Who knew you could build such a great TL on Yams?
Dashed interesting idea, this, old boy. I fear I can't contribute anything of substance, but I'll be watching with interest!
Another TL? About yams?
This isn't meant to be a full timeline. It's meant to be a discussion thread where everyone can throw in ideas. I don't have the time to write another full timeline. I don't even know if I have the energy to finish DoD.
(Okay, I'm kidding about that last sentence.)
Advance *Islamic Australia Fair!
Heh. I'm not actually sure if Islam will reach *Australia in time to matter; the domesticated yams won't be penetrating the Northern Territory until at least 1500 or 1600. But still, it would be an entertaining possibility.
So we have the yams reaching the tropics around 1500AD?
More or less. They will slowly spread north; I expect it would take another hundred years or more for them to penetrate as far north as, say, Cairns.
Any kind of society will produce trade goods, and I think that it's quite likely that trade will occur between New Guinea and *Australia once the *Australian societies have spread far enough north.
Assuming that there is enough sea contact between them, sure, there'll be trade of some kind.
This will probably cause *Australia to be integrated into the SE Asian economy that existed at the time. We could probably see some Dutch trading posts / colonial activity.
I'm figuring that the Dutch will be the first to try something. They'll be in contact, and unlike in the case of OTL Australia, there'll be settled peoples for them to trade with. Although I'm not sure how profitable the trade will be, unless someone's discovered the alluvial goldfields...
Finally... a reason of the Dutch to have a huge part of Australia...![]()
Heh. A Dutch Australia is certainly one of the possibilities for this PoD.
Higher human population means more competition for animal meat. Maybe they'll have more sophisticated weaponry by the time of contact?
Depends on whether they find the resources to enter the bronze age. This is actually a relatively limited timeframe to accomplish it; it took a while after the development of agriculture in OTL. I don't actually know offhand where there are convenient sources of copper and tin in Australia; I'll have to dig around to work that one out.
A TL with gunned Aborigines would be interesting, to say the least.
I suspect that European contact will bring with it an equivalent to the Musket Wars in New Zealand.
Looks cool.![]()
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Are yams, particularly domesticated varieties, susceptible to disease? I am thinking of something like the potato blight that affected the crop in Ireland. If they are then one outbreak could spell disaster.
Any mono-crop economy is in one sense susceptible to disease, especially domesticated crops. However, what made the potato blight in Ireland so deadly was that only a couple of varieties of potatoes had made it to Europe, and the potatoes there were thus extremely genetically uniform. This meant that they were all vulnerable. (Potatoes in the Andes have much more genetic variety). ITTL, there would be a wide range of cultivars of Red Yams, so it's unlikely that one disease would wipe them all out.
Even if they are not it still seems a rather limited base for the development of a settled urban culture. Still, as pointed out the Maori managed to do it.
It's going to place severe limits on what happens. Protein deficiency is the most obvious restriction; without hunting, yams aren't going to supply much of that. But at a rough estimate, it will at least triple the carrying capacity of a given area of land. That's enough for a much larger population than Australia had historically.
If the eel farmers in southern Australia had their diet complemented with yams it would make a huge difference to the chances of urbanization in their clan group.
The eel farmers urbanised to a certain degree anyway; they built stone houses and lived in villages/towns of up to a few hundred individuals. Their urbanisation here would be correspondingly larger; towns of a few thousand people, I'd suspect. There are all the obvious limitations, but this is going to make a big difference.
What other bush tucker species grow in that area that has the potential to be domesticated? A varied crop of even a few domesticated species would be advantageous to trade as well as the local development of an urban culture.
I'm not sure about in the immediate area of the Murray Valley, but there's a variety of crops in Australia which could be potentially domesticated. The big thing which was missing was a founder crop; something which would let farming start. Once it had started, it would be easier to explore the possibilities of other crops.
There's a lot of fruits in Australia which could be domesticated (and which is starting to happen today). These would add flavour and variety to the diet, but in terms of caloric intake would remain minor. There's various other plants which might make decent vegetables, too. I'll draw up a list of some of the possibilities and post it to this thread later.
A lack of domestic animals, except for the dingo of course, is a great disadvantage.
It doesn't help, of course, but the crucial factor is going to be whether the population is a farmer society or hunter-gatherer society. In most of the world, areas which had hunter-gatherer societies at the time of European contact saw Europeans become the large majority of the population. Conversely, areas which had farmer societies saw the indigenous inhabitants survive as a substantial percentage of the population.
Could significant technical and social advances take place without beasts of burden?
Depends how you define significant. The Maori and the Aztecs had none and very few domestic animals, respectively. Although I doubt that *Australia will be able to support population centres the size that the Aztecs managed.
Would the lack of such animals mean that any aboriginal proto urban culture be limited to the level of the near eastern first farmers? The first farmers of course had domesticated animals as well as cereal crops.
Not in all areas. The highlands of New Guinea didn't have domesticated areas, although they had multiple crops. The Aztecs and their predecessors had only a few domestic animals at most. But yes, in general terms there's going to be some limits on how far things develop. Especially with the clock ticking until Europeans arrive...
