Potato Wank

Stephen

Banned
The Potato is first domesticated around 8000 thousand years ago at lake Titicaca. Over the next few thousand years it potatoe agriculture spreads across the Andes.

4000 bc. 6000 years ago a fisherman takes to trading long distance and Potatoe agriculture begins in the Mexican highlands.

Over the next few thousand years potato use spreads across North America mostly as a slash and burn suplement to hunting and gathering but some mound building citys fed almost entirely by potatos are built from place to place from time to time. But such civilisations are usually shortlived and eventually wiped out by blight. But as over domesticates are developed they will eventually become larger and longer lived.

200bc A freak storm carries a whaling boat from North West America across the atlantic beaching in Ireland. On the whaling boat were some potatoe rations. A druid discovers the the boat with a rotting crew and and finds some strange roots inside. He plants them back at his village to see what kind of plant grows from them. A couple of years later he discovers that the bulbs make good eating when boiled. The chief develops a taste for them and they become a fashionable food that spreads across the Druidic world. And even futher a afield into Germanic lands.

Over the next century the Potato slowly becomes a larger part of the average peasents diet. And the size of land needed for a family slowly shrinks so that by 100 bc the population of Northern Europe has quadrupled. The larger numbers of peasents leads to the chief and other aritocrats becoming more wealthy able to afford larger coats of chainmail and over amour.

100bc A century of relative peace comes to an end as dividing up the land between decendents no longer yield enough food for subsistence and the number of migrations and raiders increases.

80bc A bad case of potato blight spreads across Europe. Entire tribes up sticks and search for lands to plunder before there food reserve run out. The civilisations of the Meditereanian are overun by vast bands of maurauders and destroyed.
 
Forgive me for splitting hairs, but it would have to be North East America the boat would come from, not NW.
Having the potato arrive in Europe 1700 odd years earleir than it did OTL would trigger all sorts of butterflies, but I'll leave it up to others to sugggest what those might be.
I don't think it is realistic that a blight, similar or identical to OTL 1845, could have that much of an impact on society after only 120 years of the plant being in Europe. Sure, it would make a tremendous difference in food production, but no area would be totally dependant upon only one crop like the Irish were OTL.
 
This is one of the most original yet humorous PODs around. It sounds like the Roman Empire is stillborn. Perhaps something more akin to the "Suebi Superpower" timeline would come from this?
 

Stephen

Banned
After the Potato was introduced the population of Ireland near quadrupled from 2 million to 8 million.

population_1700_2000.gif


And did so in not much more than a single century.

The potato is quite a remakable subsistence crop it requires little labour and has the highest calorie per land area density of all crops. The calorie density is even close to that of modern industrally farmed and fertilised crops. Plus they are delicouse.

If 19th century Ireland could feed 8 million peaple almost entirely on potatos grown in lazy beds, then a crude land area extrapolation leads to a population of about 13 million for England (Modern borders) 8 million for Scotland, 36 million for Germany, 63 million for france, 3 million for Belgium, 3.5 million for Netherlands, and 4 million for Denmark. Although admitidly tribal societies are more likely to go to war than starve in malthusian poverty, instead probably keeping there population a bit more on the safe side rather than pushing the carrying capacity to the limits. And those estimate are extremely crude but I did try to avoid countries with a high proportion of highlands, except for Scotland.

When I get my Time Machine simply taking a bag of potatoes to iron age or neolithic people will definatly be on my to do list and create an interesting timeline to study.:D
 
Sure, it would make a tremendous difference in food production, but no area would be totally dependant upon only one crop like the Irish were OTL.
Especially since IIRC most of the best land for growing potatoes is tends to be land that's very poor for growing traditional European grain crops. One of the reasons the potato was so popular in Ireland was because it could be grown in a lot "useless" land, which was the only type of land the poorest Irish farmers had.

One interesting effect that could be gotten out of potato farming being more widespread is actually a reduction in the risk of war-related famine; a lot of war famines were caused by mass requisition and/or burning of grain crops, and potatoes are much easier to conceal from marauding armies due to being underground and all that.
 
Well, if you introduce tatters in Eurasia early enough, both Med civilization and all great Steppe invasions (Huns, Kumans, Mongols) are doomed. Med would be wiped out by extremely numerous tribal hosts of Norther Europe, and steppe raiders are extremely out of luck as their most potent weapon (scorched earth policy) is doomed (one can't burn potato patches).
 

Hendryk

Banned
There are a couple of potato-centered TLs out there, one on this forum, the other in Robert Cowley's What If? 2--a piece by William McNeill about the consequences of not bringing the potato to Europe.
 
Spudwank - ha! Awesome. :D

The population boom in North America will be interesting too. The Mounds couldn't really sustainable support cereal crops, but potatoes? Could we see lasting Potato Mound Cultures in NA?
 
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