---
c. 400 AD — Outrigger canoes are developed in Muyil. (The POD.)
c. 400 AD – c. 550 AD — The stability in rough waters of the outrigger canoe is valued for trade along the Caribbean coast. Other Maya city-states soon adopt this new craft. Eventually the canoes are made longer and parts are weaved between to carry greater loads. Fisherman communities from the coastal cities are able to travel further in their trips and carry more of their catch back, reaching Cuba by 550 AD, and from there on solidifying the trade link between Cuba and Yucatan.
c. 550 AD – c. 750 AD — The places where the Maya fishermen visit most frequently become outposts for resupply, and later grow into trading towns. First trading with western Cuba alone, Maya trade posts later emerge all along the Cuban coast, on the Cayman Islands, on Jamaica and at the very west of Hispaniola. Farming communities are established in these emerging towns and they become a new destination and/or source for Maya trade goods.
Eventually the trade becomes highly lucrative to those involved on either side. The trade brings new agricultural products and practices to the Maya heartland, which rapidly spread among the various city-states. Increased wealth and argicultural yield leads to a population boom. In addition, inreasing numbers of people in Yucatan begin to migrate from the cities further south to the northern coastal cities, which have profited most from the Caribbean trade connections. The traditional low-density urbanism of the Maya ends up having some considerable trouble absorbing these developments.
[The transition from Saladoid to Ostionoid occurs in Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. This transition is characterized IOTL by a synthesis of pottery styles of the earlier cultures of the Antilles. The emergence of cultural traits associated with the Taino such as ball courts, plazas, hierarchical chiefdoms and zemi deities are also associated with these changes. ITTL this indigenous Caribbean development is compounded with influence from the expanding Maya linked cultures forming in Cuba. Taking place between 500 and 700 is a thorough synthesis of Maya and Ostionoid cultures and agricultural techniques in the Greater Antilles.]
c. 750 AD – c. 900 AD — Economic and social changes, combined with overpopulation (or rather: a population growth that could theoretically be supported, but cannot easily be absorbed by the existing social model) cause unrest and social problems among the Maya. Increasingly, people moving to the coastal trade cities find there is little place for them there. They move on, along the trade routes, and begin to settle in the trade towns of Cuba, Jamaica and Hispaniola. Later on, these migrants begin to diffuse across the coastal settlements of these islands. Some of the most prominent Maya settlements grow into full-blown cities.
The increased Maya settlement causes demographic and cultural changes on the islands, which is paired with some social upheaval. Despite the inevitable tensions, many have profited from the trade, and continue to profit. Those who have benefitted most are also most closely allied to the Maya settlers. These are also the ones most open to Maya cultural influence, and - handily - the ones who have gained a useful upper hand on their neighbours through the wealth and the cultural innovations that the trade has brought them. Eventually, the migrating Maya simply tip the demographic balance, while also mixing with the native groups allied to them. Both sides adopt cultural practices from the other, and although the resulting culture is heavily dominated by Maya practices and conventions... it is no longer the exact same culture that had existed in Yucatan. (Notably, the trade-based origins and focus of this hybrid culture lends a more prominent role to the merchant class, and causes something of an evolution away from earlier theocratic tendencies.)
[Through sustained and frequent contact with the mainland, the Maya of Cuba form a continuum of trade and knowledge stretching from the Greater Antilles to Central America. The population shift to Northern Yucatan and the Caribbean spreads the Maya cultural sphere and expands the world known to them as a result. Knowledge of the surroundings of the sea soon becomes common to Mesoamerican traders.]
[c.800 AD - Outrigger fishermen bring cultural elements of the Maya and Cuba cultures to Florida. The Gulf stream assures they reach there. The Calusa, who were already a fishing boat building culture adopt them readily. Elements from the Caloosahatchee culture (ropes, causways, canals) from which they belong spread to Cuba and northward along the coast. On the east coast, fishermen returning from the Bahamas spread the outrigger design to the St. John's culture.
