marathag
Banned
'The Wogs begin at Calais' was said about the folks on the other side of the English Channel
“European” Native Americans
- Thread starter Siberian Tiger
- Start date
'The Wogs begin at Calais' was said about the folks on the other side of the English Channel
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
That's true, and it's not hard to imagine a definition of "whiteness" that excludes a lot of Europeans.
This idea never really took, but it was suggested:
It will not be long before they are Christain and there is a wide range of what a European looks like.
Reminder that Asians were also white.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opin...were-white-until-white-men-called-them-yellow
Dont really like how many threads that have come up recently asking how to make certain areas of the world "white"
Albert.Nik
Banned
The PODs are quite far fetched for this to happen as I have talked about previously in a related thread. Besides the earlier PODs,a larger population of sedentary Tocharians,Indo-Iranians could help with this but only some parts of Americas can become "White" even with such a POD. It would be limited to Pacific Northwest,Canadian Steppes and certain parts of Western coast of North America in my opinion even in a POD that could yield this.
How they would be treated,how they would develop,how they would interact,etc all are quite speculative and there are multiple possibilities. But yes,color and physique based ethnic ideas could be weakened in such a scenario and the World could look different due to the effects of that domain. What could take the place of those ideas in this World? Well,let's see.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
Honestly, if any Stone Age people enter the Americas, no matter if they were white, brown, or purple, they're going to look very much like Native Americans in terms of culture when Europeans encounter the New World. It doesn't really change much about history if the native peoples of the Americas have a slightly different skull shape, skin tone, or a tendency towards green eyes or curly hair. That, I think, is the fundamental issue with your obsession with changing the phenotype of certain areas.
Skallagrim
Banned
Not to undermine the general point that people can be dicks to other people just fine without skin colour etc. as an excuse, but there is the historical tendency to believe in some "lost white land". Most famously, the idea of the Kingdom of Prester John continued to circulate. Consider that that in OTL, there was really some notion early on that a western route to "the Indies" (a nebulous concept itself, to most people) had been found. I consider the idea of an America inhabited by an indiginous people recognisably "white" (to European eyes of the period) to be highly unlikely no matter what POD, but accepting the premise for a moment... I'd expect all sorts of "Prester John" myths to pop up,. If some culture vaguely akin to the OTL Mesoamericans converted early on... well, I can see that changing the way they are perceived, and quite dramatically.
After all, if the look (more or less) akin to Europeans, several generations of ethnic mixing (as happened in OTL Latin America) would make all "whites" look very much alike, and they'd all be Christians. I'd expect *mestizo peoples to be much higher on the social ladder than has often been the historical norm in OTL. If only because just by looking at them, you'd hardly be able to tell who even is *mestizo.
Today, in (at least parts of) Latin America, there are still often sharp divides between (self-defined) "whites" and Native American. Consider the social position of the Mapuche in Chile-- not very good, on the whole. Would that be the same way if the Mapuche had always looked white? I think the potential for assimilation would be much higher. And in the present-day USA of OTL, we see such things as Native Americans living on their own reservations, clearly forming communities apart from the rest of the populace. Contrast that with, say, the Irish and the Italians. Both discriminated historically (for cultural reasons, at times with an invented biological veneer), but now very much assimilated. Sure, there's still a sense of community in such groups, but nobody remotely sane would consider someone named O'Sullivan or Russo to belong to some distinct race apart from "whites". If Native Americans had looked more or less just as white, they would have been assimilated to a similar degree, and you'd likely see no or very few Indian reservations for the same reason you see no Irish- or Italian-American reservations.
Myths like those of Prester John could very well help smooth out the process, and help it along. You may even see complete racial pseudoscience serving that cause in the ATL. "You see, it is clear that the original inhabitants of the New World are a lost tribe of our noble European stock... our long-lost brethren, having thrived in the wilderness of a distant land, returned now to our bossom..."
