AHC: Have an indigenou culture at least as advanced as the Aztec develop in Australia

maybe the concentrated food source can be a shoreline with particularly good fishing, or a major river which has particularly good fishing
 
I know there was sporadic contact between the northern coasts of Australia and Indonesia, perhaps there could have been more regular trade and an exchange of ideas that would have brought along a domesticate package?

There could have also been established contact with the Polynesians to the east, maybe the Maori in particular, perhaps something similar could have been established?
 
Could such a culture have developed on the Australian continent pre-european contact?

I guess posting a relevant link in a thread just gets ignored, so I'll make it more explicit.

The timeline Lands of Red and Gold is based on this very premise: finding a way to have viable indigenous agriculture developed in Australia. Some of the cultures there are more technologically advanced than the Aztecs; by the time they encounter Europeans in the early seventeenth century, some of the *Australian cultures are in the Iron Age.

The first timeline thread can be found here and the second thread here. (Warning: it's long.)
 
I guess posting a relevant link in a thread just gets ignored, so I'll make it more explicit.

The timeline Lands of Red and Gold is based on this very premise: finding a way to have viable indigenous agriculture developed in Australia. Some of the cultures there are more technologically advanced than the Aztecs; by the time they encounter Europeans in the early seventeenth century, some of the *Australian cultures are in the Iron Age.

The first timeline thread can be found here and the second thread here. (Warning: it's long.)

But could it though? What kind of premises would be necessary?
 

Sycamore

Banned
I know there was sporadic contact between the northern coasts of Australia and Indonesia, perhaps there could have been more regular trade and an exchange of ideas that would have brought along a domesticate package?

There could have also been established contact with the Polynesians to the east, maybe the Maori in particular, perhaps something similar could have been established?

I'm wondering- WI the Makassan contact with the Northern Australians had been more productive, and/or had occurred earlier? IOTL, the contact between the peoples of the Indonesian archipelago and those of coastal North Australia revolved around the trade in trepang, sea cucumbers. After making contact in the mid-1600s, The Makassans negotiated for the right to fish certain waters, as well as trading cloth, tobacco, metal axes and knives, as well as even rice and gin in some isolated cases. The Yolgnu of Arnhem Land also traded turtle-shell, pearls and cypress pine, and some were employed as trepang fishers.

This on its own could well be enough to establish a basic domesticate package and get a relatively advanced civilisation going- indeed, if the tales of the Baijini people, mentioned in the Djanggawul epic of the aboriginal Yolngu people of Arnhem Land, have a factual basis, then it may well have already happened IOTL. And if not, then there are other ways to bring about the rise of a Northern Australian Baijini-style advanced civilisation. For instance, getting established trade links between Northern Australia and the rest of the Old World, via the Spice Routes, would IMHO be extremely easy to do.

The Aborigines of this area technically already had their own crop package IOTL- their founder crop was Curcuma australasica, also known as Native Turmeric or the Cape York Lily. Named 'kumbigi' by the Aboriginal people of the Cape York Peninsula, they used to cultivate this plant, roasting and eating its roots. This close relative of Turmeric is present in the Cape York Peninsula, but it's common and widespread throughout Queensland. All it takes is a single trade vessel, either from or on its way to the Spice Islands, to find its way to these shores (such as the vessel from the Kilwa Sultanate which appears to have make landfall here in the 11th century IOTL), and for the merchants to trade with the native Aborigines for their potentially lucrative kumbigi spice. This variety of Australian turmeric has higher yields (in all aspects- size, weight, calorific value and curcumin yield) than the contemporary, traditional Indian varieties, and should accordingly be more valuable. This could easily provide enough incentive to add this region as another stop on the Spice Route long before the arrival of the Europeans.

Additionally, the Aboriginal people of the Cape York Peninsula aren't just limited to the single founder crop which they utilised historically IOTL. There are also four separate wild rice species which grow in abundance in the wetlands of Far North Queensland, which have only been discovered and identified by science in the past couple of years. They've now established that the Australian wild rice species are actually closely related enough to the domesticated Asian rice species to be interbred with them, combining the best elements of both the Asian cultivated varieties' higher yields and the Australian wild varieties' far greater resistance to diseases. IMHO, you don't even need an evolutionary POD for this to be perfectly plausible- it can be easily envisioned that such a civilization could indeed arise in this region of its own accord. Indeed, it's something of a surprise that it didn't IOTL.
 
