What would need to happen for Native Americans to reach a point where they are on par with Europe? By this I mean that this alternate Native American civilization would have to be about as technologically advanced as Europe and be capable to establish colonies. My theory is that there would have to be multiple competing nations in the New World in order to incentivize these alternate nations to advance.
What would it take for Native American civilizations to be on par with the Old World?
- Thread starter ETGalaxy
- Start date
A good animal that they can domesticate, besides llamas, would be a good step forward.
Perhaps horses don't go extinct in north America?
If you want to a bit more ASB, maybe evolve a deer species to be more ideal for domestication.
Perhaps horses don't go extinct in north America?
If you want to a bit more ASB, maybe evolve a deer species to be more ideal for domestication.
This is a bit of a crazy idea but domesticated mastodons would be very cool!
Kaze
Banned
Or ASB - let mastodon evolve into elephants as they did in India (India has had centuries of elephant warfare). I will agree that a domesticated animal is a good start. Looking at the major civilizations of Aztec, Inca, and Maya - a good portion of them were barely out of the late-stone age, they were experimenting with metals such as bronze, gold, and silver. There would have to be more experimentation in metals - where-in bronze weapons and armor would be a good start.
Has Diamond's hypothesis of extensive climate bands across a continent been debunked? His idea is that the Asia-Europe-Africa complex (more eurasia) had a large band across which suitable agriculture and domesticates could be found, shared, and utilized, while the Americas were bounded by bands of climate that precluded such trades. Domesticates and crop packages that work well for the Aztecs likely wouldn't find success with Mississippian mound-builders, for example, while the entire Mediterranean had similar enough climates to trade successfully.
Never heard of that theory, however, I do agree with your points. Although wouldn't some native cultures be compatible when it comes to trading? I'm sure there would be some resources of value. Besides this is a world where the natives have developed large boats so I find it safe to assume other technology would be developed as well. Would the Aztecs utilize boating to conquer tribes like what they did to the tribes they bordered in OTL?
Riain
Banned
A number of technology and domesticated animals were confined to one area of civilization, eg llama and balsa log sailing rafts weren't spread to Mexico and the wheel didn't get to Peru. A spread of these things would energise both civilization centres. A further effect may be to create a farmer-herder divide which may lead to raiding and subsequent defense against raiders, which would also energize the civilization to build walls and therefore crew served heavy weapons.
I mean, they did establish colonies. The Carib, for example, were originally from South America, and colonized the Caribbean. The Inuit are also not "native" to Greenland, and replaced the previous population. It doesn't really take much technology to migrate to other places, so I don't see why they would need to be "on par" with Europeans in order to do so.
I wonder if West Africa can be contacted first by the native Americans due to the relatively short route from Northeast Brazil to the African coastline.
That will help them with diseases in the long run if the encounter is followed by trade agreements and is set at least in a few decades before European arrival.
That will help them with diseases in the long run if the encounter is followed by trade agreements and is set at least in a few decades before European arrival.
It would be more important for medical technology to advance than anything else. I think that something like 90 percent of the population of Native Americans died solely due to contact with Old World diseases, and not to disparity in warfare technology.
Zachariah
Banned
I'd say that the biggest things which they lacked IOTL were genetic diversity (as a result of a relatively small founding population, and genetic isolation from the Old World); and following on from this, urban population centres, with established cross-continental trade routes linking them with one another. Native American civilizations for the most part seem to have been far more independent, tribal, self-contained and isolationist as a result, with the few exceptions to this, such as the Incans arising too late to make the difference. Given the geography of the Americas, maritime trade routes would have been the most viable option to facilitate this. And the most notable thing which Native American civilization lacked, which proved to be so all-important in disseminating wealth, resources, technological, scientific and military advancements across the Old World, was a thalassocracy; look at the list of examples, and you'll notice that not a single Native American thalassocracy ever arose. No Native American seafaring cultures which could have plausibly formed a Thalassocracy ever managed to achieve the levels of cohesion required to qualify, with the candidate which arguably came closest IOTL, the Haida, coming no closer to achieving this than the early Vikings did, with tribal factionalism and infighting severely limiting the reach and influence of the Haida (which resulted in the Koryaks splitting away, losing their ties and links with the Haida, and in doing so, cut off the last and only established maritime trade link between the Americas and the New World, roughly 10-5,000 years ago).
