Either the Americas remain unaffected or you add an additional POD in the Americas. Honestly, the beauty of your timeline is the fact that one heifer not being sacrificed causes so many butterflies. Personally, I wouldn't change the Americas and just stick with one POD. However, that does not mean that you cannot have some groups of Eurasians coming into contact with the Americas centuries before OTL Columbus. But it is up to you of course.
Ok I'm back and still following this. Incidentally a while back I typed half a really text-heavy reply about pre-IE genetics but I lost it by accident(PS Sardinians are closest to Pre-IE West Europeans and Ingushetians to Pre-IE Anatolians, with the Sami having the greatest amounts of a unique Motala-associated North European marker).
3. Expanded range of Yeniseian languages/peoples. Also doable. They need to adopt horse culture relatively early, which I think works with the butterflied migrations of Indo-Europeans at an earlier period. If Dené-Yeniseian is a valid grouping, we might also have another branch somewhere in Siberia, a Para-Yeniseian, something perhaps between Athabaskan and Yeniseian, that ends up inheriting Mongolia.
As far as I've seen, that's basically the substrate of Paleo-Eskimo. Evidence of an intermediary ancestral Athabaskan group. It's also probable either the ancestral Yeniseians contacted North Caucasians via one of them moving east or west. It's possible modern Yeniseians are a relict of western migrations from their ancient range in Outer Mongolia.
An additional idea is a migration of a group like the Turkic, Ainu or Mongolic peoples from Yakutia/Kamchatka into the New World like the Early Dene-Yeniseians(increasingly certain as a linguistic and genealogical classification) sometime around 0CE or even possibly later. This'd change up everything with population dynamics in Northwestern America, even by butterflies alone.
What other ideas can we conjure up? Alternate domesticates, alternate agricultural technology, just technology in general? Ideas on philosophy, and religion? As a sort of joke I was thinking of a widespread cult of Satan, with Satan, or rather *Saytān being an epithet of the Semitic god Rešep, thus Rešep Saytān later being shortened to just Saytān. This would be a solar deity, and the hen-theistic cult surrounding him I thought might gain popularity in Egypt and the Levant, and perhaps the Semitic areas of Anatolia. Hell, it may even become a major world religion, at least for a little while
Other large domesticates in Asia I can suggest are the Tibetan or Saiga Antelope, semi-domestication of the Markhor or Argali. Also with your current plans for Korea there's also the potential to keep the Sino-Korean domestication of the aurochs(probably the fourth and latest such event) separate that now only has pure descendants in Yakutian cattle and a few near-extinct landraces, resulting in a fourth distinct character and selection of cattle breeds adapted to North Asia.
Among fowl, blood pheasants for small meat use like guinea pigs(or literally any generalised pheasants could be domesticated with enough time as you'd like, especially in Burma or Papua).
Rhea or ostriches could variously also be domesticated given sufficient cyclical pastoralism.
Corvids could serve as interesting and alternative falconry birds, particularly in an antbird-style symbiotic role- they also have the advantage of being potential American companions and domesticates.
Peccaries I've stated somewhere before on here could serve as an excellent accidental domesticate in Mesoamerica or the Caribbean.
Caracal are kept as pets and have been for centuries, and could easily spread as with camels in OTL across desert regions.
A most unusual domesticate would be okapi, though their presence in Persian inscriptions from Ethiopian envoys show them being kept alive across vast distances in the ancient world, and local pygmy populations have long revered, cared for and even sometimes kept in captivity the typically skittish forest animals, and even if domestication is only partial it may have interesting results in forest clearance and local culture.
As for how you could add butterflies to the New World, I'd recommend you do, particularly if you cut the net and literally create butterfly storms according to need or want. Weather events alone can substantially influence individual human lives and eventually complete historical trends, especially with a PoD as early as yours.
In the New World, pursuing Amazonian or Caribbean civilisations in general I think would be interesting. As would using Inga as another staple crop with the potential for deliberate forest agriculture, or adjusting events such as Toltecan or South Atabaskan migrations southwards.
