The Americas without their discovery by Europeans?

Something that I wondered is, barring any type of European intervention, how would the Americas have developed? For this, let's imagine some kind of grandiose Euroscrew so that there's no time limit until some Columbus figure comes to screw everything up. Would certain tribes develop into empires and how would the Aztecs and Incas grow and evolve?
 
Foundation of Americas was inevitable event. It might delay to early 17th century but hardly any more.
 
Early XVIth century at the very best; given the naval technological upgrades, the more and more important atlantic expeditions from diverse Atlantic countries, the presence of atlantic fishers in N-W Atlantic, the maritime streams...

You could avoid a similar discovery than IOTL, trough Caribbeans, and while not easy to do, and go by a South or North America rather than Mesoamerica.

But delaying up to XVIIth century seems really, really hard given the context.

As for the consequences...Well, you'd certainly have, but essentially in European geopolitics. About monetary starvation for instance, partially compensated by African gold; maybe more cautious Habsburgs (but remember that a really important part of their policies was funded by local gold and silver, not American one).

Nothing really changes for Natives, save local geopolitics as well : biological shock is still going to happen and to destabilize enough their societies for allowing Europeans to take advantage of it.
 
I think you two completely missed the point, as well as the fact that there could easily be a PoD that changes Europe drastically well before the 16th Century.
 
I think you two completely missed the point
The point being "Europe never discovers America. Ever", it's pointed how it's quite hard to expect entiere regions to look at sea and to say "nope" and in the same time ignoring whoever from another continent reaches Europe "But I'm going from the other side of the sea!" "Nope.".

The level of willingful ignorance it ask would simply put the whole thing in ASB board.

as well as the fact that there could easily be a PoD that changes Europe drastically well before the 16th Century.
Then in case of Euro-screw, it would be either Arabo-Islamic sailors, Chinese, Indonesians, etc. that would go there. It's not like Europe was really the center of the world, and eventually, you'd have news about it more or less quickly depending of who does it (critically giving an Euro-screw would give at least one of these possibility to establish an hegemon on Europe).

But in lack of a precise PoD, I assume we're talking of a TL similar to us, up to non-discovery in the late XVth century (I'm not going to try guessing for every PoD possible up to the XVth, really.)
 
And that would still result in a vastly different TL that would plausibly allow for more time for American civilizations to develop or change or whatever, and Native-American history/geopolitics is still important.
 
And that would still result in a vastly different TL that would plausibly allow for more time for American civilizations to develop or change or whatever, and Native-American history/geopolitics is still important.

But it's not the TL asked by the OP that requires complete European ignorance of Americas, or asking for Native civilisation to develop on their own without intervention (unless arguing only European discovery would have been harmful).

The really nebulous proposed PoD doesn't give really room to guesstimate evolution as well : depending how Europe is screwed (only Atlantic Europe, do we count Russia or Constantinople, are Arabs considered part of it) in the limits of plausibility could change many things.

Apart "Okay, Europe is bogged down, so you may, or you may not have changes there and in Americas", that is not answer but basically mimick the OP...Sorry, I personally don't see what's more to add.

As for Native geopolitics : well, give it a try. But you'd have the same issue than for European geopolitics : without clear PoD or situation, it would be hard to say something else than "It would change".
 
Okay, I know that it's basically impossible for the Europeans to not find the continents. I was ignoring it for the purpose of this thread because I wanted to know what direction the Americas would have gone had they been left alone. Should this better be suited to ASB?
 

Driftless

Donor
I think you two completely missed the point, as well as the fact that there could easily be a PoD that changes Europe drastically well before the 16th Century.

A worse Black Death with far greater loss of life, that functionally fragments European/Middle East society for generations?
 
There is a scenario ("The interrupted trajectory" IIRC) on this board that describes what would happen in the Americas if the Old World does not interact with them for a while more (about three centuries).
 
There is a scenario ("The interrupted trajectory" IIRC) on this board that describes what would happen in the Americas if the Old World does not interact with them for a while more (about three centuries).
There was one along those lines (think it was an older one though) that seemed to have a much higher opinion of the Tarascans than I do, I tend to think the Tarascan's military strength gets overrated here when brought up.
 
A worse Black Death with far greater loss of life, that functionally fragments European/Middle East society for generations?

You'd need a 2/3 or 3/4 death ratio for that (the historical ratio was 1/3 or 1/2 depending of the places). That's technically doable I think, but wouldn't be the plague due to existing resistances, and would probably touch as well Asian societies.

I wonder about the survivance of a super-virus : such deadly diseases may kill off too quickly to hope spreading on the long term.
 

Driftless

Donor
You'd need a 2/3 or 3/4 death ratio for that (the historical ratio was 1/3 or 1/2 depending of the places). That's technically doable I think, but wouldn't be the plague due to existing resistances, and would probably touch as well Asian societies.

I wonder about the survivance of a super-virus : such deadly diseases may kill off too quickly to hope spreading on the long term.

Good point. There seems to be a natural selection process at work that buffers those extreme kinds of events. Even if the pestilence and it's vectors were to continue, if the pace of spread is reduced, there may be a greater chance of adapted survivors?
 
I don't have anything to say to answer the question posted in the OP, but I do want to point out that I think this is a perfectly plausible scenario.

There was a 10,000 year period when the events in Europe/Asia were pretty completely independent of the events in the Americas. The POD is arguably before the invention of agriculture, civilization, and writing. There are lots of technological revolutions that can be delayed or slowed down. All the O.P. asks is a 5% delay in technological development on one side.
 
Good point. There seems to be a natural selection process at work that buffers those extreme kinds of events. Even if the pestilence and it's vectors were to continue, if the pace of spread is reduced, there may be a greater chance of adapted survivors?

I'm no biologist (and my knowledge on it is limited to bees and flowers and like), and I was less thinking to natural budilding resistance (even if we consider that Europe having known plague outerback in Late Anquity, I'm not that sure of its importance, even given it was prooved being the same bacilla) that that a too deadly virus would kill off too many potential carriers for being able to get widespread.

Too deadly in too great numbers may be a biological limitation there.
 
Could a united europe help? Like Rome or something, less need to expand when you already have lots of land/resources etc.

Or maybe that is unrealistic.

Was thinking aling the lines of China really. Never had much need to colonise.
 
Or maybe that is unrealistic.

Even with a maintained Roman imperium, it would be hard to unify Europe as a continent (or even to consider Romania as one homogenic block, culturally or politically).
Of course, the big disinterest for anything happening deep on the Barbaricum would lead to ignore Viking-like discoveries in New World, so it may be irrelevant.

As for along the Chinese lines : before the Mongol takover, I'm under the impression that China was quite active in maritime matters past the Sea of China (hence T'ang traders in India) beneficing as well from cultural tropes about being the center of the world and expecting other nations to go to China rather than the reverse.

Roman mentality, especially in the latter time, was roughly similar (it was admittedly built on much rationalisation) but had a definitely more important interventionist trend. Expect a cultural shift, I don't see why Romans (in the large sense, including creolized populations) would ignore the growing African market and wouldn't open up to Atlantic with having the ressources of a whole Meditteranean basin and most of Europe behind them).

The main difference would probably be not if they would discover Americas if they survived, but how they'd have done afterwards.
Giving the likely maintain of slavery (whatever in latifundian or villae production system) and the need to rentabilize discoveries, it wouldn't be pretty but you could avoid continental takeover more easily due to other fronts (Barbaricum, Persia, Africa), while still considering the really important ressources at hand.
 
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