A Cargo Cult Jaredia

1406 AD

One of the biggest Treasure Ships of the First expedition of Zheng He gets lost in the "Western ocean". ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_ship )

The ship's cargo consists of: wheat, rice, other cultivated plants seeds, as well pigs, sheep, horses, cattle, goats, chicken... and lots of cultivating and other machinery units, BOOKS, gunpouder and firearms ... like a mini-Noah's ark.

The crew of about 1000 men consists of craftsmen, builders, engineers, metalworkers, scientists, teachers and soldiers. No chinese women with them onboard of course.

The ship after several weeks of sailing without navigation wrecks at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_River_(Western_Australia)

08-06-26Map.gif


The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noongar locals inhabiting the south-west tip of Mediterranean climate ( of about 200 000 km2 area ) amount no more than 12 000 of all the about half million people of the aboriginal total population.

How this noongar-chinese blend will evolve, let alone to ferment for 400 yrs on this vast, fertile ground?

Language & Writting system ( perhaps noongarian imperial "mandarine" or "latin" as spoken language encoded in hierogliphic chinese characters )? Genetics? Religion? ( fusion of Confucianism + Dreamtime, spiced with a little bit islam )? Technology ( it seems that this territory is rich enough in minerals so early 15th century tech to survive and evolve + steady influx of import tech via the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer_Route from the 1610s onwards ... )? Territorial expansion? Demographics?

How this country/society/... will look like in early 1800es when discovered?
 
No, they weren't.

Goats, pigs, and presumably rats ought to be enough to wreck as many ecologies as you like.

How would they get down there, though? Even if lost around Indonesia (likely enough), why would they keep going south when they knew home was north?
 
Goats, pigs, and presumably rats ought to be enough to wreck as many ecologies as you like.

So what? This happens naturally all the time. Ecologies implode to be replaced by better ones. It is called evolution. Human intervention accelerates such genomic exchange, which often has devastating ( although vastly exaggerated by the popular "science" ) consequences, BUT what matters is ONLY the impact such changes have on the human wellbeing, isn't it?

BUT, not this is the point here:

Australia has 0.3 to 1 million population at the beginning of the colonization in our time line, who lead subsistence lifes in economical sence. The aboriginal cultures are not evolving beyond the stone age level because they do not have access to more energy/food. The demographic situation is equilibrium, and the only way of it to evolve is slightly up when there are good years, and

The scenario proposed here is trying to figure out what Australia the Europeans will discover in early 1800s if it's population is furnished with 15th century eurasian "biotech" , writing and state-building culture, and let isolated to ferment for 400 years.

Putting in one equation: 1. Land - the fertile South-West of Australia, 2. Initial population resource of about 10 000 people ( almost 1000 chinese men + the rest to be the Noongar local groups ), 3. Plant and animal species mentioned above, which to provide the food/energy/economical foundation ...
I reckon that about 1906 ( 500 years or about 20 generations later ), Australia will have about 30-40 mln. people population ( at ~3% pop.growth rate , or doubling rate of about once each generation ), consisting mostly ( >90% ) of the sinized noongarians' descendants; which population would be organized in continent spanning "empire" centered in a city built on the Landing site ( OTL Perth ). ( Of course >90% of the imperial / continental population shall be concentrated in the South - may be roughly 50-50% distro between the South-west and South-east, and the middle and the north of the continent will be sparcely populated resembling the demographics of OTL ). The non-noongar australian aborigines would be asimilated or marginalized.
An demographic evolution similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan_before_Meiji_Restoration but simultaneously on turbo AND steroids ;)

In this world James Cook's ship is captured by the locals on 29.04.1770 while landing at Botany Bay. The ships visiting the continent continue to disappear, which keeps the chinese catalized Noongar Empire civilization out of contact until at least 1806. The Noongar Empire does not evolve like naval power until quite late, due to the overall sequence of circumstances: civilization starting with a crashlanding event, during the First Zheng He voyage; from 1600es the West ocean almost every year delivering a wrecking ship with pale people ( believed by the OTL aborigines seeing european for first time, to be the deads returning ). ...

I suspect the Noongar Empire will have lots of parallels with OTL Japan: technologically not-so-bad developed ( books printing, gunpowder, ... ) but very isolacionist. The colonization efforts of the European powers will have to skip this territory like it happened with Japan, Siam, etc. The natural Noongar ally is China ( Noongar and Chinese would use one and the same writing system, although noongar and mandarin are so different as spoken ones, two literate Noongar and Chinese persons would be able "fluently" to speak to eachother by writing notes to eachother... )

In 2006 ( 600 yrs after the Crashlanding ), Noongaria has >100 mln population, and is highly developed nation, an example and attractor for Africa...


How would they get down there, though? Even if lost around Indonesia (likely enough), why would they keep going south when they knew home was north?

Hmm. Many options are possible, but ...: Chinese Treasure fleets were doing coastal navigation predominantly, but as far as we know they were crossing the Gulf of Bengal straight from the northern tip of Sumatra to Sri Lanka. I think this is the most plausible PoD: a storm due to which the "australian" ship is diverted south and crosses the equator; the crew tries to get the eastern direction and to get back in more homey waters, but grabbed by Brower Route winds gets not to Indonesia , but to Southern Australia. Such trip must take not more than several weeks otherwise the crew will eat out the future crops and stock. ;)
 
1. Welcome to the boards! :)

2. The Chinese Cargo Cult idea is really cool and has potential...as a Cargo Cult with semi-advanced hybrid culture. But there are some flaws as others have addressed. An Austro-Chinese Tech Wank of the scale you're hinting at under these conditions is ASB, TBH.

