WI: Empty Lands

[Cavendish]

Would there be any reason for the Polynesians to settle the West Coast of South America?

Without anyone to trade with, and with no (or very little) local food sources it would hardly be seen as fit for settlement. Remember that the West Coast of South America is not like New Zealand; with lush native forests filled with helpless flightless birds and other animals.

 

[Umbral]

In an empty Americas scenario, Columbus crue might have died of hunger, and so might have the vikings in Greenland, if it is true that they got some food through trade or raids from the Skaerlings at some point.

Without hostile natives, I suspect the Greenlanders would just have migrated into the more hospitable americas when the climate worsened. At the very least, there would have been more ships available.

Would there be any reason for the Polynesians to settle the West Coast of South America?

Without anyone to trade with, and with no (or very little) local food sources it would hardly be seen as fit for settlement. Remember that the West Coast of South America is not like New Zealand; with lush native forests filled with helpless flightless birds and other animals.

The polynesians tried to settle pretty much any rock that stuck out of the ocean. With megafauna, South america would have been far more inviting than, say, the Aleutians.

 

[Cavendish]

The polynesians tried to settle pretty much any rock that stuck out of the ocean. With megafauna, South america would have been far more inviting than, say, the Aleutians.

The only large animals suitable for food in that part of the world were Otters, Seals and Sealions, seafood was plentiful, however on land there isn't much to eat.

Without people in the Americas to cultivate crops, it's questionable if they would of been able to spread as far as they did anyway (the Kumara from South America was a Maori stable).

 

[Fraxinensis]

That is another issue I had not yet though of yet: why would people stay in America? The Asian hunters crossed the land bridge to hunt. They would otherwise have hunted in Asia. It mattered very little to them where they ended up. The Polynesians and the Vikings, however, might face too big a change in lifestyle to bother with settlement. Without the Indians to show them that human habitation is possible, they might not bother to go at all.

Of course, I still think that the Europeans would see some use for the lands: as someone mentioned above, perhaps the settlement of Australia would be a better parallell. People wouldn't be all that interested at first, maybe they'd send a few criminals and some religious misfits, and eventually the great resources of the Americas would be discovered. If Mammoths, etc. survive, America would be known for weird fauna as well.

Another thought I have had since posting is that perhaps there would be an earlier settlement of the Americas by either Europeans or Asians. If anyone had ended up there (by accident perhaps) they might not be able to go home. In OTL they would have been killed or absorbed by the Indians...in TTL they would (provided they have men and women present) be the first natives. Thus, maybe you get an America sparsely populated by Portuguese (or something) speaking "natives."

 

[Umbral]

That is possible. However on the "Why would people go there" Getting away from competition and raids by other human beings would be a good reason.

The Norse might end up in Greenland for the same reasons as OTL, and would move south because the climate was better and there was more food.

 

[Cavendish]

That is another issue I had not yet though of yet: why would people stay in America? The Asian hunters crossed the land bridge to hunt. They would otherwise have hunted in Asia. It mattered very little to them where they ended up. The Polynesians and the Vikings, however, might face too big a change in lifestyle to bother with settlement. Without the Indians to show them that human habitation is possible, they might not bother to go at all.

Of course, I still think that the Europeans would see some use for the lands: as someone mentioned above, perhaps the settlement of Australia would be a better parallell. People wouldn't be all that interested at first, maybe they'd send a few criminals and some religious misfits, and eventually the great resources of the Americas would be discovered. If Mammoths, etc. survive, America would be known for weird fauna as well.

Another thought I have had since posting is that perhaps there would be an earlier settlement of the Americas by either Europeans or Asians. If anyone had ended up there (by accident perhaps) they might not be able to go home. In OTL they would have been killed or absorbed by the Indians...in TTL they would (provided they have men and women present) be the first natives. Thus, maybe you get an America sparsely populated by Portuguese (or something) speaking "natives."

I don't know if a population like that would be sustainable.
To begin with, there would be so few women, if any, that only a few children would be born.
The second generation may be more adapted to the land, however they would likely not have any to carry on the population with, outside of siblings or cousins.

