Alternative fates for the "New World"

[matashowski]

So i was looking at an Americentric map last night, and it occured to me that Alt history generally only focuses on very small changes that are at least familiar to the reader. I understand why, but i feel as though that places topics into a pretty narrow category. My thinking is this: We have two continents that existed outside the knowledge of the rest of the world for almost the entirety of human history. Really all it took was having sea faring nations cut off from the spice trade in order to get a permanent discovery. Now what im curious about is: what are some completely unexplored alternative fates for north and south America? Could the present day see some type of continent wide DMZ that runs the length of the Rocky Mountains or the Mississippi, with the sides controlled by pan-Asian and pan-European states? What about a surviving remnent of the Roman empire, or Carthage? A world where the Incans or the Aztecs had created a loose confederation that spanned their respective continents? You do see it from time to time, such as Islam spreading to the new world, or native Americans getting a better shot, but generally its confined to "Europe discovers entire continent, proceeds to colonize." What are some things that, with a POD perhaps in ancient Egypt, that give a completely different fate for to the Americas?


(And yes, i recognize that diseases and and plunder are likely going to happen. But what happened OTL, the gradual breakaway of Europeanish countries, doesn't have to be the case.)

 

[Oba]

So i was looking at an Americentric map last night, and it occured to me that Alt history generally only focuses on very small changes that are at least familiar to the reader. I understand why, but i feel as though that places topics into a pretty narrow category. My thinking is this: We have two continents that existed outside the knowledge of the rest of the world for almost the entirety of human history. Really all it took was having sea faring nations cut off from the spice trade in order to get a permanent discovery. Now what im curious about is: what are some completely unexplored alternative fates for north and south America? Could the present day see some type of continent wide DMZ that runs the length of the Rocky Mountains or the Mississippi, with the sides controlled by pan-Asian and pan-European states? What about a surviving remnent of the Roman empire, or Carthage? A world where the Incans or the Aztecs had created a loose confederation that spanned their respective continents? You do see it from time to time, such as Islam spreading to the new world, or native Americans getting a better shot, but generally its confined to "Europe discovers entire continent, proceeds to colonize." What are some things that, with a POD perhaps in ancient Egypt, that give a completely different fate for to the Americas?


(And yes, i recognize that diseases and and plunder are likely going to happen. But what happened OTL, the gradual breakaway of Europeanish countries, doesn't have to be the case.)

Firstly, I have to say that, IMHO, the Inka and the Aztecs are not really a fair match, with the Inka having many decisive advantages in both hard and soft power: The Aztecs had a loose hegemony ruled by fear, with only three cities, if extremely advanced cities, certainly superior overall to any in Europe, in their Triple Alliance - Tlacopan, Texcoco and Tenochtitlan. Everything else was hegemony. Plus, the Aztecs ruled, again, mostly only indirectly, only some three hundred thousand square kilometres and but some one million subjects in the Valley of Mexico, whereas the Inka Empire at its height covered some two million square kilometres and had a population as high as some thirty seven million subjects, according to some estimates (estimates of roughly a score or so million subjects for the Aztecs are based on the hegemony, not the Valley of Mexico). Finally, Aztec warfare was based on the "Flower War" - the aim being to capture the enemy for sacrifice, not to destroy them in battle proper.

The Inka, by contrast, fought to win, with as many as one hundred thousand troops being able to be levied for a single battle, a system of logistics and supply train rivalling that of the Romans, with storehouses, fortresses, roads, llama caravans, and so on. In fact, so powerful were the Inka armies that they often did not even need to fight their enemies, for the latter would often march beside them rather than face certain defeat in battle.

Furthermore, the Inka Empire had soft power, which the Aztecs almost completely lacked: They provided everyone with housing, food, water, basic healthcare (for their day this was remarkably advanced and effective) and necessities, in exchange for their complete allegiance to the Sapa Inka (the emperor), to the Inka state and in exchange for their labor, including in a form of civil conscription known as mit'a.

 

[Fairdowner]

Was there any pre European contact at all between the Aztecs and Incas? I remember reading that there were certain Aztec castes who were noted traders and explorers and the Incas had a degree of expansionism. I'm just wondering

Sorry pre Columbian America isn't one of my strong point.

