Land of the Horse Lords (North American Megafauna)

For the dwarves, once they get a better diet they'll mature more quickly, but still maintain the smaller size.

I highly doubt this. Islands provide generally poor-quality foods, so they favor organisms with lower energy demands. Usually, this means lizards and other reptiles, but, insular dwarf mammals have lower metabolisms than their full-sized mainland relatives, so they can survive in poor-quality environments. It's doubtful that you'll be able to increase their metabolism by feeding them on a typical mainland diet, and, even if you did, you'd be more likely to increase their mature size than to make them mature faster.

I wanted to have a domesticable dwarf elephant in my timeline, with the same rationale as you. But, island dwarfs just don't work this way.

Another option would be to go back a few million years and have a hyper-carnivore, like a sabre-toothed cat, become very good at killing even adult mammoths. In this scenario, large size would not be beneficial, but the ability to reach maturity and breed faster would make reproduction more likely. This should result in smaller mammoths that mature faster. I think this idea is a long shot, given that all proboscideans (except insular dwarfs) seem to come in only one general size (i.e. big).

*True story: my Firefox spellchecker accepts "dwarfs," but not "dwarves." That seems wrong to me. Oh well.
 
twovultures said:
Their smaller size would make them easier to domesticate...

Nonsense. There's no meaningful correlation between size and ease of domestication.

twovultures said:
...however-large horses can be extremely dangerous animals, and would probably be quite intimidating to a stone-age civilization.

We are talking about people who hunted mammoths: I don't think intimidation is a factor here at all.

twovultures said:
Also, don't underestimate the power of breeding. Give the natives a few hundred years of breeding horses, and horses capable of carrying riders would quite likely become a reality

Credulity isn't a good route to realism.

chr92 said:
Also, while zebras have been called undomesticable, people have at least trained them.

Agreed. I am an advocate of zebra-domestication concepts. The more I study the domestication of the horse, the less reason I find to accept the notion that the horse was somehow "special" in regards to domesticability. All the data seems to suggest that it was just another ungulate of the steppes.
 
Nonsense. There's no meaningful correlation between size and ease of domestication.

No, but there is a correlation (not a perfect correlation, but it's there) between size and ease of inflicting horrific injuries. This will probably factor in to which species early farmers choose to domesticate first.


We are talking about people who hunted mammoths: I don't think intimidation is a factor here at all.

Not necessarily. The people who ultimately tame horses may not be people who are in contact with Mammoths. And even people who regularly hunt large and dangerous wild animals may be a little apprehensive on caging these animals in the middle of their village, so size and aggressiveness can very well intimidate early farmers and affect domestication.


Credulity isn't a good route to realism.

Alright then, instead of taking my word that it makes sense that breeding can radically alter the size of an animal, how about you go outside and borrow a book on horse breeds from your local library. I'm not saying that horses can be bred from being too small to take riders to large enough to take riders because I think it's credible (I think that's what you're saying?), I'm saying it because it's a FACT. The exact circumstances that this would/could happen in the Americas in a scenario where horses are domesticated is really a matter of pure speculation.
 
Interesting. If the Americas have their own version of livestock, that will mean they have their own pandemic diseases, which Eurasians will not be immune to. This means the Columbian Exchange (or its equivalent) will be vastly different in that both hemispheres, the entire world, will suffer from huge pandemics that will decimate maybe even the majority of their populations in certain cases. However, do keep in mind that the very exposure to pandemic diseases strengthens the immune system, even regarding diseases the systems in question have never encountered, so neither side will have as bad a time of it as the OTL Amerindians had.
 
10,000 years before the megafauna extinction? That would put humans in the Americas at, what, about 20,000 to 24,000 BC? There are those who argue that, but it's not commonly accepted.
Hm, you're right, however, given that the commonly accepted time is still 16,500 to 13,000 years ago, and figuring a steady growth rate of only 0.5% PA, that's still an increase of of around 20,000 times between the latest accepted arrival, and the big die-off beginning, and even 0.25% PA gives 147 times. Figure it in from the earliest widely accepted date and...well I think you get the idea.

That isn't saying humans were the only reason for the die-offs or course, but for the local mega-fauna, under stress anyway from the climate change, humans probably were too much.

