maybe a successful invasion of japan would work. how did it go in those books, wasteland of flint? japanese reffugees, then the mongols?
Caesar, I do not deny that those societies were complex. Yet, it still remains that according to the original scenario, the Mongols were supposed to first sail off Alaska and Canada, and I am not quite sure that they would go further down. In order to stay there, they would need some kind of official support, and I really do not see how they would get it. There was no religious incentive, no competition between states of moderate size trying to secure commmercial assets, and I am sorry to tell you this, but the climate in Alaska and Canada is definitely not hospitable. There was no global warming at the time.
I freely confess that I am not an expert in American history and Native American cultures, and Lewis and Clark might indeed have been wrong and prejudiced in their assessment of the level of advancement of the tribes I have alluded to. However, when they pushed further west they clearly mentioned the worsening of living conditions, and this seems to point to the fact that the Indians of the central plains were better fed than Indians in the North west (I didn't say anything about California).
If you can come up with some data contradicting Lewis and Clark (comparing north western and eastern Indians), then I'll forget about this, and perhaps adopt your point of view, but until then...
Thank you very much for the links. Certainly, having watched films like "Dead Man" and read a biased account of a state-sponsored expedition is not sufficient to get a profound knowledge of the "Tlingits" and northwestern Indians in general...
However, I am still not convinced that the resources available in this part of the world would appear interesting enough to the eyes of Mongols (especially after having conquered China). And as far as food and standards of living are concerned, how do you explain Lewis and Clark's account? They can't be that biased, can they?
One motivation that has been explored on this forum on a previous occasion was the fur trade. Sea otters are found on the Kurile islands, the Aleutians and the North Pacific coast of the American continent. Just as beaver pelts provided an incentive for the exploration of Canada in OTL, perhaps some Mongol traders would find reason enough to go sailing north if there's a market for sea otter pelts.I really have difficulty imagining a whole fleet of junks sailing off the coast of Alaska. I know that Mongols are not afraid of the cold, but I really don't see how anyone of them would get support to go and get the "riches" of this part of the world...
Not that I dsipute your point, but the historical Zheng He was born in a remote mountain village in Yunnan, and I don't think anyone around him had ever seen the sea with their own eyes.Finally, as all Mongols at this point were horse-riding nomads who lived further inland from the coast, it would have been highly improbable to find a person like Zheng He or Christopher Columbus among their ranks.
One motivation that has been explored on this forum on a previous occasion was the fur trade. Sea otters are found on the Kurile islands, the Aleutians and the North Pacific coast of the American continent. Just as beaver pelts provided an incentive for the exploration of Canada in OTL, perhaps some Mongol traders would find reason enough to go sailing north if there's a market for sea otter pelts.
Quite. America as a place of exile for troublesome noblemen and their retinue during the Yuan dynasty would make it possible to bring the Mongol lifestyle to the continent. We're talking about a trickle of a few thousand exiles at a time, which may not look like much, but intermarriage and cultural assimilation of vanquished Native tribes would boost their numbers in fairly short order.However; in a scenario in which the Yuan Dynasty controls a number of settlements on the Aleutians and the Northwest American coast, it might be possible for the Yuan emperors (or perhaps their Ming successors) to exile a few particularly troublesome Mongol princes and their followers to these remote colonies on the other side of the ocean.
Now then, the presence of Chinese, Koreans and other East Asians along North America's Pacific coast would make an interesting scenario by itself, but it's still a far cry from a "Mongol hordes of the Great Plains"-scenario.
However; in a scenario in which the Yuan Dynasty controls a number of settlements on the Aleutians and the Northwest American coast, it might be possible for the Yuan emperors (or perhaps their Ming successors) to exile a few particularly troublesome Mongol princes and their followers to these remote colonies on the other side of the ocean.
That might just get a minimal population of Mongols that retain their nomadic lifestyle in North America.
Their numbers wouldn't be large, but if these exiles arrive in North America during, say, the latter half of the 14th century, then they would still have plenty of time to develop without interference from the Europeans.
Once you've made it to Alaska, it's just a matter of sailing down the coast, so no further incentive would be necessary: at that point it's a given that settlements would start popping up in suitable spots of the Pacific Northwest. And before long someone would have the idea of exiling undesirables beyond that huge mountain chain that seems to stretch forever along the coastline.Maybe when enough Asians reside in Alaska and they hear tales from the Natives of better lands to the south, they go on a massive trek until they reach the Great Plains or the Southwest.