This is massive oversimplification of elites in general elites while like nearly all humans watched out for their own views not all elites are not thinking like Sakoku era Japan
Plausibility Check-Llamas introduced to Mesoamerica
- Thread starter twovultures
- Start date
Both the bronze age collapse and the fall of Rome collapsed the trade links, a migration can move animals or have a different culture as we saw how the philistines eat and had quite a lot of pig bones compared to the proto Jews who by this time had already evolved their dislike to them.
I mean if the natives from Ecuador were willing to go as far as Mexico for spondylus shells because the natives of Peru so desperately wanted them depending on the different tales tupac inca Yupanqui went west or north to a giant expedition just using the example of the Inca I don't see it imposible for another inca to send another grand expedition if in ATL spondylus becomes even more popular.
I did mention that maybe llama and alpaca textiles become the new fashion in Mexico hence the demand
Hence why the famous and very anti union ford created shorter work week unless you can show them or you know they figure it out or other changes occur having animals to help out in speed of a project or a new object to tax and collect tribute doesn't benefit them?
There is also the peacocks in south Africa it depends a lot on the animal, llamas are closer to pigs than to elephants in terms of reproduction also ichu grass also exist in Mexico adding the possiblity of feral population
I fully agree with this
But it proves that common animals were traded just as readily as rare animals and begs the question "why didn't it work" and the good explanation is cultural factors among the people who received them. That does not necessarily exist in Classic/Postclassic Mesoamerica. While I can't say how it would work, it isn't a stretch that after enough contact with gift llamas, an altepetl establishes a tributary village in their land and their role is provide live llamas to the rulers of the city. Probably it fails, or maybe it doesn't because the herders escape toward the mountains so their animals don't die.
That is true, but women and children would sometimes ride llamas. It's not hard to see some servant boy riding the llama and making all the elites laugh.
Why wouldn't they? It's no different than other seasonal delicacies.
Right, and that's why llamas are just another addition to the limited commerce between Mesoamerica and coastal South America.
We have plenty of example of plants spreading in a top down manner, so it’s not impossible for Meso-American prince to establish his own herd and then it spread to the rest of the population. Both chickens and turkeys seem to have spread in this manner, with the chicken for a long time being mainly a sport bird used for fighting and turkeys being used for unknown purposes, before both became meat animals.
The main problems is the need for a bigger breeding population for llamas, the great consumption of resources and how hard it is to transport them. But also to find a purpose important enough to waste the resource on the, a single minor nobleman who likes gambling can upkeep a population of fighting chickens by feeding them garbage from his household, a llama herd is much more expensive to uphold, even if you let them graze on land useless for growing maize, you still have to guard them from predatory’s both two and four legged and from running off.
Honestly I think a introduction of potato and guinea pigs would make more sense than llamas.
The main problems is the need for a bigger breeding population for llamas, the great consumption of resources and how hard it is to transport them. But also to find a purpose important enough to waste the resource on the, a single minor nobleman who likes gambling can upkeep a population of fighting chickens by feeding them garbage from his household, a llama herd is much more expensive to uphold, even if you let them graze on land useless for growing maize, you still have to guard them from predatory’s both two and four legged and from running off.
Honestly I think a introduction of potato and guinea pigs would make more sense than llamas.
Ford and his ilk were very much in the early 20th century mold of proto-keynesians and keynesians.
Do you see Jeff Bezos creating shorter work weeks or giving better hours? What about Elon Musk? Matt Zuckerberg? Bill Gates? All these guys are rapacious predators out to strip mine the economy and middle class. Look at Russia's performance under the oligarchs, where again, elite cadres literally strip mine everyone else into poverty.
The notion of the 'enlightened elite' is very much a false one. The class looks after itself, first, last, always and is historically rapacious. Say what you will about Global Capitalism on the historical stage, but it was literally one of the very very few ideologies or economic systems that had reinvestment of productivity as a feature.
You're suggesting that an early bronze age set of societies would have the sort of forward thinking 'reinvestment' oriented elites that innovate, as per the 19th or 20th centuries. I'd say nonsense.
If Llamas spread to Meso-America it's going to be a bottom up adoption, not a top down.
Again we are generalizing elites hence why I made my ford comparison which shows not all elites as like that and are so isolated and they have to be shown the value of things even so comparing ford and modern day neo liberal economy to the though process of Aztec elite because of elite is like comparing hansa league elites to what the papal elites though in 900.
