Michigan's banded iron formations are also abundant in hematite though, and there's quite a bit bog iron around the great lakes too. Mesabi itself isn't very useful for a while though.
Could the Mississippi-Missouri river system have become a cradle of civilization?
- Thread starter SavoyTruffle
- Start date
marathag
Banned
Bog Iron is the best start for ironworking blooms, even if the ore is contaminated with compounds that make poor steel
Poor Steel beats the best Stone, Bone or Horn tooling
Is there a single example of an iron working industry that started out of bog iron?
marathag
Banned
British Ironworking along the Coast -- Carolinas, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and East New York, that would split to Vermont
IRON ORE in New England: Historic Information
New England iron ore: Facts to know for visitors of all kinds.
newenglandtowns.org
Access to that was one of the reasons Sir Walter Raleigh wanted the Roanoke Colony
While not Mississippian the Tarascan state in Mexico did do bronze working pre Columbus.
probably a lot. They already had a decent crop package and were on the verge of widespread metal use. Lack of big domestic animals would likely slow them down some, but they were doing pretty well without it.
I see 'environmental determinism' getting argued about a lot here. IMO, that is only half the story... time is the other half. Humans might have arrived in the New World as early as 35,000 years ago (it's debated a lot), but all the signs point to them being very thin on the ground until about 15,000 years ago, when the population began growing rapidly (that's something you kinda need to develop out of a HG culture). OTOH, modern humans arrived in the Middle East... well, that's debatable too, but anywhere from 70,000 to 170,000 years ago, according to what Google tells me. That is a tremendous head start. Still, in the comparatively short time they had, the NAs put together a crop package, domesticated the animals that would take to it quickly, and built some impressive structures... without metal tools. So, going clear back to the OP, it still seems to me that one of the best answers as to how to get that Mississippi cradle of civilization is 'get people there a lot faster'...
Sorry, but I am not going to tolerate that you would manipulate my words (I did not mention concepts like race or superiority in any of my posts) in order to call me a racist just to back your propaganda. So you are going to be reported.
When I said "started with" I mean an iron industry that actually initially developed ex nihlo out of bog iron. All of those examples are ultimately diffusions from the Near Eastern iron working industry which, so far as I can, never made use of bog iron.
OK, so I've been thinking about this quite a bit and some of the things people have mentioned is that:
a) long-distance trade would be good to facilitate the exchange of ideas amongst the different cultures that existed in the Americas at the time, but that geography was a problem.
b) Mississippians domesticating more animals would be a good thing; primarily, this part of the discussion has revolved around land animals.
This got me thinking about animals that migrate. Specifically, I was thinking about animals that might migrate from North America to South America. I first thought about Passenger Pigeons and whales, but neither of those really worked - Passenger Pigeons didn't migrate and although whales do, no species I could find seem to go from the Mississippi delta to the north coast of South America.
I found this list of bird migration routes, that mentions a bunch of birds that do migrate from North America to South America: https://www.birdsandblooms.com/travel/birding-hotspots/where-do-migrating-birds-spend-the-winter/
It wasn't that useful, but confirmed to me there are bird species that do migrate from North America to South America.
I went back to the sea and considered turtles. The Loggerhead Turtle does migrate around the North Atlantic, making stops in Colombia and the Yucatan Peninsula. However, I can't find evidence it stops off near the Mississippi delta: http://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=0eb8545fa3cd4fc38b93efc25b732193
My thinking on turtles is that they might make a good luxury good - their shells being useful, while their meat is edible. Turtles are listed here as "domesticated" but I don't think that's exactly true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domesticated_animals
There are some Native American cultures that believe the world is carried on the back of a turtle: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/world-turtle-cosmic-discworld
It wouldn't be ASB to imagine an intrepid Native American (or a tribe) trying to find the 'source' of the turtles given its place in mythology - each year move a little bit closer in the direction the turtles are coming from. This could also spur sea-faring advances as they attempt this, although maybe that's much more unlikely. It also wouldn't quite bring any Native Americans from Mississippi close enough to, say, the Incas.
