Challenge: European reaction to Carthaginian Carribean Empire

Valdemar II

Banned
There's two aspect in this challenge one is how Carthagian has affected America and the other are how the Spanish will react. The answer to the first are that it won't be recognisable compare to OTL, there won't be Aztecs and likely no Mayans either, likely the entire Caribian, most of Central America and the American South will be populated by "Mestizo", with a post Carthagian culture. Likely the Caribian will be a mess of city and island states, while Mexico are more and less unified under a unitarian empire. I doubt Human sacrifies will be common but it will likely exist on small scale.
How will the Spanish react? Likely a lot more like they planned to in OTL. They will set up a few outposts for trade and send a few missionaries which will likely be somewhat succesfull, beside that they will likely end up conquer a few of the local citystates if they becomes hostile, so more and less like the Portugese in Asia. If Europe continued to develop like in OTL likely the Dutch will conquer most of the Carribean late on, making it into a second Indonesia, through they likely convert the locals, mostly because it will be seen as somewhat harmless, and the Spanish has already begun.
 
Well, the Carthagibbeans will of course not have guns.

Would they have steel? If not, they'd have iron which unlike stone will atleast stand a chance against Spanish steel.

And germs? The Carthaginians would've bought the 200 b.c. versions, by 1400 there would probably be a wholly different set of diseases in the New World, perhaps not as many as the diseases of the Old World (less exstensive animal husbandry), but just as deadly...

I think the Carthagibbeans might lose a few islands to the Spanish fighting with cannons, muskets and larger horses, but in the long run diseass would devastate both sides in the conflict, not just one as in OTL...
 
But that's not a logical response. You personally may not be able to understand why they do that, but that doesn't mean they didn't.

I actually spent several years cataloging and drawing grave goods from the Carthage Tophet, among other places, so I have some personal experience with this subject. My old boss, Larry Stager, found more than four hundred earns containing human and animal bones buried between 700 and 146 BCE, with the majority from the 4th century. Within the confines of the entire Tophet, which stretches to the edge of the port area, he estimated roughly 20,000 urns were buried, equivalent to about 100 urn burials a year or one every three or four days. According to the classical sources, though, these sacrifices would not have occurred regularly but rather at times of peril.

In the earliest period, 70% of the bones came from extremely young infants; by the 4th century, that number increased to 90%. Most of the urns contain a single child; 30% of these were newborns, and 68% were between the ages of 1-3 years. 32% contained two or more sacrifices, usually the remains of stillborn or premature child and an older child. Stager believes that the stillborn was considered an unacceptable offering and so a second child was offered to fulfill the vow of the dedicant.

The funerary stele that accompany these sacrifices allude to three categories: molchomor or sacrifice of a lamb or kid, molk baal or sacrifice of a child from a wealthy family, and molk adam, or sacrifice of a commoner.

The archaeological evidence is pretty conclusive, and it confirms what the classical and biblical sources have to say about the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians.

If I've given you cause to be offended, I apologize. I was not calling you a liar. I just seem to find a 50/50 answer when it comes to the subject of Phoenician child-sacrifice. Given their status as an advanced trading culture, I wasn't so sure if they'd be compelled to follow this practice.
 
Top