So, all in all, I think that the simple fact of "hey, those guys look like us!" would have major effects after all. There are two main factors to the demarcation of an in-group: appearance and behaviour. If it looks like us and acts like us... it's one of us (at least after a few generations of trust-building). You can change your behaviour, but appearance is much trickier. So in a world where all Native Americans physically look very much like Europeans... those who start acting like Europeans will end up being assimilated. Only the occasional distinctive name will inform the casual observer of their ancestry.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
Eh, not convinced. A lot of white Americans (using this in the continental and not national sense) have Native ancestry and are proud of it, and a lot of Natives in the U.S. and Canada are pretty much visibly white. The mestizo thing in Latin America isn't a blood purity thing so much as how visibly mixed someone is. I think you could still have a heritage-based class gradiant in parts of the Americas with a high native population even if mestizos aren't a visible minority.
marathag
Banned
Other than encourage the Mormons, among other looking for those 'Lost Tribes' of Israel, especially if their language family is closer to the old European/Near East languages and any of the other Native American groups
Look at the Guanche or Sami. They were persecuted despite being more or less Caucasian. The Slavs were harassed and enslaved in the Middle Ages,the Irish were depicted as near ape-like,Greeks,Italians and Portuguese were considered to be mongrel and lesser Europeans than North Europeans,same for those from Eastern Europe. Native Americans having a more or less Proto-European look won't change anything.
Albert.Nik
Banned
Actually,in this particular post,I meant Bronze Age peoples(Tocharians and Indo-Iranians). I agree with you about the Stone age part. But if Bronze/Iron age "Old World" people make it to the Americas,the tragectory could change in terms of Culture and other developments.
As for the Stone Age White/Caucasian people,I think you are fully right. The tragectory can shift to either sides with them being of any phenotype.
There is a lot of Truth in this. Of course,Germans,Poles,Russians,Ashkenazi Jews(or for that matter Romanoite or Sephardic Jews as well) don't look very different from each other and the Europeans in general if you compare with many other peoples like Africans,Indians,Native Americans who were also victimized by the European colonialism. But History itself shouts out loud the horrors of the 20th century. I wouldn't completely discount what Skallagrim said. That's possible but the religious conflicts that could happen,I can't say. But a Pagan Europe could potentially smoothen the process. Speaking about religion, I think it has some role to play in this too.
This whole White thing to one extent could also just be a societal problem than anything else.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
When? There wasn't even a Bronze Age in the Middle East until 5000 years ago, roughly the same time as the third and final wave of Asian settlement in the Americas. Your Tocharians will be a drop in the bucket in terms of genetics even if you can plausibly shuffle the deck enough to somehow make them a maritime civilization in Northeast Asia that's somehow still more advanced than anywhere else on Earth. You might as well speculated on a more prolonged Vinland exchange if you want a higher American technological trajectory.
Albert.Nik
Banned
Hmm. Yes. The Westernmost people in the old World are the Italo-Celtic peoples till the Viking Germanic people settled Iceland. Vikings weren't structured enough then to make such a change on Americas then. But why would the more structured Italo-Celtic peoples have to leave their good and sunny Hispania,Gaul,Italia,North Africa,etc and fertile Britain and Ireland to go to Americas crossing rough and cold seas to establish these colonies? We need some large enough motivation for them to do that.
Coming back to Tocharians and Indo-Iranians,you can easily say Indo-Iranians are bronze age people as they originated in 2500BC or so but Tocharians originated in 3500BC or so before the Bronze age began. But problem is that in the initial days when parts more to the east were mostly open,they were Nomadic and not agricultural and to make such an impact is very difficult. But yes,you can have them as a significant population in some parts of the Pacific Northwest. But I won't dispute that crossing the large,cold Asian shield and stormy Bering sea isn't an easy thing so this is very far fetched. Italo-Celts could have it easier as the journey that side is mostly by water.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
What? How are Bronze Age Italo-Celtic tribes "more structured" than Early Medieval Norse?
Albert.Nik
Banned
I never meant the Bronze Age term to the Italo-Celtic people. Bronze Age label here was meant only for Indo-Iranians and Tocharians. Italo-Celtic people holds in so many peoples like Celts of Hispania,Gauls,Britons,Picts,Irish,Latins,Umbrians,Faliscans and eventually the Romans too. If you find a way to have these people to migrate into Americas and establish the Empires there in Antiquity or later influenced by the Romans,you could do a lot of impact.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
That still doesn't make any sense. That's a really broad and vague category and I have no idea how these groups are "more structured" than Norsemen, much less how the hell they're supposed to get across the Atlantic and maintain contact with Rome.