Sheep? How do sheep get there?
Domesticated bighorns on a Native American ship blown off course.
I don't want to raise your expectations too high or give away too much, but this will be a pretty epic timeline.
I'll add, of course, that desert bighorns are extremely adaptable to heat, and their body temperature can fluctuate several degrees.
Kalvan said:
The only places wooly sheep can survive within the Polynesian/Melanesian/Micronesian native cultural zone without air conditioned indoor pens for at least part of the day are New Zealand, Hawaii, and Easter Island, and only because they are at the lattitudinal extremes of the zone. Unfortunately, they are also at the absolute frontiers of OTL's settlement, not reached until the 1200s AD.
Is air-conditioning how sheep are kept in tropical Polynesia? Because using Google, I keep finding websites discussing sheep farming in places like the Marquesas and Cook Islands, but I can't imagine that air-conditioning makes this a very profitable enterprise.
Prism said:
Is there any way to introduce water buffalo in this timeline? I'm asking because evidently swamp buffalo thrive in Australia and Indonesia is geographically very close to Australia. Along with pigs and goats that'd really be a game changer.
Not in this timeline, which means that if you want to have a go at that, you won't be ninja'ing anybody (though of course any Australian agricultural timeline is following Jared's Lands of Red and Gold, which in the first few pages show themselves to be an extremely hard act to follow).