What could have been some alternate Cradles of Civilization?
- Thread starter Trencsmark
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I assume we take cradle to mean "city states or empire with clear agriculture and domesticstion"
The mississippi was a cradle OTL, just a late comer and it's agricultural practice was one that eventually led to the cities being abandoned for higher yields.
Personally, I think the Amazon and Columbia rivers could've played host to city states; likely the western great lakes as well.
Stepping away from America, given Australia's size and the fact they have coins from Indonesian traders on the continent, I am kinda surprised they didn't develop them.
The mississippi was a cradle OTL, just a late comer and it's agricultural practice was one that eventually led to the cities being abandoned for higher yields.
Personally, I think the Amazon and Columbia rivers could've played host to city states; likely the western great lakes as well.
Stepping away from America, given Australia's size and the fact they have coins from Indonesian traders on the continent, I am kinda surprised they didn't develop them.
I think Cradle specifically means home to the development of an independent (or mostly independent) system of agriculture. While the mississippi of course was host to its own civilization, the agricultural package of that civilization was ultimately derivative of the Mesoamerican Cradle.
The Middle Columbia River would be a fantastic candidate, especially considering that in terms of climate, soil, and topography it's similar to the Loess Plateau in North China which was a center of independent plant domestication. Lots of sites for fishing and mostly sedentary inhabitation, a tradition of large gatherings of thousands of people, vibrant regional trade networks. OTL there is evidence of increasing tending of camas patches throughout the Pacific Northwest, so that would be one of your founding crops. My guess is your others would be a mutant Lomatium (biscuitroot), since the Columbia Plateau is the center of genetic diversity of that genus, and wapato (Sagittaria latifolia), which was generally considered rare on the drier Columbia Plateau and areas which had it (those west of the Cascades and in northern Idaho) would trade it to neighbours who lacked it.
So you'd need an earlier intensification of local harvesting practices leading to a more sedentary lifestyle leading to full domestication of local plants leading to the directed irrigation networks leading to a true civilisation. My guess is that wapato would be the main reason for irrigation networks and artificial wetlands, since it would have higher value than local crops thanks to being rare on the more arid Plateau.
As for domesticated animals, they already have dogs, but the local candidates would be elk, mountain goat, and bighorn sheep. Reindeer/caribou and moose would work too of course, but they only occur at the northern fringe of this area. That said, a reindeer pastoralist culture would be highly successful if it emerged north of this region in the interior plateaus of BC. Maybe an independent domestication event by, say, the Proto-Athabaskans in their Upper Yukon homeland? Or a later (mid-1st millennium AD IIRC) spread across the Bering Strait via Inuit and Yupik contact with the Chukchi?
So you'd need an earlier intensification of local harvesting practices leading to a more sedentary lifestyle leading to full domestication of local plants leading to the directed irrigation networks leading to a true civilisation. My guess is that wapato would be the main reason for irrigation networks and artificial wetlands, since it would have higher value than local crops thanks to being rare on the more arid Plateau.
As for domesticated animals, they already have dogs, but the local candidates would be elk, mountain goat, and bighorn sheep. Reindeer/caribou and moose would work too of course, but they only occur at the northern fringe of this area. That said, a reindeer pastoralist culture would be highly successful if it emerged north of this region in the interior plateaus of BC. Maybe an independent domestication event by, say, the Proto-Athabaskans in their Upper Yukon homeland? Or a later (mid-1st millennium AD IIRC) spread across the Bering Strait via Inuit and Yupik contact with the Chukchi?
Not entirely, it's just the civilisation there mostly replaced their indigenous plants with imported staples to some degree or another. We still commonly grow sunflowers (domesticated in Eastern North America) and many cultivars of squash that partially or entirely derive from Eastern North America (squash was also domesticated in Mesoamerica).
Once the farmers from the Near East start flooding out into Europe they are going to quickly overrun the natives for the Danube, as they did in OTL. The Po valley and Rhone would and did take a bit longer, but became doomed.
For an alternative civilisation to get off the ground having suitable plants and animals is not enough. It has to either so away from an earlier one that it can develop before bit could be overrun or have a different climate. The Amazon is a good example of the latter. Whilst the Andean civilisation got going first you can't raise potatoes and llama in the jungle. Therefore the Amazon could not be overrun. China and the Americas are good examples of the former. There was just no way that the Near East civilisation was going to expand and develop the technology in time to colonise their territory before they could get going.
Animals are nice, but as the Mesoamericans showed not essential.
On a similar thread I mentioned the mouth of the Volga River Delta at the edge of the Caspian Sea.
- Perfect for agriculture.
- Sea access for trade and fishing.
- Perfectly suited to act as a middle man for Steppe Nomads and the Middle East.
