twovultures
Donor
We've had threads like this in the past, but I thought it would be worth opening a new one.
So, here are some discussion questions and my thoughts on them:
1. What is the plausibility?
From what I’ve seen on the website, it’s generally accepted that Polynesians landed in South America IOTL before Columbus, and through contact with the Native Americans (or just sneaking into someone’s garden at night) gained sweet potatoes. Matisoo et al. present some pretty compelling evidence in their book “Polynesians in the Americas” that this contact occurred, and may have occurred multiple times. If so, colonization of the Galapagos is entirely possible-it’s not further out of the Polynesian’s way than South America, just harder to hit than the vast Pacific coast.
“Polynesians in the Americas” argues that the specific point of contact where sweet potatoes were brought to Polynesia had to have been the Gulf of Guyaquil in what’s now Ecuador. The basis of this evidence is because most Polynesian languages refer to sweet potatoes as some variant of “kumara”. This is similar to some Native American languages, and has been presented as evidence for the pre-Columbian contact. However, the Native Americans who refer to sweet potatoes as something like ‘kumara’ lived upslope in the Andes-the Quechua and related peoples. They spoke different languages from the coastal peoples of what’s now Peru, Ecuador and Chile. The only exception was in the Gulf of Guyaquil, where people related to the Canari and Quechua had access to the sea. The Gulf of Guyaquil location puts the Polynesians within 600 miles of the Galapagos-a hop, skip and a jump to them during the age of voyaging.
I do have some skepticism of the Guyaquil contact theory for a few reasons. Firstly, it assumes that the distribution of languages on the coast and in the Andes was the same during the time of the Conquistadors (from where the information on some of the now-extinct coastal languages come from) as it was during the time of the Polynesian contact. There is also the fact that the people of the Gulf of Guyaquil were noted for building large, balsa wood rafts. It is entirely possible that ‘kumara’ were delivered into Polynesia on a raft swept out to sea on a storm. Finally, the absolute longest Polynesian voyage we have hard, concrete evidence for is a 4000 KM trip from Hawaii to the Tuomotu Group of atolls, where the sailors brought Hawaiitite either directly or through a trade network. The Gulf of Guyaquil is further away than that from ANY Polynesian island, including just barely from Easter Island (which was likely settled after Polynesians got sweet potatoes anyway).
But here we deal with plausibility, and Polynesian contact with the Americas-and therefore the Galapagos-is plausible.
2. From where/when do the Polynesians land?
Wilmshurst et al., after a vigorous review of carbon datings and archaeological evidence, have pushed the colonization of the Polynesian ‘fringe’ like Hawaii and Easter Island to well into the 13th century. They may have been too conservative, but the fact remains that the final stage of the Polynesian expansion was relatively late, ending in the 1200’s and giving way to a time of trade over exploration which lasted until roughly the 1450’s.
The only Polynesian island less than that distance to the Galapagos is Easter Island. There is some (though controversial) evidence that the Easter Islanders visited the Americas pre-contact, but this evidence is located far from the Galapagos on the coast of what's now Chile. Still, Easter Islanders exploring northward could have stumbled upon the Galapagos and settled there, particularly as conflict and environmental degradation made their homeland less desirable.
Matisoo et al. say that the sweet potato may have been brought to Polynesia-possibly even Central Polynesia-before the settlement of Hawaii and Easter Island, so it is entirely possible that the voyagers who discovered the sweet potato-and in a potential ATL, stumbled upon the Galapagos-came from central/eastern Polynesian archipelagos, such as the Society Islands or the Marquesas. Perhaps in an ATL, a freak storm or navigational error would drive the explorers fated to find the sweet potato away from the safe harbor of Guyaquil and onto the shores of the Galapagos sometime in the 10th to 12th centuries, when the sweet potato was brought to Polynesia IOTL. By sailing southwest of the islands and turning into wintertime tradewinds which had turned eastward these explorers could easily get home with tales of a new uninhabited land. Even if the island faded into legend, knowledge that they were there could drive explorers who were brave, foolish, or had a falling out with their fellows to try their luck sailing the perilous distance.