In relation to the yam spreading north, it would appear to be unlikely that it could form the basis for an urban culture. After all, northern Europe remained ‘barbarian’ for centuries because its soils and climate was unsuitable for the types of crops considered the basis for civilization.
It won't happen quickly, certainly, but the transfer is likely to happen over time. The north-south axis will mean that it takes longer to develop varieties which can grow in the tropics. (Much as the reverse happened in spreading maize north from Mesoamerica to the rest of North America). But new varieties could be bred, albeit slowly. And they likely would be bred by the same processes of artificial selection as happened in OTL.
More advanced aboriginal civilizations that developed in the south could conceivably found colonies or trading posts all the way up the coast. But the Murray Valley is a LONG way from northern Australia.
It's a long way, but no more so than the distance from Tenochtitlan to Boston, and varieties of maize were bred which could make the jump. Still, I'd agree that the most populous and advanced urban cultures would develop in the southeast, and maybe in the southwest around Perth if the trade routes bring yams there early enough. (One of the advantage of yams for transfer that way is that they keep so well.)
Aboriginal Australians reached the Murray Valley area relatively soon after their ancestors arrived. If such a yam existed, it would be eaten by what was at the time the most advanced culture on the planet. I would expect this to lead to the establishment of an urban-based culture very early indeed, particularly if fish farming and the domestication of other suitable plants proceeded apace. It would not be beyond the realms of possibility that a city civilization would exist long before Sumer.
The odd thing about domestication of crops is that while humans had lived in contact with domesticable varieties of crops for tens of thousands of years, including previous warm interglacial periods, but domestication didn't start until the beginning of the current interglacial. Then it developed independently in at least four areas, over a timeframe which depended on how readily crops could be developed. (The Middle East and China happened early, New Guinea and Mesoamerica happened later. It's still open for debate whether the Andean and West African agricultural zones developed independently or not.) The reasons for this are not easy to figure out; maybe something about the stresses of that era of climate change triggered the shift to farming. But the pattern is pretty clear, and hence I'd expect that domestication of the red yam isn't going to really start until after the end of the last interglacial. Even then, while it's at least domesticable, I've assumed it takes longer than it took to domesticate maize. Hence I've settled on a timeframe of roughly 1500 years ago for there to be fully domesticated varieties. But the population is going to spread pretty quickly from there.
This all presumes that the yam can indeed provide the basis for settled, densely populated civilization.
It is an assumption, but I think it's a reasonable one. The example of the Maori shows that single-crop cultures can be formed, and there are several examples of domesticable yam species around. None in Australia, admittedly, but that doesn't mean that there couldn't be one.
I doubt that the presence of a domesticable species of yam in Australia would have had much effect, unless you couple that with other environmental or cultural factors. Rarely do hunter-gatherers adopt horticulture (especially intensive horticulture) unless they find themselves in environmentally constrained situations facing overpopulation. Never in human history have people voluntarily adandoned a hunting gathering economy unless they have to. Agriculture takes more effort, requires more energy, and requires more complex social and economic rules. Nobody like that, least of all hunter-gatherers.
The stresses of the end of the ice age would have been enough to start people down the road of domestication; it happened all over the world, why not Australia? And given the historical examples, it's not a case of people waking up and deciding to become farmers. It's a gradual process; they harvest the red yam as part of their diet, applying principles of artificial selection without necessarily meaning to, and they gradually shift to a domesticated crop. From that, they develop higher population densities, which leads to urbanisation. There were the starts of urbanisation in Australia even without domesticable crops (see the eel-farming communities I mentioned), and with a domesticable crop, it's likely to be the same shift which happens elsewhere. And once some cultural group has adopted farming, they tend to spread by force of numbers. Farmer societies can simply put more bodies in the line when compared to hunter-gatherer bands.
To make this idea work, you need to create reasons aboriginal population would increase to the point where it places strains on the ability of the natural habitat to sustain it...or change history and have the first aborigines migrate to the continent with a pre-existing knowldge of practical agriculture.
Agriculture was independently invented in at least four areas, and I'm not aware of there being great periods of strain in all of those areas. (In New Guinea, in particular).
After all, the Maoris did not develop agriculture in New Zealand, they came from places where agriculture was already a major element of the subsistence pattern.
The exmaple of the Maori was only to show that one-crop farmer societies could exist, not as a pattern for how agriculture developed in the first place.
If you did get this to happen, I would tend to imagine the agricultural tribes would probably occupy the wet tropical north, where societies not unlike those in New Guinea would evolve. One might then imagine a situation where these groups would then reach population densities forcing the development of more stuctured and heirarchical socities, especially if they attempted to expand into the more arid areas where irrigation and other collaborative intensive agricultural practices are necessary.
It depends on where the domesticable species happen to be. The yams which happen to grow in the tropical north are not easily domesticable. Not as founder crops, anyway. (Nor are those in the south.) I picked the Murray Valley for the location of an alternate species of yam which was domesticable.