 

[Dave Howery]

The 'empty land' scenario is a bit hard to imagine. It wasn't just Asians walking over from Siberia who peopled the Americas... they also came by boats. In fact, the best guess nowadays is that Asians dribbled into the Americas in small waves, some by foot and some by boat, landing on the now-CA coast. We know that people back then were capable of building fairly good boats because they moved into Australia 40,000 years ago, and had to have boats to have done that. The timeframe for settling the Americas (by modern best guess) is 20-12,000 years ago, well after the time that boats were invented... so, along with keeping the Asians from walking into the Americas, you're going to have to stop them from sailing there as well...

 

[NapoleonXIV]

One of the main things the Vikings came for was timber, in very short supply in either Iceland or Greenland by this time. What kept them coming was good farmland, also in short supply at home, and things like berries etc. The Indians were the main reason they left, hostile people who had nothing.

The Spaniards found an urban civilisation, as rich as their own and relatively defenseless against them.

If the Western Hemisphere was empty it would have been settled North to South, but beginning in about 1000. If there were Solutreans, but no crops to be carried back home and cause a population explosion, it might well have never been settled or colonised at all. European immigration would remain a tiny trickle, very influential on existing native cultures (esp thru the great plagues) but changing them into something we would barely recognize over 1000 years rather than supplanting them entirely.

 

[mojojojo]

In an empty America scenario would the ivory from mammoths and mastodons be of enough value to get people from the Old World interested in coming over and staying?

 

[Valdemar II]

In an empty America scenario would the ivory from mammoths and mastodons be of enough value to get people from the Old World interested in coming over and staying?

Likely yes one of the reason Greenland was colonised was to get furs and walrus tooth.

 

[Fraxinensis]

Ivory might be a serious motivator, in fact. Before the discovery of the New World, Ivory was available in India and Africa, but both of those places were full of people, and from a European perspective were difficult to reach for other reasons.

Thus, we would have Europeans hunting a (probably already shrinking) population of Mammoths. European powers hungry for ivory would probably claim land primarily in the North. I expect there would be some fairly bitter conflict about the rights to that land...then I wonder what happens to the people left in the South. I figure they would probably start farming, and probably develope. Once they found gold and other metals (those who were located in areas where there was gold) this would likely shift the balance of power, with the southern colonists suddenly better off than those who are still in the north hunting mammoths to extinction.

 

[SRT]

Wouldn't this ultimately reward Portugese efforts to reach India?

I think that there could be still European expansion into Africa (especially south and east Africa), and still trade with India and East Africa, etc.

One thing to remember is that even without American gold, Spain (or, rather, Castile, though I don't really see how Spain uniting is butterflied away) was still a rather powerful country.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Has no one read Doug Hoff's epic saga magnum opus of glory?

 

[Atom]

Has no one read Doug Hoff's epic saga magnum opus of glory?

Yes, I have. Thanks for posting that full directory! I previously had to rely on Google's usenet search.

 

[Admiral Brown]

Very interesting thread, Fraxinensis!

That is another issue I had not yet though of yet: why would people stay in America? The Asian hunters crossed the land bridge to hunt. They would otherwise have hunted in Asia. It mattered very little to them where they ended up. The Polynesians and the Vikings, however, might face too big a change in lifestyle to bother with settlement. Without the Indians to show them that human habitation is possible, they might not bother to go at all.

As Umbral has pointed out, the Polynesians settled on lands fully empty, where nobody was there to tell them how to live. And while parts of the coasts of Peru and the North of Chile are indeed very desertic*, both the South of Chile and the Northern coast of South America aren't.

In fact, Southern Chile (where some chicken bones were found) is indeed quite similar to New Sealand ... with a bonus: It has forrests with birds... + wild strawberries and other fruits + small deer and a few small camelids to hunt + no dangerous predators except pumas (IOTL). It's the East coast of Patagonia which is a cold semi-dessert, with few things except sea mammals and penguins at the coast. I think that Polynesians will be able to survive quite well in thew west coast of South America, and to introduce their crops and domesticated animals (pigs) without any trouble, ...if they get there in sufficient numbers.

Of course, I don't see massive immigration from Tahiti to Chile. But it a group sailing from Easter Islands gets there, and this group has enough people (including women, of course) to give rise to a "native" population, they might well survive and multiply.

*With plenty of fish at the sea, however.

 

[Admiral Brown]

I'm not an expert on Latin American history, but knowing how large a population of Indians there are in many Latin American countries I suspect that Spaniards going to an empty New World would face a much different experience than those who went over in OTL.