The extremely long distance involved in travelling from any Polynesian island to the Galapagos probably means that the Polynesian settlers would not bring a lot of livestock. It would be more efficient for them keep space for food supplies for themselves, instead of feed for pigs, dogs and chickens. Polynesian rats would still hitch a ride on the large voyaging ships, but with the abundance of game animals that any scouts to the Galapagos would report I think it’s reasonable to assume that the settlers would not bother to bring at least one and possibly all 3 of the Polynesian livestock.
3. What do they do on the islands?
Going through their hierarchy of needs, the first thing Polynesians will do is settle and build shelter on the larger islands like La Isabella where there is plenty of water.
Then, they will hunt. The Galapagos are full of naïve, tasty animals that will quickly end up in Polynesian pots. The islands will be fully plundered by humans, and quite likely by rats as well. If pigs or dogs are brought, they will devastate the ecosystem by eating anything in their path, and even chickens may dig up and peck open the eggs of tortoises and iguanas. On the large islands, a lot of the iconic animals will end up extinct.
Penguins, sea lions and marine iguanas will survive, but mostly on colonies on the smaller, drier islands and those that survive will be smaller and more fearful than the animals tourists are used to IOTL.
The Polynesians will also farm. Travel articles I’ve read about the Galapagos mention a wide variety of plants being grown-sugarcane and bananas, which the Polynesians will have, but also cooler-weather plants such as coffee and regular potatoes (which the Polynesians can get access too).
How Polynesian culture develops on these islands is up in the air, but looking at other island societies we can infer that it will be hierarchical, with an aristocratic class of chiefs and priests ruling over commoners. The Galapagos has dense forests (or will initially) and stones, perfect for building monuments and statues. Perhaps they will deify the volcanic peaks of their homelands like the Hawaiians, or dedicate statues to ancestor worship like the Easter Islanders. They may make great voyages back to their homeland to tap into the Polynesian trade network, but the great distance (and perhaps negative events precipitating the original settlers travelling that distance) will hinder such voyages of return.
But unlike the societies embedded in the Polynesian trade network, the Galapagans will have access to cultures that are completely alien to the Lapita-descended peoples to look for inspiration.
3. What are their relations with the Native Americans?
If they follow tradition of sailing against the wind when leaving their homeland, Galapagans will probably sail southeast and land on the coast of what IOTL is called Peru. There, they will meet cultures such as the Chimor and the Sican.
The Galapagans could easily become like Vikings, using their superior navigational skills and open-water catamarans to launch hit and run raids against the coastal peoples. They could interact relatively peacefully, trading their goods, bringing seal furs and sailcloth to the coastal peoples in exchange for metal jewelry and cotton cloth (I put this in market terms, but it could take other forms, such as mutual gift-giving between mainland and Galapagan elites, or goods brought as part of offerings for religious pilgrimages in a shared religion). Perhaps they could even integrate into coastal societies, becoming a middleman minority that runs goods such as warm-water shells used for dyes found near Ecuador down to the Peruvian cities, maintaining their tradition of navigation and boatbuilding but otherwise following the culture of the coastal societies.
How far could they go, sailing up and down the coasts? With the relative ease of land and water always within easy reach to the east, Polynesian navigators could explore hundreds or even thousands of miles of coastline *IF* they were so inclined. I could see them traveling as far as the Gulf of California in pursuit of whales and seal fur, and trading with Mesoamericans for goods such as jade and cacao beans.
4. What are the effects on the Natives?
The calories and ease of growing bananas I think makes this plant easily and enthusiastically adopted by Native Americans in Ecuador and Mesoamerica. Sugarcane is more difficult to grow, but the sheer addictiveness of sugar makes it also enthusiastically adopted.
Other plants like breadfruit and taro could easily make their way into Native American gardens. And in the unlikely event that the Galapagans bring their livestock, pigs and chickens would be novelties that could be quite enthusiastically adopted by farmers, particularly in South America where large mammal husbandry is already established.
