WI: American Horses

If American horses survived and domesticated (is that even likely to independently develop horse domestication?), what would be the effect on American society at whole?
 
Part of the reason there were not the massive number of diseases in the Americas compared to Eurasiafrica is the lack of close contact with domesticated animals. Horses MAY, and that's a big may, then cause the Americas to have one or two extra viral diseases that will then be sent back to Europe post-1492; but will do nothing to give Native Americans any type of immunity against the diseases Europeans will bring. And that's if they are domesticated. If they are you will see vastly different ecosystems. The Great Plains exist SOLELY because of Native's mass burning huge swaths to drive entire herds off cliffs (just because you have a use for every part of the bison, does not mean you use every part of every bison; even "benevolent" stereotypes are harmful to history); they won't need to do so if they have horses; the Great Plains would not be as Great in size. Depending on where the domestication is made and how far it spreads you may not see the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois to who haven't caught up to 21st century) conquer as far as the Illinois and Ohio rivers and pretty much depopulate Ohio except for some tributary tribes and turn it into their own private hunting ground by the 1740's; all by benefit of literally walking 500 miles.

I doubt you see horses on even the largest of Caribbean islands such as Cuba, Hispaniola, or Jamaica; but maybe the Spanish are surprised by cavalry in Mexico and Cortes is slowed down (guns are very primitive at this point, but they still have crossbows, and disease will quickly spread). As guns continue to improve and disease spreads the over all history of Conquest through the Americas as a whole might be slowed by maybe 20 to 50 years but no more. You'd need more domesticated animals (creating more native diseases that will attack the Europeans) and then you have a chance to delay some regions indefinitely and have native ruled and populated states remain; if you want to have a real chance for the natives to beat back Europeans give them an incentive to have built ocean going ships (ocean going boats like the Polynesians are not the same as actual ships like Chinese junks or European vessels) and that almost certainly requires at least copper metallurgy if not bronze and iron technology.
 
This is ASB material.
How?
Part of the reason there were not the massive number of diseases in the Americas compared to Eurasiafrica is the lack of close contact with domesticated animals. Horses MAY, and that's a big may, then cause the Americas to have one or two extra viral diseases that will then be sent back to Europe post-1492; but will do nothing to give Native Americans any type of immunity against the diseases Europeans will bring. And that's if they are domesticated. If they are you will see vastly different ecosystems. The Great Plains exist SOLELY because of Native's mass burning huge swaths to drive entire herds off cliffs (just because you have a use for every part of the bison, does not mean you use every part of every bison; even "benevolent" stereotypes are harmful to history); they won't need to do so if they have horses; the Great Plains would not be as Great in size. Depending on where the domestication is made and how far it spreads you may not see the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois to who haven't caught up to 21st century) conquer as far as the Illinois and Ohio rivers and pretty much depopulate Ohio except for some tributary tribes and turn it into their own private hunting ground by the 1740's; all by benefit of literally walking 500 miles.

I doubt you see horses on even the largest of Caribbean islands such as Cuba, Hispaniola, or Jamaica; but maybe the Spanish are surprised by cavalry in Mexico and Cortes is slowed down (guns are very primitive at this point, but they still have crossbows, and disease will quickly spread). As guns continue to improve and disease spreads the over all history of Conquest through the Americas as a whole might be slowed by maybe 20 to 50 years but no more. You'd need more domesticated animals (creating more native diseases that will attack the Europeans) and then you have a chance to delay some regions indefinitely and have native ruled and populated states remain; if you want to have a real chance for the natives to beat back Europeans give them an incentive to have built ocean going ships (ocean going boats like the Polynesians are not the same as actual ships like Chinese junks or European vessels) and that almost certainly requires at least copper metallurgy if not bronze and iron technology.
I don't aim for anything like native wank, I just want thought experiment

So, a smaller Great Plains then. And larger Iroquis. Would the moundbuilders affected too? And trading with Mesoamerica? Can a civilization breed horses there?
 
Also not all or even most horse species are domesticatable. Consider zebra. Odds are they just get hunted to extinction like most other big fauna.
 
Evolutionary and prehistoric PODs are all ASB. Also, horses did not go extinct simply by human action, but also climate change (according to most specialists) so this may also qualify as a POD changing global long-term climate, also generally considered ASB.