Then I remembered that the Mongolians domesticated eagles - or certainly tamed them - and that the relationship between the handler and the eagle is a really close bond: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-eagle-hunters-of-mongolia
And this got me back thinking about birds.
So I Googled "Mississippi birds of prey" and found the Mississippi Kite: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24617876.pdf?refreqid=excelsior:a656100a4429e211e1a808957d16b2ff
And look at the Mississippi Kite's migration route: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_kite#/media/File:Ictinia_mississippiensis_map.svg
A quote on their diet: "Their diet consists mostly of insects which they capture in flight. They eat cicada, grasshoppers, and other crop-damaging insects, making them economically important. They have also been known to eat small vertebrates, including birds, amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_kite)
And on their nesting habitats: "Mississippi kites nest in colonies and both parents (paired up before arriving at the nesting site) incubate the eggs and care for the young. They have one clutch a year which takes 30 to 32 days to hatch. The young birds leave the nest another 30 to 35 days after hatching. Only about half of kites successfully raise their young. Clutches fall victim to storms and predators such as raccoons and great horned owls. Because of the reduced amount of predators in urban areas, Mississippi kites produce more offspring in urban areas than rural areas." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_kite)
So imagine that the Native Americans domesticate the Mississippi Kite, using it to help keep their fields free of pests. The Native American handlers form bonds with the birds like the Mongolian Eagle handlers did/do with their birds.
Whilst I was researching migrating North American animals, I also found this passage about bison: "The first thoroughfares of North America, except for the time-obliterated paths of mastodon or muskox and the routes of the mound builders, were the traces made by bison and deer in seasonal migration and between feeding grounds and salt licks. Many of these routes, hammered by countless hoofs instinctively following watersheds and the crests of ridges in avoidance of lower places' summer muck and winter snowdrifts, were followed by the aboriginal North Americans as courses to hunting grounds and as warriors' paths. They were invaluable to explorers and were adopted by pioneers.
Bison traces were characteristically north and south, but several key east-west trails were used later as railways. Some of these include the Cumberland Gap through the Blue Ridge Mountains to upper Kentucky. A heavily used trace crossed the Ohio River at the Falls of the Ohio and ran west, crossing the Wabash River near Vincennes, Indiana. In Senator Thomas Hart Benton's phrase saluting these sagacious path-makers, the bison paved the way for the railroads to the Pacific." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison)
Given all this information, I tentatively propose the following: An early domestication of the Mississippi Kite, used for keeping fields free of pests, prompts changes in Native American belief systems. A 'Holy Trinity' of animals become sacred to the people of the Mississippi; the bison is the God of Land and Warriors, the Mississippi Kite is the God of the Sky and Hunters, and the Turtle is the God of the Sea and Priests. Belief in these gods means that the Native Americans start becoming interested in tracking their migrations. Eventually attempting to follow the migration of your chosen 'god' becomes the Native American version of a pilgrimage or Hajj. The Bison Pilgrimage is the first that is 'perfected', the Mississippi Kite Pilgrimage is the second to be 'perfected,' and the Turtle is considered impossible but spurs seafaring innovation as followers of the Turtle God of the Sea and Priests attempt their pilgrimage.
Now, the best thing about this is that birds don't tend to migrate over water. They avoid it. So when the Mississippi Kite does migrate to South America, it goes via Mexico, Panama, and the Andes. This would take any pilgrimaging Native Americans right past the tin at Zacatecas: https://www.google.com/maps/search/Zacatecas+tin/@23.0677013,-104.7920505,7z
Some of this might seem unlikely, but cultures all over the world have decided animals are holy (cats in Ancient Egypt, cows in India, Hedgehogs in Sikhism, etc) and we know people will do anything for religion - except the Ancient Greeks who wouldn't even walk up Mount Olympus to check if their gods were actually there.
We also know people are willing to follow animals that are important to them to the ends of the Earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evens
And we know that walking from North America to South America is possible: https://matadornetwork.com/read/meet-first-man-walk-14000-miles-argentina-alaska/
So that's my idea for a TL developing.
You can call it, "The Kite, the Bison, and the Turtle."
