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Inspired by a thought I had while looking at another discussion:

I wonder if things would have gone differently if the American Pliestocene megafauna had survived. Some of them might have been domesticable, which would give the Americans large domestic animals to work with and animal-origin diseases of their own - which might not really help them directly (they'd be immune to their own diseases not Europeans), but would mean when the first explorers go back to Europe in the 1500s it's Black Death II time. I remember from reading Charles Mann's 1491 that there are estimates that as much as 95% of the population in parts of the Americas might have been killed off by the epidemics, imagine that happening in Eurasia at the same time... I guess that might actually help the Americans, as while the epidemics were burning their way across the Americans the Europeans would probably be a bit busy having their own equivalent apocalypse to do much conquering.

Man, that would be a kind of interesting (but pretty dark) timeline...
I thought this would make an interesting what-if scenario, anybody want to take a shot at it?

I can easily imagine the development of civilization in general being set back centuries by something like that.

Would the (native) Americans be better off in this scenario? It'd be pretty hard to conquer and control them effectively when your soldiers tend to drop like flies, and anyway I'd think Europe would be a bit busy with Black Death II: Bigger And Badder to do much conquering. I think the Americas might be conquered in a similar time-frame as Africa in this scenario (assuming the huge plagues didn't set back technological progress), and the foreign invasions wouldn't come until the survivors had acquired some immunity and had time for the population to recover. Plus the presence of domestic animals means they might be more technologically advanced.

Thoughts?
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