Contact could be established from whatever direction you like with such an early PoD, though a culture such as the Polynesians or Ainu establishing capable maritime trade to coastal Native Anericans could result in all sorts of combinations of admixture not seen in OTL.
(Again, sorry for any text dump. I'm on mobile, so I dunno how shit the formatting is.)
Any way to bring West Africa into the Mediterranean world earlier/to a greater extent than OTL? A maritime state in Western or Southern Iberia may look to make sustained commercial contact with the region, especially if the Eastern Mediterranean or North Africa were closed off. More significant maritime contact could spread technological advancements back and forth and may lead to the accidental discovery of Brazil by wayward African/Mediterranean traders.
As far as I've seen, that's basically the substrate of Paleo-Eskimo. Evidence of an intermediary ancestral Athabaskan group. It's also probable either the ancestral Yeniseians contacted North Caucasians via one of them moving east or west. It's possible modern Yeniseians are a relict of western migrations from their ancient range in Outer Mongolia.
An additional idea is a migration of a group like the Turkic, Ainu or Mongolic peoples from Yakutia/Kamchatka into the New World like the Early Dene-Yeniseians(increasingly certain as a linguistic and genealogical classification) sometime around 0CE or even possibly later. This'd change up everything with population dynamics in Northwestern America, even by butterflies alone.
I guess that's something of a question of incentives, though. Para-Turks and Para-Mongols ITTL will adopt horse culture from the Indo-Europeans early on as they did IOTL, so what would push them that far north? That seems a long way out of the way of nomadic horse herders.
Other large domesticates in Asia I can suggest are the Tibetan or Saiga Antelope, semi-domestication of the Markhor or Argali. Also with your current plans for Korea there's also the potential to keep the Sino-Korean domestication of the aurochs(probably the fourth and latest such event) separate that now only has pure descendants in Yakutian cattle and a few near-extinct landraces, resulting in a fourth distinct character and selection of cattle breeds adapted to North Asia.
The aurochs idea I like, but how would we justify the domestication of any of the other ungulates when we already have sheep, cattle, and yaks? I actually don't know when yaks were domesticated, or even when sheep made their way onto the Tibetan Plateau, so there could be something to this.
Among fowl, blood pheasants for small meat use like guinea pigs(or literally any generalised pheasants could be domesticated with enough time as you'd like, especially in Burma or Papua).
Or for their feathers. A number of pheasants actually have impressively colored plumage, and if feathered headdresses/cloaks remain in fashion long enough then I could definitely see a domestication or semi-domestication, or a few. It does seem odd to me that not so much as a domestic pheasant came out of Papua, since there is such thing as agriculture there, albeit very marginal.
I have thought about ostriches being domesticated in Mesopotamia by the Late Bronze Age, probably initially surrounding its importance as a sacrificial animal in local cults. It seems kind of odd that they were not kept more regularly as a domesticate, particularly in areas where other animals like cattle and sheep have trouble, like in Arabia and the Sahara. They're mature in 2-4 years, and they can be used for meat, feathers, and skin for leather. If they can be bred to lay eggs the way chickens do, they seem like the perfect domesticated bird, simply cuz they're enormous. I'm not sure they will displace chickens, though. Perhaps in North Africa?
Corvids could serve as interesting and alternative falconry birds, particularly in an antbird-style symbiotic role- they also have the advantage of being potential American companions and domesticates..
I know next to nothing about peccaries besides what they look like, they're distribution, and how they act in the zoo. Do tell me more? I'm not against far-reaching butterflies at all. I found a thread on here awhile back about Polynesians making it to the Galápagos Islands and a semi-domestication or rather managed "herding" of marine iguanas that sounded VERY interesting. It would unfortunately likely come at the cost of much of the islands' unique indigenous fauna, however.
But why? Dogs are so suitable, why start the process over? Furthermore, to my knowledge, caracals hunt small mammals and birds, but because of their size their average prey animal is a size or two up from what domestic cats hunt, so I don't see them filling a role similar to cats. You might see them used as a novelty domesticate for coursing perhaps, but beyond that I don't see them having much economic utility.
