“European” Native Americans

[Timeline Junkie]

So what happens next in South America and the West coast?

How large was the founding Viking population and how large was the population before the loss of contact with the Old World. What was their doubling size

Assuming that they could somehow get to the New World and become the dominant population, they would also bring Indo-European languages to the Western Hemisphere with them.

I've always found the whole idea of Indo-Europeans bringing their languages to the New World highly improbable. I could see a group of peoples, a Para-Indo-European speaking group being able to maybe migrate across Beringia. East Asian migrations will still occur so the cultural development of the New World would be different from OTL. I think that some populations may have more "European" looking features, but that is just a drop in the bucket. Native Americans would still be culturally distinct and people who look the same who fought each other throughout history. So any contact between Europeans and Native Americans would probably be as it was in OTL. However, linguists in TTL may be able to find some distant linguistic links between some Native American languages and the Indo-European languages.

 

[Arkenfolm]

We're forgetting the East Asians here. In the 19th century, there were anthropologists and ethnographers who on the basis of Japanese and other East Asian ships wrecking on the coasts of North America (especially the PNW), believed that the complex culture of the Salish, Tlingit, and other PNW Indians could be attributed to Japanese influence in the past. While most of this is merely traditional racism, it is a fact that East Asian (especially Japanese) ships ended up shipwrecked in that region, and that the Jomon culture to some degree resembled PNW Indians in their methods of hunting and gathering in a rich land. Since it's an attested fact that migrations from Far East Siberia continued throughout history, including the ancestors of the Na-Dene people, the Aleuts/Inuit, the Wakashans, and the Haida, and the cultural/linguistic similarities to West Coast American Indians found in East Asian groups like the Nivkh and the Itelmen.

An Indo-European group which follows the Yeniseians would be a very early split from the family, and probably not be very "European" looking.

If the case of "Viking only" America does happen, then Vikings would probably be limited in higher concentrations around the North East and the Great Plains and probably a bit more sparsely around the Mediterranean like West Coast.

Even this is being too optimistic.

I think few if any, could even cross into OTL Mexico.

If the Vikings are the first humans in the New World, then they'll spread south along the East Coast, and eventually inland along the Mississippi and its tributaries. But this is highly unlikely and bordering on ASB since several groups of humans settled the New World over the millennia and left a linguistic and genetic influence. Simply look at the linguistic diversity of coastal North America from Alaska to Baja California.

 

[Jan Olbracht]

It is impossible for humans to not cross Bering Strait untill Vikings unless they're way more primitive than IOTL (and that would exclude Vikings).

My proposition: first group to settle New World are Ainu/Kennewick Man like people, who happened to carry skin lightening gene (which appeared independently from European one, caused by different mutation), which due to founder effect/genetic drift became widespread among first Americans. Features like light skin or light hair developed several times independently, so there is nothing impossible about this.

I don't think that would change much. There are "white" looking indigenious people of Siberia and Ural -Komi, Mansi, Khanty, who traditionally were hunter-gatherers and reindeer herders. Was their fate much better from that of "Asian" looking Yakuts?

 

[Siberian Tiger]

Let’s say the Siberian migrations get butterflied away. I can see a Roman ship getting shipwrecked in an empty America and thus Romans could begin settling the Americas. Vikings I can see settling Canada, Greenland, and Alaska. The remains in Europe later let get lost due to the Black Death. So when Columbus sails, they stumble upon a continent unknown to them and with Caucasian natives. Will they be treated better? Like what many people said here, no. The Sami were mistreated by the Norse despite looking similar. So relations will likely go similar to OTL. One difference would be that there would be no need for reservations, since they are more “similar” to Europeans.