carter wrote in message news:3ABD8593.717F6A40@yahoo.com... > > > enitel wrote: > > > > Scott Carter wrote in message > > news:3ABC4CEF.6560A09D@yahoo.com... > > > Sorry about the self-followup. > > > > > > I wrote with a certain lack of reference materials to hand: > > > > > > > > Douglas Muir wrote: > > > > > > > > > > Ian Samuels wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > As noted, the Sa'dids did indeed take to the sea in a modest way; they > > were > > > > > junior partners in the whole Barbary Pirate enterprise that got under > > way in > > > > > the 16th century (and lasted into the 19th). > > > > > > > > > > Problem is, they went in for maritime designs specialized for > > piratical and > > > > > semi-piratical work in the Mediterranean... galleys (including copies > > of > > > > > earlier Italian designs) and high-speed, low freeboard lateen ships. > > Great > > > > > for chasing down infidel ships and the occasional coastal raid, not so > > good > > > > > for crossing the Atlantic. > > > > > > > > Hmm, what did the Algerians use for their big raid on Iceland (in 1657)? > > > > > > Looks like that should be 1627, not 1657. > > > > > > > Though nothing directly says they didn't make stops along the way, it > > > > seems improbable that such stops wouldn't attract rather a lot of > > > > unwelcome attention from people with much better blue water naval > > > > capability, from whence I infer that it was a direct trip from Morocco. > > > > > > > > Still, it does indicate a willingness to go pretty far into blue water. > > > > > > > > > > > > > Doug M. > > > > Island?? > > It would be a very long voyage. What do they do on Island, not Eire? > > AFAIK, mostly they grabbed ~400 people off of isolated coastal > settlements as slaves. > > A few (37) were ransomed in 1636 and thirteen eventually made it back. > One, a pastor whose name isn't mentioned in any reference I can find > at the moment, wrote about his experiences. > But why go to Island for slaves? Island was very far away, it had probably little of defenses and no allies, but the same must be true for Africa south of Sahara, who is closer. The only reason I can thing of is blondes for the harems? Magne Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 11:12:20 -0700 From: Ian Samuels Organization: University of Calgary Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Douglas Muir wrote: [snip] > 'scuse me for responding to my own post, but I was thinking about this last night. Incidentally, my original response to yr first post doesn't seem to have made it through, so I may have to repost it later. -ian Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: 22 Mar 2001 22:58:46 GMT From: coyu@aol.com (Coyu) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 Douglas Muir wrote: >Finally, the *Chesapeakes. There might also be the *Timucuans, as in OTL Georgia and Florida. A thriving proto-civilization, almost completely wrecked by disease OTL; the Spanish actually engaged in salvage ethnography and conversions. http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/vertpaleo/aucilla10_1/missions.htm (I have no idea why the mortality rate was so high there, yet not in California, where you had a similar mission movement under Serra towards the locals.) Random comment: >[breaks out ten-sided dice] >9, 8, 9, 8, 5 >9, 10, 5, 3, 2. >10, 3, 1, 10, 8. Fifteen rolls -- three 10s, three 9s, and three 8s. I'm bringing you to Vegas. Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 18:57:37 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 Coyu wrote: > > Douglas Muir wrote: > > >Finally, the *Chesapeakes. > > There might also be the *Timucuans, as in OTL Georgia and Florida. > A thriving proto-civilization, almost completely wrecked by > disease OTL; the Spanish actually engaged in salvage ethnography > and conversions. Yeah, I considered them. But OTL they were dwellers on the margin between brackish swamp and forest. At that tech level (bare beginnings of agriculture) this was ideal -- they had access to all the protein and whatnot of the swamp ecosystem, plus some offshore fishing, plus game and some (very) basic agriculture. But I have trouble seeing it scaling up to larger-scale agriculture. The soil's not that great, the swamps will breed diseases once population gets above a certain level, both ecosystems are relatively vulnerable to things like deforestation, erosion, and overhunting, and so forth. The Florida - South Georgia region just isn't very hospitable to advanced civilization. [beat] Well, I mean at the Bronze Age level. > (I have no idea why the mortality rate was so high there, yet not > in California, where you had a similar mission movement under > Serra towards the locals.) I think you just answered your question. Serra was _sui generis_. > >9, 8, 9, 8, 5 > >9, 10, 5, 3, 2. > >10, 3, 1, 10, 8. > > Fifteen rolls -- three 10s, three 9s, and three 8s. > > I'm bringing you to Vegas. Bring Claudia -- I had her do the rolling. Doug M. Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 19:13:17 -0700 From: Ian Samuels Organization: University of Calgary Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 Okay, let's try this again... On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Douglas Muir wrote: [snip] > Okay, let's generate some random numbers. [breaks out ten-sided dice] I'll > assign variables for... oh, Duration, Aggression, Size, Technological Advance, > and Wealth. Heh... I love this. > So, this civilization lasts for about 900 years, from 500 to around 1400. > Very aggressive and expansionist -- colonies all over the damn place, from > South Carolina to the Atlantic coast of Brazil. Viking raids on the > Mesoamericans. Very advanced Neolithic technology. The lowish Wealth score > suggests that their cities hit an upper limit, though -- probably because they > never quite shift to pure agriculture, as opposed to agriculture-plus-fishing; > coastal cities only. > > They collapse due to overpopulation and internal war; the Spanish find > monstrous stone ruins all over Hispaniola and Cuba. Agree with yr assessment of the probable effect of this on the Spaniards: the illusion that they're in the Real Indies lasts longer, and the conviction that there's more gold to be had just over the horizon leads them to bigger risks. Discovery of rich artefacts fuels (if possible) even bigger risk-taking and more audacious exploration/conquest than OTL. Not that this would necessarily mean they replicate the good luck of conquering, say, the ATL versions of the Aztecs and esp. the Incas as easily as OTL -- but assuming they do... > [snip; Doug rolls up the Mound Builders] These guys look > like a somewhat nastier, longer-lasting version of OTL's Mound Builders. Say > they get started as an Arawak colony that makes the shift to agriculture and > moves upriver from the Gulf. Mean as hell, they capture Plains Indians for > human sacrifice and the occasional snack. They radiate up the various > tributaries of the Mississippi, with stimulus-diffusion causing small > fortified towns to be built as far north as Minnesota. They're still around > by the early 1500s, though growing rather decadent. Hernando de Soto meets an > unpleasant end at their hands; Pablo Narvaez escapes, but just barely. There's likely concentrated Spanish effort on conquering and settling this region; possibility of a Mestizo-type society arising here as well. This could significantly affect Spain's fortunes in the Old World -- the Mississippian colonies could produce significant amounts of sugar and tobacco, allowing Spain to dominate that trade early on and making it harder for other European powers to break into the Caribbean. This firmer foothold could mean a far more economically solid Spain in the long run, and one that competes aggressively in a triangular trade with Africa (the Mississippian colonies will need a steady supply of slaves). > [snip; the small, relatively peaceful Chesapeake civilization] > > Lots of beautiful metalwork; ritual warfare. No human sacrifice, and no > god-kings either, but lots of impressive architecture, both wood and stone. > Drastically simplified syllabic writing system, not quite a true alphabet but > close. Birchbark and animal-hide parchment to write on. Great calendars, and > astronomy/astrology at roughly a classical level. Lots of pots -- goodness > knows this region doesn't lack for clay. > > They're not as enthusiastic navigators as the *Arawak, but they occasionally > sail as far south as the Okefenokee and as far north as Cape Cod (for whaling). > > When Europeans arrive (who'd get there first? Cabot? the French?), their > civilization is at or near its height -- limited in area, but wealthy, > confident, and (relatively) technologically advanced. > > European diseases will wreak mayhem with them, as it did with the Aztecs > OTL... but this, by itself, will not be enough to topple them; it'll require > some conquistador to deliver the final blow. Who may be French, Dutch or > English as easily as Spanish... If the prediction above pans out, French, Dutch and British competition for carving up this region will be intense. There'll be no shortage of adventurers in search of their own *Aztecs to conquer. Also, there's a big emphasis on developing these colonies early, making them productive in order to compete with Spain's wealth. > > Is there the possibility of trans-Atlantic networks here as well? It seems > > feasible, given the distances are far less daunting than those of the > > Pacific. > > I'm going to say no. It's not just distances, but winds and currents. I was thinking they might develop some triangular routes of their own, but that could be farfetched. > Then, eastern North America looks very different -- someone, French or > Dutch or whoever, gets a huge hit of wealth from looting the treasures of the Chesapeake, and then develops a Latin-American style > colony on its ruins, with Europeans lording it over creoles, a mestizo middle > class, and the surviving *Chesapeake Indians a new peasant class, hoeing > potatoes and sowing wheat amidst the ruins of their grandparents' cities. I see French, Dutch and British regions, each dependent on tobacco for their wealth and with colonies frequently changing hands. The race is to make these colonies turn a profit as fast as possible, partly in order to fund wars against enemies in Europe. -ian Subject: Re: Polynesian Arawaks (was Natural History) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 22:21:16 -0500 From: "The Misanthrope" Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 , 3 > The Florida - South Georgia region just isn't very hospitable to advanced civilization. > And still isn't! Just kidding! > [beat] > Well, I mean at the Bronze Age level. Heh.