 

[vuun]

One thing about pre-Columbian America is a relative lack of seafaring cultures, hampering easy diffusion of goods and ideas between distant civilizations. I get the impression there was little contact between Mexican and Andean civilizations--though presumably some as crops found their way between the two--part of the reason being they're both mountainous regions of land empires that wouldn't naturally look to the sea. Also, they're fronting a rather remote part of the open Pacific with almost no islands--unlike peoples in the Mediterranean or in the East Indies where there's plenty of nearby land across water to spur nautical development, there's basically nothing out there, from their perspective, worth trying to sail to.

The Caribbean's really the one good place in the New World for maritime cultures and trade to develop natively. I don't think it's that implausible for someone from an alternate Caribbean being blown off course in the Gulf Stream and discovering the Old World by accident, which would make for an interesting ATL.

 

[oshron]

iirc, teh Aztecs at least DID travel pretty far outside their country, as far north as the American Southwest (evidenced by a Mesoamerican ballcourt dating to just before the Spanish Conquest) and down to South America (or they met with people from there; iirc there's records of South American birds in Aztec lands which could only have arrived there by merchants selling them as pets)

 

[Driftless]

(snip)
The Caribbean's really the one good place in the New World for maritime cultures and trade to develop natively. I don't think it's that implausible for someone from an alternate Caribbean being blown off course in the Gulf Stream and discovering the Old World by accident, which would make for an interesting ATL.

Timing and landing spot would be an issue. Pre-Iron Age Europe, or later? Land in Ireland, Norway, or ?

 

[phildup]

There was limited contact between Mexico and South America facilitated by Mayans, who were adept at coastal trade.

Regarding the dearth of major PODs impacting NA and SA, I am in the middle of a timeline on AH that has major impacts on the Inca, Mayans and the Great Planes.

POD is the failed Yuan invasion of Java. nothing Eurocentric about it.

 

[zoomar]

First, lets quit talking about "Aztecs" and "Incas", when discussing such a divergent time line. It's fair to discuss and explore the possible further evolution of Mexican, Andean, and Central American civilizations absent European contacts and conquest, and base these imaginings on what we know about the general characteristics of MesoAmerican and Peruvian civilizations, but the "Aztecs" and "Inca" just happened to be the dominant groups when the Conquistadors showed up.

Also, many people have explained why it is quite unlikely for the ancient civilizations of antiquity (Egypt, Greece, Rome, etc) to have offshoots in (or even minimal contact with) the New World civilizations. Islam, Europe, China, Polynesian, and possibly even Mongol contact and colonization, yes.

So the real question is: when does this contact occur? If you delay European contact several hundred years, the processes of centralization and technological innovation in both Mexico and Peru might give you powerful civilizations capable of completely withstanding or at least adapting to the intrusion of these new people. Have the contacts come from Islam or China during the time period this is most likely (roughly the same as OTL Columbus plus or minus a few decades) you can imagine many plausible, radically different outcomes. My own guess is that Norse or Polynesian contacts would have the least overall impact on the American high cultures. All of this ignores the eternal bugaboo of disease resistance, which may or may not (opinions differ) have radically impacted Native populations even without any outright attempts by anybody to conquer or convert natives.

 

[GeographyDude]

If Asian cultures had colonized the west coasts of N and SA . . .

Well, you'd have to get lucky. The more mild forms of smallpox and influenza would have to get here first. Maybe the Chinese go slower, with the idea that you want to build up your trading partners, sure, you want a healthy half to two-thirds of the profit, but anything more than that and you're kind of asking for problems.

And maybe the Chinese and Polynesians matter-of-factly include the Native Americans in trade deals they strike with the Portuguese, Spanish, and English. Not because they're nice guys, but because it would put them at a competitive disadvantage not to.

And if things go very well, NA is a loose confederation with the Chinese on the west coast, the English on the east coast, and some largely autonomous large native nations to this day.

SA might include some Portguese nations and be both similar and different in interesting ways.

And the Caribbean might be the most interesting of all.

 

[Oba]

@zoomar: I would like to point out that the Mesoamericans were sociopolitically quite decentralized compared to the Andeans: At the time of OTL contact, only the Tarascans really had what could be called an empire. The Maya, Nahua, Mixtecs and others were really just small kingdoms or city-states. Interestingly the earlier, Classic Period, state of Teotihuacan quite possibly had greater centralization than the later states, at least in Central Mexico.