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In my current timeline ecological disruption caused by introduced pigs forces the Aborigines of Queensland to adopt a mixed American/Polynesian crop package. Something similar could happen a lot earlier with a different Lapita culture.

I guess posting a relevant link in a thread just gets ignored, so I'll make it more explicit.

Your timeline is so intimidatingly well done that it pretty much ends the conversation because no-one wants to look stupid by comparing their ideas to yours. Ignoring your post is the only way we can comfortably discuss our ideas.
 

Sycamore

Banned
In my current timeline ecological disruption caused by introduced pigs forces the Aborigines of Queensland to adopt a mixed American/Polynesian crop package. Something similar could happen a lot earlier with a different Lapita culture.



Your timeline is so intimidatingly well done that it pretty much ends the conversation because no-one wants to look stupid by comparing their ideas to yours. Ignoring your post is the only way we can comfortably discuss our ideas.

Hey, my ideas weren't that stupid. :mad: (were they? :()
 
Hey, my ideas weren't that stupid. :mad: (were they? :()

Your idea was very good. I've actually discussed the possibility of a northern Australian center of agriculture with Jared, and he did suggest rice as a possible founder crop.

Agricultural civilizations in northern Australia are interesting because there's a lot of potential for interaction with the Lapita Culture/Austronesian cultures, and later Indonesia and the Spice Islands. You could have Native Australian civilizations adopting Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam as well as exporting their material and religious culture to Indonesia and from there into the Indian Ocean trade sphere.
 
Agricultural civilizations in northern Australia are interesting because there's a lot of potential for interaction with the Lapita Culture/Austronesian cultures, and later Indonesia and the Spice Islands. You could have Native Australian civilizations adopting Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam as well as exporting their material and religious culture to Indonesia and from there into the Indian Ocean trade sphere.

Now, that's a really fascinating scenario (with the due respect to Jared, the more TLs the better for us readers :D), because it puts them right away in contact with much consolidated cultures in Southeastern Asia.

I'm simply wondering, but perhaps even China gets interested in Australia ITTL :eek:
 

GdwnsnHo

Banned
Now, that's a really fascinating scenario (with the due respect to Jared, the more TLs the better for us readers :D), because it puts them right away in contact with much consolidated cultures in Southeastern Asia.

I'm simply wondering, but perhaps even China gets interested in Australia ITTL :eek:

You'd need a China that was interested in Indonesia first.

Controlling Indonesia/Getting tributaries in the region would have to happen before an Australian one.

Unless for some reason China decides to purposely make the area isolated - and send exiles over there.

(Oh, mr.awkward noble, I have a promotion for you, go to [Australia], and govern 8000 Li)

Amusing way (IMO) to deal with the Eunuchs. Don't kill them, tell them to base their fleets in Australia. Don't let them come back.
 

Sycamore

Banned
You'd need a China that was interested in Indonesia first.

Controlling Indonesia/Getting tributaries in the region would have to happen before an Australian one.

Unless for some reason China decides to purposely make the area isolated - and send exiles over there.

(Oh, mr.awkward noble, I have a promotion for you, go to [Australia], and govern 8000 Li)

Amusing way (IMO) to deal with the Eunuchs. Don't kill them, tell them to base their fleets in Australia. Don't let them come back.

You can have a region dominated by Chinese merchants without the Chinese Dynasties getting involved in things themselves- as was the case in the Maluku Islands, before the Arabs, and later the Europeans, came in to dominate proceedings themselves.
 
It seems to take ~5k years more or less for a civilization to go from inventing agriculture to building city-state based empires.

So, you either need to have an EARLY development/introduction of agriculture to Australia, or you need a seed civilization to introduce both the agriculture and the other tools of civilization.

The other problem is the most likely contact would be from tropical Indonesia whose agricultural package is suited only to northern Australia.


OT3H... There is genetic evidence of some immigration from the Indian subcontinent some 5000 years ago, apparently. If those immigrants had set up their own city states, kept contact with India, and been able to later introduce e.g. wheat to southern Australia, that might work. Be tough to do, I'd think, but might be possible.

After a couple of thousand years, the connexion to India might well be not only broken, but preserved only in mythology.
 
It seems to take ~5k years more or less for a civilization to go from inventing agriculture to building city-state based empires.

It's a little more complex than that. The growth of city-states took some time to build up to in the Middle East and East Asia, but you had them popping up in South America at around the same time as the Middle East despite South America's relatively later start on agriculture. These cities were fed mostly by seafood, and they were major urban centers.