The Indigenous peoples of the Florida panhandle encounter Caloosahatchee fishermen more often than before and while trading items from the north for the fishing catch and tools, they begin making outrigger canoes with fibered baskets to travel along the coast and up rivers. The design becomes a staple of the Gulf coast Mississippian cultures and new towns of such type are founded near the shore owing to a small but steady stream of goods from the Caribbean as well as the ability to catch more fish and trade the bounty. As Cuba becomes a source for Maya goods like cotton and cocoa, Floridian traders grow wealthy by bargaining these items up the peninsula. Agricultural communities in southern Florida become much more common than OTL, benefiting from tropical plants that can be grown in a climate closer to home. This, coupled with the abundant marine based resources, allows for larger populations to be sustained.]
c. 900 AD – c. 1100 AD — The Maya, though they rely entirely on oar-driven ships, spread their influence rapidly. As the Caribbean cities continue to grow, new settlements are founded on Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and on the southern and southwestern coasts of Florida (a region with which the Taino of Cuba already traded). The coastal regions are drawn into the trade network directly. Further inland, large chiefdoms begin to consolidate. These also profit from the trade and from cultural exchange, although they are far more independent from direct Maya influence.
Besides actual establishment of trade posts and any real settlement, there are also more daring expeditions on a more ad hoc basis. Island-hopping isn’t that difficult, and the Taino were already a rather nautical people who used their own canoes for island trade. The emerging Maya island culture essentially expands its trade exactly in the opposite direction from the one the Taino did: tracing the Caribbean arc from Cuba towards Trinidad. (Beyond Puerto Rico, however, this is incidental trade, and not any kind of systematic settlement... yet.)
[By the 1100s outrigger designs have spread to Louisiana owing to the extensive connections that tie the Mississippian culture together. Since pottery, copper, and shells were bartered over land distances far rougher than the coast, the trade route towards the Caribbean (though sporadic compared to core Mississippian sites) is well within the realms of sustainability. It is in this time frame that an outpost at Vieux Carré, New Orleans is founded, originally as a farming-fishing village of the late Coles creek culture. The transition to the Plaquemine culture still occurs but this incarnation has benefited from new boats and subtle trade with growing Florida.]
While hardly a booming trade post at that early stage (the Mississippians are still too far north for any contact to take place), the rich soil of the great river’s delta makes for a highly successful agricultural settlement.
Because the “Carribean release valve” for excess population has worked to migitate the social pressures in Yucatan, the old Maya heartland is stabilising again, and also profits from the trade. Another factor that plays a role in this stabilisation is the increasingly diversified and sustainable agriculture and aquaculture of the Maya polities. The climates and soil types of the various islands that are being settled have sparked a move away from slash and burn monoculture, and towards other alternatives. New crops and new techniques make the whole culture and the entire trade network far less vulnerable to drought, climatological changes, and certain crop blights. The cities of Yucatan also benefit from this. So much so, in fact, that the increased levels op population density become increasingly sustainable. Migration to the islands recedes somewhat (although trade remains booming), and ventures along the Mesoamerican coast begin to be launched instead.
By 1100, the Maya are expanding from Yucatan towards the old Olmec heartland (which has been sparsely populated sinse the Olmec decline of the fourth century BC, and would in Otl remain so until after Spanish colonisation). The old Olmec sites, such as the one at La Venta, become inhabited again... by Maya settlers. On the other side of the Yucatan, some Maya trade posts are established along the Caribbean coast of OTL’s Honduras, while in the south, Mayan influence once again expands through OTL’s chiapas and Guatemala, all the way to the Pacific coast.
Still, despite the flourishing of the old Maya heartland and the expansion of its influence... the economic centre of gravity of the whole trade network is gradually beginning to shift towards the Caribbean islands.
c. 1100 AD – c. 1200 AD — The trade network of the Caribbean Maya gradually expands, as the pattern of trade posts being established and settlements growing around them progressively follows the arc of the lesser Antilles all the way to Trinidad. Ever more daring exploratory expeditions precede the actual settlement, eventually skirting west from Trinidad along the northern coast of South America, and tentatively going east from there as well.
Maya explorers come across South Americans using sails on their boats, and are fascinated by this innovation. Trade-minded as they are, they do not fail to grasp the implications of using ships that do not rely on oars alone. Employing sails would vastly increase the load that Maya ships could carry, and would also make them less dependent on island-hopping for getting around the region. Sails are introduced to Maya ships by eager entrepeneurs around 1100 AD, marking a drastic development that will greatly change the possibilities of nautical trade. By 1200 AD, sails are near-ubiquitous within the Maya trade network.
