Bronze age Americans

Zor

Yes, another alternate history Scenario, but this is something I think would be interesting.

Let’s say for whatever reason, the development of Native American Civilization was accelerated considerably. As such, by the 1400s, the East Coast of North America, PEI, the St Laurence River and great, California and the Caribbean islands are home to several Bronze Age civilizations. There are about a hundred and fifty city-states in total in these areas with populations averaging between 15,000 and 30,000 (generally with large walls around them) save for Cuba, which has been united into a feudal nation. The Natives have domesticated Bison, they use plows and corn is there staple crop. Most of them have a simple form of pictograph based writing. Warfare between city states over territory and to gain slaves is common and the standard soldiers are spearmen clad in Bison leather armor, bronze helmets and with wicker shields, archers with composite bows made of bison horn with flint arrows and Noble Heavy Infantry with Bronze scale male, bronze helmets, leather reinforced wicker shields and bronze swords. They also have fleets of single deck Galleys similar to those in the Mediterranean, which fight by boarding and ramming, as well as being used for trade.

How does history unfold with the Europeans finding this, much stronger America?

Zor
 

rewster

Well. Hopefully this will get moved over. Anyway, the concept is probably backwards... "if bison domesticated, then bronze working" is how it should be, rather than "if bronze working, then bison domesticated". Standard argument here is that bison are very difficult to domesticate, if it is indeed possible at all. If that is the POD (bison easily domesticable) then the scenario, as posed, makes pretty good sense.

Europe would indeed have had more trouble with these Indians in some ways. I say in some ways because in one sense the tendency to form standing armies would actually make things easier in a way for the Euros... using decent formations and alternating firing lines, musketeers can take down much greater numbers of opponents armed mainly with spears. Formations and all that mean nothing, however, when being ambushed in the woods, or to victims of a night raid by a band of warriors.
On the other hand, there are going to be a lot more Indians in this scenario, and sheer numbers alone will make them quite a bit harder to fight. In fact, the Europeans would face organized resistance the moment they landed, and the only way they might make a foothold would be to send an invasion force. Even then, depending on how large a kingdom they happen to disrupt, they could still be slaughtered.
 

Timmy811

European disease will still decimate these civilizations, and having them concentrated in cities will make it easier to take them out all at once.
 

rewster

Timmy811 said:
European disease will still decimate these civilizations, and having them concentrated in cities will make it easier to take them out all at once.
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Europeans likely will be devestated by New World diseases though. Bisonitis is going to wreak havoc on the colonists, and eventually on the Old World itself.
 

Max Sinister

Banned
Yes... but the native Americans will still die from European diseases, and their body count will be even higher. IOTL up to 80% of them died. The fact that they have domesticated animals doesn't help them much, it only hurts the Europeans more.

The colonization of America will take longer, and the stronger native states might survive, but Europe (or Eurasia) will still have the advantage.
 

rewster

Max Sinister said:
Yes... but the native Americans will still die from European diseases, and their body count will be even higher. IOTL up to 80% of them died. The fact that they have domesticated animals doesn't help them much, it only hurts the Europeans more.

The colonization of America will take longer, and the stronger native states might survive, but Europe (or Eurasia) will still have the advantage.
Click to expand...

Is there a reason that Eurasian diseases are more devestating than American diseases? Or are you simply saying that because Europeans have the advantage of guns and steel, the cancelling of the germ advantage still leaves them ahead?

So, Cortes or Pizarro comes over with a couple hundred men... now they lose 80% of their men, and they have... 40 or 50 guys. They're toast. Or they run, and take their infected remnants back to send a wave of destruction across Eurasian society. If 80% of Eurasia is wiped out, nobody is coming or going across the Atlantic again for a looooooong long time. Centuries, maybe even a millenium.
 

Max Sinister

Banned
I meant that the Europeans still have more different species of livestock, so there are probably many more diseases deadly for the native Americans. On the one side, we have measles, chickenpox, smallpox, typhoid fever, and quite some more, don't know the English names for all of them. On the American side, we only have syphilis (and that's not even sure) and your hypothetical bisonitis. Europe will suffer from plagues, maybe even at Black Death level, but America will suffer a complete breakdown. Europe will recover earlier (I guess after 100 to 150 years), when America's still broken, and then the conquest may begin. The native Americans will do better, but Europe still has the upper hand.
 

rewster

Max Sinister said:
I meant that the Europeans still have more different species of livestock, so there are probably many more diseases deadly for the native Americans. On the one side, we have measles, chickenpox, smallpox, typhoid fever, and quite some more, don't know the English names for all of them. On the American side, we only have syphilis (and that's not even sure) and your hypothetical bisonitis. Europe will suffer from plagues, maybe even at Black Death level, but America will suffer a complete breakdown. Europe will recover earlier (I guess after 100 to 150 years), when America's still broken, and then the conquest may begin. The native Americans will do better, but Europe still has the upper hand.
Click to expand...
I disagree. Smallpox was the chief killer, one, because it is simply the deadliest, and two, because it came before the other major killers. Assuming bison are domesticated, we can also guess that geese and turkeys, and other birds as well, could also be domesticated. (We know that turkeys were already in OTL). From this, you'll have your secondary infection, the turkey pox, or the goose flu, whatever. Bison will probably make it to Peru, having somewhat better defenses against flies than llamas, so they will have the opportunity to mingle with llamas and alpacas as well, not to mention guinea pigs. So you could have two, three or even four diseases, potentially... especially considering what plowed fields of corn, potatoes, and beans are going to do for the population.
Even if you only have one disease, chances are it will be extremely deadly to a virgin population, which the Europeans will be. And should the Indians happen upon some gunpowder weapons, they're going to want to figure out how this gunpowder works. The guns themselves will probably be too complex to comprehend, but the explosive powder... they'll try just about any combination trying to replicate it, and that curiosity will give them a pretty good chance of figuring it out... giving them a partial equalizer for when, in 150 or 300 or however many years they'll have, the Europeans return (or they go find the Europeans).
 

