AHC- Pre-Columbian discovery of the Old World by the Native Americans

SunDeep

Banned
As it say; your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have an ATL where the native Americans discover the Old World before Columbus 'discovers' them. Could this be done? Which native American civilisation would be the likeliest candidate to establish contact? And what would the ramifications be? Personally, I'd go with an ATL where the Taino follow a similar path to the Polynesians, island-hopping across the Atlantic to settle the archipelagos of Bermuda, the Azores and Madeira prior to the Europeans, with the man who would have been Christopher Columbus' father in law IOTL, Bartolomeu Perestrello, making first contact with the Taino civilisation ITTL in 1419. Does this sound like a good start? Or would you suggest a different path of divergence?
 
The Amazonian civilization was probably fairly water-oriented. If they developed in the direction some bluewater nautical skills, currents and winds indicate that contact with Mail would be possible.
 

SunDeep

Banned
The Amazonian civilization was probably fairly water-oriented. If they developed in the direction some bluewater nautical skills, currents and winds indicate that contact with Mail would be possible.

isn't that how the Taino came into being in the first place? The Arawak peoples originated from the Amazon region, before a group developed the blue-water navigation skills that they used to colonise the Caribbean and became the Taino. Later, from 1200AD onwards, the Caribs followed the same path of expansion that the Taino had earlier, from the Orinoco basin across the Caribbean, and for the next two and a half centuries, any further expansion was put on halt, with the Taino having to devote their efforts to combating the encroaching Caribs' attempts to exterminate and assimilate them. So, for a potential POD, WI the Caribs never ventured beyond the Orinoco basin, leaving the Taino to develop in relative peace, and allowing them to continue along their course of expansionism largely unchecked?
 
A couple of Inuit were washed up dead in Ireland in their canoe in the 1700's. I'll have to see if I can find the source. But would be possible for this sort of thing to occur say 3-400 years earlier.
 

SunDeep

Banned
A couple of Inuit were washed up dead in Ireland in their canoe in the 1700's. I'll have to see if I can find the source. But would be possible for this sort of thing to occur say 3-400 years earlier.

Thing is though, it's only a proper discovery if they return back home to tell their own people about it, or at least bring stuff back with them. So, would this scenario actually be counted as a 'discovery'?
 
The pre-Inuit Saqqaq and Independence cultures in Greenland are possible candidates. Put them on the right path and you can have pre-Columbian discovery of the Old World during the Nordic bronze age. :D
 

SunDeep

Banned
Hmm...

The pre-Inuit Saqqaq and Independence cultures in Greenland are possible candidates. Put them on the right path and you can have pre-Columbian discovery of the Old World during the Nordic bronze age. :D

Taking the reverse Viking route, via Greenland, Iceland and the Orkney Islands? Interesting, and it opens up plenty of possibilities... :cool:
 
Yeah, Inuit or other groups near the arctic circle would be the best bet, traveling by canoe to Iceland, or even Europe proper. IIRC, there's some evidence it may have happened IOTL, but not much.

Other than that... there are a lot fewer islands in the Atlantic than the Pacific, so that would be more difficult than a Polynesian scenario, though if you wanted to go that route, than the Taino are probably the best bet.

If you just wanted the Old World, though, you might be able to get this by taking some Andean culture and having a reverse Polynesia - there certainly were coastal cultures with merchant boats, however coastal, in the region. I suppose that if you have some PoD introducing trade with the Polynesians, than you could go that route. There's some stories that claim that an Incan emperor went out to sea for some time, and people who associate with Easter Island, though whether or not that's a good assumption is an entirely different question.

Putting the two together, I suppose if you could delay European discovery of the Americas - Columbus isn't financed/sinks/is mutinied and turns back, or whatever - and add in major trade via Polynesia, it might be possible for an extremely limited contact of Europeans with Native Americans somewhere in maritime SE Asia or nearby regions before the Europeans reach the Americas, but you'd be running on a time crunch before someone found there way to Brazil on accident.
 
Somebody from one or another of the canoe-building tribes in the NW of North America -- I think that it was the Haida, but am not 100% sure about this -- apparently told a journalist or anthropologist (or some other 'Anglo' who reported the story) that their ancestors' journeys along the coast had once taken them to a land "where people eat using sticks"... If true then, maybe, they reached Japan?
 
