Favourite Obscure Civilizations?

If the Ancient Puebloan (derogatorily called Anasazi) count, well then I would include also the Tellem people who were pushed out/genocided out of the great escarpment (though looking at Bangime, most likely assimilated).

Maybe Portugal gets united with Castile instead of Castile with Aragon? That would remove Castile as a patron for people like Columbus and possibly delay the "discovery" of the New World? There's still France, England, and the HRE though and I would think that the Portuguese crossing of the Cape would motivate them to send Western expeditions...

Perhaps stopping African exploration in general is the answer? IIRC, Portuguese exploration in the first place was mainly motivated by the desire to find the source of African gold and other products after capturing Ceuta. By keeping Al-Andalus ensconced in southern Spain, the peninsula could be kept too weak and divided for any state to safely patronize African exploration. The "orientation" of portugal was already towards the lower Atlantic due to geography. Would a northwest kingdom of Leon be the same? Not sure-I'm not very familiar with this period of history.

What do you see happening if the two things you mention were stalled like you say?

It's too many butterflies for me to want to deal with honestly, I think it'd be critical that the expulsion of Jews and Muslims not occur and Al Andalus remain for this to be viable but the cost of this also is the open trade relationships of Iberians in West Africa as a whole.

At any case if the new world hadn't been "discovered" for another century or two and mass enslavement to other continent's did not occur I could see a afro-eurasian trade develop that would solidify chieftains and kingdoms throughout the West African littoral.

You'd have to butterfly away say the population explosions around manioc, corn, peanuts, etc.. but you could get kingdoms on par technologically as well as a number of other things.

By the time of "Discovery" after about 300 years of intense interaction and exchange you could even see the formation of African powers colonizing the new world.

I could go more into it later, it's late but it'd be an interesting ATL if it's viable.
 
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Actually, having them avoid getting 'Portuguese-ified' would have been better, since it was their reliance upon Portugal that ultimately fucked them over. If you could get some other Catholic country like, say, Spain or France to get involved and provide them an alternative way to 'modernize' then they might have been much better off.

Or if they allied with the Dutch (remember, this is the seventeenth century), which seems doable. Kongo actually planned an attack on the Portuguese in coordination with the Netherlands in 1624, but the untimely death of the Kongolese king destroyed the plan.
 
Or if they allied with the Dutch (remember, this is the seventeenth century), which seems doable. Kongo actually planned an attack on the Portuguese in coordination with the Netherlands in 1624, but the untimely death of the Kongolese king destroyed the plan.
It wouldn't have worked anyway; the Dutch fleet that was being sent wasn't strong enough and the Portuguese would just send their cannibal child soldiers loose on the Kongoese. No, what you need is for the Pope to give the Kongo a bishop of its own instead of letting the Portuguese assign it for them and for another country than Portugal to provide a way for the Kongoese to learn and modernise. That doesn't have to be a Catholic power, but it would help with the Pope and the Catholic countries tended to be a bit more, uh, useful for educating natives due to having things like Jesuits.
 
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It wouldn't have worked anyway; the Dutch fleet that was being sent wasn't strong enough and the Portugeuse would just send their cannibal child soldiers loose on the Kongoese. No, what you need is for the Pope to give the Kongo a bishop of its own instead of letting the Portugeuse assign it for them and for another country than Portugal to provide a way for the Kongoese to learn and modernise. That doesn't have to be a Catholic power, but it would help with the Pope and the Catholic countries tended to be a bit more, uh, useful for educating natives due to things like Jesuits.

That makes sense. Also, maybe the whole neglect of Portuguese colonies during the Iberian Union could play in with helping Kongo assert its independence.
 
I forgot my all time favourite of favourites which has to be the Khevsureti of Georgia somebody should make a film of these people or at least a documentary.
 
Orkney's already been mentioned. Gets my vote.
But pre-Viking, and while I do find the Picts fascinating, I'd go for pre-Pict too.
The people that built the likes of Maeshowe, Standing Stones of Stenness, Ring of Brodgar, Ness of Brodgar, Skara Brae etc.
How did they organise themselves to build these monuments? How powerful were they?
What could they have gone on to if one or two things had happened differently? (I have no idea what these 1 or 2 things are incidentally)
 
What about the Shun and Daxi "dynasties"? Most people believe the Manchus defeated the Ming while in reality the Shun did while Daxi is only known by people for the utter craziness of it's Emperor (Zhang Xianzhong).
 
Orkney's already been mentioned. Gets my vote.
But pre-Viking, and while I do find the Picts fascinating, I'd go for pre-Pict too.
The people that built the likes of Maeshowe, Standing Stones of Stenness, Ring of Brodgar, Ness of Brodgar, Skara Brae etc.
How did they organise themselves to build these monuments? How powerful were they?
What could they have gone on to if one or two things had happened differently? (I have no idea what these 1 or 2 things are incidentally)

I am going to the Orkney's in September to visit the prehistoric sites cant, wait will upload a pic or two at the time probably.
 
(I hope the mods are OK with me posting in this thread — seems no sense to make a new thread just to meantion the Dorset)

I’ve recently heard about the Dorset people and think they are rather interesting. A mysterious group that inhabited arctic North America before the arrival of the Inuit/Eskimo, they apparently lacked drills and bow-&-arrow technology but were highly adapt at carving. Despite being all but pushed out by ~1500 A.D. there is some theories that their culture survived in isolated pocket-communities into the start of the 20th century!
 
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