What would civilization in the New World look like with 500 extra years?

Suppose everything in the New World relating to civilization occurs 500 years earlier than OTL, how would Native American civilization develop and what do you think would result by OTL 1492?
 
Suppose everything in the New World relating to civilization occurs 500 years earlier than OTL, how would Native American civilization develop and what do you think would result by OTL 1492?

Well if everything occurred 500 years earlier than OTL, the weather would be different when certain events happened. I'm certain that there were some big famines and droughts that could happen or not happen. And the butterflies from those would quickly spread.

Instead a better idea would be to have a POD before 1000, and have the OTL situation in Iberia and the eastern trade routes not happen (have the Muslims hold onto Iberia longer, but still lose it, and have Iberia be split into more, different kingdoms--and in the east, don't have the Ottomans overtake the Byzantines, so that there isn't a big 'heathen' obstacle to the silk/spice trade). As a result there would be no reason to go west until, if you want exactly 500 years, 1992. Or, more realistically, a little bit earlier, or later.
 
Aztecs and Mayas may become more advanced, most likely they would have metal working and Bronze or Iron weapons. Its likely that Native Americans in the north would have started farming and would have settled down, this could lead to cities and a stable civilization and may even lead to more contact between the Native Americans and Aztecs.

But even with 500 years, I don't think New old would be technologically advanced enough to take on the old world of the 16th century.
 
Aztecs and Mayas may become more advanced, most likely they would have metal working and Bronze or Iron weapons. Its likely that Native Americans in the north would have started farming and would have settled down, this could lead to cities and a stable civilization and may even lead to more contact between the Native Americans and Aztecs.

They had quite large urban civilisation in the Mississippi valley already.
 
Wouldn't it make the eventual plagues all the more devestatinh with a larger population?

Probably, there's at least some argument the Incan road network aided the spread of disease. 500 years won't fix the fundamental Amerindian problem - vulnerability to European-borne illnesses. A slightly higher level of metal-working might mean more resistance to colonization at first, but once diseases start to spread it will render any new technologies moot.
 
Wouldn't it make the eventual plagues all the more devestatinh with a larger population?

Yup- pretty much like what happened in the Amazon. The rainforest as it is today is actually the descendant of a forestscape that was carefully managed by a large native population. After the diseases burned their way through the only remnants were scattered tribes. Most of the current Amazon tribes are actually relatively recent migrants.
 
But even with 500 years, I don't think New old would be technologically advanced enough to take on the old world of the 16th century.
If you want that my bet is you'd have to hit the entire Old World with something like the super-plague from The Years Of Rice And Salt, or do something along those lines; you'd need to delay the Old World by thousands of years, not hundreds, if you want the New World to be competitive or dominant on its own indigenous technological base.
 
No, it would lead to more disease, which will give thm a stronger immune system, and possibly a virus to combat the europeans.

Not without more domestic animals, they are the key when it comes to that sort of biological warfare.

And no matter how you play it, the new world just gets screwed.
 
Well if everything occurred 500 years earlier than OTL, the weather would be different when certain events happened. I'm certain that there were some big famines and droughts that could happen or not happen. And the butterflies from those would quickly spread.

Instead a better idea would be to have a POD before 1000, and have the OTL situation in Iberia and the eastern trade routes not happen (have the Muslims hold onto Iberia longer, but still lose it, and have Iberia be split into more, different kingdoms--and in the east, don't have the Ottomans overtake the Byzantines, so that there isn't a big 'heathen' obstacle to the silk/spice trade). As a result there would be no reason to go west until, if you want exactly 500 years, 1992. Or, more realistically, a little bit earlier, or later.
Or you could have it so that the Classic Era Collapse does not happen the way it does, because that kinda halted development significantly if not turned it back, almost every major kingdom in that time vanished over a century or two. If that did not occur, all those advanced kingdoms and empires would have another 5 or 6 hundred years to continue developing. IOTL, there was a slight increase of technology in those intervening years, but at the expense of a lot more things the Classic Maya had like running water systems. And this way it'd be easier to know who exactly this scenario is dealing with when the Old World comes knocking rather than a scenario that butterflies away the familiar peoples of the New World.
 
I wonder which civilizations might be inclined to attempt to take the whole hemisphere for themselves. Naturally, I think some kind of "Super-Aztec" group would be very hideous to behold.
 
