What would need to change about the new world for it to dominate the old world?

Diamond's thesis is academically controversial, even if lots of laymen accept it at face value because he writes well. I personally think Eight Eurocentric Historians countered GGS quite well.
Anyhow I mostly agree with your first and third points, although I'd note that Iroquois agriculture was significantly more productive without plows than early New English settlers' agriculture (with plows), and according to a Dutch (IIRC) explorer rudimentary plows with a relative of the llama were being used on a Chilean island that had had minimal Spanish contact by that point.
I disagree with the axes hypothesis because the temperate zone is actually split up by huge mountains and deserts, and because I haven't yet been introduced to any definitive evidence.

Fair enough, I don't claim Diamond's documentary is the be-all and end-all, I just found it interesting and though provoking, it is worth watching if you are interested on this topic at any rate. As to the point of the differing size of the landmasses of Eurasia + Africa (also sometimes called "the World Island") I have little doubt that the large size of this super-continent was important because it brought with it more possible areas for different civilizations to develop and brought much more opportunities for intercultural contact that helped spread ideas and new technologies. As to the North/South orientation of the Americas vs the East/West Orientation of Eurasia I admit this is probably the most difficult aspect to prove (mountains and land inhospitable for other non-latitude reasons certainly are confounds, but its also not like the Americas don't have big mountain ranges "ruining" what would have been habitable land). I would guess that if were were to compare the proportion (because the Eurasian landmass is simply a lot larger than the American land mass so raw numbers wouldn't be helpful) of land in Eurasia that is prime for human habitability to the proportion of land in America that is prime we would see the ratio is much higher for Eurasia. I could be wrong here though and even if I am right this is probably the weakest factor of the ones I mentioned (although it does indirectly contribute to the isolation of these American cultures which affects their poor infectious disease resistance).

As to domestic farm animals; they are really useful for helping develop a settled domestic and urban society. To get real, rapid technological development you need to develop a creative class; people who can spend their time creating new things and developing new, more efficient technologies rather than having to constantly hunt, gather or farm just to feed themselves and their families. This means the person who does do the farming has to not just be able to generate enough food for themselves but also for the people who are not farmers. Here pack animals can really help one farmer do the same work that would have taken several farmers without animals.
 
As to domestic farm animals; they are really useful for helping develop a settled domestic and urban society. To get real, rapid technological development you need to develop a creative class; people who can spend their time creating new things and developing new, more efficient technologies rather than having to constantly hunt, gather or farm just to feed themselves and their families. This means the person who does do the farming has to not just be able to generate enough food for themselves but also for the people who are not farmers. Here pack animals can really help one farmer do the same work that would have taken several farmers without animals.
Yes, but rather paradoxically plow-less Iroquois agriculture produced much more surpluses (per land area, not per capita) than European agriculture in the same period and the same region. The Paradox of Plows and Productivity: An Agronomic Comparison of Cereal Grain Production under Iroquois Hoe Culture and European Plow Culture in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries is an article that directly addresses this, you should see it here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3098/ah.2011.85.4.460?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
 
Yes, but rather paradoxically plow-less Iroquois agriculture produced much more surpluses (per land area, not per capita) than European agriculture in the same period and the same region. The Paradox of Plows and Productivity: An Agronomic Comparison of Cereal Grain Production under Iroquois Hoe Culture and European Plow Culture in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries is an article that directly addresses this, you should see it here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3098/ah.2011.85.4.460?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents


I don't have access to the full article but from reading the abstract seems to be comparing productivity per acre not per person. That is a key distinction. The Iroquois may be able to use the land (which they have lived on for generations vs the settlers who have only recently arrived) more efficiently long term (in this example they seem to be more efficient because they are less likely than the Europeans to over-stress/over-exploit the land via plowing). The Iroquois farmers may have been able to gain more food per acre then the White Americans (after an extended period of over-use of the land) but I doubt that the Iroquois farmers generated more food per farmer working the land (ie. that same acre of land being farmed by hand without plowing by the Iroquois probably required much more farmers to work it then the amount of settler farmers that later worked the same acre of land with plows and pack animals). That means the same number of settler farmers may have produced the same or even more food per person/per hour labour even if their use of the land was less efficient using plowing. This is important in an area where there is an excess of farmland (like the US, whereas the reverse would be true in places like Japan where farmland is very limited) and food produced per farmer is key for technological development because it determines how many non-farmers and hence how many urban conglomerations are possible in a civilization. I cant really tell any of this without full access to the article. Do you have access to the full paper? If so, could you please post some relevant parts of it as I would be interested to see whether my idea about this is correct or not. Either way it certainly is an interesting finding and does show that the New World civilizations did indeed have some in-born advantages in agriculture (corn being more efficient than wheat and plow-less farming helping preserve the fertility of the soil) that I was unaware of, at least in terms of long-term land productivity. However I would doubt that this advantage would completely offset the multitude of advantages Eurasian domestic farm animals provide beyond just pulling a plow. Furthermore although farm animals take agricultural capacity and man-hours just to feed and maintain, the are useful for providing food security (and importantly a source of protein) in the winter months, where it is impossible to farm in the cooler regions of the globe (like much of Europe or Iroquois land) and thus help the civilizations with a verity of domestic farm animals endure the "lean times" of the year with a larger resident population.

