No discovery of the New World

This is my first time posting a thread, but this idea has been in my head for a while now.

Let's say that Christopher Columbus left was sunk in a hurricane. Europe then turned to beleive that the world wasn't a sphere and there was an edge. They turned their back on trying to find a route to india and china.
 
It was actually common knowledge that the world was a sphere back then.

Effects are hard to imagine...

Maybe Stronger Natives when colonial empires are finally established. Perhaps Russia has a stronger influence of even a empire in western North America.

I'm not realy sure.
 
Well I was thinking about what would happen to the Native Americans if they were not bothered by the Europeans.

That's a very interesting topic, though the point of departure needs work (even if Columbus sank, the general consensus among the educated in Europe was that the world was round, as Eratosthenes had proven before 200 BC). It would take something of greater magnitude or an earlier point of departure to prevent later sailors from discovering the Americas, as especially Portugal was coming very close to Brazil every time they sailed around Africa.
If you find a way to prevent the collapse of the Pax Mongolica, and/or prevent the Turks from coming to power and controlling the overland trade routes, that takes away a lot of the incentive, as trade with the Far East was a big factor in beginning the Age of Discovery.

For an interesting start at a timeline of a New World with no interference from the Old World, look at Atom's 5500 years:

version 2:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=111718
original:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=69161
 
Well I was thinking about what would happen to the Native Americans if they were not bothered by the Europeans.
You'd need more than just Columbus dying. rewster has some good points. At the least, North America would likely get some seasonal camps for Basque fishermen, which would enlarge to supply food, then get noticed and colonization starts. So maybe push things back fifty years, if that, which can make plenty of differences.
 

Hendryk

Banned
So maybe push things back fifty years, if that, which can make plenty of differences.
That would be my estimate as well: if Columbus's ships sink on the way or turn back for whatever reason (a mutiny being a likely one), the American continent will get an extra half-century to itself, at most. Eventually, some other explorer would reach it. Obviously, that could still make a big difference, both for political developments in Meso- and South America, and for the European conquest itself. TLs have been written about it, but you'll have to look for them.
 
Two observations:

(1) The evolution of Mesoamerican and Peruvian civilizations had reached a basic plateau by AD 500-1000. Other than a few minor changes, such as more widespread use of bronze metallurgy, perhaps the rise of meso-american-level civilizations into the US southwest and Peru, and a consolidation of large empires in Mexico, there is no reason to believe that American civilizations would be significantly more advanced in AD 2000 than they were in AD1500. I'm not a big fan of everything Jared Diamond has to say, but his "Guns, Germs and Steel" has a good discussion of why this is.

(2) Even if somehow Europe somehow lost interest in sailing westward, it is alomst inevitable that somebody else from the old world (Islam, China, Japan, etc) would.
 
Didn’t the Russian reach the west coast ahead of the English? Some Russians settled, I don’t know how many, in California, and built a bunch of settlements. Some names perhaps survived of these settlements. Tsar wasn’t supporting them as the remoteness of the land had made it an inefficient mission. Had they been given more time, they probably would have settled the whole continent, one small step at a time.

Inuit’s built quality boats for thousands of years, capable of crossing oceans with a strike of luck. I wonder if they ever landed in Europe; the might have landed in Island, not that I know anything about that.
 
The Russians found the place in the 1740s, landed briefly in the 1760s, and settled semi-permanently in the 1790s. Rezanov's California adventure was in 1805 I think.

The Spanish were there at the same time as the Russians, the English explored the areas in the 1790s.
 
It would take more then Columbus sinking to stop the Europeans from discovering the Americas. Every Western European nation wanted to get to East Asia and there are only two directions to get there are east or west.

Now if the Europeans were some how magically barred away from North and South America I think that if the Incas established trade with Mesoamerica and introduce Llamas then the Aztecs, or some other Mesoamerican Civilization, would Invent the wheel. The Aztecs already had wheels used as toys but they had no large animal to pull it just manpower but the Llama could change this.
 
