What if Native American Ancestors never passed into the Americas?

So you would have an Americas populated by Na-Dene speakers, Inuit, and possibly Polynesians. ;)
Cetainly somebody. Living in the Arctic may be tough, but hunter gatherers managed to do it for hundred of years post the last ice age. With no competition from existing natives some of them could travel down rivers. From there the climate get gets easier.

Polynesians though? No winds and currents were ever in the right direction for them. I am not aware of any travelling beyond a line running from Hawaii to Easter
 
Maybe the European Scandinavian Vikings will have a better chance of landing and settling not only in Vinland but Nova Scotia and upper Maine due to not having to do battle with the Native Americans that had never had migrated into North America in the OP..
 
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Hypothetically if a group of vikings settled more inland into North America and perhaps actually lost contact with the greater European/viking world and remained isolated from them for a good 4 centuries+ or so, until further European exploration.

What would the interaction be like? Technologically I assume they would be quite lacking compared to the new European visitors perhaps they would also be more susceptible to their diseases as well?
 
If the initial first and second wave of Vikings from Scandinavia would have the knowledge of metallurgy and agriculture to create an Iron Age in North America among the Coast-line from the former Canadian region and downward to Florida before the folks that colonize in North America is left by their lonesome until Columbus comes along three or four centuries later....

If the Viking Colonials start going South and South-westward facing the Appalachian Mt Valley Range...

and since there has been no Native Americans to have any influence among the Animal world .....

maybe some of the still surviving Mega-Fauna Predators and their Prey would still be alive in the Mid-West and the Pacific Region but not in huge numbers where the Viking Colonials would have colonize among the Atlantic Coastline and later on pass the Mississippi Westward as the V. Colonials learn what is on their new lands and dig for minerals ...

maybe.....
 
This is probably a sarcastic reply, but I'll answer it straight.

The time scales involved in these migrations are over 10,000 years, and thus long enough for skin color and facial features to change to the point where people could be considered a different 'race'.

So the 'Australoids' would be as light skinned and long-nosed as modern Europeans due to living in Europe's icy climate and the 'Caucausoids' would be as dark skinned and flat-nosed as modern Australians due to their time spent in the tropics. (1)

I should hasten to add before anyone jumps into the thread with proclamations of MEGAVINLAND! that the Vikings might still not permanently colonize the region unless they find a way to get rich while doing so. (2) Mastodon/Mammoth ivory might do it, though even without hunters their survival post-ice age isn't guaranteed.

1) VERY recent advanced mitochondrial DNA analysis of prehistoric human remains found in the Pacific Northwest have shown that the theory of Aborigine Meso-Americans (Pre-Paleo-Indian) was erroneous. I confess I believed it at one point:eek:, but you can't argue with DNA. If local tribes hadn't reacted so hysterically regarding examing the remains the whole matter would have been settled much sooner I imagine.

2) The difficulty of the northern route plus inbreeding would probably have doomed the effort anyway. And there was the whole pagan vs. Christian issue as well.

Yeah, no, this theory is fringe to the point of being entirely discredited. Any genetic similarity between unmixed Native Americans and Europeans is due to the movement and interbreeding with ancient Siberian peoples who Native Americans are most similar genetically to.

Absolutely. It is unfortunate that it took so long to get permission for the DNA workups to be performed and completed, but pushing those theories now is like looking at astronomers in the 60s and 70s still pushing the "Steady State Theory" for the origin of the universe.
 
A Different Flesh (thank you Harry)

No Amerindian migration to the Americas? HT has a series of stories published by BAEN Books called A Different Flesh which talks about a survival of Homo Erectus in the New World at discovery by Columbus if there was no Amerindian migration during the last Ice Age. You didnt say anything about that so bring this up :D
 
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