One theory gaining credence is the effects of a comet impact on the North American ice sheet about 12,900 BP, causing massive wildfires and releasing a huge freshwater lake down the St. Lawrence that turned off the Gulf Stream and caused the Younger Dryas mini-ice age.
It's also attracting a fair amount of criticism as well.
 
No, but there is a correlation (not a perfect correlation, but it's there) between size and ease of inflicting horrific injuries. This will probably factor in to which species early farmers choose to domesticate first.

Sure, it's perfectly rational to think that the amount of bodily harm an animal could inflict would be inversely correlated with humans' interest in domesticating it. But, the first animal that humans domesticated was the wolf, which is also easily one of the most dangerous animals humans have ever domesticated. Likewise the wild boar and the aurochs were also among the first animals domesticated, and these can also be very dangerous animals.

twovultures said:
Alright then, instead of taking my word that it makes sense that breeding can radically alter the size of an animal, how about you go outside and borrow a book on horse breeds from your local library.

Cute. So, do you believe it's possible to breed a purebred bantam chicken that produces 10 lbs of meat? Or a purebred cow that can produce as much meat as a bison? Or a purebred Shetland pony that's 17 hands at the withers and could race at Keeneland? Or a purebred chihuahua that can pull sleds with a team of six?

Just because an animal is related to a thoroughbred doesn't mean it can be bred to run like one. A little more skepticism is in order on this.
 
Hm, you're right, however, given that the commonly accepted time is still 16,500 to 13,000 years ago, and figuring a steady growth rate of only 0.5% PA, that's still an increase of of around 20,000 times between the latest accepted arrival, and the big die-off beginning, and even 0.25% PA gives 147 times. Figure it in from the earliest widely accepted date and...well I think you get the idea.

Actually, I don't. Are you arguing that a human population increase of 0.5 percent a year results in an increase of 20,000 percent in only a few thousand years? I'm sorry, I don't understand your math there.
 
Likewise the wild boar and the aurochs were also among the first animals domesticated, and these can also be very dangerous animals.
True, but they were domesticated after sheep and goats-much less dangerous livestock. Once again, the relative dangerousness of an animal affected how eager early farmers were to domesticate them.

As for wolves, your point is taken but in their case, there was no other animal available that could fulfill the functions they were ultimately domesticated for. Hunter-gatherers weren't going to choose goats as a guardian and companion for hunts.



Just because an animal is related to a thoroughbred doesn't mean it can be bred to run like one. A little more skepticism is in order on this.
I think your skepticism is somewhat misplaced. True, perhaps whatever American horses are domesticated would not reach quite the efficiency or power of Old World horses, depending on what genetic stock they are bred from. But if people could extract the Great Dane from the genes of wolves, then they could extract a larger breed of horse from whatever stock they originally domesticate-farmers will breed for size, in the hope of increasing the amount of meat and power they can get from their horses.

I will concede though, that if American horses are bred from a less diverse stock of wild horses than the Old World horses, and the original American domesticates are smaller and weaker than Eurasian horses, that the American breeds will not match the Old World breeds.

Speculative history is not a hard science-unless you can show that it is absolutely impossible for the smaller American horses to have been bred to be larger and therefore capable of carrying riders, a writer can put that in a timeline and claim it as plausible. Credibility is kind of what we base...pretty much everything we do in the pre and post 1900 forums.
 
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Re: a non-ABS way to bring this about, what you need are successive species of ancient hominids colonising the New World as they did the Old, allowing the animals there to evolve in tandem (particularly behaviourally) with pre-humans over millions of years, giving them a chance to adapt to and possibly survive us.

I think realistically the best you could do is to get some early homo erectus into the New World (anything more primitive is unlike to be able to withstand the cold of the Bering land bridge), perhaps as long as a million years ago. After that, the more settlement of Old World human populations the better. The trick is to avoid as much technology shock as possible.
 
Re: the American Cheetah, one of my favourite nature facts is that the fastest herbivore in the world is the pronghorn, living on a continent where there are no extant prey species anywhere near as fast. Gives you an idea how incredibly quick the American cheetah must have been (presumably the pronghorn have slowed down some in the past ~10k years with the evolutionary pressure removed!)
 