Yes, it'll be completely different, and so will be the society that's establiched there. It might be more like Carmen de Patagones, or like the failed colony of Floridablanca, two small "settlement colonies" founded by Spain in Patagonia in the XVIII century. They were populated by Spanish "labriegos" (peasants), without the use of any form of forced labour, wether Indian or African. And the society that was created differed greatly from that of, let's say, Potosí or Lima.

 

[Cavendish]

Very interesting thread, Fraxinensis!



As Umbral has pointed out, the Polynesians settled on lands fully empty, where nobody was there to tell them how to live. And while parts of the coasts of Peru and the North of Chile are indeed very desertic*, both the South of Chile and the Northern coast of South America aren't.

In fact, Southern Chile (where some chicken bones were found) is indeed quite similar to New Sealand ... with a bonus: It has forrests with birds... + wild strawberries and other fruits + small deer and a few small camelids to hunt + no dangerous predators except pumas (IOTL). It's the East coast of Patagonia which is a cold semi-dessert, with few things except sea mammals and penguins at the coast. I think that Polynesians will be able to survive quite well in thew west coast of South America, and to introduce their crops and domesticated animals (pigs) without any trouble, ...if they get there in sufficient numbers.

Of course, I don't see massive immigration from Tahiti to Chile. But it a group sailing from Easter Islands gets there, and this group has enough people (including women, of course) to give rise to a "native" population, they might well survive and multiply.

*With plenty of fish at the sea, however.

I'm not sure how far South you'd have to go in Chile for it to get like that. And if you go too far south the Ocean currents are too unfavourable get there, let along return home to tell potential settlers.

The evience of polynesian visitors is mostly from Peru. I'd like to see where you read about the chicken bones in Southern Chile though, is it on the internet?

 

[Constantinople]

Im suprised hardly anyone has read Empty America! It may literally be the best timeline on the internet...

 

[mojojojo]

Im suprised hardly anyone has read Empty America! It may literally be the best timeline on the internet...

Just started reading it, and it is good . But I do have to wonder, how realistic is it for the First Europeans in an Empty America to start domesticating Dire Wolves and Mammoths?

 

[bard32]

Hello everyone, this is my first post. I hope that there is no rule or tradition against starting a new thread as one's first post: if there is I apologize. However, I think I do have a rather interesting hypothetical.

Suppose the group of Asian hunters who crossed the Berring Land Bridge either never made it or failed to establish lasting human population there. If all Native Americans are descended from them, then we are faced with two large, empty continents until some more established powers find them. Conversely, if we buy in to the Solutrean hypothesis or one of the Pacific models, we would have a different group of people settling the New World. As far as I can see it, I imagine one of three things would happen:

A. Pacific islanders did settle in the Americas. When Europeans arrive in the 15th century, they find strange, strange-looking (to them) natives. Thus, things go mostly as they do in OTL.

B. The lands are completely empty. Ice-age megafauna may still exist, even in extremely large numbers. I suspect the nations of Europe would settle in to this land quite comfortably: without the need to subdue natives, free land and resources might be quite a draw to Europeans. American society would likely develope on a "closer to Europe" line: though in OTL colonists sometimes mingled with the Indians (resulting in nations like modern-day Mexico) and other times did not, but nonetheless saw them as a kind of example of a different society (modern-day America). Without their example, the Americas might seem more like a new part of Europe than a New World.

C. Europeans arrive and meet...Europeans. Personally, I don't think Solutrean "natives" would be treated much better than the natives in OTL: they would still be pagans, still speak a strange language, and still be in the way. However, after they are mostly wiped out by disease, they might be more able to integrate in to European culture: convert, learn English, Spanish, Portugues, Dutch, etc., and you're just another white person. Of course, they might still be seen as low class, but they would probably not be the object of a campaign to kill them off.

Other than that, I can perhaps see a larger population in eastern Asia, due to the descendents of the hunters who did not leave. However, I expect that the Native Americans are descended from a sufficiently small group that there is not likely to be much effect. If there were, I suppose either pressure on Europe from the East results in quicker discovery of the New World, or pressure in the East results in settlement of more and more Pacific islands, perhaps culminating in discovery of the New World from the other side (and subsequent Asian colonization). However, if the population that left Asian is small enough, I suspect that them remaining in Asia could eliminate the human settlement of North America without having a large effect on the rest of the world.

If anyone has any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Back in 1985, Harry Turteldove, writing under the pseudonym Eric G. Iverson, had a novelette about Europeans arriving in America and finding it occupied by Homo erectus.