A continents wide Pre-Columbian Empire in the Americas

Could any of the civilizations in the Americas have ever developed into an empire that spanned from South America into central America and then well into North America?
 
No. Why would you even ask if that's possible? Nobody created a continent-wide empire in Europe and that's a much smaller place than either of the Americas, and they had easier means of travel throughout the area.
 
No. Why would you even ask if that's possible? Nobody created a continent-wide empire in Europe and that's a much smaller place than either of the Americas, and they had easier means of travel throughout the area.

Was Rome not a continent wide-empire in Europe and beyond?

Maybe you misunderstood my question. I don't mean all of the Americas geographically under one empire but one that spanned between South America through into North America (In this case at least into the modern US).

Perhaps a much larger sphere of influence of the Incas



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Even that much is asking a lot, you still have to remember the logistical problems involved. The Romans had logistical problems and they had roads and ox-carts and all that stuff to transport goods and people across the empire. In the Americas people can only walk. It's a marvel the Tawantinsuyu was as big as it was, and of course they didn't really get into Colombia, let alone Central America.
 
At its largest the Incan empire was apparently 2,000,000 km² (772,204 sq mi), which is just a little larger than the Roman Republic at its peak 1,950,000 km² (752,899 sq mi).
 
Because India and China don't have jungle that to this day is impassable and a waterway that is a major birthplace of hurricanes right in their heart. It'd be ASB to have a powerbase in North America and hold South America or vice versa. The terrain is just too unfriendly for regular communication.
 
The biggest issue is transport. In the Americas the best beast of burden they had was the llama. Llamas are pack animals, meaning that items were loaded on their back for transport. As draft animals (animals that carry weight behind them rather than on their backs) llamas are not that useful, and when they are used as a draft animal it's typically to pull ploughs. Pre-Columbian civilizations also didn't have the wheel. This means that things like carts or wagons didn't exist, and that limits both how fast people can travel and how much they can travel with (a pre-Columbian American can only bring what they can carry, while someone from the Old World could load much more into an ox cart). This limits the amount people can travel and their ability to trade, both of which limit the size of an empire.
 
The isthmus of Panama is a big problem for a united North and South America, it doesn't make for a good land transport route. It also means that good stuff in one area doesn't spread to other areas, for example with the entire new world food package and llamas somewhere like the eastern half of the USA could have made a great civilisation. But alas the llamas never made it, nor did the full panoply of other stuff from South and Central America so such a civilisation couldn't boom before 1492.
 
Because India and China don't have jungle that to this day is impassable and a waterway that is a major birthplace of hurricanes right in their heart. It'd be ASB to have a powerbase in North America and hold South America or vice versa. The terrain is just too unfriendly for regular communication.

Just trying to point out the other guy's analogy of Europe being an example of nobody creating a massive empire is wrong.
 
Spaniards did manage to create an empire spanning both Peru and Mexico, and much more.
The jungles of Panama are not going away. But there was some OTL communication between Peru and Mexico. Bronze metallurgy was introduced, and hairless dogs.

WI Incas build up sufficiently powerful navy, that they end up projecting power to Mexico and Inca soldiers with bronze swords take control of Tenochtitlan?
 
Spaniards did manage to create an empire spanning both Peru and Mexico, and much more.
The jungles of Panama are not going away. But there was some OTL communication between Peru and Mexico. Bronze metallurgy was introduced, and hairless dogs.

WI Incas build up sufficiently powerful navy, that they end up projecting power to Mexico and Inca soldiers with bronze swords take control of Tenochtitlan?

I'm not that familiar with Incan sailing culture but I figured this would make more sense in terms of traversing such a long south-north axis as opposed to only traversing through land and jungle.
 
So how come someone was able to create large empires in China and India?
How does that have anything to do with what I said? China and India aren't entire continents, and more to the point they also had the same advantages that Europeans had to let them create large local empires.
Spaniards did manage to create an empire spanning both Peru and Mexico, and much more.
The jungles of Panama are not going away. But there was some OTL communication between Peru and Mexico. Bronze metallurgy was introduced, and hairless dogs.

WI Incas build up sufficiently powerful navy, that they end up projecting power to Mexico and Inca soldiers with bronze swords take control of Tenochtitlan?
Spaniards accomplished said empire-building in a very different context than what you'd expect if you're asking if a Native-American empire could span through both continents. Spanish had a lot of ocean-traversing ships and, more importantly, germs. How many Inca soldiers can hop on over to Mexico and how are their bronze swords going to grant them enough of an advantage to conquer an empire with hundreds of thousands of soldiers? Empire-building in any continent is not even a fraction of how simple people on this forum tend to make it out to be, and in the Americas moreso. Also, source on the Pre-Columbian communication between Peru and Mexico?
 
WI Incas build up sufficiently powerful navy, that they end up projecting power to Mexico and Inca soldiers with bronze swords take control of Tenochtitlan?

the big question here is just what kind of ships can the Incas build? If they get full out into the bronze age, can they build ones big enough to establish real communications with Mexico and point north, essentially bypassing that jungle in CA?
 
the big question here is just what kind of ships can the Incas build? If they get full out into the bronze age, can they build ones big enough to establish real communications with Mexico and point north, essentially bypassing that jungle in CA?

Just a note that "Bronze Age" isn't a particularly useful term outside the area that the term was invented for, (especially western) Eurasia.
 
the big question here is just what kind of ships can the Incas build? If they get full out into the bronze age, can they build ones big enough to establish real communications with Mexico and point north, essentially bypassing that jungle in CA?

Bronze age ships aren't hurricane proof. That's going to create a problem vis a vis regular communications between two population centres with differing interests.
 
So there is the West Mexico culture - some finds in the last few decades that have some real cultural links to the Andes. Iconography of some similar gods, similar large cooper ritual blades, some similar pottery. Trade up that littoral is in fact possible.

A problem though is the Darien. Seriously, its one of the more impassable places on land on the planet, and you have some separate origins of the Andean and Mesoamerican zones.

I think, absent a Spanish conquest, the Mexica were well on their way to controlling most everything from the Rio Grande to modern El Salvador. Tawantansuya was going strong as well. And Tawantansuya had pretty huge chunk of territory. Any Amazon polities are lost to recorded history, sadly.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
About the most sophisticated marine carpentry in the

Bronze age ships aren't hurricane proof. That's going to create a problem vis a vis regular communications between two population centres with differing interests.

About the most sophisticated examples of marine carpentry in the Western Hemisphere were the Chumash and Tongva tomols:

http://www.nps.gov/chis/learn/historyculture/tomolcrossing.htm

Impressive for redwood and pine planked and tar/rosin caulked, but presumably pretty close to the ultimate one could expect absent real metallurgy, which is not a technology that was particularly present in the Western Hemisphere before the European mariners made contact.

Best,
 
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