If the Eastern woodland natives managed to congratulate both moose and WTD, then North America could become the continent of cervids where they fulfill most of the same roles that bovines do in the Old World.
I said that it's an interesting theory, as I found it so when I studied it at university, not the Bible. In some cases it works, in others not. Maybe we could say that, if not Carneiro-type places developed an organized civilty, all organized civilities developed in a Carneiro-type places?
Wei River Valley, is surrounded by desert and mountain.What about the North China Plain?
It's harsh land, but with mesquites, salt-tolerant crops as noted above, and domesticated mountain goats (or bighorn sheep, but mountain goats seem to have more suitable social structures for human domestication), it could be like Mesopotamia or West Africa. Complex civilisation can survive given these conditions.
One bit disadvantage compared to those two: you can irrigate a floodplain and semi-arid flatlands via dykes, ditches, ect. Canyons and moutains not so much, which puts a limit on how much land you can realistically make ariable. Can you pull it off? Sure, but the odds are against you and your cap on urbanization is much lower.
My guess is that it wouldn't be so much the Upper Colorado Valley/Grand Canyon area as it would be the Delta and the Salt/Gila system that would see the most development at first.
My guess is that it wouldn't be so much the Upper Colorado Valley/Grand Canyon area as it would be the Delta and the Salt/Gila system that would see the most development at first.