“European” Native Americans

Siberian Tiger

Siberian Tiger

What if Native Americans were West Eurasian rather than East Eurasian? In an alternate timeline, during the ice age 17,000 years ago, a wave of hunter-gathers from Europe cross over the ice and reach North America. They then proceeded to populate the Americas. By the time the first wave from Siberia comes over, they find a land already filled up and head back into Eurasia. These “white” Amerindians generally look similar to Europeans. The ones in Canada, the US, and Patagonia look like central/northren Europeans, the ones near the Southren US look like Southren Europeans, the ones on Central America resemble Iranians/Arabs, and the ones in tropical South America resemble Aryans/South Asians. When the Vikings and Columbus arrive, they discover Caucasian-like people living in North America. How will they be treated? Will they be treated any better than OTL? Are there any butterflies that might happen? How will the Vikings see these “euro-amerindians” when they land in Canada? No geological or evolutionary PODs please.
 
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walmart

They still die on mass of disease and face large scale conflict with the settlers. However you would see the stronger and more successfully attempts to assimilate the Natives later on as race is no longer a barrier.
 

pompejus

GeckoSerpent23 said:
Will they be treated any better than OTL?
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No, because it wasn't the fact that the Native Americans were of a non caucasian race they were mistreated. It was because they were non-Christians with a significantly lower tech level and lower number of people who lived in places the Europeans (or their descendants) wanted to live.

The only difference it would make is that Native Americans would have an easier time pretending they were Europeans. At least in Northern America. In more tropical regions they would still have a too dark complexion for it. Actualy I would even go so far as saying that there is a significant chance that Native Americans in Northern America would still look too different from Europeans. Native Americans do not resemble East Asians that much after all.
 
Vuu

Vuu

Banned
Pfft, like anyone actually needs that reason to fuck someone over

Yeah, they could pretend, but human phenotypes change spookily fast - that's why genetic differences between populations are pretty small, but their appearance very different. Let's say that the Solutrean hypothesis is for real and the migration over the Bering strait is much less strong, resulting in a still "European" America - there's still 10k years to go - the end result will certainly look different.
 

Arkenfolm

As I said in a thread on this topic a month ago, why wouldn't they just get displaced and intermixed with later waves of immigrants from Asia?
 

Ricardolindo

Banned
The terms Caucasian/Caucasoid and Mongoloid are outdated, they
were based on cranial morphology and on some doubtful and simplistic theories of ancient human migration.
 

Burton K Wheeler

Moderator
Even if you have North America settled from Europe, the three waves of settlement from Asia OTL show that settlement from Asia is inevitable and that Native American people probably won't look like Europeans by the time of first contact. If you handwave aside that, all that will change is the definition of whiteness. Remember that the idea of being white was a construct that was a product of European contact with Africa and the new world.
 
PuffyClouds

PuffyClouds

@GeckoSerpent23 what you are describing is a permanent Solutrean Hypothesis. The Solutrean Hypothesis posits that Epipaleolithic (20kya - 10 kya) Western Europeans crossed over the Atlantic, settled in North America, modified their Solutrean stone tool technology to create the pre-Clovis stone tool technology, spread from the (at the time exposed) Continental Shelf towards the Pacific Coast, they passed their technology to the arriving Beringians, possibly interbred, and diminished into extinction as a separate and distinct people. The proposed Solutrean Americans' extinction was coincidental with the North American megafauna extinction. The archaeological and anthropological consensus currently rejects all this, though the idea is slowly finding more acceptance.

Epipaleolithic Western Europeans had no Caucasus Hunter Gatherer ancestry, and they are posited to have a different complexion compared to modern Western Europeans because they lacked the alleles for light hair and skin that modern Europeans have, though many of them had blue eyes. Speculation on the complexion of the Epipaleolithic Western Europeans varies from light tan to very dark. If the Solutreans did cross over, and assuming no subsequent changes in their physical appearance in sixteen and half thousand years, they would still look significantly different from modern Nortwestern Europeans. Judging from how the Gaunches were treated by the Spanish, and how various internal European Crusades treated other Christian Europeans then I think this would not be peaceful.

To survive the climactic changes of the period, the Solutrean Americans would have needed widespread agriculture and animal husbandry. Agriculture, and especially animal husbandry, are the natural laboratories of pandemics. Now assuming no changes to Eurasia, not only do the European explorers spread their unique Old World plagues, they also bring back New World plagues to Europe.

Ricardolindo said:
The terms Caucasian/Caucasoid and Mongoloid are outdated, they
were based on cranial morphology and on some doubtful and simplistic theories of ancient human migration.
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Can you offer some alternate terminology to use, and the reasoning for it?
 

Burton K Wheeler

Moderator
funnyhat said:
What about European and Asian? I don't understand why all Europeans must be "Caucasian". That's like saying that all Americans are Alaskans, it makes no sense.
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Because this far back in time it's not really clear that "Europeans" are what we would call white or Caucasian.

I have no idea how you quoted @PuffyClouds but my name was on it.
 

Burton K Wheeler

Moderator
GeckoSerpent23 said:
Your right, they will probably not be treated better. They were seen as inferior because they were not Christian, not because they weren’t Caucasian. Besides, like what others have said, they probably won’t look like Europeans.
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Yep. Guanches in the Canaries were treated no different than Indians in Mexico despite being basically white Europeans.
 

Richard V

Until about 7-8,000 years ago proto-Caucausians had brown skin. This group of American Caucasoids would look very different from 16th century Europeans.
 

LunazimHawk

Native Americans as a whole group would cease to function to exist after the first few centuries, as their be little difference in race, as a result they’ll be assimilated into whatever group conquers them.
No doubt they’ll be oppressed, but they’ll be absorbed into the population much easier than OTL due to no existing barrier of race being there.
 

Alex Zetsu

pompejus said:
The only difference it would make is that Native Americans would have an easier time pretending they were Europeans.
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In the Colonial Era, this won't save them from land grabs. But in the development of either a Reservation system (USA style) or princely State system (British style), a lone Native who learned English (or whatever language of the colonizers since we might butterfly away England), and got money through (insert businessman scheme here) could use this pretending as a way to circumvent the racism that develops since, well no one would notice the difference. When America tried forced assimilation in the early 20th century, large numbers did not do so well due to not wanting to give up their culture (most people don't want to do that) but even those who tried their hardest to "act like the white man" found they couldn't get anywhere in the hamlets/towns. They had learned English, got some working skills, but were still treated as an underclass.
 
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