The Aleutians of the Atlantic

POD: Prehistoric volcanic activity creates a chain of islands that extend south-westward from the Liberia area. The number, size and distribution of islands is quite similar to the OTL Aleutian Islands, although the climate is obviously very different.

What are the historical consequences of this? The New World will probably be [re-]discovered during Antiquity because, even if there's still a wide ocean between Africa and South America, at least now explorers can go island hopping.

What else would happen?
 
Most folks will say this probably belongs in ASB and that such geological PoDs introduce zillions of butterflies with completely unpredictable results, but I'll bite.

The original settlement of the New World in prehistory would still probably come from Siberia as in OTL. Cultural evolution in the New World would be largely inaffected, at least until approximately 2000-1500 BC or thereabouts.

However, with a chain of islands extending westward from Africa toward Brazil, each reachable from the previous by primitive oared boats or rafts, it is reasonable to speculate that African fishermen or traders would gradually make their way along the chain westward, eventually reaching Brazil. Alternatively, I suppose that native Americans might do the same thing, moving east. Thus, there would be local knowledge (in west Africa and in Brazil) that other lands and peoples exist across the sea. Diseases might be interchanged as well as some items of technology and agriculture. It would be cool to speculate that this culture contact and interchange of ideas mightfoster development of a linked America/African high culture in these areas, but I suspect the distances and diffiulty of maintaining regular ties would make this difficult.

It seems fairly unlikely that this information would make it to the ancient high cultures of the Mediterranean Basin (Phonecia, Greece , Carthage, Rome) in a manner that would prompt an intensive effort by any of them to attempt western voyages themselves, but perhaps enough information would filter north to allow ancient scholars to prepare maps showing the islands and some unexplored land masses across the Atlantic.

I suspect that the earliest systematic "discovery" of the New World by Christian Europe or Islam wouldn't occur much earlier than AD 1200, and I suspect the probably is greatest that Islam would do this - if for no other reason that closer geographic proximity.
 
Hmmm. The problem is that there wasn't much tradition of sailing in the south atlantic. Of the Macaronesian islands, only the close by Canaries were colonized. Others... the Cape Verdes, the Azores, the Madeiras were left untouched.

On the Aleutian chain, its notable that the Commander Islands were never discovered or significantly settled.
 
Phoenicians where sailors, and its been reported that they sailed around Africa. Some Phoenicians may discover Brazil, but not really colonize or anything. But they discovered it, and that stays in their culture, by the time the Romans have conquered Judea, and maybe Carthage, they learn of the lands from the stories, and some of them go off to find the 'far off lands, covered in jungle as far as the eye can see'.

Or alternatively, Phoenicians do set up a colony in Brazil, but it becomes an entity like Carthage, setting up coastal cities, using the local woods, animals, and plants as trading goods to the Carthaginians, while they're around, and Romans. The Romans decide that its in their best interest to leave them as a trading partner, rather than try and get troops all the way there. They could colonize some as well, maybe follow the island chains and go up the cost towards the Caribbean.
 
Post Moslem conquest of Morroco the Arabs replace the Romans as the cultural entity expanding west along this archipelago. Contact with the Yucatan & Mexico civilizations occurs gradually between 900 & 1200. Reconquista of Iberia or not, the Europeans begain competing with the Arabs for control of the island chain, and between 1500 & 1600 are raiding Arab/Native America commercial centers and merchant ships in the Carribean region. European explorers would have probablly be nosing around the northern route: Greenland-Labrador-Newfoundland-& points south by the 1400s. Newfoundland fishing camps and other early settlement efforts before the 1400s end.

1600 to present, the archipelago is a major stratigic objective in the various European Imperial wars into the 20th Century.
 
The New World will probably be [re-]discovered during Antiquity because, even if there's still a wide ocean between Africa and South America, at least now explorers can go island hopping.

Eh, Liberia was not exactly a source of large maritime expeditions IOTL. Like DValdron said, Macaronesia was not very well explored. That said, with islands very close to the mainland, perhaps the *Bantu expansion could have Niger-Congo farmers hopping onto the nearest island to the mainland. On an island with rich soil, heavy rain, and generally an environment supporting intensive agriculture, these African people's population would grow. On an island environment, they would do a lot of fishing for protein and eventually by luck or skill would blow to the next island. Repeat the process for a few centuries, and you could see a much more intensive maritime culture develop on these islands, capable of making the hop to South America.

I'm not sure what materials they could use to build ships to reach South America, or whether or not they could make a round trip. But an earlier introduction malaria and yellow fever to the Americas would be pretty major, and an exchange of staple crops like bananas and cassava could cause a population boom on both continents.

EDIT: Actually, pre-human organisms island hopping could have major consequences. Birds flying across the island could exchange various kinds of seeds, and depending on how far the islands extend towards South America you could have more complex organisms like rodents or even small new world monkeys rafting across the islands between continents.
 
EDIT: Actually, pre-human organisms island hopping could have major consequences. Birds flying across the island could exchange various kinds of seeds, and depending on how far the islands extend towards South America you could have more complex organisms like rodents or even small new world monkeys rafting across the islands between continents.
As far as I know, this already happened OTL, with the ancestors of rodents like the capybara island-hopping or travelling in driftwood from Africa to South America during a geological period when the two continents were much closer and there were small islands in between.
 
Should be in ASB for sure.

Could be interesting in providing a bit of a bigger east-west southern hemisphere area.
Not quite as big as Eurasia but...maybe sizable enough something could develop.
 
If you want them off africa, theyll be more like polynesia than the aleutians, in some ways.

If the new england seamount chain were actually islands, that would help.

If Iceland behaved like Hawaii, as a chain of islands rather than one big one, that would work really well.
 
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