Difficult

It seems really, really difficult. The Western Hemisphere Civilizations were unsurpassed plant breeders and farmers, excellent masons, and could build their cities big and quite clean for the era - but their seamanship seems to be in the same boat as their iron working.
 

SunDeep

Banned
It seems really, really difficult. The Western Hemisphere Civilizations were unsurpassed plant breeders and farmers, excellent masons, and could build their cities big and quite clean for the era - but their seamanship seems to be in the same boat as their iron working.

The Taino built pretty sophisticated ocean-going catamaran canoes, comparable to those of the Polynesians. They were the ones who invented hammocks, which were immediately adopted by the Europeans on their ships after making contact with them, and which allowed them to carry larger crews aboard their vessels in more sanitary conditions. They also had some pretty effective sail designs. All told, their vessels IOTL were easily as capable as Viking longboats, maybe even more so; and they could well have been capable of island-hopping across the Atlantic.
 
The Taino built pretty sophisticated ocean-going catamaran canoes, comparable to those of the Polynesians. They were the ones who invented hammocks, which were immediately adopted by the Europeans on their ships after making contact with them, and which allowed them to carry larger crews aboard their vessels in more sanitary conditions. They also had some pretty effective sail designs. All told, their vessels IOTL were easily as capable as Viking longboats, maybe even more so; and they could well have been capable of island-hopping across the Atlantic.

I have seen no information of Taino dugout canoes being of catamaran configuration or that they were capable of anything more than Caribbean island hopping. I can't even find info regarding if historically, they were used in conjunction with sails. Perhaps you can provide a link?

Sure the canoes for the elites in their society could be large but capable of bluewater voyages across the Atlantic? The geography of the Caribbean was perfect for their technology. One can island hop from the S. American mainland N. up the lesser Antilles and then W., hopping the various greater islands to Cuba and then either to the Yucatan or Florida. None of this requires a hop further than 100 miles. Crossing the Atlantic itself would be a whole larger dimension with no handy island chains until one is close to either Europe or Africa. Thousands of miles of voyaging as opposed to anything they would need to do in their domain.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Some of the Pacific Coast cultures were

building pretty sophisticated planked "longboat" type canoes (tomols) in the early modern era; the Chumash in what is now California and the Haida, etc. in Washington/British Columbia.

Some of the last ones may have been influenced by Western contact (really hard to tell) but the indigenous designs were pretty impressive, especially for people working without any metallic fasteners...;)

Obviously, this is a (small) replica, but it still gives one an idea:

Tomol5_4.jpg


Get something similar (but bigger) into use by the Micmac or what-have-you early enough, and (given a lot of good fortune) an encounter in Iceland is certainly possible...

Best,
 
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If you take into how sailing paths were worked out (taking advantage of currents and winds) then two of the best options would be via the equator of the Pacific or up the North American coast getting you to upper Western Europe/Iceland/Scandanavia. Going from the Amazon to Africa would be very had because your going against natural forces pushing you back where you came from.
Depending on how you look at climactic PODs you could maybe start a mini ice age to build up northern glaciers and ice caps, then have the people journey across the coast?
I think there has been evidence that the Maya could sail a little bit, so maybe if the Polynesians make it to the Maya, they trade technology, then perhaps the Maya can go the way of the Pacific?
 
As had been mentioned earlier, of all the Atlantic cultures on the west side of the pond, the Inuit were best positioned to make it to the Old World, if just by the particular conjunction of geography and sea skill the Inuit had access to.

Of all the other cultures mentioned, none had a history of more than coastal sailing (or paddling). The Taino and other peoples of the Caribbean are given a partial exception, and even then, it was island hopping of no longer than 100 miles at a stretch.

For any of this cross- Atlantic venturing, motivation needs to be the key, and I just don't see any among the New Worlders.

On the Pacific side, mention has been made of a Polynesian POD. There is unverified evidence of Polynesian contact (most probably from Easter Island) with the Mapuche of Chile(Polynesian contact with Meso America seems more than a bit of a stretch). Wrinkles just possible here, although hard to see it seeing New Worlders getting to the Old World before the Europeans come to them.

Aleuts and Inuits probably crossing the Bering Straits and even the Bering Sea to Kamchatka seems very doable. It's just island hopping. Does that count? ;)
 
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