[The Classic-Postclassic shift sees the center of Maya urban society move not only to northern Yucatan but also beyond towards Belize and coastal Honduras. The moving communities travel along the fishermen routes established centuries earlier. New Maya descended dialects form in coastal central Cuba and Honduras analogous to the Huastec. Accompanying this is the growth of mixed Maya-Arawak and Maya-Honduran societies. These societies, with new Caribbean agricultural techniques spare the southeastern Maya area from becoming irrelevant. Road systems are stronger than the same era of OTL meaning ideas and technologies from the Pacific coast have the chance to spread gradually to the Caribbean. Coastal ports in the greater Antilles flourish while the inland chiefdoms centralize under fortified towns and hamlets.
The 1100s will see sites in the south central Maya area recover while near coastal Belize and Honduras emerge as powerful as their counterparts in the north. The result is the Ulua basin and the Honduran coast becoming the seat of a unique Post Classical urban culture, as well as the encounter with sail/raft making peoples of South America. The era of glory for this new phase in Maya civilization is inaugurated by the invention of the catamaran in the 1200s, inspired by rafts seen on both sides of the isthmus. Their design is combined with the Maya outriggers, creating a vessel that allows traders ro maximise their cargo load. This has such obvious advantages that is rapidly becomes the standard vessel of the trade routes.
Equipped with catamarans and the skills learned from South America open sailing becomes a growing phenomena for the Maya, Cuba, Taino, Chibcha, and Caloosahatche; the later three are more populated and commerce oriented than OTL. Sailors travel directly from Yucatan and Colombia to Jamaica and from Cuba to the Florida panhandle. This new found confidence at sea has emboldened the disparate people of the trade network to ply the coasts and migrate further afield, they can carry more of their cargo physically and culturally. The Post Classic south sends regular trips to Panama,Ecuador and Peru. They pick a bounty of exotic foods, (some nobles have even made gardens and pens), and tools.]
[The Yucatan and Caribbean gradually pull the southeastern Maya and Central American worlds into their orbit, facilitating the diffusion of metallurgy and sails into the island trade network.]
Also by that time, trade posts have been established along the less Antilles, and are beginning to pop up along the Caribbean coast of South America. At this point, sails are mostly still used for coastal plying, but sailing skills are rapidly developing. More daring traders already risk crossing the open sea. Soon, sailing will be so universally embraced that all traders will confidently voyage far out of sight of land.
On the northern edges of the trade network, developments are no less stunning. First of all, various entrepots have been established along the Gulf Coast, more firmly linking the trade posts in Florida to the settlement at Vieux Carré. Besides that, trading posts are also being formed on Florida’s eastern coast. The northerneasternmost trade post, marking the very edge of the Caribbean Maya culture’s influence, is at the mouth of the Altamaha River, near the site of OTL’s Brunswick, Georgia.
Finally, and most importantly, contact is established, around 1200 AD, between the Caribbean Maya culture and the Mississippian culture. Specifically, the Mississippian Plaquemine culture has migrated south, establishing complexes such as Emerald Mound and Grand Village at the site of OTL’s Natchez... and in exploring the region, they have made contact with the Maya settlement at Vieux Carré. Trade links are cautiously established, and a mutual understanding of non-hostility is reached. The Maya esablish a trade post, roughly at the location of OTL’s Medora Site.
While all these exciting developments are underway, the cultural area of the Caribbean Maya people becomes more consolidated. The various chiefdoms are gradually integrated more fully into the trade network, although this takes a number of minor wars here and there. By 1200, the trade empire of the Maya is orderly and at peace. Of course, this trade empire is not really an "empire" at all, but rather a culturally and economically interlinked association of mostly autonomous city-states. In some cases, some of those city states enjoy hegemony over lesser city-states, colonies, and inland chiefdoms (ehich are now much like OTL’s "princely states" of the Raj). There are a number of major cities that tend to dominate their region, and demand loyalty from others in some form or another. But all in all, this is certainly not a rigidly hierarchical empire with one clear capital that calls all the shots, and there is a general understanding of peaceful interaction and free trade.
Within this sprawling and still expanding trade network, the centre of power is now clearly shifting towards the Caribbean islands. The domanant cultural forms are no longer purely those of the Maya (as these once were). The culture has gradually changed as ever more cultures have been absorbed into its sphere. The exact culture, beyond the basic tenets, varies from place to place, but a sense of fundamental common identity and mutual association binds the entire trade network together. (Much like the Greek sense of a common Hellenic identity, even at times when various poleis were most opposed to each other.) The more hybrid culture of the islands has become ever more dominant, and by 1200 AD, the old homeland in Yucatan has mostly been swept into its orbit.
c. 1200 AD – 1300 AD — The use of sails, and an increasing willingness to cross open water, kicks off rapid changes within the trade network. Not only does it solidify the interactions between the Antilles and Mesoamerica to an even greater extent than ever before, but it also brings the harder to reach peripheral areas fully into the network’s orbit. Traders and explorers, both from Trinidad and Yucatan, use sailing vessels to trace the Caribbean coastline of Mesoamerica and South America.
