Best place ever to maintain a civilization?

Which crops and animals might be available there?

I have always wondered why no great civilization arose there. Did humans got too late there? It seems unlikely compared to places like the Andes.

I posted a thread about California in ASB a while back. https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/california-wild-rice.415159/

Bottom line is that there was a great abundance of natural food and no particular need to develop horticulture, even with a native population of hundreds of thousands. Secondly, the hundred year flood line in the Valley is so high that it would inundate any cities built on the valley floor. A California civilization would have to develop pretty extensive aquaculture and water control structures, and even then anything that isn't build on the western slopes of the Sierras will get wiped out every so often. There aren't any great candidates for domestication there and the extreme remoteness and unique climate means that not much will get brought from outside.

One crop that would change everything radically in North America is potatoes in the Pacific Northwest. It's possible for California people to put one crop of potatoes in fall and one in early spring, but they already had no shortage of fall/winter food sources and you'd need a summer crop to change settlement patterns. I thought wild rice but just couldn't make it work.
 
I would say IOTL, the Yangtze or Yellow River Valleys. They produced one of the oldest and most continuous civilizations on the planet that still has a recognizable successor. And it repeatedly assimilated invaders into adopting its mores and culture so that it could continue existing.
 
I posted a thread about California in ASB a while back. https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/california-wild-rice.415159/

Bottom line is that there was a great abundance of natural food and no particular need to develop horticulture, even with a native population of hundreds of thousands. Secondly, the hundred year flood line in the Valley is so high that it would inundate any cities built on the valley floor. A California civilization would have to develop pretty extensive aquaculture and water control structures, and even then anything that isn't build on the western slopes of the Sierras will get wiped out every so often. There aren't any great candidates for domestication there and the extreme remoteness and unique climate means that not much will get brought from outside.

One crop that would change everything radically in North America is potatoes in the Pacific Northwest. It's possible for California people to put one crop of potatoes in fall and one in early spring, but they already had no shortage of fall/winter food sources and you'd need a summer crop to change settlement patterns. I thought wild rice but just couldn't make it work.

Isn’t corn a summer crop? California just needed the standard native holy trinity: corn, beans, and squash. Plus tomatoes, cotton, peanuts and turkey would be nice luxuries.

The problem with California is it’s too isolated. You want trade partners and a Goldilocks zone of managable invasion threat to kick you into higher gear.
 
Isn’t corn a summer crop? California just needed the standard native holy trinity: corn, beans, and squash. Plus tomatoes, cotton, peanuts and turkey would be nice luxuries.

The problem with California is it’s too isolated. You want trade partners and a Goldilocks zone of managable invasion threat to kick you into higher gear.

Yeah, the North American triad would do great in the California summertime, as do most Mediterranean-zone crops. Isolation is the biggest problem with California, but even handwaving that aside, the floods are a huge problem within major landscape engineering. The OTL Valley has a host of problems relating to water even with extremely sophisticated hydraulic engineering, for example the inability to take all the available water in low snowmelt years because of the subsidence of the Delta.
 
I feel like the Great Lakes region would be too vulnerable to western nomadic people coming in from the Great Plains to raid the commerce and agricultural Great Lakes region. A while ago, I was worldbuilding this post-post-apocalyptic world around the Great Lakes region and I foresaw them becoming like Russia, always looking to expand for security because there's no natural barrier to the west to defend themselves.
 
I feel like the Great Lakes region would be too vulnerable to western nomadic people coming in from the Great Plains to raid the commerce and agricultural Great Lakes region. A while ago, I was worldbuilding this post-post-apocalyptic world around the Great Lakes region and I foresaw them becoming like Russia, always looking to expand for security because there's no natural barrier to the west to defend themselves.

Climate wise it’s most similar to Russia and the Baltic, not exactly the craddle of civilization. They will need potato to stand a chance.
 
Provided the civilization gets started, how about Australia? Close enough with Asia to trade but far enough not to worry about invasion. Eastern half mostly rich, liveable terrain that could be dominated by one group. Western half mostly uninhabited, leaving little possibility of invasion. Given its size and openness, it could have huge internal markets as well.
 
Provided the civilization gets started, how about Australia? Close enough with Asia to trade but far enough not to worry about invasion. Eastern half mostly rich, liveable terrain that could be dominated by one group. Western half mostly uninhabited, leaving little possibility of invasion. Given its size and openness, it could have huge internal markets as well.

Still too isolated. The part of Asia they were near was pretty isolated themselves. At best they would have to wait for the age of sail for contact to trickle in.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
I would say IOTL, the Yangtze or Yellow River Valleys. They produced one of the oldest and most continuous civilizations on the planet that still has a recognizable successor. And it repeatedly assimilated invaders into adopting its mores and culture so that it could continue existing.

Seconded. Yellow, Yangtze, and Ganges had provided most successful civilization in OTL. even conquest would be temporary because vast reservoir of natives eventually forced them to assimilate or got expelled.

