More advanced pacific northwest civillation
- Thread starter Wolttaire
- Start date
It's a pretty rugged area, and you'll need a good cereal that can work in the cooler weather.
The Pacific Northwest had many food plants that were extensively gardened, pushing over to full agriculture shouldn't be a stretch at all.
A paper on Pacific Northwest metal working: http://www.academia.edu/6932789/The_Copper_Age_on_the_Northwest_Coast_Early_Indigenous_Metallurgy
Copper and iron were both used for tools, weapons and armor. Copper came from Alaska, and the Ice and Mice TL has a post on how easy it would be to get to bronze.
I second that a cereal isn't needed, and the Pacific Northwest already has the potato like wapato.
A paper on Pacific Northwest metal working: http://www.academia.edu/6932789/The_Copper_Age_on_the_Northwest_Coast_Early_Indigenous_Metallurgy
Copper and iron were both used for tools, weapons and armor. Copper came from Alaska, and the Ice and Mice TL has a post on how easy it would be to get to bronze.
I second that a cereal isn't needed, and the Pacific Northwest already has the potato like wapato.
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Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
Wapato doesn't give you the calories per acre of potato. It's hard to really postulate alternate domestications. You can either handwave or come up with an introduction, but it's hard to imagine a land or seaborne introduction of potatoes before the modern era.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
That's a great example of just postulating a domesticate and going from there. I tried doing something similar with wild rice in California.
Yes but i believe that Europeans made it so that the potato was high in that they could probably due the same thing with the river potato and also hugethere potential for Native American in the Pacific Northwest USA and Canada to devolp a strong fishing culture allowing for cities to develop on the coast
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I wonder what would happen if you had some contact between some group and the Spanish in the 16th century (as early as possible post-Inca), and they somehow received potatoes (and maybe some other crops) from them. Perhaps they could enslave the Spanish and have them grow said crops (while the rest harvest fish and plants in the traditional manner), which would give whichever tribe started it a substantial bounty of food.
Rather far out, but the Maori on the other side of the world received the potato from European travelers a few centuries later.
PNW peoples were sedentary and didn't need better boats, since the land was so rich in food (especially fish). That's probably why they never developed agriculture, because IIRC there's a saying there that you had to be an idiot to starve.
Rather far out, but the Maori on the other side of the world received the potato from European travelers a few centuries later.
PNW peoples were sedentary and didn't need better boats, since the land was so rich in food (especially fish). That's probably why they never developed agriculture, because IIRC there's a saying there that you had to be an idiot to starve.
Yes with that but it would only take several gen of chiefs to keep them sedentary to relive the value of it and start to see cig devolp in place all cross the Pacific Northwest and one craftsmen to go farther out to shore and better nets to bring even bigger fish that they relaize the value of it is if you think about sort of historical anomaly that no civ ever devolp here of some kind and we could see a Bronze Age devolp here because they were tin deposits near that civilization along the pacific nor west could use them as they go farther inalnd
Proto-Indo-European
Banned
The Coast Salish were sedentary IOTL, establishing a stratified class society despite being hunter-gatherers. This is largely attributable to the high density of salmon and the sheer amount of population the salmon runs could support. Add to this the fact that most of the soils out here are bad for growing the available crops and there's really no reason for them to become agricultural without outside pressures (which are unlikely due to the remoteness of the region).
When does extensive gardening cross over into agriculture?
Political unification could help, but with resources so abundant is there any reason for a ruler to push for it?
A way to get a head start on disease immunity might be Japanese shipwrecks. Somebody survives long enough to pass on a disease, disease carrying animals like fleas make the trip, or contaminated cargo.
I don't know what diseases could be spread that way though.
Political unification could help, but with resources so abundant is there any reason for a ruler to push for it?
A way to get a head start on disease immunity might be Japanese shipwrecks. Somebody survives long enough to pass on a disease, disease carrying animals like fleas make the trip, or contaminated cargo.
I don't know what diseases could be spread that way though.
How would that corn reach all the way to the pacific northwest perhaps a large amount of seeds are sent north and stay together and eventually reach the pacific northwest and then one chief buys them and plants them in rich soil could change everything and with the extra food they could trade them to people who do not live by the river and I bet this would spread quickly on whatever rivers this is founded on
That corn growth is in eastern Washington so it might be dependent on deep well irrigation.
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/graphics/CR-PR-RGBChor.png
Also maize took a long time to move that far north, i.e. to develop cultivars adapted for cooler weather and shorter summers. So simply introducing Mesoamerican maize to the Fraser or Willamette valley in 1000bc isn't going to do you any good.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
This is the scenario that interests me. What if European colonization had been much more gradual and Indians had time to adapt? Basically the pattern most places was Indians start trading with Europeans, change their society based on new technology, then a generation or two later get wiped out or swept away.
I agree with you that there's not a ton of incentive for PNW natives to farm, but they did a lot of root digging and culturing of edible plants. It wouldn't be a stretch to see potato gardening, since people were sedentary anyway and their food sources were mostly seasonal, though abundant.
The thing PNW natives lacked was an effective store of wealth, hence the potlatch system. What they got from the Hudson Bay Company that revolutionized Salish society was horses, not for hunting buffalo from horseback but as an effective store of wealth. I would have liked to see that last longer than twenty years and see where Salish society would evolve from there.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
Before that, blankets were the store of wealth. Horses were good because they were a visual sign of prestige and they didn't wear out, in fact they increased if left alone.
Horses also helped in keeping the prairies clear, and the prairies are where Salish people dug for roots.