There is evidence that the artifacts originally described as fish traps in the Murray Valley area were in fact primitive attempts to farm fish, particularly eels. That they worked is shown by the centuries of use. This may well indicate that the pressures you mentioned had occured and this was the response. It could also mean that the theory is wrong and that when humans discover a particularly delicious food source they attempt to farm it.
There were eel-farming communities in a couple of areas in Victoria. (The Murray Valley was one.) These were people who built stone houses, in the first stage of urbanisation. An eyewitness account also reports acres of wild yam fields growing there. That was my inspiration for placing the red yam in that area - how much more would those societies have grown if there were domesticable yams in the Murray Valley
It is now generally accepted that climate change was the trigger for the development of agriculture in the Middle East. Such changes have occured in Australia as well. With the existence of a viable species of domesticable and edible plant, the possibility of urban development is likely. It happened all over the world after all except in Australia and most probably because of the absence of the equivilent of a cereal crop.
Not all of the developments of agriculture used cereal crops. New Guinea's agriculture used root crops - yams and taro - and fruits. Also sugarcane, but that wasn't their main source of calories.
You are correct. Climate change can often result in increased pressures on an existing population to prompt greater dependence on intensive agriculture.
There's been no shortage of climate change in Australia. If memory serves, there was a big one starting around 4000 years ago which had other cultural effects in OTL. I'll try to dig up some more of the details.
Very interesting Jared. I look forward to what you have in store for this TL. But how densely populated could Australia get with just better food? And the tech gap will still be quite large with simply the length of Eurasia and all that Guns Germs and Steel stuff. You've read the book I hope and I'll just trust you'll make it plausible.
As per upthread, this isn't meant to be a TL in itself, just a collaborative discussion thread. But what I'm thinking of isn't a case of Australia developing a technology enough to fend off European invasion. The differences are going to be profound, but mostly having to do with higher population density. And yes, a farming society can have a population density several times higher than a hunter-gatherer society. Compare the populations, for example, of the North and South Island of New Zealand. The kumar didn't grow very well in most of the South Island, leaving the people there as near-hunter-gatherers. (Not exactly, but near enough.) The North Island isn't bigger, but it had a much larger population.
PS so this will replace DoD?
Nah; I'm abandoning DoD for reasons which have nothing to do with this thread. (Kidding, people.)[/
Maybe this was already happening there is evidence to suggest that Australias desertification was caused by thousands of years of fire stick hunting. (Setting fire to the bush and killing the things that ran way from the flames)
Firestick farming seems to have been used for tens of thousands of years. It was deliberate land management; keeping open areas for kangaroos to grow, for instance, and rotating those areas so that there was always a supply of kangaroos to hunt. But these practices needed large areas to work, which leads to the low population density I've mentioned upthread.
In the North West espesially aroung Kalbarri the Abboriginals were actually growing crops. This is largly thought to have been the influence of Dutch sailors shipwrecked on the West coast in the 1600's. As the Abborigals are the only ones in the entire contenant who cultivated a crop.
Aboriginal peoples around Australia harvested wild crops, resowed the seeds in some cases, and left parts of yams in the ground so that they could be reharvested next year. But without a fully domesticable crop, the population density remained low. If the agriculture of the New Guinea highlands could have somehow been transferred to parts of Australia, it would have worked very well, too. But transfer was difficult because highland agriculture didn't work in the lowlands of New Guinea, and thus didn't spread further...
Love PODs from a seemingly minor change!
I do, unfortunately, have to disagree with you regarding the percentage of native die off from imported European diseases. Western Hemisphere experiences indicate a die off more on the order of 90%+, especially in areas with some population density.
The worst-hit areas lost up to 90%, but it doesn't seem to have been that bad across whole continents. The problem is that even the best-intentioned estimates are rubbery... I think that 80% is a reasonable estimate, but even if it's close to 90%, that still means a large enough surviving population to have interesting effects downtime.
One of the biggest killers would be measles, which proved to be just as lethal to virgin populations as Small Pox (although small pox gets all the ink!)
There was a whole cocktail of diseases, plus other factors, certainly.
Yams are hardly a minor change!
Especially some of the varieties which can grow up to 25kg tubers...
I've been thinking about pre-European Australia and contact in the last few days, and the society in the Condah swamp. Here are links which give a bit of info about the area, basically the Gundijimara built up stone wiers etc to make the swamp into an eel farming area, and lived a resonably sedentary, structured lifestyle.
www.eniar.org/news/stones.html
www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s806276.htm
If you throw 'red yams' into the mix and all of a sudden you have the ability to carry large populations in selected areas. Perhaps this combination of improved wetlands and 'red yams' would result in something similar to one of the American societies, pre Columbus.
These were the areas I was thinking of. Yam farming would be a natural extension of what happened there, if there was a domesticable species. Although I suspect that the yams would spread further than the eel-farming itself, which was more restricted in terms of wet areas to spread to.