There also factor other than invasion that must be considered 1. Climate : Messopotamia and Egypt, Azanasi and Maya all hit hard by prolonged drought. 2. Safety from other local power, away from nomad didn't mean it can survive from neighbour : Wales, Aquitaine, Picts all conquered by nwighbour.

All in All, biggest safety is in Numbers.
 
Provided the civilization gets started, how about Australia? Close enough with Asia to trade but far enough not to worry about invasion. Eastern half mostly rich, liveable terrain that could be dominated by one group. Western half mostly uninhabited, leaving little possibility of invasion. Given its size and openness, it could have huge internal markets as well.
Australia has the same problem as the Americas in that it lacks animals to domesticate and I don't think it has many good crop plants either. On top of that Australian soil is pretty poor in nutrients and relies a lot on fertilizers.
 
I posted a thread about California in ASB a while back. https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/california-wild-rice.415159/

Bottom line is that there was a great abundance of natural food and no particular need to develop horticulture, even with a native population of hundreds of thousands. Secondly, the hundred year flood line in the Valley is so high that it would inundate any cities built on the valley floor. A California civilization would have to develop pretty extensive aquaculture and water control structures, and even then anything that isn't build on the western slopes of the Sierras will get wiped out every so often. There aren't any great candidates for domestication there and the extreme remoteness and unique climate means that not much will get brought from outside.

One crop that would change everything radically in North America is potatoes in the Pacific Northwest. It's possible for California people to put one crop of potatoes in fall and one in early spring, but they already had no shortage of fall/winter food sources and you'd need a summer crop to change settlement patterns. I thought wild rice but just couldn't make it work.

Isn’t corn a summer crop? California just needed the standard native holy trinity: corn, beans, and squash. Plus tomatoes, cotton, peanuts and turkey would be nice luxuries.

The problem with California is it’s too isolated. You want trade partners and a Goldilocks zone of managable invasion threat to kick you into higher gear.

Indigenous Californians like their Pacific Northwest counterparts have a long and intimate history with food plants. This is not only limited to harvest but also propagation, up keep and storage.

The issue is not of "super abundance land of Eden maaaaaaaan" but rather the main staple being Acorns in the Central valley.

This is the reality of pre and proto agricultural Europe, China, Japan and Korea as well. They shifted eventually to grains and chestnuts as population density was increased likely due to the increased populations and livestock that provided fertility boosts beyond that of even annual alluvial discharge.

Further south and inland there were cultivators of beans and corn, they traded it but they werent all that powerful or influential. We see rather a complex aboricultural society that went through time of famine with finnicky oak yields.

They stayed within the limits of acorn harvests and the annual production of grains and pseudo-grains + roots and fruit.

The limitations to all of this of course is the lack of tilling beasts, grains just don't get the massive release of microbial nutrients tearing organic matter without that churning. Perennial systems in a land of summer drought and at times years long droughts is more resilient.

Also up until about 250 years ago it was drier. We are actually in a wet phase that's likely petering out.

However there are two exceptions to all of this.

First the California Fan Palm oases dwellers and the Owens Paiute nutsedge farmers. But they were all relatively small and had few other crops to rely on, they were in more hostile environment and specialized.

There would and could never really be one big empire. There isn't anything that could force such a reliance. I'd imagine a latitudinal trade system from the Sierras down to the coast kind of like the Grease Trails of the PNW of rather autonomous kingdoms and chieftains.
 
The mountains of Iran.

Great defensive position, good fertile land with valleys for farming and forests. The earliest evidence of wine cultivation comes from this area, the Zagros mountains as far back as 8000BC.

It's also well situated with access to Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf for trade, while to the east is protected by the dasht e kevir and lut deserts.

To the north is the fertile Caspian region and the Alborz mountains. This region sees heavy rainfall and has dense tropical forests (the word jungle is found in the ancient Persian language). The region along the coast is extremely fertile farmland.

It's no wonder a great civilisation arose here.

c192fcd06a21a7f7a9ffde06a39904bf.jpg


Gohar lake, Lorestan, south west Iran
 
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Anatolia.

If you look at what the Hittites did, you can have your capital in the hills/mountains and whilst invaders may get at your peripharies, you can hit back at them

It is also at an important crossing point of trade and contact, which is vital for civilisation to develop, else it stagnates
 
Assuming the goal is keeping together a civilization which long term has more-or-less a single idea of itself and of linearly descending from others before it with no break in continuity, I would guess where real life civilization seems to have had the most advantages, long term, as a cohesive civilization: in the North China plain. As:

- River valleys with high yielding encourage proto-states to manage control over agriculture
- plenty of room to expand (unlike, say, Egypt or Mesopotamia, limited at the margin) and maintain a large population (at times almost as large or larger than all other civilizations put together!)
- enough contact via the steppe with other early civilization that metallurgy and other technologies can be imported... so China was not lagging metallurgy like the Americas, or lacking animal domesticates etc. (and they were exported as well, but that's not really the topic at hand).
- ... but distant enough from other civilizations that there's no civilization competition, and no other identities spread from there
- enough unidirectional pressure from non-civilized nomads to keep the civilization together and fairly "sharp" militarily, but not enough to frequently overwhelm the population, which is too large for that to happen (there's this conflict between wanting to be close to competitors, because competition can drive the mechanisms to make a state and civilization a more effective competitor, and pressure from multiple directions pulling a large empire apart, as subregions try to conserve resources for their own pressure. unidirectional pressure from a group that's militarily competitive but not really got a competing civilization identity may work out best!).

