Precolumbian societies were extremely advanced. IIRC Tenochchitlan was the largest city in the world when a couple hundred fundamentalist bandits with a microscopic superweapon landed to destroy everything. Of course, the Aztec themselves were nearly as savage, and in some ways more. These were two very nasty people, and also very advanced.
The problem, however, is that human beings migrated to the Americas so darn recently. Combine this with the geographic barriers of the Americas, since they are mostly laid out on a north-south axis, as described by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel. This geographic orientation applies to Africa as well, but not Eurasia.
One possible PoD is a huge (but not too huge) asteroid landing in the middle of the Mediterranean sometime between the Punic Wars and the Reconquista. But how could we know whether this stops the European juggernaut, or simply delays it to come back even more terribly than the one we know?
Even if the Indians have an industrial civilization, they are not likely to have the necessary immunities to resist, without terrible casualties, a visit from the filthy gods from across the sea.
There's also the question of the Chinese, whose civilization seems less expansionist by nature--probably because it achieves such a magnificent equilibrium by itself--but sooner or later they are going to cross the great ocean if nobody else will.
The problem, however, is that human beings migrated to the Americas so darn recently. Combine this with the geographic barriers of the Americas, since they are mostly laid out on a north-south axis, as described by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel. This geographic orientation applies to Africa as well, but not Eurasia.
One possible PoD is a huge (but not too huge) asteroid landing in the middle of the Mediterranean sometime between the Punic Wars and the Reconquista. But how could we know whether this stops the European juggernaut, or simply delays it to come back even more terribly than the one we know?
Even if the Indians have an industrial civilization, they are not likely to have the necessary immunities to resist, without terrible casualties, a visit from the filthy gods from across the sea.
There's also the question of the Chinese, whose civilization seems less expansionist by nature--probably because it achieves such a magnificent equilibrium by itself--but sooner or later they are going to cross the great ocean if nobody else will.