Other traditions could be adopted by the Native Americans during cultural contact. Tattoos in the Polynesian style, catamarans instead of rafts and canoes, there’s a lot of culture for the Native Americans to draw on. And violent contact or not, it is a culture they can draw on in a much more even ground-in fact, a ground where the Natives will in many cases have military and numerical dominance over the Polynesian visitors.
5. What happens post-conquista?
At the end of the day, the Galapagos are too close to South America to escape the notice of Europeans, who IOTL stumbled on the islands in the 1530’s.
There’s multiple scenarios that could happen though, with vastly different long-term results. The Galapagos could be conquered and subjugated quickly, its people forced to work in sugarcane plantations and later exported to work in guano mines. Slavery and disease would cause their numbers to plummet, and the Galapagans would become a minority in their own land, flooded by immigrants from the Americas and possibly Asia. It is these colonists, not the Natives who will probably be largely politically shut out of power, who will build the Galapagan nation in modern times.
But as close as the islands are to South America in absolute terms, they are 600 miles out to sea. A strong and violent confrontation at initial contact and the sight of the rocky, barren coastlines of the Galapagos (the farms and wealth would be more inland) could drive away Spanish attention, with the more immediate rewards of conquest on the mainland distracting them from conquest for quite a while (the rewards may not be as easy to get as OTL, depending on the butterflies the Galapagans cause on Native military and political organization).
Perhaps the Galapagos would end up with very light colonial presence-a mission to preach and soldiers to protect the preachers. IOTL evangelism has taken strong root in multiple places in Polynesia even without forced conversions. Tonga, for example, has enthusiastically adopted Christianity despite having largely dodged colonialism. Galapagans who go to church and chiefs who are willing to pledge loyalty to the Spanish (or another European) crown could see the islands go into benign neglect as white authorities determine them to be tamed and not worth further bothering. Disease would hurt their numbers, but without enslavement the diseases will not cause as much damage, and the population will recover. The islands could enter the modern world with a high Native population-even a majority one-and a strong sense of traditional (albeit Christianized) culture.
So, here are some discussion questions and my thoughts on them:
1. What is the plausibility?
From what I’ve seen on the website, it’s generally accepted that Polynesians landed in South America IOTL before Columbus, and through contact with the Native Americans (or just sneaking into someone’s garden at night) gained sweet potatoes. Matisoo et al. present some pretty compelling evidence in their book “Polynesians in the Americas” that this contact occurred, and may have occurred multiple times. If so, colonization of the Galapagos is entirely possible-it’s not further out of the Polynesian’s way than South America, just harder to hit than the vast Pacific coast.
“Polynesians in the Americas” argues that the specific point of contact where sweet potatoes were brought to Polynesia had to have been the Gulf of Guyaquil in what’s now Ecuador. The basis of this evidence is because most Polynesian languages refer to sweet potatoes as some variant of “kumara”. This is similar to some Native American languages, and has been presented as evidence for the pre-Columbian contact. However, the Native Americans who refer to sweet potatoes as something like ‘kumara’ lived upslope in the Andes-the Quechua and related peoples. They spoke different languages from the coastal peoples of what’s now Peru, Ecuador and Chile. The only exception was in the Gulf of Guyaquil, where people related to the Canari and Quechua had access to the sea. The Gulf of Guyaquil location puts the Polynesians within 600 miles of the Galapagos-a hop, skip and a jump to them during the age of voyaging.
I do have some skepticism of the Guyaquil contact theory for a few reasons. Firstly, it assumes that the distribution of languages on the coast and in the Andes was the same during the time of the Conquistadors (from where the information on some of the now-extinct coastal languages come from) as it was during the time of the Polynesian contact. There is also the fact that the people of the Gulf of Guyaquil were noted for building large, balsa wood rafts. It is entirely possible that ‘kumara’ were delivered into Polynesia on a raft swept out to sea on a storm. Finally, the absolute longest Polynesian voyage we have hard, concrete evidence for is a 4000 KM trip from Hawaii to the Tuomotu Group of atolls, where the sailors brought Hawaiitite either directly or through a trade network. The Gulf of Guyaquil is further away than that from ANY Polynesian island, including just barely from Easter Island (which was likely settled after Polynesians got sweet potatoes anyway).
