DBWI: No horses in Pre-Columbian America

Dorozhand

Banned
What if North America were still devoid of horses when Europeans arrived?

We know that the North American horse originally disappeared long ago, but mysteriously seems to have reappeared some time during the High Middle Ages, the reigning theory being that a Song Chinese exploration ship with a cargo of horses somehow ended up in California, though there is considerable debate raging still about the question.

However it happened though, it seems to have been a fluke. So how would things have turned out for America if, for example, the fearsome cavalry and horse-archer culture of the Plains Indians never had the time to come into being? Imagine a world where, say, the Zapotec Empire which ruled Mesoamerica for hundreds of years had never collapsed in the face of the Shoshone Invasions? Perhaps the Portuguese could have been frustrated further if sedentary civilizations could have continued to dominate their own affairs, or maybe they could have more easily conquered these civilizations of Mexica if they did not have to face what may have been the most effective cavalry armies in the world at the time. Or maybe without the introduction of the horse plough-based agriculture might not have spread as far and hunter-gatherer cultures might have been the rule?

Who knows?
 

libbrit

Banned
Any other large animals of a similar build, such as Elk? Could they not be domesticated by the natives over the preceding millenia?

post-4047-0-83385500-1338587523.jpg
 
Without horses, Native Americans probably could not have fought the different European colonizers, primarily the Spanish and the English, relatively equally and to relative stalements. We may not now have the seven Native American states of Susquehanna, Niagara, Shoshone, Pensacola, Nebraska, Chinook, and Malibu. We might only have two or three.

The other bit of good luck was that the more minor form of smallpox (variola minor) arrived here first. This was a lucky break.

Without the Native American contributions, and without the loosening up of European doctrinaire religion, we may not be as far ahead scientifically, technologically, and economically. We may not have our fairly large space stations around Jupiter and Saturn and our exploratory stations as far as the Kuiper Belt. We could conceivably be stuck with just a pokey little Mars station.

It's hard to tell for sure.
 
What if North America were still devoid of horses when Europeans arrived?

We know that the North American horse originally disappeared long ago, but mysteriously seems to have reappeared some time during the High Middle Ages, the reigning theory being that a Song Chinese exploration ship with a cargo of horses somehow ended up in California, though there is considerable debate raging still about the question.

However it happened though, it seems to have been a fluke. So how would things have turned out for America if, for example, the fearsome cavalry and horse-archer culture of the Plains Indians never had the time to come into being? Imagine a world where, say, the Zapotec Empire which ruled Mesoamerica for hundreds of years had never collapsed in the face of the Shoshone Invasions? Perhaps the Portuguese could have been frustrated further if sedentary civilizations could have continued to dominate their own affairs, or maybe they could have more easily conquered these civilizations of Mexica if they did not have to face what may have been the most effective cavalry armies in the world at the time. Or maybe without the introduction of the horse plough-based agriculture might not have spread as far and hunter-gatherer cultures might have been the rule?

Who knows?

I don't understand the question.

When Columbus arrived in America there were not a single horse there, as the American horse was wiped out 10 millennia before. Native Americans did not know the animal, even if they rapidly adapted to its use thanks to the Spanish. The feral horses used by Native Americans in the Plains (mustangs) are all from Iberian stock (as proven through DNA test):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustang_horse

Those theories about horses coming mysteriously from elsewhere lies on the Roswell UFO box. As today, there is not a single proof of that.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
I don't understand the question.

When Columbus arrived in America there were not a single horse there, as the American horse was wiped out 10 millennia before. Native Americans did not know the animal, even if they rapidly adapted to its use thanks to the Spanish. The feral horses used by Native Americans in the Plains (mustangs) are all from Iberian stock (as proven through DNA test):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustang_horse

Those theories about horses coming mysteriously from elsewhere lies on the Roswell UFO box. As today, there is not a single proof of that.

OOC: Apparently you are not familiar with DBWIs?
 
Without widespread use of large domestic animals, can we assume that the Old World would suffer less from American Diseases? Irl the Americans were by and far the worst off when it came to the plagues of the Colombian exchange, but we can't rule out what effect the illnesses had on the Europeans, /specifically speaking/ the settlers. It should be remembered that many conquistadors died shortly after consolidating there conquests on account of this, sorta common knowledge but sense it wasn't the case for Pizarro and Cortes I feel its a little overlooked, at least on the Spanish side, everyone knows about the epidemics suffered around OTLs US eastern Seaboard afterall.
 
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