The phrase in the sticky is 'evolutionary and geological' not 'evolutionary and prehistoric'. I always thought that anything which could be attributed to human action was considered non-ASB, hence if a pre-historic cultural development gave rise to a taboo against horse meat preventing extinction that was OK.

Otherwise, labelling everything 'pre-historic' as ASB simply amounts to prejudice against non-literate societies.
 
Evolutionary and prehistoric PODs are all ASB. Also, horses did not go extinct simply by human action, but also climate change (according to most specialists) so this may also qualify as a POD changing global long-term climate, also generally considered ASB.
I.. didn't even said it's totally human action. And how this is evolutionary? This prevent a species to extinct, not creating another species
Also not all or even most horse species are domesticatable. Consider zebra. Odds are they just get hunted to extinction like most other big fauna.
That's why I wrote "survived and domesticated"
 
The Great Plains exist SOLELY because of Native's mass burning huge swaths to drive entire herds off cliffs

Incorrect sir! Part of the reason, yes. But much more of the damage was burning from lightning strikes, strikes that would create giant fires that burned tens of thousands of acres of land and only peter out when the fire encountered an area of no fuel due to the devastation caused by a wandering buffalo herd.
 
This thread might be of use to you: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-horse-survives-in-south-america.392688/

But how about a combination of these two ideas, one by Falecius in this thread:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/americas-equal-to-europe.396539/
My take:
The agricultural package DValdron described in "Land of Ice and Mice" is developed during the first peopling of the American Arctic in the mid-late fourth millennium BCE, and in turn kicks the development of a Boreal wetland parallel package also discussed in that timeline, with domestication of moose, wild rice, cattails and arrowhead. Say the Dall sheep is also domesticated in the Arctic, creating another local domesticate that can in time adapt to more southerly climes (good for the Southwest when they get there together o slight after maize, for instance).
By 2000 BCE you have the northern half of North America as agricultural perhaps with bronze and experimenting with iron, connected with the nascent civilizations of mesoamerica by trade routes through the Southwest and along the Mississippi, which disseminate crops and tech all over the continent. Coastal sea trade develops all along the Pacific coast and bring contact with the Andes, all the western face of the Americas gets potatoes and metallurgy, as large polities develop in the Mississippi basin thanks to enviable trading position. Naval technology passes to the Caribbean and the Atlantic, maybe through Mesoamerica. By 1000 BCE, you have settled or semisettled, somewhat metal-using societies from Greenland to Cape Horn (some already having decent iron), all interconnected by coastal navigation and big river basins, with cities in every region and diverse packages of crops and domesticates.
The POD also affects Arctic Eurasia, however, with cascading changes to the Old World. And needs lots of luck (early arctic peoples won't be as quick to develop metallurgy as DValdron's deems his Thule likely to, for example, which is a problem for the scenario).

Combined with an earlier chain of events described this thread by Jonathan Edelstein: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/ahc-horse-nomads-of-the-north-american-arctic.312541/
POD: In the 6th to 9th centuries AD, the proto-Yakuts get an early push north, courtesy of aggressive neighbors. They suffer terrible losses in adapting to the harsh tundra, but as they did in OTL, they survive, and the technological advantage provided by iron and horses enables them to occupy the lower Lena basin.

By the 13th century, they are many and strong: too many, in fact, to easily survive the pressures of the Little Ice Age. They need new territories, and individual clans begin moving east. About 1350 to 1375, they reach the Kolyma.

On the other side are mountains, which are nothing - they've crossed mountains before. But there are also the Chukchi, a warlike people who in OTL were able to stand off the Russians during the 18th century, and who won't simply stand aside for the Yakuts in TTL.

The Yakuts lose the first few battles - they may be better acclimatized than the Russians, but they're also less numerous and less well-armed. But their technology is attractive to the Chukchis, and after a few false starts, Yakut traders begin a process of cultural assimilation. Or maybe a Yakut adventurer manages to install himself as head of a Chukchi clan, and with the aid of loyal supporters, becomes head of a Yakutized Chukchi empire with Yakut blood strong among the upper class. Regardless, the Yakut cultural package reaches the Bering Strait by the end of the 15th century, although the people who carry it there are as much or more Chukchi as Yakut.