In the Andes, however, the situation was quite different: The Inka were quite a centralized state, more or less centralized, and a true empire, in contrast to a confederation (as with the Iroquois) or a hegemony (as with the Aztecs). Furthermore, centralization had been increasing in the Andes arguably since the Early Intermediate Period: While the weak centralization of the Chavín gave way to various Nasca, Moche and Paracas states of the Early Intermediate Period, these were were replaced by the bipolar system of Wari and Tiwanaku, with the Late Intermediate Period being less strongly but still dominated by the Chimú, and finally an undisputed and quite uniform unipolar system throughout the Andes was established with the Inka. One way this can be seen, for example, in the extreme dominance of Quechua to this day in the Central Andes (among the indigenous languages, that is), in contrast to the many languages of Mexico or even just the Maya Area alone.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

I wonder if there is/was big ores and such deposits that could have been harvest, mined relatively easily with an say up to dark age-middle age tech, like in an ASB scenario to give the natives higher techs, a different fate indeed... OR with serious and more pacific early contact with the old world...

The Potosi silver mine maybe by example, but they have a dark legacy...


Note on the subject of Incans that the Aymaras got a somewhat favorised fate and position and the language is still spoken and well alive nowday, and they never conquered those famous warrior like Mapuche at their southern marches... they where not all mighty and perhaps not so oppresive at times.

 

[Gurroruo]

So i was looking at an Americentric map last night, and it occured to me that Alt history generally only focuses on very small changes that are at least familiar to the reader. I understand why, but i feel as though that places topics into a pretty narrow category. My thinking is this: We have two continents that existed outside the knowledge of the rest of the world for almost the entirety of human history. Really all it took was having sea faring nations cut off from the spice trade in order to get a permanent discovery. Now what im curious about is: what are some completely unexplored alternative fates for north and south America? Could the present day see some type of continent wide DMZ that runs the length of the Rocky Mountains or the Mississippi, with the sides controlled by pan-Asian and pan-European states? What about a surviving remnent of the Roman empire, or Carthage? A world where the Incans or the Aztecs had created a loose confederation that spanned their respective continents? You do see it from time to time, such as Islam spreading to the new world, or native Americans getting a better shot, but generally its confined to "Europe discovers entire continent, proceeds to colonize." What are some things that, with a POD perhaps in ancient Egypt, that give a completely different fate for to the Americas?


(And yes, i recognize that diseases and and plunder are likely going to happen. But what happened OTL, the gradual breakaway of Europeanish countries, doesn't have to be the case.)

I have sidelined a TL in which Spain gains a huge huge hold on the Americas I mean even bigger then OTL.

Also there are lots of TLs in which the Americas are entirely different

 

[SunDeep]

What about a TL where the Polynesians colonize the Galapagos a century or so after they reached South America in 700CE, establishing a Kingdom/Empire there, forging sea trade links between all of the Native American Pacific coastal trading cultures (such as the Mexicans and the Andeans, for instance). As such, the rate of economic, social and technological development, as well as population growth, is accelerated across the Americas in general- especially with regards to military and naval strength. Will it be so easy for the Europeans to take over? Could the Native Americans even be in a position to go the other way as well, establishing their own colonial trading outposts in favourable regions of the Old World? What do you think?

 

[othyrsyde]

Firstly, I have to say that, IMHO, the Inka and the Aztecs are not really a fair match, with the Inka having many decisive advantages in both hard and soft power: The Aztecs had a loose hegemony ruled by fear, with only three cities, if extremely advanced cities, certainly superior overall to any in Europe, in their Triple Alliance - Tlacopan, Texcoco and Tenochtitlan. Everything else was hegemony. Plus, the Aztecs ruled, again, mostly only indirectly, only some three hundred thousand square kilometres and but some one million subjects in the Valley of Mexico, whereas the Inka Empire at its height covered some two million square kilometres and had a population as high as some thirty seven million subjects, according to some estimates (estimates of roughly a score or so million subjects for the Aztecs are based on the hegemony, not the Valley of Mexico).

Are you just basing this off the three principal cities? Because there was a hell of lot more than 2 million people in the Triple Alliance held lands. Even after the main smallpox epidemic, the forces raised to take Tenochtitlan and the other loyalists (which was more than the core three cities), was still in 200,000+ range.