So, then, how about this for a POD to help remedy both big issues; find some way to unify the proto-Haida clans on one of the major islands in the Haida Gwaii archipelago, and from there, unify the multiple Haida clans under a single Emperor (or rather, as a matriarchal civilization, an Empress), expanding the area of its rule to encompass the islands of OTL's British Columbia and the Alaskan Panhandle- essentially, developing the Haida into a matriarchal Amerindian Japan analogue. ITTL, the split between the Haida and the Koryaks of OTL's Kamchatka Krai (as well as the Nivkh people of northern Sakhalin and the Amur River estuary, who are also now believed to have been originally colonists from British Columbia) either never happens, or their territories are conquered and their tribes assimilated by the Haida, in much the same manner as the Japanese did with the Australasians across Saikaido, and at a similar juncture (1,500-1,000 ya). And in doing so, TTL's Haida Empire's thalassocracy spans both continents, with its naval territories extending across the Sea of Okhotsk, making it a neighbor and direct trade partner of the Japanese (with potential scope for the Ainu to develop their own Ryukyu Kingdom analogue themselves as a result of this, with the trade route through their archipelago enabling them to capitalize, become intermediaries and form a thalassocracy of their own).
As such, ITTL, a Trans-Aleutian inter-continental maritime trade route- essentially, the same deal as OTL's much later Maritime Fur Trade- is firmly established between the Pacific North-East of Asia and the Pacific North-West of the Americas by the Native Americans themselves, 1,000 to 500 years earlier than it was IOTL, making it a contemporary of the European Hanseatic League (and using this analogy, also making this solution potentially viable even if the original Haida Empire has already collapsed and fragmented by this stage, so long as enough of the port market settlements and the trade connections between them still remain). Or, indeed, to the Viking settlements on Newfoundland. And in doing so, this 'Aleutian Interchange' brings them up to a similar level roughly on a par with those of the Japanese and Koreans over the course of the next few hundred years, with these technological developments (along with domesticates, crops, inter-racial merchant-native populations, Old World diseases, and earlier resistance to them) spreading southwards, along the Pacific coast, and eastwards, to Native American tribal groups further inland, through the Haida's trade links.
I mean colonies on other continents. And colonies wouldn't necessarily make the Native Americans"on par" with Europe, however, in order to establish colonies far away you do need advanced technology in order to achieve such a feat.
Zachariah
Banned
Not necessarily- the Koryaks and the Nivkh prove that you don't need advanced technology in order for the Native Americans to establish colonial settlements on another continent. You would, however, need some form of unified, centralized authoritative structure for those colonies to remain part of a larger Amerindian Empire, as opposed to merely becoming the equivalent of Barbary States at best.
The ancient Polynesians navigated thousands of miles of ocean and colonized hundreds of islands hundreds of years before the Europeans discovered the Americas. Do they count as "having advanced technology" by your standards? What I mean is that having a strong maritime tradition doesn't necessarily help in resisting European colonialism.
I don't think it has either been debunked nor confirmed, but it does make some sense; while, the climate bands don't necessarily stop the integration of the American complex but rather slow it down. Take for example corn, which did reach as far as the Great Lakes even though its wild variant (teosinte) was first domesticated in southern Mexico.
To overcome this, American civilizations will need extra help; that is more domesticated (both animal and agricultural) capable of adapting to a wider variety of climates in both North and South America so they can spread and be shared. The Americas were not only missing large draft and riding animals (cattle and horses/camels) but also small domestic animals that breed relatively quickly for food (pigs).
The Americas fared better when it came to agricultural domesticates; corn, sweet potatoes, and potatoes are amazing crops unmatched in calorie output. Nevertheless, some variety here could have helped. Wheat is much less labor intensive than corn and can grow farther north, while rice can provide multiple crop cycles a year with the right climate. This is less important but still useful.
It seems that some balsa-log "sailors" from Equador / Peru did sporadically make contact with Mexico. A key breakthrough to have the continents integrate would be for Mesoamerican civilizations to adopt the South American drafts and have them cross into the Carribean as early as possible. And hopefully, from there, its sail technology can be perfected and integrated with local canoes, helping the Carribean act as a sort of American-Mediterranean.
All of this goes a long way to helping the Americas develop. But lots of other things would still have to happen to help its civilizations grow on par with Europe. There is no guarantee that the same discoveries will occur; that metallurgy will be adapted into a post-iron stage, that deep sea voyaging would need to be developed, gunpowder and paper be discovered, etc. At the same time you could get something that advances so difrently it would be unrecognizable.
Pre-Columbian contact with the Old World. Say, a consistent trade route with West Africa.
I think Mesoamerican civilizations getting to the Iron Age would be a huge help for them to resist European encroachment. Maybe through more intense Flower Wars that prompt more serious weapon and armor development. Is there any reason for why the Mesoamerican civs didn't develop iron smelting? They knew how to purify and mold gold and silver.
I completely forgot about the Polynesians, my bad!
And yes, I agree with your point that strong maritime capabilities don't necessarily mean that a civilization will avoid colonization, however, it would help a bit. What I'm trying to ask is could these alternate Native American civilizations reach a point where they could have colonial empires like those in Europe.