Northstar
P.S. I know the Inca didn't yet exist in the timeframe we're talking about, but you can still get an exchange between North America and South America going with the pilgrimage I talked about, thus when/if the Incas do develop you already have an existing system in place that can facilitate the exchange of animals/culture/innovation.
a) long-distance trade would be good to facilitate the exchange of ideas amongst the different cultures that existed in the Americas at the time, but that geography was a problem.
b) Mississippians domesticating more animals would be a good thing; primarily, this part of the discussion has revolved around land animals.
This got me thinking about animals that migrate. Specifically, I was thinking about animals that might migrate from North America to South America. I first thought about Passenger Pigeons and whales, but neither of those really worked - Passenger Pigeons didn't migrate and although whales do, no species I could find seem to go from the Mississippi delta to the north coast of South America.
I found this list of bird migration routes, that mentions a bunch of birds that do migrate from North America to South America: https://www.birdsandblooms.com/travel/birding-hotspots/where-do-migrating-birds-spend-the-winter/
It wasn't that useful, but confirmed to me there are bird species that do migrate from North America to South America.
I went back to the sea and considered turtles. The Loggerhead Turtle does migrate around the North Atlantic, making stops in Colombia and the Yucatan Peninsula. However, I can't find evidence it stops off near the Mississippi delta: http://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=0eb8545fa3cd4fc38b93efc25b732193
My thinking on turtles is that they might make a good luxury good - their shells being useful, while their meat is edible. Turtles are listed here as "domesticated" but I don't think that's exactly true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domesticated_animals
There are some Native American cultures that believe the world is carried on the back of a turtle: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/world-turtle-cosmic-discworld
It wouldn't be ASB to imagine an intrepid Native American (or a tribe) trying to find the 'source' of the turtles given its place in mythology - each year move a little bit closer in the direction the turtles are coming from. This could also spur sea-faring advances as they attempt this, although maybe that's much more unlikely. It also wouldn't quite bring any Native Americans from Mississippi close enough to, say, the Incas.
Then I remembered that the Mongolians domesticated eagles - or certainly tamed them - and that the relationship between the handler and the eagle is a really close bond: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-eagle-hunters-of-mongolia
And this got me back thinking about birds.
So I Googled "Mississippi birds of prey" and found the Mississippi Kite: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24617876.pdf?refreqid=excelsior:a656100a4429e211e1a808957d16b2ff
And look at the Mississippi Kite's migration route: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_kite#/media/File:Ictinia_mississippiensis_map.svg
A quote on their diet: "Their diet consists mostly of insects which they capture in flight. They eat cicada, grasshoppers, and other crop-damaging insects, making them economically important. They have also been known to eat small vertebrates, including birds, amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_kite)
And on their nesting habitats: "Mississippi kites nest in colonies and both parents (paired up before arriving at the nesting site) incubate the eggs and care for the young. They have one clutch a year which takes 30 to 32 days to hatch. The young birds leave the nest another 30 to 35 days after hatching. Only about half of kites successfully raise their young. Clutches fall victim to storms and predators such as raccoons and great horned owls. Because of the reduced amount of predators in urban areas, Mississippi kites produce more offspring in urban areas than rural areas." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_kite)
So imagine that the Native Americans domesticate the Mississippi Kite, using it to help keep their fields free of pests. The Native American handlers form bonds with the birds like the Mongolian Eagle handlers did/do with their birds.
Whilst I was researching migrating North American animals, I also found this passage about bison: "The first thoroughfares of North America, except for the time-obliterated paths of mastodon or muskox and the routes of the mound builders, were the traces made by bison and deer in seasonal migration and between feeding grounds and salt licks. Many of these routes, hammered by countless hoofs instinctively following watersheds and the crests of ridges in avoidance of lower places' summer muck and winter snowdrifts, were followed by the aboriginal North Americans as courses to hunting grounds and as warriors' paths. They were invaluable to explorers and were adopted by pioneers.
