American Indians: The Interrupted Trajectory-1492-1939

One aspect that you may want to consider for enriching the details of your timeline is that of language. The number of languages spoken in the Americas in 1492 was perhaps around 1,000, though it may have been higher (and as always, the boundary between language and dialect is not a clear one). With the gradual agriculturalization, urbanization and state-formation processes occurring in your TL, the number of languages, and the level of linguistic diversity, is going to trend downwards, as happened historically in Eurasia due to the same factors. State societies simply tend to absorb and assimilate smaller language groups, and indeed this process was already underway pre-1492 in the Andes under the Inkas - even without taking into account the further reduction in linguistic diversity that occurred under the Spanish (who actually expanded the use of Quechua for evangelization purposes), the Andes today is a linguistically far more homogenous region than its immediate geographic neighbor, Amazonia, as well in comparison to the likely linguistic state of the Andes itself one or two thousand years earlier. In the modern Andes, the Quechuan and Aymaran languages predominate, a direct result of their use as languages of state power in Tawantinsuyu as well as their post-colonial promotion by the Spanish (though curiously, the once equally-prevalent Pukina language has almost entirely disappeared). Most minority languages of the Andean region are found in the northern reaches of the cordillera, within modern-day Ecuador and Colombia, likely because these regions had been under much more tenuous Inka rule than the broad central Andes and Altiplano, and indeed only one non-Quechua/Aymara linguistic group is still found in the central Andes - Uru-Chipaya, with around 10,000 speakers in western Bolivia.

Mesoamerica on the other hand is an interesting case, because in OTL, most of the original linguistic diversity of the region has survived to the present day, despite the centralizing forces of the Triple Alliance and later New Spain. The main linguistic groups found in modern Mexico are the Oto-Manguean and Mayan families, with a presence in Mesoamerica dating back many millennia, and the Uto-Aztecan family, largely represented by the more recently-arrived Nahuatl-speaking peoples and their linguistic relatives in the north of Mexico such as the the Yaqui and Opata (in the US, the Uto-Aztecan family extends on to include such languages as Hopi, Paiute, Shoshone, and Comanche). Oto-Manguean is a very dense and compact language family, spread across the western and southern parts of core Mesoamerica yet encompassing nearly 200 distinct languages; its best-known members include Mixtec and Zapotec. The Mayan family is of course well-known, and concentrated in the far southeast of Mesoamerica, in the Yucatan and Guatemala, but with an outlying language - Huastec - spoken far up the Gulf coast. Beyond these three main groups, several other small families and language isolates (individual languages with no known relatives) are found. These include the Mixe-Zoque languages of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec; the Totonacan languages of the central Gulf coast; the Tarascan languages; and Tequistlatecan and Huavean of Oaxaca. What's striking about this picture of diversity compared to the relative homogeneity of the Andes is how it likely reflects the governing style of the Inkas versus the Aztecs; while Tawantinsuyu was a unified, centralized, stratified, large-scale bureaucracy, not far off in its governing style (and in its effects on local languages) from the Roman Empire, the Triple Alliance was much more decentralized and less ethno-culturally cohesive, with the result that the pre-existing languages of Mesoamerica were not pervasively replaced with Nahuatl. This is only one aspect of the difference of course; another major difference is that the Nahuas were relative newcomers to their region, while the Quechua- and Aymara-speaking peoples of the Andes had deep roots in their area, likely having a cultural presence in earlier Andean states such as Tiwanaku and Wari.

With respect to your TL, a longer existence for both the Inka and Aztec Empires would most likely lead to the extinction of many minority linguistic groups in those regions under their control. You would almost certainly see a purely Quechua-Aymara(-Pukina?)-speaking Andes up until the fracture of Tawantinsuyu, for instance. I'd stress again that overall linguistic diversity will be reduced as cultures move towards sedentary agriculture, urbanization, and state societies, though this linguistic change will proceed unevenly and quite distinctly in different regions. Look for the greatest reduction in diversity to occur in areas of long-standing state formation, such as the Andes and Mesoamerica, while linguistic diversity will be retained in "refugia", marginal regions of difficult terrain such as certain mountain ranges, dense rainforest, peninsulas, offshore islands, etc. You may also see a partial re-diversification of the Andes and Mesoamerica upon the collapse of the major empires in these two regions with the subsequent infiltration of nomadic groups from the northern deserts and Great Plains (Mesoamerica) or the northern cordillera and Amazon basin (Andes). Depending on the circumstances surrounding the collapse of these major states, you could either have these infiltrating groups assimilate linguistically to the established population (a la the Franks and Goths in post-Roman Gaul and Iberia) or assimilate that population to their own language (a la the Slavs in the post-Roman Balkans, or the Turks in medieval Anatolia).