Finally, Aztec warfare was based on the "Flower War" - the aim being to capture the enemy for sacrifice, not to destroy them in battle proper.

No. The Flower Wars were a very specific style of warfare, and not sole form it took. The Triple Alliance and other states of Mesoamerica engaged in war for all the other reasons humanity has decided to wage organized murder on one another. That said there was more glory and rewards for taking war captives in either case - just the Flower Wars were completely about that, while more traditional forms of battle it was an added plus in addition to whatever other military aims the combatants sought.

The Inka, by contrast, fought to win, with as many as one hundred thousand troops being able to be levied for a single battle, a system of logistics and supply train rivalling that of the Romans, with storehouses, fortresses, roads, llama caravans, and so on. In fact, so powerful were the Inka armies that they often did not even need to fight their enemies, for the latter would often march beside them rather than face certain defeat in battle.

The Aztecs were nearly as capable of such logistics, it's just the Inka had a better road system. Pretty much every able bodied male had at least rudimentary training in warfare through their public school system, and it was also likely women might have received some simple instruction in case of emergencies (during the fall of Tenochtitlan women were armed by Cuauhtemoc, and there were similar Pre-Conquista instances of last ditch resistance by polities arming women as well, in addition to the Mesoamerican tradition of having divine-prostitute warriors that accompanied their armies).

 

[Driftless]

I wonder if there is/was big ores and such deposits that could have been harvest, mined relatively easily with an say up to dark age-middle age tech, like in an ASB scenario to give the natives higher techs, a different fate indeed... OR with serious and more pacific early contact with the old world...

Copper - raw native Copper was used in Pre-Columbian times from the Upper Pennisula of Michigan in surprising amounts. You can still find a few nuggets of mostly metallic copper in that area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_mining_in_Michigan#Native_American_mining
A rather spectacular example

Native Americans were the first to mine and work the copper of Lake Superior and the Keweenaw Peninsula of northern Michigan between 5000 BCE and 1200 BCE. The natives used this copper to produce tools. Archaeological expeditions in the Keweenaw Peninsula and Isle Royale revealed the existence of copper producing pits and hammering stones which were used to work the copper.[2] Some writers have suggested that as much as 1.5 billion pounds of copper was extracted during this period, but some archaeologists consider such high figures as "ill-constructed estimates" and that the actual figure is unknown.[3]

By the time the first European explorers arrived, the area was the home of the Chippewa people, who did not mine copper. According to Chippewa traditions, they had much earlier supplanted the original miners. The first written account of copper in Michigan was given by French missionary Claude Allouez in 1667. He noted that Indians of the Lake Superior region prized copper nuggets that they found there.[4] Indians guided missionary Claude Dablon to the Ontonagon Boulder, a 1.5-ton piece of native copper along the Ontonagon River. When American prospectors arrived in the 1840s, pieces of copper were found in streams or on the ground. The copper pits abandoned by Native Americans led early miners to most of the first successful mines.

Copper by itself had limited utility in that time, but as a trade item?

 

[othyrsyde]

It would change a lot:

1. the american natives go thru the smallpox crysis several centuries before the arrival of the conquistadores and they have time to adapt and rebound in number;
2. the american natives know about other people so the spaniards are not gods but yet another set of foreign visitors.

For centuries Europe will not have the technology to project a strong enough fighting force to Americas and, especially the Incas, would have time to adapt, learn modern metal working and develop modern weapons. At least southern America would not be a land of conquest.

1. You need more than one exposure to build up an equivalent resistance. It would help, but if there's centuries between each pandemic, then any advantage will be gone.

2. The Spaniards were thought of as gods FAR less often than it's propagated. For instance the Aztecs never did so. They thought they might have had perhaps more spiritual power, but the whole Cortes is Quezacoatl thing is nonsense made up by Cortes and huge language and historical misconceptions done by the Franciscan monks. The Natives encountering Europeans and other visitors from Africa-Eurasia would have a greater strategic depth, and not suffer so much shock and awe from horses and gunpowder weaponry.

Copper - raw native Copper...

Copper was beginning to be used in a weaponized form by the Tarascan Empire in Mexico. The Mesoamericans, Andeans, and Caribbean natives had metallurgical skills, but it was largely used to make jewelry and artwork. For instance, the Tlaxcalans were making copper arrowheads for the Spaniards' crossbows.

