WI: Europeans colonized America 1000 years earlier

Maybe have Basque or Breton fishermen to maintain a small outpost for safe haven during storm and smoking/salting their fish ?
 
Point is that the Americas already had their disease going IOTL, they didn´t affect Europeans much because of their more robust immunity system(brought up through heavy exchange/trade with other civilization and domestical animals use for millennia). You have syphilis but I´m not sure how you are gonna find something bigger. We should ask those question to people more expert on this.

Germ mutation.

Thing is, to be immune, you need continuous contact, like, animal-human, human-human contact can do the same with Europeans, but...they don't contacted America (that would be human-human contact) on a timespan of 1000 years.

Said germs would mutate, they would be different of what normally try to infect Europeans, so, when they go back to Europe...

There's a reason of why they try to vaccinate everyone, any mutation on a virus or a bacteria can start a epidemy, like, Spanish Flu, bad hygienic conditions, bad nutrition...
 

Skallagrim

Banned
It didn't OTL, since for the most part, all that trade just created a dependence on European goods rather than making the goods themselves. And why not, since even if the natives did get their own blacksmiths or what have you, they'd make inferior quality goods to what European blacksmiths were making, PLUS that means that that individual was no longer available to do other tasks since he was now spending all his time blacksmithing, so why not just get the white man to do it for you? Only more organised societies would be able to truly adapt metalworking, and there weren't a lot of those outside the East Coast.

I certainly agree with that last bit, but since we're assuming that there will be no real effort at mass settlement for some considerable time, those more organised societies are exactly the ones that might very well profit from extended contact with European traders. They're also the ones most likely to have something of value to offer the Europeans in return, which would make the trade worth the effort. I'm fairly certain they'd be very interested in handsomely paying the Europeans in exchange for certain technological instructions, horse-riding lessons etc. -- and in such a scenario, provided relations are amicable, the Europeans would have few reasons not to comply. Even if European governments would balk, there would be adventurous individuals who would see the potential in becoming the valued technological advised to some native ruler. It would hardly be the first time in history such a thing happened!

Again, I stress that this is not the most likely outcome of the whole "Europeans get there 1000 years early"-POD... but I think it is possible. That's why I reject the somewhat pessimistic tendency to simply say "Well, in all likelyhood the native Americans would still get a raw deal in the end". Sure. But how raw? How different from OTL would it get, under which circumstances? We can consider various outcomes, and I'm simply considering one possibility.

After all, if we want to reject a scenario just because it's not the most likely one, we can basically throw all of AH out of the window, since all we're doing here is exploring the roads not travelled anyway...
 
I doubt the tech exists at this point in time to get a ship to America. Europe at this point is just too divided and too torn up by the decline of the Roman Empire to have much interest in sailing off the western edge of the map, even if the technology to do so existed. There are lateen sails bouncing around in the period, sure, but mostly in the eastern Mediterranean - and the Persians and Greeks probably care more about their immediate neighbourhood than on looking to the ocean.

Crossing the Atlantic is hazardous, but not particularly demanding in terms of technology. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, small and very primitive boats undertook the crossing at times. In the modern era, people have done it in replicas of leather coracles and Viking ships, kayaks, reed floats and big surfboards. The need here is not technology, but knowledge: you have to know what you are doing. Without an understanding of prevailing winds, currents, and landfalls, it's not something anyone would willingly do, but someone has to do it to get that understanding. That's the real obstacle IMO.

Maybe have Basque or Breton fishermen to maintain a small outpost for safe haven during storm and smoking/salting their fish ?

THe problem is that these people didn't really get into high seas fishing until the High Middle Ages.
 
I would say that the Norse discovery of Vinland was at the best point in time before Columbus for a earlier European colonisation of America. It was in the middle of the warm period, where farming on Greenland was possible. There was a general population increase in Europe, the ship building technics produce ships, which could make the trip without any great risk. It still didn't happens, so a earlier colonisation is even more unlikely.
 
Sorry guys, a 500 AD discovery and then prolonged contact just isn't possible. The Compass has yet to reach Europe and the Astrolobe has yet to be invented both of which were pivotal in exploration and cartography. Without the invention of the Caravel you have less manouverable ships, less capability to sail windward and less ability to sail in coastal warters all of which are crucial to trans-continental exploration. Not to mention demographics are against the whole debacle and the earlier you go the lower the population density is or at the very least the incentive to go all the way to the Americas decreases. The Phoenicians would most certainly not mantain extensive contact or prioritize colonizing the Americas when they are so far away and they can set up colonies and outposts in the Mediterranian as they did in our time line.