[The recovery of the southeast is nearly, if not totally, complete. The Pacific coast sailors follow the route along the west coast of Central America, retracing the routes through which metalworking diffused. By doing so they encounter skilled craftsmen from the south as well as tying Western Mesoamerica into a more direct trading relationship to northwestern South America. The trade focused Maya and Taino of the Antilles also make use of open sailing to trade across the Caribbean rim and Gulf Coast.]
Establishing entrepots on the coasts of OTL’s Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia, they trade with the native inhabitants and pick up metallurgy techniques and other useful skills and items. Settlements in the region are already utilising ditches, causeways and terraces. The Diquis, Zenu, Tairona, Tierra Alta and an assortment of Panamanian and Colombian highland cultures are gradually drawn into the interaction sphere of the circum-Caribbean trade network.
Sailors from Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles increasingly travel directly to Yucatan, instead of following the arc of the islands (and vice versa). At the same time, ships from the coastal ports of Central and South America ever more frequently cut directly across open water when they head for Cuba etc. — it is truly a new era for trade, and for culture. Ideas are exchanged ever more rapidly.
[One area, once peripheral to the network soon becomes one of it's most important destinations...
Florida's societies continued to grow in size and complexity owing to its warm climate and land connections to the Mississippian culture. They obtained copper via this route since time immemorial, but now there exists a great demand for smelted copper, as tools and currency. Its working became ubiquitous across the Caribbean and Mesoamerica. The Gulf Coast and Florida, connected to abundant copper sources in the Grest Lakes, became a new focus for trading outposts.
The effects of this trade were nothing short of revolutionary. Powerful chiefdoms matured in Florida, the largest based at Big Mound City near Canal point utilized aquaculture in addition to radiating causways to create one of the peninsula's greatest pilgrimage sites. To the west along the Gulf, the Fort Walton, Pensacola, and Plaquemine cultures received Caribbean and Mesoamerican sailors along their fishing villages. They did not come empty handed. Chilies, chocolate, textiles, ornaments, exotic feathers, smelted objects, honey, salt, skins and ceramics were carried on their catamarans. Well recieved by the natives, communities of traders were established within many of the coastal Mississippian sites. Already making outriggers, the Mississippian port towns took to constructing catamarans in their own style and before long were sailing them to the Caribbean, a land beyond the sea with cities and treasures beyond imagination.
The Gulf Coast also experiences meteoric growth in urbanization and specialization. A series of trading towns pepper the bays, expanding from the already prominent boat building villages. These urban centers act as middlemen to the more northerly parts of the southeast, providing a link to the most exotic tropical goods through their seaborne connections.
Influence also comes from the north in the form of a chiefdoms based at Moundville and Etowah in Alabama and Georgia. One of the largest Mississippian sites, Moundville appears to have repeatedly interfered in the affairs of the Pensacola culture of the coast. At the Bottle Creek Mounds, legends and texts tell diplomatic and militarily relationships to the north. The Lake Jackson Mounds also show trading relationships to the north through Etowah, the latter sitting along the trade route to copper sources in the Cumberland Plateau. It was through these means that copper smelting and agricultural techniques made their way into the interior. Such interactions went a long way towards tying the northern parts of the South Appalachian Mississippians into the Gulf Coast's Pan-American economy and the Maritime Horizon cultural sphere.
This is corroborated in the archaeological record by the appearance of copper smelting workshops not only at Moundville, but also at Etowah, the latter sitting along the trade route to copper sources in the Cumberland Plateau.]
By controlling the distribution of these goods to the interior, the Gulf chiefs grew famously wealthy and one site would be the wealthiest of them all...
The Vieux Carré site of Plaquemine culture grew exponentially thanks to its fertile soils and direct trade with the south. A new archaeological horizon begins around the 1300s. Characterized by a dazzling array of Mesoamerican and Caribbean artifacts, large mounds, ditches, canals, and a large population, the stylistic types Vieux Carré expand northward. Cahokia's influence meanwhile spreads southward, eventually fully connecting the copper sources far to the north to the Caribbean.]