 

[Driftless]

Copper was beginning to be used in a weaponized form by the Tarascan Empire in Mexico. The Mesoamericans, Andeans, and Caribbean natives had metallurgical skills, but it was largely used to make jewelry and artwork. For instance, the Tlaxcalans were making copper arrowheads for the Spaniards' crossbows.

I've seen quite a few of the native copper "nuggets". They are of varying size, purity, and configuration; but they are mostly metallic copper, so there is limited refining required. Heat them up and beat them into useful shape.

 

[SunDeep]

It would change a lot:

1. the american natives go thru the smallpox crysis several centuries before the arrival of the conquistadores and they have time to adapt and rebound in number;
2. the american natives know about other people so the spaniards are not gods but yet another set of foreign visitors.

For centuries Europe will not have the technology to project a strong enough fighting force to Americas and, especially the Incas, would have time to adapt, learn modern metal working and develop modern weapons. At least southern America would not be a land of conquest.

IMHO, the Polynesian Galapagos Empire scenario, boosting the Americas' development by leading to the creation of a trans-American equivalent (potentially extending to a trans-Pacific equivalent, if the Polynesian Kingdoms remain connected enough) equivalent to the Silk Route, would result in a very different fate for the New World compared to OTL. In all likelihood, assuming that the butterflies aren't massive enough to alter the situation in Europe significantly, I can see it going one of two ways;

Worst case scenario- European colonial efforts in the Americas are delayed, only for them to commence the curbstomping of the Native American kingdoms and empires as the industrial era gets underway, analogous to OTL's Scramble for Africa. Boundaries are drawn by treaties between the colonial powers, with no consideration for underlying historical tensions or cultural differences between the peoples of those areas, with the oppressed indigenous American majority kept under the heel of an elitist European colonial minority on the grounds of alleged racial and cultural supremacy into the post-colonial era (without enough time for the influx of colonial settlers to displace the indigenous American population, and make up the majority of the demographic in any territory). As such, with this rather bleak path, the Americas ends up going the same way as OTL's Africa.

Best-case scenario- The more advanced Native American states succeed in modernising quickly enough after the Europeans arrive, resulting in a situation more analogous to OTL's Asia. The largest, wealthiest, most organised Empires survive the colonial era due to the fact that they're simply too powerful to conquer, and some of them even thrive- the Inca Empire, for instance, would be the greatest benefactor of TTL's trade routes, and could easily end up becoming the nation with the largest economy in the world by the present day, as the New World's far more organised, federalist equivalent to the Chinese Empire. Some regions of the New World will still probably become colonies along the way- for instance, the West Indies' colonial history ITTL will probably bear a far closer resemblance to that of the East Indies IOTL- but even there, colonial boundaries will be far more likely to be drawn along the lines of the pre-existing kingdoms and confederacies, allowing for greater social cohesion in the post-colonial era.

 

[Oba]

Copper - raw native Copper was used in Pre-Columbian times from the Upper Pennisula of Michigan in surprising amounts. You can still find a few nuggets of mostly metallic copper in that area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_mining_in_Michigan#Native_American_mining
A rather spectacular example

Copper by itself had limited utility in that time, but as a trade item?

Actually, copper sulfide smelting dates all the way back to the Chavín in the Andes.

And the Inka worked precious metals and smelted not only copper, tin, arsenic, lead and alloys such as tin and arsenical bronze or electrum and tumbaga but they were even the first civilization in the world to smelt bismuth. They also worked and melted platinum, with gold dust as a flux, long before any other civilization did.

And the Taíno used a manganese bronze known as guanín, a type in many ways superior to Old-World or Andean tin bronzes.

 

[Driftless]

Actually, copper sulfide smelting dates all the way back to the Chavín in the Andes.

And the Inka worked precious metals and smelted not only copper, tin, arsenic, lead and alloys such as tin and arsenical bronze or electrum and tumbaga but they were even the first civilization in the world to smelt bismuth. They also worked and melted platinum, with gold dust as a flux, long before any other civilization did.

And the Taíno used a manganese bronze known as guanín, a type in many ways superior to Old-World or Andean tin bronzes.

Wouldn't making a much wider routine use of their metallurgic skill be a good POD for change? Wide spread use of Bronze tools & weapons?