It would take more then Columbus sinking to stop the Europeans from discovering the Americas. Every Western European nation wanted to get to East Asia and there are only two directions to get there are east or west.
I've heard that Columbus was working on flawed figures for the distance he needed to travel to reach Asia, which most other navigators knew were false. If true, unless exceptionally well prepared, no-one would try the west route.
 
Even if Columbus would fail America would be discovered within a few decades. 1500 a Portugese, Pedro Cabral run into Brazil while trying to sail around Africa to India.
So as long as Europeans continue to travel to India the trade winds will blow someone to America.
 
Even if Columbus would fail America would be discovered within a few decades. 1500 a Portugese, Pedro Cabral run into Brazil while trying to sail around Africa to India.
So as long as Europeans continue to travel to India the trade winds will blow someone to America.

He's right. From 1500-1510, the Portuguese would start investigating Brazil. How long before the Spanish send explorers of their own, probably towards South America? From there, all one has to do is sail northwards along the coast to discover the rest of the Americas. If Columbus was butterflied away, it would give the Native Americans only a few decades at most, which wouldn't really matter at all.
 

Hendryk

Banned
If Columbus was butterflied away, it would give the Native Americans only a few decades at most, which wouldn't really matter at all.
Well, it may to some extent, if, for example, the Aztec empire collapses in the meantime. The Spanish were quite lucky in the way things played out in OTL, and a changed local situation may make things more difficult for European conquerors.
 
As said the Portugese skirted very far west when rounding Africa, bumping into Brazil at some point is inevitable.
Also with improved ship building technology fishermen heading towards the grand banks is going to become more and more common place.
 
This has been dealt with in the What if Columbus failed thread. As other have pointed out it wasn't a revoluntionary idea that the world was round. Coumbus is thought to have had access to portolans showing land to the West and the Vikings reached parts of Canada and fishermen were fishing the Grand Banks.There was probably limited accidental crossing of the Atlantic before Colmbus, Romans? Phoenicians, St Brendan? but no regular trade. Someone else would have got there before long maybe to South America there was supposdely somewhere called Hy Brazil marked on maps. So the only difference would have been whether it was Spain, Portugal or Britain.
 
We've kind of got to stomp on all of the Old World if we want an extra 500 years for the New World to remain isolated. If we go back far enough, we might be able to do something devastating enough... something like eliminating Islam might do it. In the resulting vacuum, there may be a greater loss of ancient knowledge, fewer new developments, and overall less cultural interaction to spur things forward. It'd also butterfly away the Turks, so if the Mongols still do their thing (a big if with such an early POD), land routes to China would stay viable longer.
 
We've kind of got to stomp on all of the Old World if we want an extra 500 years for the New World to remain isolated. If we go back far enough, we might be able to do something devastating enough... something like eliminating Islam might do it. In the resulting vacuum, there may be a greater loss of ancient knowledge, fewer new developments, and overall less cultural interaction to spur things forward. It'd also butterfly away the Turks, so if the Mongols still do their thing (a big if with such an early POD), land routes to China would stay viable longer.

um...what?
The whole myth of Islam preserving knowledge and all that is greatly exagerated; to get that knowledge to preserve they had to beat up the Greeks in the first place.
And most of the knowledge was of a non-practical variety. The Greek classics and whatnot. Little of actual technical use.
 
um...what?
The whole myth of Islam preserving knowledge and all that is greatly exagerated; to get that knowledge to preserve they had to beat up the Greeks in the first place.
And most of the knowledge was of a non-practical variety. The Greek classics and whatnot. Little of actual technical use.

I realize it's exaggerated, but taking out Islam has huge effects, even so. The Ottomans, the Mamluks, the Moors (and the Reconquista, probably the Crusades) are all butterflied away... so the Byzantines stick around longer, and the Sassanids too, the Mongols probably never happen (as a world-altering force) and neither does the Pax Mongolica, nobody hears about Marco Polo.
It could go either way, with such a big change, but clearly you could come up with plenty of dystopic scenarios in a no-Islam TL in which another 500 years go by without significant contact between the hemispheres.
 
Top