Summer, 1519: Aytal crouches in the prow of the boat, cursing his cousin who usurped the clan leadership from him. The winds are strong, the seas heavy and the sky forbidding, and the men are nearly as terrified as the horses and calves trussed in the bottom. But anything would be preferable to living - or more likely dying - under his cousin's rule, and ahead is the eastern land that he has heard of from fishermen. Surely there will be something for him there...

Eventually this leads to sustained contact between North America and Asia via Beringia. Over the course of several centuries or millennia the exchange of people between the two grows more robust and the peoples making the trip can carry greater amount of their own "package" i.e. cold adapted horses and other techniques of Arctic/Boreal agropastoralism. These horses spread southward via the trade networks envisioned by Falecius. Thus in North America there arises a flourishing population of horses, who have returned to their former home in a similar way to how they left.

It may be unlikely for both of these to occur in the same timeline but it isn't in the realm of impossibility. An earlier Lands of Ice and Mice is likely to reinforce a migration similar to the Yakuts and allows for it to go both ways too.

Considering both North America and Eurasia maintained faunal interchange since the breakup of Pangaea, it's a surprise to me that such an exchange didn't occur that way during the Holocene. Perhaps one was on the way OTL. A world without European contact as it happened in the OTL fifteenth century and nothing like it for a few centuries or millennia would allow for a faunal exchange of domesticated horses between the two continents as it happened in the past.

(Sorry for the Alerts Falecius and Jonathan Edelstein, I just wanted to give credit where credit was due)
 
Incorrect sir! Part of the reason, yes. But much more of the damage was burning from lightning strikes, strikes that would create giant fires that burned tens of thousands of acres of land and only peter out when the fire encountered an area of no fuel due to the devastation caused by a wandering buffalo herd.

No. Lightning strikes resulted in fewer prairie fires than previously thought and the Great Plains have been proven to be human made, as is most of "nature". Please don't join the pre-21st century thinking of pristine "natives" who are incapable of living "outside nature" and somehow lack free will to master their environment. People do them a disservice with such nature talk.
 
How?

I don't aim for anything like native wank, I just want thought experiment

So, a smaller Great Plains then. And larger Iroquis. Would the moundbuilders affected too? And trading with Mesoamerica? Can a civilization breed horses there?

Smaller Iroquois. As I said they probably would not have their advantage over the Midwest Indians if the Midwest Indians had horses FIRST. Depends on who domesticates the horse
 
On earlier threads, it was pointed out there was a good chance the American horse might be not as easily domesticable as ours. But even if it wasn't, as prey might it supplement other prey, and mean a slightly denser population of hunters?
 
No. Lightning strikes resulted in fewer prairie fires than previously thought and the Great Plains have been proven to be human made, as is most of "nature". Please don't join the pre-21st century thinking of pristine "natives" who are incapable of living "outside nature" and somehow lack free will to master their environment. People do them a disservice with such nature talk.

The book I read about the geographic history history of the Great Plains disagrees with you about the role of fire (particularly lightning) on the plains. I don't disagree that they had a huge impact on their environment but in this case we'll have to disagree.
 
No. Lightning strikes resulted in fewer prairie fires than previously thought and the Great Plains have been proven to be human made, as is most of "nature". Please don't join the pre-21st century thinking of pristine "natives" who are incapable of living "outside nature" and somehow lack free will to master their environment. People do them a disservice with such nature talk.

I suspect that you are thinking of the Midwest Savannah- and even more so the now extinct Eastern Savannah- which probably did get a lot of help from native fires, as opposed to the Great Plains per se, which is a steppe. The east coast was much more park-like (i.e. savannah-like) at first contact because of this. But most of the Great Plains are dry enough that grasses simply out-compete trees. And, of course, once they are established the grass/grazer interaction also suppresses trees. There's a reason it was called "The Great American Desert." Certainly this is true of the area between the Rockies and about 100 degrees longitude. Until horses arrived the (few) plains Indians were mostly river valley farmers, weren't they? The gigantic buffalo jump hunting style was much older, IIRC. The more recent ones were conducted on smaller scale, using beaters and runners, by otherwise sedentary peoples (as described by the Lewis and Clark expedition). I guess I really should look that up before I post... But cite a source. If it's a good one I'll buy it.