Bison traces were characteristically north and south, but several key east-west trails were used later as railways. Some of these include the Cumberland Gap through the Blue Ridge Mountains to upper Kentucky. A heavily used trace crossed the Ohio River at the Falls of the Ohio and ran west, crossing the Wabash River near Vincennes, Indiana. In Senator Thomas Hart Benton's phrase saluting these sagacious path-makers, the bison paved the way for the railroads to the Pacific." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison)
Given all this information, I tentatively propose the following: An early domestication of the Mississippi Kite, used for keeping fields free of pests, prompts changes in Native American belief systems. A 'Holy Trinity' of animals become sacred to the people of the Mississippi; the bison is the God of Land and Warriors, the Mississippi Kite is the God of the Sky and Hunters, and the Turtle is the God of the Sea and Priests. Belief in these gods means that the Native Americans start becoming interested in tracking their migrations. Eventually attempting to follow the migration of your chosen 'god' becomes the Native American version of a pilgrimage or Hajj. The Bison Pilgrimage is the first that is 'perfected', the Mississippi Kite Pilgrimage is the second to be 'perfected,' and the Turtle is considered impossible but spurs seafaring innovation as followers of the Turtle God of the Sea and Priests attempt their pilgrimage.
Now, the best thing about this is that birds don't tend to migrate over water. They avoid it. So when the Mississippi Kite does migrate to South America, it goes via Mexico, Panama, and the Andes. This would take any pilgrimaging Native Americans right past the tin at Zacatecas: https://www.google.com/maps/search/Zacatecas+tin/@23.0677013,-104.7920505,7z
Some of this might seem unlikely, but cultures all over the world have decided animals are holy (cats in Ancient Egypt, cows in India, Hedgehogs in Sikhism, etc) and we know people will do anything for religion - except the Ancient Greeks who wouldn't even walk up Mount Olympus to check if their gods were actually there.
We also know people are willing to follow animals that are important to them to the ends of the Earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evens
And we know that walking from North America to South America is possible: https://matadornetwork.com/read/meet-first-man-walk-14000-miles-argentina-alaska/
So that's my idea for a TL developing.
You can call it, "The Kite, the Bison, and the Turtle."
Northstar
P.S. I know the Inca didn't yet exist in the timeframe we're talking about, but you can still get an exchange between North America and South America going with the pilgrimage I talked about, thus when/if the Incas do develop you already have an existing system in place that can facilitate the exchange of animals/culture/innovation.
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I know we're not supposed to do comparisons with Eurasian civilizations but the turtles shells for their Oracle bones and as a precursor to paper. So maybe native American civilization could do something similar...
It's not a problem with comparisons - comparisons are vitally important! We have no other way to judge what is likely and what is not. What is bad is when people demand that Native American societies in ATLs must progress down the exact same "tech tree" and series of social developments as Eurasian civilizations, either out of the belief that the only way those societies can be interesting is if they're copy-pastes of Eurasian ones or out of the well intentioned but ultimately very boring (and ironically Eurocentric) imposition by the author to bring societies up to a state of perfect equanimity with the Eurasian civs to do Montezuma's Revenge or whatever. Like I said, the latter is well intentioned, but its ultimately an imposition from above that stretches credulity and doesn't take these societies on their own terms and see them as interesting in their own right - rather, it sees all of history as a narrative leading up to the coming of the white man. That's an important story in world history, and they can be done well and sparingly, but it denies the validity of these societies on their own terms.
As to turtle shell concept - I actually really like that. Demand for tortoiseshell could well drive maritime exploration, sort of being comparable to the Baltic Amber Trade. Ultimately, the Turtle Culture could be the forerunner of the Rio Grandese trade complex that connnects Oasisamerica (as well as Mesoamerica) to the Mississippian societies.
The Inca not existing is irrelevant; like the Aztecs, their empire was built on the prior existence of settled societies throughout the Andes and the Pacific coast of South America dating back thousands of years B.C. (considerably before the Mesoamerican societies of comparable development, actually). It pretty much doesn't matter what you do with North America, the Andean societies are going to be available if they can be reached.
That pretty much explains human interaction with many extinct species for long periods of time. Humans were a distinct species for about 150,000 years. Ice ages happen at 44,000 year intervals. Not since after the last ice age have humans reached civilization that left any records. (Sci-fi writers put humans into outer space several ice ages ago but there is no archeological evidence.) A key to keeping horses and other large animals alive in North America would be to increase their range and change human migration, perhaps let them discover how to "use" the horse the way Old World settlers did.