3. Try to keep calm and realize that people here (save for a small handfull of trolls we ignore anyway) really are happy to help and will provide constructive criticism so long as you're willing to listen. The biggest "n00b" mistake on these boards is getting argumentative and taking advice/critiques personally, then seeing their TL derailed into a flame war. Keep calm and open and hear people out and your TL will be the better for it! :)
 
but how then Japan can?
( as far as I know their rice production covers about 100% of their consumption ).

Different ecologies altogether. Australia is mostly scrub to desert with the east being temperate woodlands or grassands. The north has some tropical areas, and a small portion in the south-west is temperate. The map you posted shows this. To the desert regions (orange) add in the darkgreen and light pink areas since they are sub-humid regions.

If you haven't done so, read Jared's Land of Red and Gold for some advice. A lot of his posts give foot notes on the foods, ecologies, and cultures of Australia for both his ATL and OTL. Besides all the info that fellow posters put up in the thread.

Anyway it will be interesting to see what you do with this. So, continue on.
 
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2. The Chinese Cargo Cult idea is really cool and has potential...as a Cargo Cult with semi-advanced hybrid culture. But there are some flaws as others have addressed. An Austro-Chinese Tech Wank of the scale you're hinting at under these conditions is ASB, TBH.

I agree. You are likely to lose lots of the cultural package in the chaos, and given the necessity of intermarriage. And adapting agriculture to a new area, even if climates are similar, is always more difficult than you think.

But really a cool POD.
 
Pre:

"cargo cult" denotes only the quality of the crashlanding event of being sudden injection of highest available on the planet seed of material and social technology into low tech environment. This does not imply in future the descendants of the mixed stock of locals and crashlanders to await and to try to spellbound the highly developed foreigners into giving more gifts.

"jaredia" - because it is in J. Diamond's lines of thought about natural constraints / resources vs. chances and conditions for expansion and accumulation of wealth.

I think that the setting is not ASB. The only very unprobable event is the trajectory ( distance and time ) accross the Indian ocean which leads the Treasure ship exactly in the OTL Perth's area. Luck, even exceptional one is not an ASB tool, as far as it is within the "metaphysical" frame.

Last, but not least - of course, we'll avoid taking personal any remark and comment.

Conditions:

Civilization:

Will persist. No factor to destroy it present there. They ( the first 1000 ) have ( printered! ) books, they have practical knowledge, they have the "biotech" - a set of plant and animal species to build up expanding base of food, materials, energy, transport, they even have seed-materials - wood and metals to start with...

The Crew consists of about 1000 people - young men, they have the time to undertake the measures to survive the first several years, they have the mental flexibility to realize what have happened to them and to adjust their actions according to this real picture, and have the vigor and strenght to implement further plans.

Also, a crew is emanation of the highest achievements of a civilization. They are all people of organization. They accept and understand discipline, line of command, superiority in rank, functional specialization. I believe the first thing they'll do upon landing will be to built a fortified townlike settlement into which they'll try to preserve their wealth / resources. The town will attract locals for providing the things the locals anyway spend their entire lifes to look for - mainly food. The interaction will be peaceful. The Crew will be accepted by the locals as yet another tribe, and a tribe with which no hostile interaction is meaningful and useful. The Crew tribe and the local Noongarians will trade. Due to the technological superiority the Crew and descendants will buy very cheap and will sell very expensive.

I think that the line of civilizational succession will be mostly vertical / generational: the crashlanded crew members will marry local women ( no matter how strange looking they'll be to chinese from early 15th century ). The women and their offspring will live in and around the Town and the offspring will be grown according to the Crew traditions. In several generations the spoken Chinese language will be lost, due to the prevalence of the mother tongue ( except the neologisms for things which do not exist and are not conotated by the local Noongar languages and dialects, the words for ALL the newly imported objects and ideas ); but the written language will use chinese characters.

The Crew being 1000 men strong will "consume" huge part of the local "women's" pool. The estimates about the Noongar population are for 6000 to 12000 people in early 1800es, for the whole territory ( the left "orange" on the agricultural map above ). Starting with almost 1000 chinese men, and a little bit more than 1000 local women, the demographic initial basis of the Crew tribe will be initially about 2000 strong "citizens" + may be another 1000 locals included in the economical structure of the Town. The agricultural capabilities and all the available territory around ( containing comprehencive list of resources to maintain and expand the techno and biotech base ), implies that the descendants of the Crew will undergo demographic transition into times higher birth rates and lower death rates. From comparative data, we may assume that starting with total of about 3000 people, the population will double each 20-25 years. The whole Noongar population will be assimilated in generation or two. Say half of the growth product will feed the Town expansion, and the other half will feed colonization around.

I can not estimate how much of whom will perish due to epidemics ( do we have data on desease interaction between the europeans and locals in OTL? ).

The demographic part of the timeline would look something ( roughly ) like:

1400 - 3 000
1420 - 6 000
1440 - 12 000 ( the point where no unintegrated noongarians are present anymore )
1460 - 24 000
1480 - 48 000
1500 - 100 000
1525 - 200 000
1550 - 500 000 ( the point where the Noongar population becomes bigger than the local pre-contact one for the whole continent; at this period south-eastern Australia is colonized too ( horses!)
1600 - 2 000 000
1700 - 10 000 000
...
Australia has 40-50 000 000 hectars of arable land suitable for growing of wheat / cereals. Modern yield is about 9 tonnes per hectare. Realistic Noongar - Crew one will be about a tonne per hectar.

... to be continued ...
 
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