Your best shot is having some miracle event where a fleet gets thrown off course and lands in the Americas somewhat intact and then somehow managing to survive until the next European contact likely around the date in our time line. You could have sparse contact, but continued supply would just be inconsistant and trade would be risky and perhaps outright unprofitable. To make it happen earlier, you have to make naval innovations happen earlier. The most probable scenario is that colonies develope by hopping between the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and then Northern Canada. But the big question is what would the motive be to go all the way to Canada?

A scenario for that would be perhaps the Black Plague never happens and thus Europe remains the dirty and overcrowded thus giving more incentive. . your best bet is on nations bordering the North Sea such as Scotland, The Irish States and the various polities of Scandinavia. It's interesting to note that prior to the black plague Norway was much more influential than it was after; it dominated the North Sea trade.
 
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I certainly agree with that last bit, but since we're assuming that there will be no real effort at mass settlement for some considerable time, those more organised societies are exactly the ones that might very well profit from extended contact with European traders. They're also the ones most likely to have something of value to offer the Europeans in return, which would make the trade worth the effort. I'm fairly certain they'd be very interested in handsomely paying the Europeans in exchange for certain technological instructions, horse-riding lessons etc. -- and in such a scenario, provided relations are amicable, the Europeans would have few reasons not to comply. Even if European governments would balk, there would be adventurous individuals who would see the potential in becoming the valued technological advised to some native ruler. It would hardly be the first time in history such a thing happened!

Again, I stress that this is not the most likely outcome of the whole "Europeans get there 1000 years early"-POD... but I think it is possible. That's why I reject the somewhat pessimistic tendency to simply say "Well, in all likelyhood the native Americans would still get a raw deal in the end". Sure. But how raw? How different from OTL would it get, under which circumstances? We can consider various outcomes, and I'm simply considering one possibility.

After all, if we want to reject a scenario just because it's not the most likely one, we can basically throw all of AH out of the window, since all we're doing here is exploring the roads not travelled anyway...

If you have extended contact, then you have an extended supply of goods to trade, and thus the same scenario happens as later on. There's also the fact that furs (without a doubt the main good the natives have to offer) are less valuable in Europe at the time since there's still so much land where the animals that provide them haven't been extirpated from.

Horses, yes, an obvious one. But metalworking? That's a bit different since it's so much more complex in the process from raw materials to the finished goods. Technology doesn't transfer as easily as it does in Sid Meier's Civilization.

Which organised civilisations are you thinking of? Mesoamerica certainly had them, and would be by far the most likely to go about the process you described. But elsewhere on the east coasts? And I guess the cultures that made terra preta in the Amazon, but I don't know if there's any good sources of metals around there. North of Mesoamerica, you had the Hopewell culture, which happened to be severely declining and wasn't particularly complex of societies though certainly organised.
 
If you have extended contact, then you have an extended supply of goods to trade, and thus the same scenario happens as later on. There's also the fact that furs (without a doubt the main good the natives have to offer) are less valuable in Europe at the time since there's still so much land where the animals that provide them haven't been extirpated from.

Horses, yes, an obvious one. But metalworking? That's a bit different since it's so much more complex in the process from raw materials to the finished goods. Technology doesn't transfer as easily as it does in Sid Meier's Civilization.

Which organised civilisations are you thinking of? Mesoamerica certainly had them, and would be by far the most likely to go about the process you described. But elsewhere on the east coasts? And I guess the cultures that made terra preta in the Amazon, but I don't know if there's any good sources of metals around there. North of Mesoamerica, you had the Hopewell culture, which happened to be severely declining and wasn't particularly complex of societies though certainly organised.
As far as metal in Brazil goes, there are sources of iron ore in the south near Mariana and Ouro Preto. Gold was found near Belo Horizonte in the 1690's. Nowadays, the country is a producer of tin, copper, and bauxite. However, I haven't found any sources of these metals near the Amazon.
 
Crossing the Atlantic is hazardous, but not particularly demanding in terms of technology. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, small and very primitive boats undertook the crossing at times. In the modern era, people have done it in replicas of leather coracles and Viking ships, kayaks, reed floats and big surfboards. The need here is not technology, but knowledge: you have to know what you are doing. Without an understanding of prevailing winds, currents, and landfalls, it's not something anyone would willingly do, but someone has to do it to get that understanding. That's the real obstacle IMO.



THe problem is that these people didn't really get into high seas fishing until the High Middle Ages.

In order to have colonization, as opposed to a few guys making it to landfall in the Western hemisphere alive and perhaps then having a chance of their descendants permanently mixed into the gene pool, you need not only to survive the crossing but to reliably be able to get back to where they came from, and then after doing so persuade others to make the trip.