This is a fascinating timeline idea, I look forward to reading more! Good luck!
 
One aspect that you may want to consider for enriching the details of your timeline is that of language. The number of languages spoken in the Americas in 1492 was perhaps around 1,000, though it may have been higher (and as always, the boundary between language and dialect is not a clear one). With the gradual agriculturalization, urbanization and state-formation processes occurring in your TL, the number of languages, and the level of linguistic diversity, is going to trend downwards, as happened historically in Eurasia due to the same factors. State societies simply tend to absorb and assimilate smaller language groups, and indeed this process was already underway pre-1492 in the Andes under the Inkas



With respect to your TL, a longer existence for both the Inka and Aztec Empires would most likely lead to the extinction of many minority linguistic groups in those regions under their control. You would almost certainly see a purely Quechua-Aymara(-Pukina?)-speaking Andes up until the fracture of Tawantinsuyu, for instance. I'd stress again that overall linguistic diversity will be reduced as cultures move towards sedentary agriculture, urbanization, and state societies, though this linguistic change will proceed unevenly and quite distinctly in different regions. Look for the greatest reduction in diversity to occur in areas of long-standing state formation, such as the Andes and Mesoamerica, while linguistic diversity will be retained in "refugia", marginal regions of difficult terrain such as certain mountain ranges, dense rainforest, peninsulas, offshore islands, etc. You may also see a partial re-diversification of the Andes and Mesoamerica upon the collapse of the major empires in these two regions with the subsequent infiltration of nomadic groups from the northern deserts and Great Plains (Mesoamerica) or the northern cordillera and Amazon basin (Andes). Depending on the circumstances surrounding the collapse of these major states, you could either have these infiltrating groups assimilate linguistically to the established population (a la the Franks and Goths in post-Roman Gaul and Iberia) or assimilate that population to their own language (a la the Slavs in the post-Roman Balkans, or the Turks in medieval Anatolia).

True, unfortunately. Yet another thing I need to explore.

This is a fascinating timeline idea, I look forward to reading more! Good luck!

Thanks. I'll be trying to flesh it out as I have time.
 
One of the problems with this scenario is the Amazon. For a long time, archaeologists assumed that the surviving Amazon tribes were reasonably close to what was there before Columbus, because their lifestyle was pretty much all that the Amazon could support, due to poor soil. Essentially, tribes would slash and burn, creating fields that they could farm for a few years before the poor fertility of the soil forced them to move on.

Slash and burn agriculture meant inevitably low populations and not a lot of culture. That view ignored early Portuguese reports of large towns and advanced cultures. It also ignored fragmentary reports of ruins of more advanced cultures. More recently, archaeologists have found hints that Amazon Indians were for more sophisticated at the time of Columbus than they previously believed. Among other discoveries, they found that tribes there had figured out a way of enriching the poor soil, creating "terra preta" or black soil, much more fertile than the surrounding soils, and fertile enough to support long-term, intensive farming and large populations.

How widespread those large populations were is unknown, as are the limitations of Indian ability to create the more fertile soil. The vast majority of the Amazon is archaeologically unexplored, partly because much of it was still tough to get too until recently, and partly because most people thought they already knew what was there.

Epidemics and giant, poorly documented slave-raiding expeditions destroyed a lot of the Amazon Indians, with the most densely populated areas getting hit the hardest.
 
Quite interesting. I wonder if you can count on weather patterns being the same. Not precisely in the sense of butterflies, but I read recently that reforestation of marginal lands due to the population collapses of the Black Death and Columbian Exchange may have caused the Little Ice Age.
 
Quite interesting. I wonder if you can count on weather patterns being the same. Not precisely in the sense of butterflies, but I read recently that reforestation of marginal lands due to the population collapses of the Black Death and Columbian Exchange may have caused the Little Ice Age.

The reforestation that followed the two great pandemics may have lengthened and deepened the little Ice Age, but it was well underway in Europe by the time of the Black Death. The chronic malnutrition of a generations' worth of generally poor harvests was one of the reasons the plague took such a large proportion of the population.
 
I just wanted to say that this is a really interesting idea and I like it.

