Very Early colonization of the New World?

There's two huge, interconnected problems for China. First, the currents aren't as favorable. Your choices are to go far to the north, but not so far that you're hugging the coast, where the currents head towards Asia. Or, along the equator. Which leads directly to the second problem: The distances are much greater.
 
There's two huge, interconnected problems for China. First, the currents aren't as favorable. Your choices are to go far to the north, but not so far that you're hugging the coast, where the currents head towards Asia. Or, along the equator. Which leads directly to the second problem: The distances are much greater.

Definitely, but currents can be overcome... but they have to want to overcome them.
 
Even positing the will, are you so certain they have the capability?

Well, can anyone be certain?

Short of building an 'era' vessel and attempting the trip, and even then is it realistic? Has weather paterns changed in the past 2000 years? If so how much? etc etc.

Nobody can say with certainty. I would say that within reason anything would be able to be overcome by the Chinese with sufficient incentive... and that's what's lacking.

If there was some almost guarantee of unlimited gold at the end of the trip I'm sure any lack of capability would be been overcome. I understand that there is a substantial cultural exchange between the Yupik people both Siberian and Alaskan. I don't know whether this exchange happened historically or whether modern transport allow this exchange only in recent times. However, if less developed peoples could transfer between Alaska and Siberia then I cannot see why more advanced ships couldn't (again, with sufficient incentive). I acknowledge there is a difference between a kayak and a masted ship.

It's the incentive that is missing.
 

SunDeep

Banned
Well, we already have conclusive proof that the Vikings did colonise the Americas, 500 years before Columbus made landfall (unless you discount Newfoundland) So far, everyone's been talking about Europe and East Asia, but there may have been other places in the running as well- including a pretty outside-the-box candidate I came across recently, on another thread. For a long time after the fall of the Byzantine Navy, in the 12th century, there wasn't much to choose between between the capabilities of European Galleys and Arab/ N. African Dhows at the time; and in his Nuzhatul Mushtaq, written in 1150CE, the esteemed early 12th century geographer and cartographer Muhammad al-Idrisi reports that explorers had sailed out into the Atlantic from the then Almoravid-controlled port city of Lisbon, allegedly reaching the Sargasso Sea, making landfall in either the Azores or Madeira, and making contact with the Guanche in the Canary Islands.

In an ATL where the Almoravid Dynasty endured and maintained its foothold in Iberia, with the Berbers holding onto their Iberian Atlantic ports and preventing the Portuguese Navy from carving out their own kingdom, al-Andalusian adventurers would almost certainly follow up on these early missions. Upon discovering the trade winds needed for the return journey in the northern Sargasso, an ambitious al-Andulusian merchant could well decide to attempt a trans-Atlantic island-hopping trip hoping to reach China, with the increasing activity of the crusading Christian pirates beginning to run rampant across large swathes of the Mediterranean providing ample incentive to do so. ITTL, the Arabs/ N. Africans would arrive in America in the 13th century, 200yrs earlier than IOTL (admittedly not a 'very early' colonisation of the New World, but early enough to make for an intriguing ATL).
 
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I understand that there is a substantial cultural exchange between the Yupik people both Siberian and Alaskan. I don't know whether this exchange happened historically or whether modern transport allow this exchange only in recent times.
As I understand it the proto-[Yupik/Inuit/Aleut] peoples migrated into America by sea, only a few thousand years BC, well after the disappearance of Beringea, and may have maintained at least sporadic contact with their old neighbours all along...
 
There's two huge, interconnected problems for China. First, the currents aren't as favorable. Your choices are to go far to the north, but not so far that you're hugging the coast, where the currents head towards Asia. Or, along the equator. Which leads directly to the second problem: The distances are much greater.

You don't actually need to follow the currents. There's something known as the prevailing winds. Which, at the middle latitudes, blow east. Directly towards California.
 
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