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?
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?
Wouldn't it make the eventual plagues all the more devestatinh with a larger population?
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.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.
Wouldn't it make the eventual plagues all the more devestatinh with a larger population?
No, it would lead to more disease, which will give thm a stronger immune system, and possibly a virus to combat the europeans.
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.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.
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.
Somehow, that does not make me feel much better.
How many people did the Aztec execute for other reasons (if we know)?
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.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.
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.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.
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.