Vieux Carré is blooming into a major city, while lesser boom towns pepper the Gulf coast from the site of OTL’s Galveston to Florida. The sea lanes now loop the Gulf, while sailors also travel across open sea. The delta dwellers, once living on the periphery, now have far more direct contact with the rest of the trade network. And so much the better. With trade goods like textiles, chocolate, chilies, exotic stones and feathers available to the Maya merchants, the trip to the mouth of the Mississippi is well worth the cost. The Mississippians to the north are eager to buy, to learn, to exchange goods and knowledge. The Plaquemine culture, growing immensely rich by being the middle man between the Maya and the other Mississippians, are eager to share their canal building techniques with the Maya settlers. This allows the booming city at Vieux Carré to become a masterpiece of water management, ensuring that its teeming masses keep their feet dry.
Among the Mississippians, wealth derived from the Mesoamerican-Caribbean trade gradually allows more centralised command structures to form, along with a greater opportunity to manage infrastructural works. The same goes for the city at Vieux Carré. The two cultural spheres continue to learn from each other, and even adopt some of each other’s cultural tenets. Nobably, the mississippians adopt certain agricultural practices from their trade partners, which ultimately brings them a more versatile and stable supply of food.
[Some other Plaquemine sites share Vieux Carré's unique iconography. Most prominent are warrior emblems and effigy vessels of priests and priestesses. This indicates the rise of one of the most powerful of Mississippian chiefdoms. It is called by its inhabitants "Ku-Hanan", based on the Chitimacha words water and house respectively. The name derives from the large harbors of catamarans, canoes and rafts near its largest canals. Some settlements dominated by the Ku-Hanan Chiefdom become specialized centers for manufacturing and distributing goods. Copper, river canoes and rafts, catamarans, textiles, and pottery workshops, and plantations across the Plaquemine culture testify to the chiefdom's influence.
Controlling the diminished hunting grounds, maintaining workers in its various sectors, the lucrative copper trade, wood for boats, tropical/subtropical fibers for fishing and sails leads to the rise of a military of elite warriors and religious means of ensuring legitimacy. Ku-Hanan comes to dominate other local chiefdoms as vassals, who pay tribute in traded items and captives to the paramount. The late 1400s sees the Plaquemine and parts of the surrounding cultures united under Ku-Hanan hegemony. In fact it's name had a reputation across the gulf of Mexico and into the Ohio river, spoken by oral historians and even bearing a gliph of it's name in a Huastec codex.]
While not incredibly common, no Caribbean merchant would by this point be surpised to bring Mississippian emmisaries to Cuba, nor is it unheard of for Maya dignitaries to occasionally venture up the Mississippi— occasionally even as far north as Cahokia.
.....
[The 13th century marks the beginning of what historians of TTL call the Maritime Horizon. This archaeological horizon represents a unique phenomenon in that it is the first indigenous culture to span a considerable portion of both continents, thus becoming pan-American in scope. The Maritime Horizon is not marked by a single dominant cultural trait, but by the (synthesis) of elements from many societies surrounding the seas. Though many cultures and ideas will come to define this "maritime age" a few early traits are noteworthy to separate this era from the one immediately preceding it. The first is a demonstrated ability (and preference if the records left behind at Maya trading enclaves are to be understood) for sailing into the open sea. This period features an active policy on the part of Maya descended traders to not only seek trading opportunities along established sea lanes but also to find new ones.
Another defining early trait was the presence of smelting technology, especially with copper alloys. These technical skills proved extremely useful both with regards to the creation of art and utilitarian use as can be seen in later times by the metal tweezers in Hispaniola, the cast molded Mississippian copper plates, and the implements used in ship making.
The early defining elements of the Maritime Horizon merged together in an arc stretching from northwestern Colombia through Central America and esast to Puerto Rico. This core would then absorb a plethora of ideas from contributing cultures as they were brought into the interaction sphere.
In spite of the established seaborne trade routes, the first great navigators of the Maritime Horizon were based in the Pacific rather than the Caribbean. The mariners appear to have followed the coastal routes through which metalworking was introduced from the south.]