But here we deal with plausibility, and Polynesian contact with the Americas-and therefore the Galapagos-is plausible.
2. From where/when do the Polynesians land?
Wilmshurst et al., after a vigorous review of carbon datings and archaeological evidence, have pushed the colonization of the Polynesian ‘fringe’ like Hawaii and Easter Island to well into the 13th century. They may have been too conservative, but the fact remains that the final stage of the Polynesian expansion was relatively late, ending in the 1200’s and giving way to a time of trade over exploration which lasted until roughly the 1450’s.
The only Polynesian island less than that distance to the Galapagos is Easter Island. There is some (though controversial) evidence that the Easter Islanders visited the Americas pre-contact, but this evidence is located far from the Galapagos on the coast of what's now Chile. Still, Easter Islanders exploring northward could have stumbled upon the Galapagos and settled there, particularly as conflict and environmental degradation made their homeland less desirable.
Matisoo et al. say that the sweet potato may have been brought to Polynesia-possibly even Central Polynesia-before the settlement of Hawaii and Easter Island, so it is entirely possible that the voyagers who discovered the sweet potato-and in a potential ATL, stumbled upon the Galapagos-came from central/eastern Polynesian archipelagos, such as the Society Islands or the Marquesas. Perhaps in an ATL, a freak storm or navigational error would drive the explorers fated to find the sweet potato away from the safe harbor of Guyaquil and onto the shores of the Galapagos sometime in the 10th to 12th centuries, when the sweet potato was brought to Polynesia IOTL. By sailing southwest of the islands and turning into wintertime tradewinds which had turned eastward these explorers could easily get home with tales of a new uninhabited land. Even if the island faded into legend, knowledge that they were there could drive explorers who were brave, foolish, or had a falling out with their fellows to try their luck sailing the perilous distance.
The extremely long distance involved in travelling from any Polynesian island to the Galapagos probably means that the Polynesian settlers would not bring a lot of livestock. It would be more efficient for them keep space for food supplies for themselves, instead of feed for pigs, dogs and chickens. Polynesian rats would still hitch a ride on the large voyaging ships, but with the abundance of game animals that any scouts to the Galapagos would report I think it’s reasonable to assume that the settlers would not bother to bring at least one and possibly all 3 of the Polynesian livestock.
3. What do they do on the islands?
Going through their hierarchy of needs, the first thing Polynesians will do is settle and build shelter on the larger islands like La Isabella where there is plenty of water.
Then, they will hunt. The Galapagos are full of naïve, tasty animals that will quickly end up in Polynesian pots. The islands will be fully plundered by humans, and quite likely by rats as well. If pigs or dogs are brought, they will devastate the ecosystem by eating anything in their path, and even chickens may dig up and peck open the eggs of tortoises and iguanas. On the large islands, a lot of the iconic animals will end up extinct.
Penguins, sea lions and marine iguanas will survive, but mostly on colonies on the smaller, drier islands and those that survive will be smaller and more fearful than the animals tourists are used to IOTL.
The Polynesians will also farm. Travel articles I’ve read about the Galapagos mention a wide variety of plants being grown-sugarcane and bananas, which the Polynesians will have, but also cooler-weather plants such as coffee and regular potatoes (which the Polynesians can get access too).
How Polynesian culture develops on these islands is up in the air, but looking at other island societies we can infer that it will be hierarchical, with an aristocratic class of chiefs and priests ruling over commoners. The Galapagos has dense forests (or will initially) and stones, perfect for building monuments and statues. Perhaps they will deify the volcanic peaks of their homelands like the Hawaiians, or dedicate statues to ancestor worship like the Easter Islanders. They may make great voyages back to their homeland to tap into the Polynesian trade network, but the great distance (and perhaps negative events precipitating the original settlers travelling that distance) will hinder such voyages of return.