Except I never said I said adoption of animals even in their economy can be a benefit if from it which you spoke of the bronze age one of the reasons why pig were not as used is because their helpful activity of eating garbage became seen as bad thing pigs also aren't as predictable with litter sizes and don't do well with pastoralism nor do they produce secondary economic benefits like wool, but the llamas do so if we want to compare to actual bronze age societies llamas are useful
Elites are like that. It's consistent behaviour. Individuals within elites are sometimes forward thinking. But elites are habitually reactionary and shortsighted.
Not all that much to elites.
So my point is that if you want Llamas adopted, you have to have it take place at grass roots level.
Let's go back to first principles. No one is going to build giant Llama catapults to fling them from the Andes to Meso-America. That would be entertaining, but not realistic. Before we get there, we need to do stuff.
What we have now is communication and contact between Meso-America and the Andes, proven for a fact. But it's limited and intermittent.
We have Llamas and Alpacas in the Andes, beasts of limited burden for carrying packs, not big enough for riding, not really suitable for fulling a plow, not really good for milk, good for meat, good for wool, don't handle environmental hardship. In terms of useful domesticates, with cattle and horses being a 10 and turkeys being a 1, I'd rate them as about a 5.5, maybe a 6.
Now, if the objective is to get a viable population of Llamas up into Meso-America in sufficient eventual numbers that they're doing useful things, there are some challenges, and some POD options.
How about a deep time POD where Llamas really diversify and become useful. Where the Andeans start breeding larger and robust, and particularly more environment tolerant breeds. This isn't deliberate artificial selection - most of the diversity of duck, dog, cat, cattle, horse, pig, chicken varieties aren't the result of careful breeding, but simply a lot of genetic diversity, and animals being moved or used in different environments. Shetland gets ponies, the Mongols get ponies, the Knights got big ass clydesdales, etc.
So maybe all we need is some small cultural social tweak which results in Llamas proliferating much more widely.
What does this matter? Well, it'll change Andean societies, and that may have knock ons all over, including contact with Meso-America. And you might get more robust or specific-environment tolerant Llamas that will transfer to Meso America.
Or how about a median-POD. Forget the Llamas. We need at least one robust seafaring culture to emerge and develop really good boats and navigation for distance. This is not out of the question. We have hard core coastal/sea cultures from the Salish in British Colombia and the Pacific Northwest all the way down to the Andean coasts. The earliest Andean cultures were highly dependent on sea protein and the fishery.
Better boats, better navigation, allows for more and better trade opportunities. And this allows for more trade volume.
The big question is what goods get traded, what the priorities are, etc.
What we have now is communication and contact between Meso-America and the Andes, proven for a fact. But it's limited and intermittent.
We have Llamas and Alpacas in the Andes, beasts of limited burden for carrying packs, not big enough for riding, not really suitable for fulling a plow, not really good for milk, good for meat, good for wool, don't handle environmental hardship. In terms of useful domesticates, with cattle and horses being a 10 and turkeys being a 1, I'd rate them as about a 5.5, maybe a 6.
Now, if the objective is to get a viable population of Llamas up into Meso-America in sufficient eventual numbers that they're doing useful things, there are some challenges, and some POD options.
How about a deep time POD where Llamas really diversify and become useful. Where the Andeans start breeding larger and robust, and particularly more environment tolerant breeds. This isn't deliberate artificial selection - most of the diversity of duck, dog, cat, cattle, horse, pig, chicken varieties aren't the result of careful breeding, but simply a lot of genetic diversity, and animals being moved or used in different environments. Shetland gets ponies, the Mongols get ponies, the Knights got big ass clydesdales, etc.
So maybe all we need is some small cultural social tweak which results in Llamas proliferating much more widely.
What does this matter? Well, it'll change Andean societies, and that may have knock ons all over, including contact with Meso-America. And you might get more robust or specific-environment tolerant Llamas that will transfer to Meso America.
Or how about a median-POD. Forget the Llamas. We need at least one robust seafaring culture to emerge and develop really good boats and navigation for distance. This is not out of the question. We have hard core coastal/sea cultures from the Salish in British Colombia and the Pacific Northwest all the way down to the Andean coasts. The earliest Andean cultures were highly dependent on sea protein and the fishery.
Better boats, better navigation, allows for more and better trade opportunities. And this allows for more trade volume.
The big question is what goods get traded, what the priorities are, etc.
I think this is plausible, and one thing that could happen is a mutation that would stiffen their backs like how a similar mutation in horses allowed them to be ridden by people; they'll also be better at holding packages and would spread around more.