My answer is probably not much would change. The aztecs would have fallen to the next group drifting south. So there would be a similar civilization in Mexico. the use of metal for tools might have spread North from Peru. Peru might very well be into an Iron Age.
It is possible that there would have been contacts between the Basque who were fishing for cod on the grand banks off Novo Scotia and the local Indian. This might have been enough to introduce european diseases to the Americas. But even if this happened the population may not have been large enough to spread the diseases.
 
I wonder which civilizations might be inclined to attempt to take the whole hemisphere for themselves. Naturally, I think some kind of "Super-Aztec" group would be very hideous to behold.

Actually once you put the human sacrifice into proportion it turns out that it's estimated that the percentage of people sacrificed under the Triple Alliance (Aztecs) wasn't really that much more than the percentage of people routinely executed in public spectacles in European societies like England or France.
 
Actually once you put the human sacrifice into proportion it turns out that it's estimated that the percentage of people sacrificed under the Triple Alliance (Aztecs) wasn't really that much more than the percentage of people routinely executed in public spectacles in European societies like England or France.

Somehow, that does not make me feel much better.

How many people did the Aztec execute for other reasons (if we know)?
 
Somehow, that does not make me feel much better.

How many people did the Aztec execute for other reasons (if we know)?

It's not meant to make anyone feel any better- its just meant to counter the general supposition that the Aztecs were somehow more horrible than Old World societies. In fact arguably by their own moral code at least the sacrifices were dying nobly for a good cause as opposed to simply being criminals for punishment.

I'm not sure if there were any records on Aztec executions for other causes (or if they simply folded judicial executions into the sacrifices).

I think we all need to remember that in a lot of pre-Modern societies life was extremely cheap if you weren't an elite.
 
There would not be an iron age with 500 years of extra development, though there would be more widespread bronze use, at very least in the Andes. There would possible be relatively highly developed maritime trade, forced into being by a lack of pack animals in Meso and North America.

Regarding disease, I have come to the conclusion that the New World civilizations could have developed epidemic diseases without widespread domestic animals, they just needed high population densities combined with well developed trade routes to occur and be maintained for long enough. However, it would take longer than a mere 500 years to really allow this to happen.
 
It's not meant to make anyone feel any better- its just meant to counter the general supposition that the Aztecs were somehow more horrible than Old World societies. In fact arguably by their own moral code at least the sacrifices were dying nobly for a good cause as opposed to simply being criminals for punishment.

I'm not sure if there were any records on Aztec executions for other causes (or if they simply folded judicial executions into the sacrifices).

I think we all need to remember that in a lot of pre-Modern societies life was extremely cheap if you weren't an elite.
Criminals were usually never sacrificed. If they did something bad enough to warrant death, they'd be garrotted. Otherwise they'd be enslaved until they've worked off their debt to society, as the Aztecs didn't have jails either. And yeah, there weren't exactly any records that we know of. If there were some they must've gone up in smoke.
 
Regarding disease, I have come to the conclusion that the New World civilizations could have developed epidemic diseases without widespread domestic animals, they just needed high population densities combined with well developed trade routes to occur and be maintained for long enough. However, it would take longer than a mere 500 years to really allow this to happen.
This is my thinking too, though you never know. If it's a 1-in-1,000,000 chance, just have the chance come up on try 100 instead of try 900,000. It's not ASB for a disease to arise in "merely" 500 years just unlikely.

A related possibility I am looking into is if you have some small pools of disease reservoir that are self-sustaining--for instance a few small colonies without a great deal of migration--then perhaps if you have high enough population densities, you could get a mutation that is somewhat more deadly to future visitors after 500 years, though not on the level of 95% kill rates. Flu again is the example here, since we now know it can make major mutations very rapidly. But there are also things called viroids that mutate very fast and at least one of which (Hepatitis D) can infect a human.
 
My answer is probably not much would change. The aztecs would have fallen to the next group drifting south. So there would be a similar civilization in Mexico. the use of metal for tools might have spread North from Peru. Peru might very well be into an Iron Age.

I rather agree with this, regardless of whether we speed up developments in the americas by 500 years or retard developments in Europe. It probably is reasonable to presume that the MesoAmerican and Andean civilzations will become solidy "bronze-age". I am less convinced the evolution to an iron-smelting and casting technology will have occurred absent contact with the old world, but it might be beginning in Peru (assuming the ores are present and extractable). I think you are correct about the cyclical rise and fall of central mexican civilizations. The American civilizations will always be saddled by the lack of really powerful draft animals, which have all kinds of effects on travel, transport, and agriculture. It is possible that the incipient states of the Mississippi Valley and NW Mexico/US Southwest will have become more influenced by MesoAmerican trade and contact, and become true civilizations.
 
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