But unlike the societies embedded in the Polynesian trade network, the Galapagans will have access to cultures that are completely alien to the Lapita-descended peoples to look for inspiration.
3. What are their relations with the Native Americans?
If they follow tradition of sailing against the wind when leaving their homeland, Galapagans will probably sail southeast and land on the coast of what IOTL is called Peru. There, they will meet cultures such as the Chimor and the Sican.
The Galapagans could easily become like Vikings, using their superior navigational skills and open-water catamarans to launch hit and run raids against the coastal peoples. They could interact relatively peacefully, trading their goods, bringing seal furs and sailcloth to the coastal peoples in exchange for metal jewelry and cotton cloth (I put this in market terms, but it could take other forms, such as mutual gift-giving between mainland and Galapagan elites, or goods brought as part of offerings for religious pilgrimages in a shared religion). Perhaps they could even integrate into coastal societies, becoming a middleman minority that runs goods such as warm-water shells used for dyes found near Ecuador down to the Peruvian cities, maintaining their tradition of navigation and boatbuilding but otherwise following the culture of the coastal societies.
How far could they go, sailing up and down the coasts? With the relative ease of land and water always within easy reach to the east, Polynesian navigators could explore hundreds or even thousands of miles of coastline *IF* they were so inclined. I could see them traveling as far as the Gulf of California in pursuit of whales and seal fur, and trading with Mesoamericans for goods such as jade and cacao beans.
4. What are the effects on the Natives?
The calories and ease of growing bananas I think makes this plant easily and enthusiastically adopted by Native Americans in Ecuador and Mesoamerica. Sugarcane is more difficult to grow, but the sheer addictiveness of sugar makes it also enthusiastically adopted.
Other plants like breadfruit and taro could easily make their way into Native American gardens. And in the unlikely event that the Galapagans bring their livestock, pigs and chickens would be novelties that could be quite enthusiastically adopted by farmers, particularly in South America where large mammal husbandry is already established.
Other traditions could be adopted by the Native Americans during cultural contact. Tattoos in the Polynesian style, catamarans instead of rafts and canoes, there’s a lot of culture for the Native Americans to draw on. And violent contact or not, it is a culture they can draw on in a much more even ground-in fact, a ground where the Natives will in many cases have military and numerical dominance over the Polynesian visitors.
5. What happens post-conquista?
At the end of the day, the Galapagos are too close to South America to escape the notice of Europeans, who IOTL stumbled on the islands in the 1530’s.
There’s multiple scenarios that could happen though, with vastly different long-term results. The Galapagos could be conquered and subjugated quickly, its people forced to work in sugarcane plantations and later exported to work in guano mines. Slavery and disease would cause their numbers to plummet, and the Galapagans would become a minority in their own land, flooded by immigrants from the Americas and possibly Asia. It is these colonists, not the Natives who will probably be largely politically shut out of power, who will build the Galapagan nation in modern times.
But as close as the islands are to South America in absolute terms, they are 600 miles out to sea. A strong and violent confrontation at initial contact and the sight of the rocky, barren coastlines of the Galapagos (the farms and wealth would be more inland) could drive away Spanish attention, with the more immediate rewards of conquest on the mainland distracting them from conquest for quite a while (the rewards may not be as easy to get as OTL, depending on the butterflies the Galapagans cause on Native military and political organization).
Perhaps the Galapagos would end up with very light colonial presence-a mission to preach and soldiers to protect the preachers. IOTL evangelism has taken strong root in multiple places in Polynesia even without forced conversions. Tonga, for example, has enthusiastically adopted Christianity despite having largely dodged colonialism. Galapagans who go to church and chiefs who are willing to pledge loyalty to the Spanish (or another European) crown could see the islands go into benign neglect as white authorities determine them to be tamed and not worth further bothering. Disease would hurt their numbers, but without enslavement the diseases will not cause as much damage, and the population will recover. The islands could enter the modern world with a high Native population-even a majority one-and a strong sense of traditional (albeit Christianized) culture.
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