NOTE: i remember hearing that Eastern Asia's rice paddy farming was also more efficient per acre than European cereal farming (although I may be wrong about this). it would be interesting to see how Iroquois maize agriculture stacks up against this method (as East Asia also had access to large pack animals).
 
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I think horses were already declining before humans were introduced, so it would be ASB in that case.

Horses went extinct in N.A. about 12000 years ago give or take a few hundred years, humans had been in north america for several thousand years already at this point. They likely coexisted for a long time... probably a thousand years or more. Likely a long enough time (if the dice had rolled differently) to have a POD for their domestication without the need for ASBs.
 

jahenders

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So, I think we've seen thus far that to make the new world dominate over the old world it would take huge changes (geological reconfiguration, different evolution, the presence of different animals, etc.) -- few things that humans could control/decide.

I'd like to mention a few human changes that could significantly affect the balance of power (old v new), though not likely to lead to the new dominating:

1) Stronger native nations. IOTL most Native Americans (NAs) were primarily associated with a local tribe and (some) a larger nation. In any case, the structures were mostly loose and cooperation limited. If, instead, most of the NAs were in more centralized nations and those nations more zealously recognized and guarded their borders, the Europeans would have had a much harder time progressing incrementally.

2) More aggressive NAs. In many cases, relations with the arriving Europeans were (at least initially) friendly or businesslike. This definitely benefited the NAs in many cases. However, if they were more often hostile, slaughtering all Europeans that came ashore, the Europeans would likely move on to try to find friendlier areas.
 
So, I think we've seen thus far that to make the new world dominate over the old world it would take huge changes (geological reconfiguration, different evolution, the presence of different animals, etc.) -- few things that humans could control/decide.

I'd like to mention a few human changes that could significantly affect the balance of power (old v new), though not likely to lead to the new dominating:

1) Stronger native nations. IOTL most Native Americans (NAs) were primarily associated with a local tribe and (some) a larger nation. In any case, the structures were mostly loose and cooperation limited. If, instead, most of the NAs were in more centralized nations and those nations more zealously recognized and guarded their borders, the Europeans would have had a much harder time progressing incrementally.

2) More aggressive NAs. In many cases, relations with the arriving Europeans were (at least initially) friendly or businesslike. This definitely benefited the NAs in many cases. However, if they were more often hostile, slaughtering all Europeans that came ashore, the Europeans would likely move on to try to find friendlier areas.
With respect to (1), there were plenty of strong native nations (e.g. the Inca, the Aztecs); it didn't especially help them (indeed, having a single central power structure to dominate made the conquests of Mexico and Peru easier than that of e.g. the Great Plains, where the much looser tribal confederations were tied with general mobility and individual raiders).
 
1) Stronger native nations. IOTL most Native Americans (NAs) were primarily associated with a local tribe and (some) a larger nation. In any case, the structures were mostly loose and cooperation limited. If, instead, most of the NAs were in more centralized nations and those nations more zealously recognized and guarded their borders, the Europeans would have had a much harder time progressing incrementally.

2) More aggressive NAs. In many cases, relations with the arriving Europeans were (at least initially) friendly or businesslike. This definitely benefited the NAs in many cases. However, if they were more often hostile, slaughtering all Europeans that came ashore, the Europeans would likely move on to try to find friendlier areas.

1) would actually be pretty bad, since stronger and more organised states like in Mesoamerica just let the Spanish insert themselves as the new kings. The peoples who performed best against European resistance were those in strategic places (Iroquois) or those with anarchic manners of organisation like the Comanche. That mode of organisation was actually an advantage, since it let the situation the Comanche, Sioux, etc. found themselves in evolve organically and let the nation as a whole take the best course of action.

2) The Mapuche basically did that to Spain and remained independent until the late 19th century when technology and their smaller population proved insurmountable against Argentines and Chileans hellbent on conquest. Other groups ended up more friendly, since they loved European trade goods. And why shouldn't they, since they made life easier and gave an advantage over neighbours.

So neither seem particularly viable options. A needlessly hostile tribe (remember, they don't know what it'll mean when Europeans settle) in the case of 2) will end up outcompeted by tribes who accept European trade.
 
A needlessly hostile tribe (remember, they don't know what it'll mean when Europeans settle) in the case of 2) will end up outcompeted by tribes who accept European trade.
The Iroquois and their neighbors are a very good example of this. Yes, they were eventually defeated and contained post-ARW, but that's more than 150 years after from first contact with Europeans. In the meantime, their trade with the Dutch and English meant that they were able to conquer or exterminate most of their neighbors to establish hegemony over a much wider area than they had ever ruled.
 
One could argue they simply had the bad luck of starting 15,000 years "late". Have Mt. Toba, Mt. Baekdu or Monte Nuovo erupt with a VEI 9 amount of force and literally knock the Old World back into the Stone Age and the odds would be considerably evened.
 
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