A most unusual domesticate would be okapi, though their presence in Persian inscriptions from Ethiopian envoys show them being kept alive across vast distances in the ancient world, and local pygmy populations have long revered, cared for and even sometimes kept in captivity the typically skittish forest animals, and even if domestication is only partial it may have interesting results in forest clearance and local culture.
That would be most unusual, I agree. They have a very limited range in Africa though, and so they would pretty much have to have been domesticated by the pygmies, right?
As for how you could add butterflies to the New World, I'd recommend you do, particularly if you cut the net and literally create butterfly storms according to need or want. Weather events alone can substantially influence individual human lives and eventually complete historical trends, especially with a PoD as early as yours.
In the New World, pursuing Amazonian or Caribbean civilisations in general I think would be interesting. As would using Inga as another staple crop with the potential for deliberate forest agriculture, or adjusting events such as Toltecan or South Atabaskan migrations southwards.
Contact could be established from whatever direction you like with such an early PoD, though a culture such as the Polynesians or Ainu establishing capable maritime trade to coastal Native Anericans could result in all sorts of combinations of admixture not seen in OTL.
(Again, sorry for any text dump. I'm on mobile, so I dunno how shit the formatting is.)
Any way to bring West Africa into the Mediterranean world earlier/to a greater extent than OTL? A maritime state in Western or Southern Iberia may look to make sustained commercial contact with the region, especially if the Eastern Mediterranean or North Africa were closed off. More significant maritime contact could spread technological advancements back and forth and may lead to the accidental discovery of Brazil by wayward African/Mediterranean traders.
Earlier in the thread I believe I discussed the possibility of a colonization happening by way of the Canaries. I need to get a more functional civilization on the Canaries though, which I don't think should be too much to ask. Remember that Iberia will be a source of silk ITTL, and they will guard their secret as jealously as the Chinese did. I can imagine a North African, quite probably Berber-speaking kingdom in Morocco trying to establish some sort of maritime trade with West Africa, having heard of the gold coming out of the region that could give them a market advantage in trading with other countries on the Atlantic using the Canaries as a potential trading outpost before getting blown off course and never making it into Africa at all, but rather discovering Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Maya or the Olmec, depending on when it happens. They might then trade slaves for gold, but the source of their gold would remain as much a secret as the production of silk, at least for awhile.
There's not much research into the subject as far as I know, but there's either a substrate or significant ancestral influence in Paleo-Eskimo of an intermediary Dene-Yeniseian group.
I guess that's something of a question of incentives, though. Para-Turks and Para-Mongols ITTL will adopt horse culture from the Indo-Europeans early on as they did IOTL, so what would push them that far north? That seems a long way out of the way of nomadic horse herders.
Well it worked for the Yakut and several other Siberian groups, probably thanks to climatic shifts enabling summer pastoralism further north in the Eurasian Steppe, though it'd probably need some unusual coastal migration patterns or isolated lifestyle shifts from there. At the same time, it'd be easier to linguistically develop in such a situation than a truly isolate Siberian group forming a migratory founder population in the New World.
The aurochs idea I like, but how would we justify the domestication of any of the other ungulates when we already have sheep, cattle, and yaks? I actually don't know when yaks were domesticated, or even when sheep made their way onto the Tibetan Plateau, so there could be something to this.
The fact that ungulate domestication events have happened significantly after or before each other in similar or the same regions suggests the presence of different livestock is more limited by ecological competition than human convenience. The Tibetan Plateau, Southeast Asia and Eurasian Steppe have many ungulates that have been historically herded and coexisted with preexisting pastoral populations. Even in the case of more skittish megafauna, Saiga congregations were huge and their situation rather similar to reindeer. Though I'd need to look into it more, there may be some interesting unique behaviorial traits of certain groups able to be exploited by any domesticating cultures.