Contingently there are some disadvantages possible, long term, but I reckon those are either:

a) contingent on chancy invasion dynamics, and really those are no better in other places
b) inherent to the problems of having one large, stable, civilization rather than a bunch of polycentric competing states without a single cultural identity. that is, "maintaining a civilization" being self defeating to the purpose of staying at the technological frontier.

(If we're in some random alternate ASB world surface, then the options are totally different..)

If we're just looking for an area to pay host to civilization generally, and we're not too concerned about whether it undergoes great cultural identity changes, then other regions of Eurasia probably come more into play...
 
I would say IOTL, the Yangtze or Yellow River Valleys. They produced one of the oldest and most continuous civilizations on the planet that still has a recognizable successor. And it repeatedly assimilated invaders into adopting its mores and culture so that it could continue existing.
Indeed. I think Chinese civilization existing in two separate axis of the North (Yellow River, Beijing) and the South (Yangtze river, Shanghai/Nanjing) post -400BC (Qin Conquest of Nanyue/Yangtze river delta) males Chinese civilization able to endure multiple multicentennary conquest by others.

I mean, if Chinese culture centre only exist in the North, they would probably be assimilated by the various post-Han barbarian dynasties there, but the South acts as back-up and manage to reconquer China again and again...

But Chinese high culture assimilating others into it (due to what? The hanzi letterings?) is still a pretty big factor yes.
 
Egypt might not be so great on the long run.

Hey, it worked for 3000 years. I wouldn't count Egypt out, honestly. A river valley with abnormally regular floods and deserts on either side, it's no wonder they lasted so long. Only China really surpassed them, and they had the advantage of several rivers.
 
It was much more than the Great Lakes that made the US a superpower.
Not much more. New England to Chicago would still have been a super power. The South and West would not have come even close to what they are today if it wasn't for the north and "old" midwest. It's telling of the power of the north and the lack of innovation in the south when you look at the fact that air conditioning was invented in the northern USA.
 
The Great Lakes region was a superpower waiting to happen.
Other than the USA it did become a continental power in the form of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy). They ruled over everything from the Hudson River in the East to the Illinois River in the West, south to the Ohio River; they literally ran the Midwest like a giant nature preserve for hunting and eliminated or pushed west the natives of that region.
 
Chinese high culture assimilating others into it (due to what? The hanzi letterings?)

Lots of cultures have assimilated their neighbours without the Chinese lettering system, so I'd guess the main reason is simply China's superior population and wealth allowing it to produce more prestigious high culture, which in turn made less-high-cultured neighbours seek to emulate it.
 
Indigenous Californians like their Pacific Northwest counterparts have a long and intimate history with food plants. This is not only limited to harvest but also propagation, up keep and storage.

The issue is not of "super abundance land of Eden maaaaaaaan" but rather the main staple being Acorns in the Central valley.

This is the reality of pre and proto agricultural Europe, China, Japan and Korea as well. They shifted eventually to grains and chestnuts as population density was increased likely due to the increased populations and livestock that provided fertility boosts beyond that of even annual alluvial discharge.

Further south and inland there were cultivators of beans and corn, they traded it but they werent all that powerful or influential. We see rather a complex aboricultural society that went through time of famine with finnicky oak yields.

They stayed within the limits of acorn harvests and the annual production of grains and pseudo-grains + roots and fruit.

The limitations to all of this of course is the lack of tilling beasts, grains just don't get the massive release of microbial nutrients tearing organic matter without that churning. Perennial systems in a land of summer drought and at times years long droughts is more resilient.

Also up until about 250 years ago it was drier. We are actually in a wet phase that's likely petering out.

However there are two exceptions to all of this.

First the California Fan Palm oases dwellers and the Owens Paiute nutsedge farmers. But they were all relatively small and had few other crops to rely on, they were in more hostile environment and specialized.

There would and could never really be one big empire. There isn't anything that could force such a reliance. I'd imagine a latitudinal trade system from the Sierras down to the coast kind of like the Grease Trails of the PNW of rather autonomous kingdoms and chieftains.

That was ultimately my conclusion. Acorns as a staple + radically unpredictable amounts of water annually meant that California culture would be very hard to shift with minor additions of domesticates.
 
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