Yeah, people have replicated the voyage of St Brendan or Polynesians reaching South America (and since then we've verified that some Polynesians apparently did that for real) but I don't think that equates to being able to do what the 16th century Europeans could do. There's a whole lot of stuff that goes into a successful wide ocean crossing. Not just having a boat that won't sink and sails handy enough to take advantage of less than perfectly convenient winds, nor even just navigational skills to have some clue where you've actually gotten to, but food and drink storage that will last you the probable duration of the journey.

As you say, a big part of it is big-picture knowledge of what you are doing as well as detail knowledge. The thing about Brendan replicas or Kon Tiki is, their modern sailors know America or Europe is out there somewhere, they know this ocean comes to some other end than a big waterfall off the edge of the Earth, that it doesn't go to infinity with no more islands anywhere, etc. And even so, if they "prove" that a 6th century Irish fisherman or a Phoenician trader or whoever could survive an ocean crossing, most likely any real world instances of that happening would result in the surviving crew kissing the soil of whatever tiny island they wind up on and stopping right there, never going home again because they know they won the lottery surviving and to try to sail back would be tempting the gods. For every one of them that did make it, in other words, are 5 or 10 or a thousand who perished miserably in the wide deep, some of them tragically just hours from a landfall that would have saved them if they had those few more hours--others out in the middle of nowhere. Mostly dying of dehydration or going mad and finally drinking the seawater I suppose. So the ones who made it one way do now have knowledge that would be useful to people like themselves back home, but first of all it wasn't their knowledge alone that saved them but also good fortune, and second they will never go home to share the knowledge base and build on it. And if they are daft enough to resolve to try and do it, the odds get these few; the survival rate, a number less than one, is squared and becomes a much smaller number you see. Also given the knowledge we do have today, we know for a fact that the way home is not to try to reverse your course on the way out; we know currents and winds gyre around and the following wind that brought you here is the headwind that forbids you to take that way back. Whatever you did learn about the route from home to here, you have to find a completely different route to get home--what you learned crossing the first way is only useful to the next gang of adventurers or unfortunates trying to retrace your steps.

Once someone finds a way there and back again, the odds that regular communications will start are much higher. Once ten or twenty voyages have been made round trip, we can start to talk about colonization, maybe, and then it is time to talk about motives and reasons. Until then the main motive the sailors have is pleading to their gods, "please please let us find some landfall and some water and we'll worship you for the rest of our miserable lives, just don't have us die out here like this!"
 
I don't think 5th century contact (let alone colonisation) is even remotely plausible. While the ships themselves might be able to traverse the ocean (Kon-Tiki etc. replicas proved it) the only way to do it would be island hopping (Scandinavia - Greenland - Aleutes - N.America? somewhat like the way the vikings discovered Vinland). Even if they did it, they'd probably die off like Vinlanders did without getting much word back to home countries.

The Compass has yet to reach Europe and the Astrolobe has yet to be invented both of which were pivotal in exploration and cartography.

Compass was first used for navigation in 11th century. And for sea-going travel, you need a *mariner's* astrolabe, not a regular one. The earliest date for that is 1295, records centre around 15th century, and the oldest surviving one is from 1554.

So the earliest we might get any contact is when it happened OTL with the vikings discovering Vinland.
 
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Skallagrim

Banned
If you have extended contact, then you have an extended supply of goods to trade, and thus the same scenario happens as later on.

I'm sorry, but it's unclear to me what you mean by this. What do you mean by "later on"? OTL? I don't get what you're trying to say here.


There's also the fact that furs (without a doubt the main good the natives have to offer) are less valuable in Europe at the time since there's still so much land where the animals that provide them haven't been extirpated from.

Furs were historically the major trade product in the north, and yes, the timeframe does not favour the transatlantic fur trade at all. But let’s not pretend that furs were the only thing the Americas had to offer. First of all, there’s the one thing that Europeans were looking for in OTL, namely gold. In certain regions, it’s really there and no-one’s ever going to say no to it. Besides that, there are certain crops unique to the Americas that can be offered to the Europeans. Maize, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, cashews, pecans, squashes and pumpkins—just to name a few crops—all came from the “New World”, and proved to be something the Europeans were interested in. In the north, maple syrup is sure as anything not going to be as profitable as furs were in OTL, but that’s something the northern regions might offer.

And then there’s tobacco. That’s always going to be a hit, and it’s logistically best to cultivate it in America, and ship the end product to Europe. I name this product in particular because if we assume that mass immigration of Europeans is not (at least not initially) a factor, I can easily imagine the European merchant-colonists employing allied natives in this particular undertaking. This leads to the exact conditions—Europeans and native Americans working in one community—that in OTL greatly aided the spread of knowledge and technical expertise, useful skills etc.