I have thought about ostriches being domesticated in Mesopotamia by the Late Bronze Age, probably initially surrounding its importance as a sacrificial animal in local cults. It seems kind of odd that they were not kept more regularly as a domesticate, particularly in areas where other animals like cattle and sheep have trouble, like in Arabia and the Sahara. They're mature in 2-4 years, and they can be used for meat, feathers, and skin for leather. If they can be bred to lay eggs the way chickens do, they seem like the perfect domesticated bird, simply cuz they're enormous. I'm not sure they will displace chickens, though. Perhaps in North Africa?
Ostriches are one such unique case you can take advantage of.
Basically, studies show ostriches that've imprinted upon humans in farm or captive situations actually view humans as more attractive than other ostriches(replete with gender preferences), engaging in courtship displays and affection towards humans as readily as other ostriches. What does this mean practically for your domestication? It means that if somebody captures, accidentally adopts or even just has an ostrich induvidual imprint and survive long enough, said bird will probably stick around(especially in nomadic groups or ones that already herd ostriches). Over time this lends an accidental preference in a 'follower population' to docility, captivity and emotional attachment to humans. If given enough time, captive ostrich populations could domesticate themselves. If you have them widely disperse enough or multiple domestication events, it would also lend in a diversity of breeds similar to mammalian livestock.
By the way, I wasn't meaning to imply any such fowl would replace chickens, merely they'd be additional bird domesticates in Eurasia.
Or for their feathers. A number of pheasants actually have impressively colored plumage, and if feathered headdresses/cloaks remain in fashion long enough then I could definitely see a domestication or semi-domestication, or a few. It does seem odd to me that not so much as a domestic pheasant came out of Papua, since there is such thing as agriculture there, albeit very marginal.
Feather collection would be more valuable than farming(particularly as captive birds have worse quality feathers than wild), but it'd still serve as an important usage and feather usage in a culture reliant on pheasants would be interesting. Mostly pheasants and fowl in general are reliable, fast-breeding and easy to catch and contain meat. It's mostly down to luck and details how much they're domesticated. The mountainous terrain of Southeast Asia and the Himalayas not only encourages a great diversity of pheasant species(plus hybrids) but also creates stable isolated communties reliant on said local species and able to domesticate them.
Hey, at least Papua gave us sugar cane, albeit originally as pig feed.
At least in the New World, that alone could massively change communication and animal husbandry dynamics. With all the corvid species, their generalized intelligence and close proximity to humans has immense potential.
I know next to nothing about peccaries besides what they look like, they're distribution, and how they act in the zoo. Do tell me more? I'm not against far-reaching butterflies at all. I found a thread on here awhile back about Polynesians making it to the Galápagos Islands and a semi-domestication or rather managed "herding" of marine iguanas that sounded VERY interesting. It would unfortunately likely come at the cost of much of the islands' unique indigenous fauna, however.
It's long and excessive, but here's some work I posted a long time ago on the potential of peccaries, deer and their ecological side as New World domesticates. The iguanas sound cool, though marine iguanas are very, very specific. Green iguanas would arguably be more likely domesticated as pets, meat or pest control.
As interesting as large animal domestication might be, I believe that bison would be by far too large, aggressive and simply of a scale unavailable to most cultures in contact with them. Although the Wood Bison of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska might be ideal for tame migratory herding(possibly combined with slash-and-burn prairie creation in taiga forests), in some equivalent role to reindeer in the Eurasian steppe, Plains Bison are en masse incredibly dangerous in the same manner as rhinoceros or moose can be. Their speed, non-organized herding strategies and low intelligence make actual isolation and containment- especially later selective breeding or animal husbandry- simply beyond the divided and transitional Great Plains populations. Their incredibly low population density and established hunting practices make a captured calf or even a restrained herd much more viable as a temporary food source than a shepherding tradition. North America's low population size and disparate trading networks means that it's unlikely for large domesticated livestock like bison or even elk to be taken far unless tied to specific cultures. A similar occurrence would be Banteng, which is endangered now and often only tame(not truly domesticated).