Also, I'll go ahead and call you out- your last two sentences are a straw man. Who said that? Answer- nobody. Nobody said that. They just disagreed with you that native-sparked wildfires were a significant factor in the dominance of grasses over trees on the Great Plains. Accusing someone of trivializing Native Americans when no one is in fact doing that says more about you than about them. But if it's the only way you feel that you can win the argument, then I guess that's what you're left with. Not very convincing, though, Brother. Resorting to straw men (or ad hominems) the moment someone disagrees with you is not a positive character trait. The confident man just backs up what he said.

To whit:

EDIT- Well, some quick research online revealed that the Great Plains (as an ecoregion) date from at least the Ogallala deposition about 5 to 10 million years ago, which tidily predates human habitation of the continent. In fact, it tidily predates humans, depending upon one's definition of "human." (Ardipithecus?) And they probably first started forming after the orogeny of the Rockies, in the Miocene, about when apes where first evolving, and not long after the Western Interior Seaway filled. I'm a bit shakier, here, but I think the Miocene is when large numbers of mammalian megafaunal grazers first appear, leading to more tree suppression. (The Miocene is characterized by an extensive spreading of grasslands in general.)

So I find it difficult to believe that the Great Plains exists "SOLELY" due to wildfires started by nonexistent natives.
 
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Why would the Iroquois even exist? Would the Iroquoian languages as a whole (or any American Indian language group) even exist in any form comparable to what we know them as?

Regarding the impacts on the Plains and elsewhere, you'd see far, far less bison than you did at the time of European contact with the region. This is because horses are a natural competitor to bison, and the reintroduction of horses combined with their extensive use by Plains Indians groups helped cause a major decrease in bison population. But unlike OTL, I don't see the indigenous overhunting of bison occurring since the natives will have time to incorporate bison hunting traditions and proper use patterns into their culture.

You'd without a doubt see full-fledged steppe empires in North America. Probably South America too if/when horses get there. Basically what the Comanche and such only hinted at evolving into, you would see. With this in mind, I could see parts of the Plains that were OTL used for river valley farming not even being used for that purpose, but also the western areas of the Mississippian cultural area will always be at great risk of being raided or plundered. Actually getting a native steppe empire to the Mississippi itself could be hard, since Arkansas and Missouri seem to be a bit rough terrain for that sort of warfare, but I could see it happening.

The same goes for Mesoamerica. A horse nomad empire (either Chichimeca or a group from further north) conquering the Valley of Mexico is basically like steppe nomads conquering China. One of the ultimate challenges for a group like that, but it could happen if you have a few thousand years of time.
 
Well, humans historically killed off most North American megafauna. (We think. And why it was so profound in North America compared to other places is a small mystery.) So once they have horses and are thus capable of it I don't see why they wouldn't start doing the same to the 'leftovers', like bison, given enough time. IIRC, bison numbers were dropping quite alarmingly long before white hunters entered the scene, due to natives hunting on horseback starting around 1600 or thereabouts. So I think that to have a powerful steppe culture you need a herd animal. Of course, that could also be a role filled by the horse...

I doubt that you'd get a gigantic Mongol-style conquest eastward.

Hear me out...

The Eurasian steppe is an east-west construct, whereas the North American steppe is a north-south construct. IIRC (not my area) the Mongols got as powerful as they were by incorporating other conquered steppe peoples into their armies as they headed westward, over those huge steppes. A North American pseudo-Mongol trying to head eastward couldn't do that. So I think you'd get something more like pseudo-Scythian or pseudo-Hun raiding eastward, rather than a pseudo-Mongol conquest.

If the pseudo-Mongols decided to head south, though, toward the riches of Mexico, then this might be possible. Like the Mongols, they might engage in side-diversions, perhaps as far as the Mississippi, which makes for one hell of an obstacle if it is defended. And of course, once they have central Mexico perhaps they'd decide to head east in force or something. (Lord knows the Central American montane jungle isn't exactly conducive to cavalry warfare.) So who knows? Also bear in mind that there is a practical northern boundary on large-scale horse survival under primitive ranching conditions in North America- just about at the US/Canadian border, or perhaps a little south of that.
 
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