(EDIT: and there's also cocao, for which much the same goes as does for tobacco.)


Horses, yes, an obvious one. But metalworking? That's a bit different since it's so much more complex in the process from raw materials to the finished goods. Technology doesn't transfer as easily as it does in Sid Meier's Civilization.

Reality is certainly not a video game. But the spread of knowledge has often, all throughout history, been remarkably rapid. Of course, in many cases, cultures were closer together, didn't have an ocean separating them etc. There are factors hindering the process, absolutely. But I argue (as above) that trade would be interesting to both populations, and that certain business undertakings in this scenario are going to involve close contact and the actual teaching of certain skills to the native population— if only because it's far easier to train allied natives on-site to do the work than it is to move considerable numbers of Europeans across the ocean (at least initially). Also, I repeat that any smart native American ruler is going to see the value of certain technologies, and would be likely to richly reward any European willing to serve as an expert adviser.

This last possibility was greatly hindered in OTL because exactly the most organised societies likely to do this were his first by the Spaniards, and their rulers were overthrown rapidly. If we envision a scenario where the Europeans arrive without any such ambitions, or at least with initial numbers and means so limited as to prevent such an undertaking, the outcome of allied native states (as opposed to overtrown native states) becomes more likely. And with that, the prospect of native rulers—at peace with and trading with the European merchant-colonists—hiring Europeans as advisers becomes more realistic.

Which organised civilisations are you thinking of? Mesoamerica certainly had them, and would be by far the most likely to go about the process you described. But elsewhere on the east coasts? And I guess the cultures that made terra preta in the Amazon, but I don't know if there's any good sources of metals around there. North of Mesoamerica, you had the Hopewell culture, which happened to be severely declining and wasn't particularly complex of societies though certainly organised.

I also consider Mesoamerican polities to be the best candidates for this scenario. I don't know anything about good sources of metals in the Amazon, so I'd pretty much rule out the peoples in that region. As for north of Mesoamerica... well, that depends entirely on the timeframe. As you can no doubt see from the focus of my reactions in this thread, I'm mostly focused on the results of far earlier contact, and less focused on the specifics of how or exactly when this contact comes about.

Of course, those are still very important factors. Personally, I really agree with @PaleoT, @Shevek23 and @Zireael that the actual feat of getting there (or rather, getting there, coming back, and developing the means to repeat that trick) is the real hard part here. Basically, I suspect you'd want some kind of Phoenician-and/or-Carthaginian-wank as your POD, and let that develop (after several centuries) into a scenario where the means to cross the Atlantic become available at a much earlier stage. Obviously, that diverges significantly from the original question posed by @saturatedfats.

Keeping with the timeframe of c. 500 AD, yes: the Hopewell tradition is pretty much going belly-up at that exact time. Of course, theories as to the cause of its decline vary. One interpretation (of overpopulation and its attendant problems) might lead one to think that the epidemics brought by the Europeans could actually have ultimately positive effects (in the longer term; obviously not for the vast scores of people who die). The underpopulated, post-Hopewell North America might indeed see an earlier rise of something akin to the later Mississippian culture (which in OTL first began to emerge c. 800 AD). But all that is rather speculative. I'm mostly writing it down as 'food for thought', and not as a real argument that I'm convinced of.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the subject.
 
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I don't know about Carthage, but Phoenicia and Egypt are plausible candidates: http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/exploration.htm
Problem is, there wasn't much technology for long voyages over open ocean; the Egyptian circumnavigation of Africa in comparison was a much more coastal route. You need to min-max your storage load and your speed; so that you can have enough supplies to get there and then get there before you do run out. But the problem is that ships at the time couldn't go fast enough while still having enough food and fresh water to make it there. Not to mention your ships need to be much more durable. I don't think its possible for those nations to so much as discover the americas without some unprecedented advances in Naval Technoloy.

In my opinion, earliest you can get is during the Viking Age or maybe a couple decades before 1492. Heck, I think Mali in the 1300s has a higher chance to discover Brazil than Phoenicia and Egypt ever had.

To answer the question flatly; no, a 500 AD colonization is not in my opinion, possible. I think it's an interesting topic to discuss.

But if you had to have had a 500 AD Colonization, I think your best shot is to have the Huns or the Xiongnu have a much stronger and earlier push west while still attacking the east and thus adopting eastern technological advances like the Compass and spreading them to where they pillaged and conquered. Either that or as @Skallagrim said you'd probaly want a Phoenician/Carthagian wankfest of naval advancement or a freak miracle.
 
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