Actually, I don't. Are you arguing that a human population increase of 0.5 percent a year results in an increase of 20,000 percent in only a few thousand years? I'm sorry, I don't understand your math there.
Exponential growth, multiply 1.005 (for half-a-percent-per-annum) by itself multiple times. After:
5 years - 2.53% increase
10 years - 5.11% increase
20 years - 10.49% increase
50 years - 28.32% increase
100 years - 64.67% increase
200 years - 171.15% increase
500 years - 1110.68% increase
1000 years - 14557.56% increase
2000 years - 2148341.40% increase

The time to the first doubling is 139 years, to the second doubling is 323 years, then it's 10 times the initial at 481 years, 20 times at 611 years, 50 times at 789 years, 100 times at 926 years, etc.

That's for a fixed increase of course, undoubtedly there will be environmental factors to slow that down a bit.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Re: a non-ABS way to bring this about, what you need are successive species of ancient hominids colonising the New World as they did the Old, allowing the animals there to evolve in tandem (particularly behaviourally) with pre-humans over millions of years, giving them a chance to adapt to and possibly survive us.

I think realistically the best you could do is to get some early homo erectus into the New World (anything more primitive is unlike to be able to withstand the cold of the Bering land bridge), perhaps as long as a million years ago. After that, the more settlement of Old World human populations the better. The trick is to avoid as much technology shock as possible.
Once again, the human factor is not the only factor. There was a Megafauna in Europe and Asia too, that died out the same time as the American one. They had been in contact with humans for ages.
 

NothingNow

Banned
Why the hell aren't the Glyptodonts and Pampatheres included on the list? They're pretty much the only thing on it no-one would want to touch.

Hm, you're right, however, given that the commonly accepted time is still 16,500 to 13,000 years ago,

Actually, the genetic Data points to around 25,000 BP, as does most of the Archaeology.
 
Once again, the human factor is not the only factor. There was a Megafauna in Europe and Asia too, that died out the same time as the American one. They had been in contact with humans for ages.

Almost all the African megafauna survived, and much of the Eurasian megafauna did too (not surprisingly most that died off were in the north of Eurasia where human settlement was more sudden, plus many species only went extinct in the past ~2k years which can be prevented with some conscious conservation). Nothing like that happened in the Americans, Australia, various islands...

I doubt, for instance, there's any way to save the likes of the ground sloth: just too vulnerable to human weapons. But considering lions survived human settlement in Africa and Eurasia (at least until very recently), I don't see why an American lion adapted to co-exist with humans (as are African and Asian lions) couldn't be alive today. Ditto the American cheetah, and horses and North American camalids: their Old World analogs dealt with humans reasonably well considering what a pestilence we are. Mammoths/mastodons even seem salvageable: not only did their relatives survive in the Old World with seemingly little trouble, but were domesticated.

What American megafauna survives today is alive because they rapidly learned to fear and avoid humans: considering how superficially-non-threatening we are this isn't an easy thing for not-very-intelligent-largely-instinct-driven animals to do overnight. You can imagine that when the Americas were first settled the native herbivores would have absolutely no natural fear of humans, while the predators would have no reluctance at all to confront us (to their immediate peril). An American lion or cheetah that learned to avoid human contact (as do modern cougars and wolves and bears and jaguars) seems perfectly viable. Ditto an American horse that behaves like a zebra.
 
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yourworstnightmare

Banned
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Well Europe lost the Irish Elk, the Cave Lion, the Cave Bear, the Eurasian Sabertooth, the Woolly Mammoth, the Woolly Rhinoceros, the Hyena etc. So yes, there was a Megafauna extinction in Europe too.
 
I highly doubt this. Islands provide generally poor-quality foods, so they favor organisms with lower energy demands. Usually, this means lizards and other reptiles, but, insular dwarf mammals have lower metabolisms than their full-sized mainland relatives, so they can survive in poor-quality environments. It's doubtful that you'll be able to increase their metabolism by feeding them on a typical mainland diet, and, even if you did, you'd be more likely to increase their mature size than to make them mature faster.

I wanted to have a domesticable dwarf elephant in my timeline, with the same rationale as you. But, island dwarfs just don't work this way.