- Delta doesn't freeze over in the winter so Delta islands provide water defense from Nomadic tribes.
- Can trade up river for fur, lumber, slaves, and minerals, and can trade these goods for Persian/Mesopotamian products.
- Can also export Salt and Oil.
Not an easy thing to accomplish, but due to a lack of competition, I think a civilization there could become the Venice of the Caspian.
- Perfect for agriculture.
- Sea access for trade and fishing.
- Perfectly suited to act as a middle man for Steppe Nomads and the Middle East.
- Delta doesn't freeze over in the winter so Delta islands provide water defense from Nomadic tribes.
- Can trade up river for fur, lumber, slaves, and minerals, and can trade these goods for Persian/Mesopotamian products.
- Can also export Salt and Oil.
Not an easy thing to accomplish, but due to a lack of competition, I think a civilization there could become the Venice of the Caspian.
The European hunter gatherers were only overrun because they had smaller population sizes, if they have their own new more intensive subsistence strategies there is no reason to believe they would be overrun as opposed to what happened in the middle east which was more bilateral mixture.
This doesn't make any sense, the Natufians didn't overrun everyone by having had agriculture first, nor did the Anatolian pastoralists that domesticated animal overrun all of Iran. So why would Anatolian farmers necessarily overrun all of Europe??
Why?
I thought of the basins of the three principal Siberian rivers (Ob, Yenisei and Lena).
That would sound good too but why be far away from the larger world, Yes that could be fine but not very accurate. I know there is the Uruguay, etc Rivers but that wouldn't be as accurate 😬
I've always been enamored of an independent origination of agriculture in the rainy winters and Mediterranean climes of South Africa's fynbos. You've got 5 different river systems but none of them are quite as grand as most riverine cradles, but OTL saw non-riverine cradles in Peru and Papua New Guinea so it isn't entirely out of the question.
(Edited for clarity on defining a fynbos cradle as non-riverine)
(Edited for clarity on defining a fynbos cradle as non-riverine)
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About the Amazon, that was kinda what happened in otl.
New Discovery Shows Amazon Jungle Once Home to Many Millions
Forget small nomadic tribes and pristine jungle: the southern Amazon was likely covered in a network of large villages and ceremonial centers before Columbus.
www.nationalgeographic.com
The southamerican mesopotamia is a hard one. I have 2 ideas.
1) the northern guaranies were settled and had a somewhat impressive crop package. Maybe they keep expanding southwards and assimilate the southern nomads. Spreading agriculture with them. Altho this wpuld be a lot more likwly if they get their hands on the andean agricultural package, but that's difficult bc of the great geographic barriers between the andes and Paraguay.
2) The mapuche had access to the andean crops and llamas right? Maybe they are driven put of Chile by the Incas and forced to move to the argentinian side much earlier, eventually crossing the steppes until they reach the pampas region and the mesopotamia.
This is true, but I think that area is very well suited to developing domesticated animals and probably necessarily will need at least one. Reason being is that the population density would be less than Mesoamerica (as it's a lot of semi-arid land and mountains) and that the labour demands to make the area "work" are probably more intense than Mesoamerica (as I'm postulating irrigation canals and construction of wetlands as a driver for social complexity).
Reindeer/caribou I think make a fine candidate given they were independently domesticated twice in Siberia and given the Inuit links with the Chukchi it's surprising that domesticated reindeer never showed up in the New World (until they were brought here that is).
Seems more like it would develop as a South American version of the Mississippians. The climate and topography is similar to the American South, so if they innovated their own agriculture it would probably be replaced by maize agriculture.
You wouldn't need the Mapuche, Andean crops were spreading southeast OTL to mountainous parts of northwestern Argentina. But this area developed relatively late (around 1000 AD) meaning it never had the full chance to expand further.
I do wonder why you never had an equivalent of Scandinavia/Northern Europe in places like Chiloe and Tierra del Fuego. It's very possible to develop cultivars of potatoes and at least some other crops to survive there, and llamas could be bred for thicker coats to deal with harsher weather.
Re: Reindeer/caribou. Given that reindeer were domesticasted after the Bering strait became sea, transfer of the "technology" to the New World is going to be less straightfoward than adoption of horses by civilisations not from Central Asia. No reason though why they could not have been independently domesticated in Alaska or Canada. They just won't. Just because something is a good idea, does not mean that it will be adopted.
Re: Llamas.The natives raised chilihueques/hueques, a llama/alapce derivativein south-central Chile. I guess that agriculture just did not take off otherwise there might have be an equivalent of Scandinavia/Northern Europe.
Amazonia had large pre-Exchange settlements, though we don't exactly know if they counted as city states. Paraná River Basin is often cited as another possibility.
The Cucuteni Trypallia culture on the Dniester if it changed a little could have been a cradle of civilization on the Dniester river.