The wider formation of exceptionally innovative and unique forms of civilization or inter-cultural exchange makes South America exceptionally promising. Peccaries bear similar ecological and morphological traits to pigs, but are even more social and perhaps display primate levels of social cohesion. Recent field observations have shown a group of Collared Peccaries in Arizona repeatedly visiting a recently dead group member, defending the carcass, simply standing around it and attempting lift the deceased peccary up again. This included social calls and sleeping next to the body(something not easily explained by curiosity or territorial instincts). These indications of "mourning", at least understanding and responding to loss, have certain parallels not to pigs(that commonly eat dead mates and siblings)- but instead to canids. This is why it is probably a more apt comparison of naturally curious, commonly urban and socially bonded peccaries to wolves, and by extension dogs. They already are kept as both pets and food sources across their natural range, and have definitely encountered prehistoric human activities(not only have peccaries been found burnt and eaten in middens, their tooth marks are especially common in ancient and modern waste). They would be primary opportunities for a social-bonding, loyal pack animal. Like dogs, hunting support is not impossible. They have in large groups attacked and even killed llamas, cattle or humans when provoked. Unlike dogs, however, they are omnivorous and primarily herbivorous, so they're much more likely to support high populations in more rural or forested areas. Of the three known species, the Collared Peccary is the most adaptable and widespread(possibly more intelligent too), the White-Lipped species is mainly frugivorous and of much lower natural population density, and the much more primitive Chacoan Peccary is only found in the relatively small Gran Chaco and numbers 3000 individuals in total. Interestingly enough, the partially confirmed existence of a fourth, Giant Peccary from the Amazon has been filmed multiple times and definitely exists within the Amazon. It has yet to have a preserved specimen studied. It appears to live in only pairs and is around 1.2m long. These could serve as a pig equivalent if domesticated, perhaps by the ancestors to the Marajoara Culture.
Although pack animals are hard to come by beyond the relatively weak and specialized llama, selective breeding could obtain sizable results much as what has happened with the horse. Originally prehistoric horses were even smaller and weaker then the Przewalski's Horse(genetic studies recently supporting that it in fact is a separate Kazakh Steppe domestication of horses for meat,,, convergent with all other horses, only then gone feral in the recent past). A potential candidate for a donkey-like pack animal, albeit more fragile and skittish, is the Red Brocket. Though appearing small, they exhibit growth patterns similar to convergent White-Tailed Deer and smaller deer species worldwide. They are the same size or slightly larger than Florida Keys White-Tailed Deer, and can be as docile occasionally too. However unlike the White-Tailed Deer, they have a much wider diet and occur greatly in the same regions as Mesoamerican or South American civilizations, barring the Southern Andes. Other deer species with wider climatic range follow Bergmann's Law, in which most mammals are larger the further you get from the Equator. The Red Brocket is the largest Brocket Deer species, with subspecies from the Yucatan as far as Paraguay. Recent genetics suggests that Brocket Deer are multiple unrelated lineages, and Red Brockets may in fact be the same genus (Odocoileus) as many much larger North American deer. Unlike White-Tailed Deer or larger relatives, however, they are not very dangerous or even particularly skittish. If they are of genus Odocoileus, then their growth patterns would range dramatically with conditions. White-Tailed Deer can go from 50cm to 120cm at the shoulder. Wild Red Brockets are 60-80cm at the shoulder in solely tropical and arid climates. When selectively bred for either meat or labor, body size could increase immensely. If larger varieties were to be traded or simply went feral and spread into North America, they could be re-domesticated or naturally breed to even larger sizes, still with a mainly docile temperament. If we accept their potential range as similar to that of related species of equal large size, they could naturally reach as far as the Great Lakes within several generations. Much like the Mustang or captive Przewalski's Horse, their already bred docility could allow large domesticated Brockets to spread across the temperate and tropical New World. Once present within sedentary or mobile cultures, this could pave the way for more difficult and niche tamed animals, if not fully domesticated ones.