Another option would be to go back a few million years and have a hyper-carnivore, like a sabre-toothed cat, become very good at killing even adult mammoths. In this scenario, large size would not be beneficial, but the ability to reach maturity and breed faster would make reproduction more likely. This should result in smaller mammoths that mature faster. I think this idea is a long shot, given that all proboscideans (except insular dwarfs) seem to come in only one general size (i.e. big).

*True story: my Firefox spellchecker accepts "dwarfs," but not "dwarves." That seems wrong to me. Oh well.
Fair enough.
For my TL, I didn't look too closely into dwarfism. But I can handwave it away with the explanation that the Dwarf Mammoths returned to the mainland so predation likely sped up their growth.
 
Well Europe lost the Irish Elk, the Cave Lion, the Cave Bear, the Eurasian Sabertooth, the Woolly Mammoth, the Woolly Rhinoceros, the Hyena etc. So yes, there was a Megafauna extinction in Europe too.

Indeed true, although these animals lived in areas that were more recently settled (Europe - particularly northern Europe - was the last part of the Old World to be settled by humans). The megafauna in Southern Europe stuck around much longer (until there was basically no habitat for them left)

We did, until a millennia or so ago, have lions in Europe. The Caspian Tiger was still around until a couple of decades ago. Wolves were widespread and common in Europe until recent times, as were brown bears (both still exist in remnants in surprising places). Europe had wild horses until the past few centuries. Ditto the auroch.

Also a POD that has hominids in the Americas +1 million years ago would require them to be more cold-adapted, which would put them into Europe as well. That might be enough to head-off the extinction of other European megafauna (woolly rhinos, giant deer, hyena, etc)
 
I've been a bit too aggressive in this thread so far, and I don't want to kill it off by beating up on every idea that other people bring up, so I'll back off for a bit.

I've been thinking a lot about megafauna and evolution timeline concepts, and my thinking has focused on a couple of main angles:

First of all, we have to accept that, whatever killed off the megafauna was very quick and very dramatic. So, unless a timeline proposes some major, dramatic changes to history, with rampant butterflies, one probably shouldn't be expecting the megafauna to survive intact. In order to make the timeline manageable and realistic, I would prefer to pick just a couple species to survive and try to contain the butterflies to some extent.

Unless, of course, you're interested in taking on all the butterflies and effectively rewriting history with a clean slate. The uncertainty about what caused the megafauna to go extinct gives us considerable wiggle room in determining which species might survive the onslaught. We don't really have to explain why X or Y survived, because we really don't know why it didn't survive in OTL.

Likewise, the paucity of historical records about Paleo-Indians gives us precious few insights into potential points of divergence, and potential alternate courses of history. For example, what if Paleo-Indians had never hunted mammoths? Would anybody raise their eyebrows over this? The Olmecs apparently had invented wheels, but they only used them on toys, and apparently never made chariots or other vehicles. Is that any stranger than not hunting mammoths?

I do not, however, like to abuse the audience's willing suspension of disbelief. There is a tendency to go over the top with megafauna timelines. Once you've gone a certain distance from OTL with megafauna, you might as well just pull stuff out of your rectum. We can just pretend that evolution or artificial selection will let us get away with anything. It's very difficult to give feedback on that, especially dissenting feedback, and I think this is why most megafauna threads don't get very far. (There's also the fact of biology nazis like Sven wanting to beat down every new idea someone comes up with).

There are good opportunities for collaboration though. For instance, we could pick an animal, and decide, after much debate, what characteristics it would most likely have, what characteristics it could most likely be bred to have, and then start in on how these characteristics would make society develop differently from OTL. For instance, maybe there's a surviving North American camel that is domesticable. How would a New World camel society develop differently from the Old World horse society or cattle society?

If there's interest, maybe I'll start a new thread for that, so as to avoid stepping on Argo's toes.
 
IThere are good opportunities for collaboration though. For instance, we could pick an animal, and decide, after much debate, what characteristics it would most likely have, what characteristics it could most likely be bred to have, and then start in on how these characteristics would make society develop differently from OTL. For instance, maybe there's a surviving North American camel that is domesticable. How would a New World camel society develop differently from the Old World horse society or cattle society?
A few years ago somebody did a thread of North American llamas. a real gem.
 
Sven-I just want to congratulate you on being the only person on the internet who is willing to de-escalate a debate. You win +1 internets.

Sure, I'm up for the thread you proposed.
 
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