Which might be difficult since horses are a relatively late domesticate, basically being kept at around the beginning of the Bronze Age and used for chariot driving. It was only a few thousand years ago, that they were bred up to be strong enough as a mount! Cats were domesticated much earlier than horses for a comparison.
For all the talk about domesticates, I'm not sure how necessary they are. The Aztec Empire had a population of six million with just turkeys and perhaps peccaries. If we took their population density and applied it to the range of the Mississippians, we could potentially achieve a population of as much as 40-50 million by 1500 with no domesticates.
That being said, if we want to go the most realistic route with domesticates, we can avoid alternate domesticates entirely and use animals that we know can be domesticated because they've been domesticated elsewhere. I mentioned the turkey and peccary, but I would also add the caribou/reindeer coming in from the north and perhaps rabbits.
Either way, while beasts of transportation like a horse or camel would be useful, I don't know how necessary that is either. Mesoamerica and the Andes thrived without them, and even compared to them Mississippian geography is much, MUCH more easily traversable. Mexico is full of a variety of mountain ranges and valleys, and don't get me started on the Andes. Mississippia has not only relatively flat land, but a massive river system connecting that flat land. Where the river flows out to the Gulf of Mexico, they have the intracoastal waterway to make coastal navigation quite easy, so they would be able to expand to other watersheds that also touched the Gulf of Mexico. This would also likely bring them into contact with the Mesoamericans. To the north, they would also effectively have control of the southern side of the Great Lakes. I imagine a city on the sites of Chicago or Milwaukee would be crucial as those are points where the Mississippi system and the lakes are nearly connected.
I think the most interesting aspect we haven't touched on much is the geopolitical ramifications on the Americas pre-Columbus. Politically, Mississippian civilization would be the most centralized and the most heavily populated, and would thereby dominated the eastern half of North America as well as the Gulf of Mexico. They narrow coastal plain to the east of the Appalachians would likely be divided, with larger kingdoms that are more closely under the Mississippian thumb in the south and smaller more autonomous states further north where the coast and mountains are closer together. There would also likely be smaller kingdoms north of the lakes. With the Mississippians bringing more activity to the Gulf of Mexico and perhaps by extension also the Caribbean, groups like the Taino would likely have to give up their peaceful lifestyle to establish more powerful polities better suited to the more complex geopolitical environment brought by the Mississippians. Overall, the geopolitics of North America would be centered around the Mississippians and their interactions with surrounding peoples, and they would even likely have influence in the Mesoamerican civilizations. Various groups would likely position themselves in attempt to gain favor with the Mississippians, and methods of warfare and diplomacy would develop in nearby states specifically with the question in mind of how to deal with such a larger power.
There would also be more advanced technology with a higher population to innovate, although it is hard to say what form that would take given the fact that technology doesn't always go down the same path. The one thing I think would definitely become more advanced early on is boats for reasons I previously mentioned.
In terms of religion, I imagine that the Mississippi river would play a primary role, with perhaps the river being considered a god and the tributaries its children (or perhaps the tributaries its less powerful ancestors instead). Human sacrifice may also play a role, given how common sacrifice is in early religions and the lack of very many domesticated animals to sacrifice instead.
Also while I think that there's always the trap of jumping to "what happens when the Europeans come", I think that with a less friendly Caribbean population and an even bigger juggernaut of a mainland empire, it is unlikely that colonialism as we know it would take hold, and the relationship between the natives and the Europeans would be much more like the relationship that the Europeans had with much of Asia. I think that native civilizations would therefore be able to survive into modernity, and we would probably see a continuation of the ancient geopolitical trends with the Mississippians at the center of the New World and rising as a power.
That being said, if we want to go the most realistic route with domesticates, we can avoid alternate domesticates entirely and use animals that we know can be domesticated because they've been domesticated elsewhere. I mentioned the turkey and peccary, but I would also add the caribou/reindeer coming in from the north and perhaps rabbits.