Beyond wholly domesticated creatures, semi-domesticated creatures could be possible in a similar manner to the regularly annoying, if unusual, Fuegian Dog. This requires come more fanciful speculation and application. Monkeys can be trained to pick fruit(not considering basic hygiene) and were used so frequently in certain civilizations. It is possible for tamandua to be used this way also, although possibly to simply locate edible insects or get rid of crop pests would be highly useful, and they are certainly intelligent enough to do so. Various smaller paca, agouti or opossum species could be farmed very easily for food or pets like guinea pigs. Even armadillos might be kept at least partially tame, even simply for ritual or cultural use. Sloths are just way too impractical for much, and South American cats are far more dangerous than cooperative. Coatis could be pets, but are elusive enough to catch or breed that they are unlikely to be widely tame. At a real stretch, tapirs, giant anteaters, moose or bears could be kept as semi-tame novelties as a status symbol, but are absolutely impractical for general captivity, let alone husbandry. Giant anteaters and their relative indifference to humans might be tolerated around settlements as pest control or in mutual respect, but in no way would be tame.
In summary, the most practical endemic New World species for full domestication and cosmopolitan distribution by Native American efforts would be peccaries, the Red Brocket and a range of smaller insectivore species for general use. All of these have the ability to revolutionize at lest one major center of civilization in the Americas, and have a high chance of spreading across a huge variety of conditions. Although the impact and factors would change depending on the scenario, undoubtedly these domestications alone would impact social, economic, demographic and even environmental situations for the Native Americans prior to external Eurasian contact.
But why? Dogs are so suitable, why start the process over? Furthermore, to my knowledge, caracals hunt small mammals and birds, but because of their size their average prey animal is a size or two up from what domestic cats hunt, so I don't see them filling a role similar to cats. You might see them used as a novelty domesticate for coursing perhaps, but beyond that I don't see them having much economic utility.
My advice is never to think of domestication as a purely functional process or means to an end. A huge number of domestic or semi-domestic animals have resulted just because. It might be the tribe pitying a wolf pup or the Egyptian girl adopting a kitten, but on the individual level domesticate and captivity events happen all the time, even today.
From a functional standpoint beyond simply fate or chance of history, caracals serve a role as medium pest control, trackers/retrievers, warning systems or simply cultural animals. All roles somewhat similar to dogs, but long before many dog breeds were suited to desert environments where- as far as I understand it- ITTL Trans-Saharan and desert caravan trade in general is more active and established earlier. They may be limited to these regions and cultures associated with it, but it's just another random idea with OTL precendent.
That would be most unusual, I agree. They have a very limited range in Africa though, and so they would pretty much have to have been domesticated by the pygmies, right?
They may have once had a larger range, but pygmy populations would almost certainly have to be the origin culture, although there's potential for them to be spread to Bantu populations and cultures shared with the pygmies as they migrate into the Congo.
The link's been shared above, but with stronger Native American trade routes and Amazonian civilizations, it's a very versatile and sustainable staple arboriculture crop, with the added benefit of being able to effectively supplant slash-and-burn models. It's wide range of environments gives good horticultural potential for beyond tropical climates too.
Earlier in the thread I believe I discussed the possibility of a colonization happening by way of the Canaries. I need to get a more functional civilization on the Canaries though, which I don't think should be too much to ask. Remember that Iberia will be a source of silk ITTL, and they will guard their secret as jealously as the Chinese did. I can imagine a North African, quite probably Berber-speaking kingdom in Morocco trying to establish some sort of maritime trade with West Africa, having heard of the gold coming out of the region that could give them a market advantage in trading with other countries on the Atlantic using the Canaries as a potential trading outpost before getting blown off course and never making it into Africa at all, but rather discovering Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Maya or the Olmec, depending on when it happens. They might then trade slaves for gold, but the source of their gold would remain as much a secret as the production of silk, at least for awhile.
Ooh that'd be fascinating. Just creating stable Trans-Atlantic links is interesting enough, but Iberian silks has a lot of potential for migration events and political disunity by wealth too. West Africa is a whole other kettle of fish and cassava that has a lot to work with.