With open sea sailing now the norm, long distance expeditions along the coastline of the Americas are being attempted in the early [13th] century. These are prestige undertakings by which the various great cities attempt to outdo one another. The always-present possibility of finding new trade partners also plays a role, of course. The most promising of these expeditions, undertaken at the end of the 13th century, is the daring journey down South America's west coast. A particularly enterprising group of wealthy merchants from a Maya city on the Pacific coast, determined not to be outdone by the more prominent teaders of the Caribbean, orders an unprecedented expedition to the far south. Travelling beyond Panama, the exceedingly experienced marined hired to carry out this feat reaches the urban centers of Ecuador— with their own impressive naval traditions and their well-established trade network up to lake Titicaca. Stopping by the Sican, Chimu, and Chincha cultures, the Maya crew ultimately brings back the most exotic textiles, smelted tools (the Chimu being known for their utilitarian bronze objects), hallucinogens, animals, and foods.
This development causes a major boom in the establishment of new settlements on Mesoamerica’s Pacific coast in the middle of the [13th] century, and lucrative trade with the various cultures to the south. To facilitate the transportation of goods, the leading merchants of various major cities eventually begin to discuss a wild idea: a [series of] canals, to be cut across the isthmus of Panama. (And this notion is not utterly ridiculous: the Egyptian Canal of the Pharaos, first cut in the sixth century BC, was 35 miles long, whereas OTL’s Panama Canal is 48 miles long.) [As these cities mature, they each add their own contribution to the network of causways and canals.]
....
[Northern Colombia, as an early nucleus of catamaran construction, begins the transformation into a trading nexus. The Tairona emerge as the foremost seafarers of the region, uniting the coast economically with the Maya trading communities. Already renowned builders of terraces and paved stone roads, the Tairona were quick to add Mesoamerican architectural styles to their already sophisticated works. To the immediate west, the 1100s IOTL featured a decline in the waterworks of the Zenú, the population subsequently relocating to the highlands from the lowlands. ITTL a shift southward still occurs, but lucrative trade to Mesoamerica and the Antilles (obtaining goods such as vanilla and cacao) gives a great incentive to hold the coast in their orbit and integrate it to the highlands. This is accomplished through the construction of roads and canals as well as sustained merchant activity from the Tairona. In the coming centuries the cultures of Colombia would rise to become among the most influential contributors of the Maritime Horizon through bridging the Andes to the Caribbean and beyond.
.....
Owing to a long history of seafaring, it should come as no surprise that the peoples of Ecuador would take full advantage of new vessels capable of tackling the open ocean. It was sailors from Ecuador, plying the coast on balsa rafts, that brought metalworking to Central America. Building on old tradition, the Manteño used the catamarans to ply their old trade routes with larger cargo capacity than what was possible before. Trade to the north, while not infrequent, was often indirect..at least until a Maya voyager from the Pacific coast of Guatemala made landfall in the Manteño heartland. Bringing with him exotic goods such as feathers, cocao, and honey, the Maya Voyager made quite an impression on the Manteño leaders. They took great interest in obtaining these treasures directly. Likewise the Maya Voyager returned from his trip with the wealth of the Andes. It was the beginning of a fruitful relationship.
......
With open ocean voyages becoming a universal phenomenon, a great synthesis is underway. Arising from the connected trade routes traveled by the peoples of the Maritime Horizon is an ever expanding economic web. This is referred to as the Pan-American Interaction Sphere by archaeologists, an exchange network stretching from the Andes to the Mississippi basin. Crafts, tools, art styles, exotic materials, crops, agricultural systems, and technologies where brought together, culminating into in a wide-ranging cultural flowering that transformed all the societies touched.
Peoples from Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, Central America, the Andes, the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi basin over time accumulated knowledge of each other, linked together in a pan-American world.]
c. 1300 AD – 1491 AD — By the 14th century, the Caribbean Maya culture has almost reached its greatest extent. It is a vast collection of thriving market centers, all across the Antilles, the Bahamas, Florida, the northern Gulf Coast of North America and the Caribbean coasts of Mesomamerica and South America. All these regions have been more or less swept up into the cultural sphere of the Caribbean Maya. The population of the larger region is considerably higher than OTL. Politically, the region is a mosaic of cities, confederations, towns, kingdoms and chiefdoms. The culture is highly diverse, varying from place to place in a number of loose groupings, but there are certainly cultural traits that bind them all together; a Caribbean equivalent of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, that synthesizes all the interacting societies. Ceremonial pilgrimage sites, ball games, cults and recreational foods... all shared across the sea lanes.
Of late, the Maya settlements on the Pacific coast (in OTL’s Chiapas and Guatemala) have begun to send out even more trade expeditions along the coastline, and not without success. All of Mesoamerica has been thoroughly tied into the trade zone and its cultural sphere. The time is ripe to learn of what lies beyond...