I kind of imagine North America being somewhat similar to ancient Europe, with the most advanced, flourishing civilizations around the Caribbean and a ways up the Mississippi, which tribes to the north picking up innovations from those civilizations and changing themselves into their own organized polities in order to match the great ones and avoid conquest. The areas to the far north, away from the ocean, would be the most undeveloped and most similar to the way things were thousands of years ago, as would the Great Plains, which would be almost equivalent to the steppes of Asia, sans horses. I've heard that they now theorize the tribes of the Caribbean got there from South America, not North America. I wonder if some of them would form their own small empires, or be conquered by those on the mainland similar to what happened to Minoa.
 
I just wanted to say that this is a really interesting idea and I like it.

I kind of imagine North America being somewhat similar to ancient Europe, with the most advanced, flourishing civilizations around the Caribbean and a ways up the Mississippi, which tribes to the north picking up innovations from those civilizations and changing themselves into their own organized polities in order to match the great ones and avoid conquest. The areas to the far north, away from the ocean, would be the most undeveloped and most similar to the way things were thousands of years ago, as would the Great Plains, which would be almost equivalent to the steppes of Asia, sans horses.

That's kind of what I was visualizing, with the Gulf of Mexico playing about the same role as the Mediterranean did with Europe and North Africa.

I've heard that they now theorize the tribes of the Caribbean got there from South America, not North America. I wonder if some of them would form their own small empires, or be conquered by those on the mainland similar to what happened to Minoa.

In the short-term, I'm visualizing the island Caribs pushing into the larger islands, and pushing the Tiano chiefdoms away from the coast, but also forcing the Tiano to become militarily stronger. I'm not sure where that leads in the long run. It would be kind of cool to have local civilizations grow up, kind of paralleling Minos. On the other hand, the island Caribs seem naturally suited to becoming pirates once enough sea trade develops to support pirates.
 
Quite interesting. I wonder if you can count on weather patterns being the same. Not precisely in the sense of butterflies, but I read recently that reforestation of marginal lands due to the population collapses of the Black Death and Columbian Exchange may have caused the Little Ice Age.

That's a good point, especially if the reason Europeans didn't arrive in the New World was some kind of Old World population collapse.

I tried to figure out the potential climate impacts, but finally gave up and went with climate and weather happening pretty much the way it did historically. Part of the issue is that I'm trying to be agnostic as to why the Europeans didn't arrive, and the reason they didn't make it can have a big impact on climate. A big die-off in Europe wouldn't just have mean reforestation. It would also mean a lot less fishing and whaling in the North Atlantic, and that might have an impact on the climate by increasing or reducing the amount of plankton that is holding carbon dioxide in the North Atlantic.

Whales (at least some of them) are giant plankton eating machines. When whaling reduced whale populations, presumably it reduced overall predator pressure on plankton, which may have increased plankton numbers and sucked carbon dioxide out of the air, which presumably would have made the planet marginally colder. That assumes that the whales weren't simply replaced by smaller plankton eaters and that plankton growth wasn't constrained by lack of some other resource.

In some parts of the Atlantic, plankton growth is supposedly controlled by lack of nutrients. The Atlantic gets a lot of its nutrients from dust blown in from Africa, with a lot of the dust coming from the Sahel, just south of the Sahara. So that's another factor: if something reduces human populations and grazing animal pressure in the Sahel, you end up with less dust in the Atlantic and less plankton, which means more carbon dioxide in the air, which presumably means a little bit of warming, all other things being equal. On the other hand, the dust itself would have some climate impact, maybe shading out some sunlight, or, depending on the color and level of the dust, maybe absorbing sunlight that would have been reflected.

To really figure all those factors out, you would need a climate modeling computer and you would need to really understand climate, which I'll freely admit that I don't.
 
1) In 1545 and 1576, Mexico got hit with bouts of deadly "cocoliztl" fever of mysterious origin. The 1545 version supposedly killed 80% of Mexico's Indians, while the 1576 version killed around 45% of the already much-reduced Indian population of Mexico, with young adults as the most frequent victims. The 1576 version actually recurred off and on for the next twelve years.There were further smaller epidemics stretching through much of the post-conquest history of Mexico, with the last big one in 1813.

None of the epidemics killed many Spaniards, and that led a lot of people to think it was European in origin, possibly typhus, but none of the big European killer diseases fit all of the reported symptoms.

Some more recent authors think cocoliztl might have been a native Mexican disease, caused by climate conditions that put Indians in close proximity to a rodent host. If that's true, getting rid of the Spanish conquest wouldn't necessarily stop those epidemics, though poverty and overwork probably made Indians more susceptible to them, and changes in agricultural practices forced by the Spanish may have played a role

Probably some type of Hantavirus if the association with rodents is true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hantavirus
http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/
 
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