The concentration of the population, the availability of water and protein etc. can all strongly influence the speed at which cities grow. There is no set timeline for how (or if) city-states will develop after the invention of agriculture.
 
I suppose you could have contact the other way, a tropical agricultural package of bananas, taro etc. transmitted from New Guineau or Melanesia seats in northern Australia.

Or you could try a real swerve with a society based on Emu domestication.

Or get real wonky and try and posit a super-early civilization which emerges during or before the megafauna extinctions.

But seriously, any line of speculation or development, keep it to the tropical north. Jared's work on the Australian south is so incredibly well developed and comprehensive it's just ... pointless to try and write anything.
 
In the spirit of developing an alternative in the tropical north, I can throw out a few ideas for crops and related matters. Maybe someone wants to run with developing that into an *Australian farming society that develops in the tropical north, and is confined from expanding south due to lack of suitable crops. (If you do that, I suggest you pick an existing language such as Yolŋu, which as currently living languages mean that it would be easier to develop names and so forth).

As others have already mentioned, Australia has existing native rice species. Four of them, in fact: Oryza australiensis, O. rufipogon, O. meridionalis and O. officinalis. Perhaps something could be developed with them as staple crops, and being limited by water and climate, things remain confined to the north.

Other staple crops could be developed from plants which are the same species as those which have been domesticated in Southeast Asia: the water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) and two species of yams (Dioscorea alata and D. bulbifera). There's some other plants which may well be native to northern Australia as well as southeast Asia, but the evidence is more ambiguous as to when they arrived, such as the lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) which is found in Queensland, and water spinach or kangkang (Ipomoea aquatica).

There's a wide variety of fruit trees that could be developed. Perhaps the most famous is the Kakadu plum, famous for having one of the highest concentrations of Vitamin C of any fruit, approximately 45-60 times that of an orange. Kadadu plum actually has 3 species which are called that; the main one is Terminalia ferdinandiana). Plenty of other fruits also grow in the tropical north and could be domesticated, too.

If you want to go nuts, there's the Australian cashew (Semecarpus australiensis), a relative of the common cashew. Cultivating it requires some care, though; the sap causes intense skin irritation.

There may possibly be some spices as well. I've read rather mixed things about Curcuma australasica aka native turmeric or Cape York Lilly, which Sycamore already mentioned as a possible spice. There's lemon ironbark (Eucalyptus staigeriana), whose leaves make a decent spice, used a bit like bay leaves are in cooking.
 
You can have a region dominated by Chinese merchants without the Chinese Dynasties getting involved in things themselves- as was the case in the Maluku Islands, before the Arabs, and later the Europeans, came in to dominate proceedings themselves.

A more developed Northern Australia would be a region the VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie; United East India Company) would have been a lot more interested in.
 
As others have already mentioned, Australia has existing native rice species. Four of them, in fact: Oryza australiensis, O. rufipogon, O. meridionalis and O. officinalis. Perhaps something could be developed with them as staple crops, and being limited by water and climate, things remain confined to the north.

Other staple crops could be developed from plants which are the same species as those which have been domesticated in Southeast Asia: the water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) and two species of yams (Dioscorea alata and D. bulbifera). There's some other plants which may well be native to northern Australia as well as southeast Asia, but the evidence is more ambiguous as to when they arrived, such as the lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) which is found in Queensland, and water spinach or kangkang (Ipomoea aquatica).

There's a wide variety of fruit trees that could be developed. Perhaps the most famous is the Kakadu plum, famous for having one of the highest concentrations of Vitamin C of any fruit, approximately 45-60 times that of an orange. Kadadu plum actually has 3 species which are called that; the main one is Terminalia ferdinandiana). Plenty of other fruits also grow in the tropical north and could be domesticated, too.

If you want to go nuts, there's the Australian cashew (Semecarpus australiensis), a relative of the common cashew. Cultivating it requires some care, though; the sap causes intense skin irritation.

There may possibly be some spices as well. I've read rather mixed things about Curcuma australasica aka native turmeric or Cape York Lilly, which Sycamore already mentioned as a possible spice. There's lemon ironbark (Eucalyptus staigeriana), whose leaves make a decent spice, used a bit like bay leaves are in cooking.
Oooohhh.... ATL (north) Australian cuisine would be more interesting.

How about the writing system? Would they borrow from their northern neighbors or from southern Indian traders directly?
 
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