One thing that I could see make this happen is more genetic mixing, maybe a group of people in the Andes mixes their alpaca and llama herds together and breeds a much bigger animal that could take more packages and be ridden, and as a result become pastoralist due to having more meat, milk and blood to work with? I think that would enable more competition between different andean tribes and force more of the andeans to leave for the lowlands (and this is when a more heat tolerant breed starts to develop as people get lucky and win the genetic jackpot once again after a few thousand years of trying). If they also develop the sail around the point where they have bigger and more heat-tolerant llamas I could see them conquering Mexico by having animals that they could ride in general, making them the new elite in the region and keeping their links in the Andes intact bc of their sea-faring experience?
Hell I could see the sail be developed in the Caribbeans and spread throughout Mesoamerica, leading to people sailing down the pacific coast to the Andes and spreading the sail there. It just depends on how the timeline develops.
What about a POD delaying the European contact by one or two hundred years? By then both Tawantinsuyu and Tenochtitlan could have expanded their control and furthered trade routs around Central America to have lhamas introduced to Mexico. Then this trend continues in an alt-Colonial context or one with surviving native states.
twovultures
Donor
Tin IMO is a big one. This will create trade routes that draw traders right into some of the most llama friendly land in Mesoamerica. A situation where bronze working is more common in the Andes, and the equivalent of OTL's *Tiwanaku polity controls the best tin mining areas of the Andes will drive other groups to look for tin elsewhere. Mexico doesn't have insanely plentiful tin deposits like Bolivia, but it has enough to interest a premodern Ecuadorian/Peruvian/Colombian polity. However, other goods like jade and vanilla can interest traders and draw them inland.
Last edited:
twovultures
Donor
I do think this sets the llama in this scenario apart from the failed European attempts to import them IOTL, and overcomes the objection of "the Chinese emperors didn't breed giraffes". There is a niche that it fills. We saw this in Native American cultures IOTL with sheep, that were adopted within decades of Spanish contact with the American southwest by Hopi and Navajo peoples because they filled a useful niche despite being a pain the butt to raise (more so than llamas, if the llama breeder's associations are to be believed). What gives me pause is that useful livestock don't necessarily spread into open niches for them easily-it took millenia, for example, for water buffaloes to be established in the Mediterranean after they were domesticated in India, and the Yak never made it to the Alps. Which is why I am definitely grateful for everybody's feedback and ideas!
Last edited:
What do you mean by this ? Just to clear something up if you mean they don't adapt well to other environments we have lots of evidence of llamas living in the Peruvian coast from huaca de la Merced or the 200 sacrificed ones in near the beach of Huanchaco by the chimu llamas are also found in Machu Picchu were the jungle stars not saying llamas would survive the Amazon or Yucatan jungles but they can survive in more than just the higher ie 3000 m areas of Peru
I think the llamas having more genetic interchange with alpacas and gaining genes that would get them bigger (partially due to hybrid vigour), and evolving to become better at dealing with forest environments would prob go a long way, even if they are traded from sea. A transplanted Andean community in Mesoamerica wanting llamas would probably make the incentive to get the animals too, since they know of their usefulness.
Ofc this is predicated along the fact that you'd need the sail so that boats big enough to have young llamas on board could exist.
I don't know that Tin would be an initial commodity. But once steady trade happens, yes.
Then you'd see significant quantities of Tin moving into Meso-America, and likely a Bronze Age starting up, with all the elements of Bronze Age technology and advantages. I'm assuming that tin and bronze would be unequally distributed, and the societies most engaged in Trade would be politically and militarily advantaged over others. That would probably change the balances of politics and wars.
With significant volumes of tin moving inland, you also have deployment of Llamas as carriers, and more chances of them being caught up in trade, at least to some degree.
tin could be the initial commodity that pushes the integration of markets, as I don't think mesoamerica had a lot of tin. I remember copper artefacts being made by the mesoamericans and not bronze artefacts.
Both the Aztecs and the Inca were centers located far from the sea most interested in extracting tribute from the coastal cities they ruled. Particularly the Aztecs, where one major motive of them conquering the Pacific Coast was solely geostrategic (confining their Purepecha rivals, who I should note also aren't likely to be very interested in economic policies that would boost maritime trade). That's not to say their rule was some sort of disaster for coastal merchants, but it wasn't a situation likely to result in vast expansion of coastal trade.
Mexico is rich in tin and it isn't too far from the main silver sources. Although it is slightly beyond the frontier of "Mesoamerica", there were ample trade links so Mexicans ccould just need to acquire it from those people who traded with the Chichimecs in the north.