Tired. Intro will be short:
5500 years was an old time line of mine discussing what would happen if the Native Americans had not been influenced by the old World. This is a re-boot to make it shorter and easier for me to make. Thats why the style changed.
5500 Years: A time line of cataclysmic isolation
A reworking of a failure
Part the Zeroth
Concerning the POD
The POD of this time line is a broad and implausible one, but one whose effects are very interesting. In the year 1491 as Christopher Columbus prepares to sail a series of plagues and disasters hit the “Old World” and proceed to destroy civilization across it. Almost all humans die as do almost all pigs, horses, cows, wheat, rice, barley cultivars and almost all other remnants of the former civilization. This process allows the Americas to continue untouched by the old world, which is what this timeline is about.
Part the First, Concerning developments in the year 1520-1750
On Phonology and Nomenclature: All vowels are short (so [a] is pronounced as in 'gap'), x is [sh], tl and ts are their own sounds which are similar to running together t and s and t and l but are more connected. The Aztecs are referred to as the Triple Alliance as that was their proper name. To draw a comparison between the Triple Alliance and Britain, calling the Triple alliance the Aztecs is rather like calling Britain the Londonite empire, but worse as Aztec derives from Aztlan the mythical home of the founder of the on city you named the empire along.
Section the First, The Rise of the Tarascans and the Fall of the triple Allaince:
The fall of the Triple Alliance is at its heart not the triumph of the Tarascans and their more organized and centralized state, but the failure of the triple Allaince to control their own subjects. The Alliance method of Empire was one that was to be the norm among all the civilizations of Mesoamerica even with the introduction of llamas. It was at its heart a simple and effective method of controlling a large area with no horses or other large beasts of burden (this would be affected slightly by the large scale spread of tropical llamas in the 18th century) which relied on the empire continually expanding and remaining in a position of strength. Each city when conquered was forced to pay tribute and provide for any army passing through. Other then that they were left alone. It was a loose empire and one with several major flaws.
If the empire were to be threatened by major incursions into it, as the Triple Alliance was, then many of the subjugated cities would wish to rise up which could then spread to more cities and from their to more. It was an unstable equilibrium and in the end the Tarascans with but one major city that defeated the Triple Alliance with many of important and powerful cities.
Some have argued that the Triple Alliance practice of flower wars and tribute wars is to blame, but this was in practice, a common element of all Mesoamerican civilizations at the time. The Triple Alliance may have been on a larger scale, but most other empires did not see this as that strange (the Tarascans when they took over where to do the same).
The various wars of the later Trippe Alliance were not characterized with major technological shifts, and wars were still fought with the traditional javelin and war club, with shields decorated with feathers and animal skins for armor. Massed and disorganized mobs of soldiers was still the name of the game, and capturing not killing was the goal of most of the combatants. While strange to hear to western ears bronze was not immediately taken up by the Mesoamericans, even as it percolated from the Tarascans to Mayans as part of tool use. The emphasis on capturing made bronze weapons, far more lethal then the traditional clubs covered in obsidian, an unattractive choice for most of the rising nobles in the army who wished to capture so as to gain the glory. It would take the arrival of the northern Uto-Aztecans in the 17th and 18th centuries for bows and bronze to become important parts of the army.
The Tarascans and the Triple Alliance had been engaged in a geo-political test of will since the late 15th century one which neither of them was willing to lose. The Triple Alliance had expanded faster and in more directions and by 1520 was the most powerful of the two sides. Their rise in prominence continued unabated for the next 50 years as they continued to push westwards into the jungles of Oaxaca and northwards towards OTL Veracruz. As the Triple allaince armies went farther and farther part there grip on areas became more and more insubstantial relying on fear more then their actual presence. Wars with the Tarascans became more and more frequent as they were forced to consume Tlaxcala due to a major and coordinated attack with the Tarascans denying the Triple alliance their main source of flower wars.
The Tarascans however took a different tact. They expanded little only heading north along the coast and instead working on building a more homogeneous and bureaucratic state. By the early 1600s the had imported Aztec logographs allowing them to write and keep records, which further enhanced the bureaucratic nature. Mass movements of peoples were made ,sometimes simply taking whole villages and moving them across the empire. The end result was simple: a homogeneous core around Tzintzuntzan the capital city.
For the Triple Alliance the end was not glorious but long and drawn out an exercise in futility. The Triple Alliance was wracked with rebellion as a series of weak Huey Tlatoni's create decadent parties of cocoa and nihilistic poetry. The Triple Allaince lost their gains to the east and nearly lost Xoconochco. AS the Tarascans marched from the west and into the Valley Mexico the various cities within the Triple alliance rebelled. The end was inglorious as the Huey Tlatoni surrendered in the palace as his city burned down around him and his soldiers were taken to feed the fires of Caracueri (the Tarascan fire god) in Tzintzuan. Tenchtitlan was sunk and the Tarascans allowed most of the Northwest of the Triple Alliance to become tributary states.