Why didn't civilization develop along the Mississippi?

NothingNow

Banned
What's interesitng is that the Cahokian states collapsed well before European contact. So something else held them back.

Not really. There's a couple periods. The Classical period's end across the americas, and the crash of the 16th century. Cabeza de Vaca, de Soto, and de Leon all talked about full blown cities in the Mississippi basin, and the gulf coast. A lot of times the expeditions just had to haul ass, while being pursued by one city or another after a raid for provisions.

The decline in the 1200s is probably because of other sites eclipsing it, and migration, or a sacking, not a die-off. It's at the beginning of the end of the Medieval Warm period though, so climate shifts were likely a factor as well.

A bit horrifying given that its populatoin declined in the 1200s, no?
Not really. Remember, Europe's population crashed just as hard during the crisis of the late middle ages (from the great famine to the end of the first black plague pandemic or 1400, depending on how you count things.)

That said, between the two major die-offs, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if the world's population dropped by about 1/2 to a 1/3 between 1300 and 1600.
 
Really, perhaps the creation of a massive North American empire equivalent to the Aztecs or Inca only needs one extra crop. IMO meadow barley doesn't get enough love whenever we have these conversations, I think a mutant large-seeded meadow barley would be a great domesticate for Eastern North America.

This is something I've long thought. One important thing Diamond notes in GG&S is that wheat and barley were 'easy' to domesticate, being large seeded grains that adapted very easily to planting/watering/harvesting, etc. N. America had nothing comparable. Put a comparable grain somewhere in the Mississippi valley, and mound builders have a much better shot at getting to that monument building stage...
 
Really, perhaps the creation of a massive North American empire equivalent to the Aztecs or Inca only needs one extra crop. IMO meadow barley doesn't get enough love whenever we have these conversations, I think a mutant large-seeded meadow barley would be a great domesticate for Eastern North America.

What if a ship from the Roman empire made it to the Americas and the Mississippi, they trade barley and wheat for supplies they need to go home. After the Romans leave they don't return, but they leave wheat, barley, and diseases. The new crops help Cahokia to recover, and its diseases have spread to other tribes, weakening them. Cahokia assimilates the weakened tribes into its own civilization, forging a powerful empire.
 

Flubber

Banned
What if...


Just... stop. Okay? Just stop.

This is an oft discussed topic here. The search function will dredge up hundreds of threads for you to read. What you're proposing is no different than hundreds earlier of failed proposals. You don't yet know most of things you need to know and nothing you suggest will be worthwhile until you know those things.

Look at the question of disease. You, and too many others should already know better, are blithely assuming that all we need is a Viking Patient Zero to come ashore in 1000CE with smallpox and the Amerinds will all be somehow magically immune when Columbus arrives in 1492. Diseases don't work that way. In order to build up immunities over generations, populations need repeated infections and repeated infections require a "reservoir" for that disease in either that population or nature.

De Soto brought smallpox and other diseases with him when he explored what would become the US southeast in the 1540s. When the French explored the same region a century later, they only found ruins where de Soto had described towns and villages within sight of each other. Smallpox and other diseases had savaged the region but, because there was no "continuity of infection", Amerinds in North America remained susceptible of continued to die of smallpox up through the 1840s-50s.

Prior to the development of inoculation and immunization, the only thing which will provide the Americas with resistance to Eurasian diseases is constant contact with Eurasia and an Americas in constant contact with Eurasia isn't going to be waiting to be discovered in 1492.
 
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