Either way, while beasts of transportation like a horse or camel would be useful, I don't know how necessary that is either. Mesoamerica and the Andes thrived without them, and even compared to them Mississippian geography is much, MUCH more easily traversable. Mexico is full of a variety of mountain ranges and valleys, and don't get me started on the Andes. Mississippia has not only relatively flat land, but a massive river system connecting that flat land. Where the river flows out to the Gulf of Mexico, they have the intracoastal waterway to make coastal navigation quite easy, so they would be able to expand to other watersheds that also touched the Gulf of Mexico. This would also likely bring them into contact with the Mesoamericans. To the north, they would also effectively have control of the southern side of the Great Lakes. I imagine a city on the sites of Chicago or Milwaukee would be crucial as those are points where the Mississippi system and the lakes are nearly connected.
I think the most interesting aspect we haven't touched on much is the geopolitical ramifications on the Americas pre-Columbus. Politically, Mississippian civilization would be the most centralized and the most heavily populated, and would thereby dominated the eastern half of North America as well as the Gulf of Mexico. They narrow coastal plain to the east of the Appalachians would likely be divided, with larger kingdoms that are more closely under the Mississippian thumb in the south and smaller more autonomous states further north where the coast and mountains are closer together. There would also likely be smaller kingdoms north of the lakes. With the Mississippians bringing more activity to the Gulf of Mexico and perhaps by extension also the Caribbean, groups like the Taino would likely have to give up their peaceful lifestyle to establish more powerful polities better suited to the more complex geopolitical environment brought by the Mississippians. Overall, the geopolitics of North America would be centered around the Mississippians and their interactions with surrounding peoples, and they would even likely have influence in the Mesoamerican civilizations. Various groups would likely position themselves in attempt to gain favor with the Mississippians, and methods of warfare and diplomacy would develop in nearby states specifically with the question in mind of how to deal with such a larger power.
There would also be more advanced technology with a higher population to innovate, although it is hard to say what form that would take given the fact that technology doesn't always go down the same path. The one thing I think would definitely become more advanced early on is boats for reasons I previously mentioned.
In terms of religion, I imagine that the Mississippi river would play a primary role, with perhaps the river being considered a god and the tributaries its children (or perhaps the tributaries its less powerful ancestors instead). Human sacrifice may also play a role, given how common sacrifice is in early religions and the lack of very many domesticated animals to sacrifice instead.
Also while I think that there's always the trap of jumping to "what happens when the Europeans come", I think that with a less friendly Caribbean population and an even bigger juggernaut of a mainland empire, it is unlikely that colonialism as we know it would take hold, and the relationship between the natives and the Europeans would be much more like the relationship that the Europeans had with much of Asia. I think that native civilizations would therefore be able to survive into modernity, and we would probably see a continuation of the ancient geopolitical trends with the Mississippians at the center of the New World and rising as a power.
I don't think it's about interesting. Because while the societies are valid in their own terms, when the two hemispheres meet up, it would lead to vast change for them. Look at how the introduction of the horse in OTL happened and also the trade for fur and metal tools or even guns had.
I think it's a matter of practicality, likeihood and repeatabiltiy. People tend to go with what works overall and when they find a new method that they find brings more favorable outcomes and results with less cost, that's what they're gonna do. Civilizations do not need beasts of burden to coincide. It does make it alot easier to handle the work and focus on other tasks though and increase the likelihood of future developments. People tend to forget things like infrastructure and logistics, the boring stuff that makes day-to-day society work and endure for years, decades and so on.
I don't think doing exact copy-pastes is the intent, but looking at what works and how it led to there and seeing what happens in a different environment. People work best with what they have, but if they were content with just that, well, we wouldn't be here now would we?
I completely agree with all of this, I will add tho that I don’t see why white-tailed deer couldn’t be domesticated using the prey path. This probably precludes other cervid domestications or importation of llamas because of deer-worm, but it would still be a useful domestication for the Mississippians and whomever they export them to, like Mesoamerica and the Caribbean.
To my knowledge, deer are a bit too flighty to be viable domestication candidates. The Eastern Woodlands cultures did sort of manage them though, through the Agro-forestry that supplemented agriculture.