Saladin

Max Sinister said:
I meant that the Europeans still have more different species of livestock, so there are probably many more diseases deadly for the native Americans. On the one side, we have measles, chickenpox, smallpox, typhoid fever, and quite some more, don't know the English names for all of them. On the American side, we only have syphilis (and that's not even sure) and your hypothetical bisonitis. Europe will suffer from plagues, maybe even at Black Death level, but America will suffer a complete breakdown. Europe will recover earlier (I guess after 100 to 150 years), when America's still broken, and then the conquest may begin. The native Americans will do better, but Europe still has the upper hand.
Click to expand...

I'm really doing this based on pure thought ... no real experience, no docuentation, so, on that basis, is this perhaps not unlikely:

The establishment of bronze age static societies would probably allow the development of North American versions of some of the diseases we're familiar with (especially colds, flus, morbillivirus (related to measles) ) Wouldn't the north american versions of these illnesses be as severe to europeans as the converse?

Additionally, wouldn't yellow fever be more of an issue (and more likely to be resisted by north americans) in this scenario?
 

Homer

rewster said:
I disagree. Smallpox was the chief killer, one, because it is simply the deadliest, and two, because it came before the other major killers. Assuming bison are domesticated, we can also guess that geese and turkeys, and other birds as well, could also be domesticated. (We know that turkeys were already in OTL). From this, you'll have your secondary infection, the turkey pox, or the goose flu, whatever. Bison will probably make it to Peru, having somewhat better defenses against flies than llamas, so they will have the opportunity to mingle with llamas and alpacas as well, not to mention guinea pigs. So you could have two, three or even four diseases, potentially... especially considering what plowed fields of corn, potatoes, and beans are going to do for the population.
Click to expand...

True. But you'd still have more eurasian deseases because of the higher population. There simply are more places in eurasia where diseases can arise: europe, India, China, every jungle...

Domesticated animals are only a source when there's close contact between man and animal, like in China, for example. I once read that pretty much every influenca pandemia started in china.
To make America such a germ-breding horrorhouse for Europeans as you want it - ;-) - you'd need indeed many forms of domesticated animals and many diseases already there when Europeans arrive, so that Americans had time to establish immunity against a variety of these diseases. This would mean that america suffered waves and waves of plagues until the Europeans arrive. But this would make it much harder for them to establish strong city-states and make a faster technological advance.

Anyway, given what success Europeans had in conquering asian cities and countries, bronze working in America wouldn't make much of a difference in fighting the Europeans. Give Cortez ten times or 20 times the men he had OTL. Or more. Remember, the Americas as you propose them would make an even better loot then OTL!
 

Keenir

Banned
rewster said:
Bison will probably make it to Peru, having somewhat better defenses against flies than llamas,
Click to expand...

And how, exactly, do you get breeding herds of bison from the Midwest to Peru?

The guns themselves will probably be too complex to comprehend, but the explosive powder... they'll try just about any combination trying to replicate it,
Click to expand...

a gun is too complex, but gunpowder isn't???



Saladin said:
Additionally, wouldn't yellow fever be more of an issue (and more likely to be resisted by north americans) in this scenario?
Click to expand...

Why would it be resisted?
 

rewster

Keenir said:
And how, exactly, do you get breeding herds of bison from the Midwest to Peru?
Click to expand...
By bronze-age ships, of course. You don't expect a New World this radically different would still be using rafts?
a gun is too complex, but gunpowder isn't???
Click to expand...

Whoops. What I meant was that the iron and steel of the guns would be too complex to learn without also having firsthand knowledge of what iron is and how to get it. I suppose bronze replicas of the originals could indeed be made.
Why would it be resisted?
Click to expand...
I think he means a natural resistence would have built up in the population.
 

Max Sinister

Banned
According to Gurps RPG, gunpowder isn't that easy to make... you have to find out the right combination of the raw materials, the right grain size...
 

AzureOwl

rewster said:
By bronze-age ships, of course. You don't expect a New World this radically different would still be using rafts?
Click to expand...


That only get's you to the coast. You have to take into consideration the great altitute at which the Andean civilizations developed. There are no great plains for them to pasture, and I'm not sure the bisons would do well at that altitude.
 

the_lyniezian

Banned
Also what are the chances of gunpowder having been invented independently? (The Wikipedia article on gunpowder claims it's unclear whether it was just discovered in China and then spread, or was invented in lots of places independently.) It's possible, though maybe unlikely, methinks.

What seems to have been ignored in this discussion, though, is that I doubt there's be any of the sort of colonisation in the same way there really was. I dare say if the early settlers hit upon a mainly 'civilized' continent, some attempt brokering trade agreements would be more likely, as happened with the Far East. Although as seems to be the case with a lot of history, conquest via the back door would become more probable. Though I'm no student of history, so you may have to correct me on this.
 
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