WI: Native Americans never crossed over from Asia

Dspoh001

What would have happened had the Europeans come to the Americas only to find the lands uninhabited? How would this have impacted the course of immigration to the New World, settlement, etc.? Also, I am pretty sure that this is not ASB, but please correct me if you feel otherwise.
 

Gurroruo

This impacts so much.

Here

Ok so here Humans never migrated to the Americas. Because of that the tens of millions of people that never inhabited the Americas never affected it. This means the crops there were never domesticated and the trees never harmed. In fact there are many more trees then OTL. Because of this the world is cooler and the air is cleaner. It also means that Europe (not Med), Northern China, Siberia, Canada, Russia, and the Northern USA are all colder. Scandinavia, Canada, Britannia, Siberia, and Northern Russia in partictular are much colder. It also means that in contrast Mediterraen/Northern Africa/Middle East is wetter and so is South USA/Northern Mexico and South China. The affects of wetter and still warm Northern Africa is that the Med is though somewhat cooler for the most part retains its OTL climate. Meanwhile the Chihuahuan Desert is much smaller and in the areas where it isn't, is lush forest. South China and the South Pacific got the bad end of the stick and though more wet is also more stormy.

Glaciation will become quite extensive in a number of regions: Tibet, the Alps and the Andes in particular. The nascent Tibetan empire may collapse earlier than OTL in this timeline, while the development of Swiss culture is unlikely. In the Andes the glaciers as well as increased dessication caused by altered Pacific winds are going to retard the development of the civilizations there. Desertification will become a problem in a number of places. Central Asia and North-east India will become quite dessicated, with the Thar desert spreading further across the Aravallis toward the Ganges Valley. This will likely reduced the populations of these regions, perhaps even slowing the progress of Islam into both Central Asia and India. It may mean that the migrations of the Turkic peoples become more directly focused on a weaker China, and less likely to migrate into the Middle East (though Khazaria may remain fair game).

Monsoon effects are interesting. Reduced sea temperatures will result in a lessened monsoon effect on India. However, it is likely to become wetter and stormier in southern China and eastern Africa is likely to go through a long wet period (broken by occasional periods of dryness). Typhoons along the southern Chinese coast are going to make the development of maritime culture there more difficult, but not impossible. The North Pacific is going to be warmer than OTL. In Russia, the expanding ice pack will cause the Ob and the Yenisey to form large lakes.
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Tannenbuam

And all those Natives would stay in Siberia and Mongolia. Maybe thus affecting the Mongol Empire or a civilized southern Siberia.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

There are at least 3 waves of indigenous peoples to arrive in the Americas.

The bulk of them, then later the Athapaskans (Dené of various nations), then the Eskimo/Aleuts.

Actually, this last lot may be two waves, as the Inuit seem to not to be related to the Dorset culture before them.

In addition to all THAT, you have the crazy recent results from the Amazon which suggest a population more closely related to the Australian aborigines (!!!!) arrived at some point.


So... To have your scenario come true, you need to stop ALL of those waves, somehow. Which almost certainly means changing the geography of the Bering Strait area (at best), which it turn would have massive impact on the animals that iOTL moved back and forth.


PLUS, if there's no natives, then Polynesians or Ainu or Norse or .... would have settled the land instead. So, really, it's probably ASB.
 

Caramelcorn

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
PLUS, if there's no natives, then Polynesians or Ainu or Norse or .... would have settled the land instead. So, really, it's probably ASB.
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Assuming those cultures still arise in this massively-changed earth. For the benefit of the doubt, let's say that sure, Polynesia still forms in some sort of way, and they still make contact with now-empty lands in Chile around roughly the year 1000.

What will they do? Probably not much. Maybe they'll settle Chiloe and the massive archipelagos of southern Chile. Maybe they head north, somehow don't care that they're sailing past thousands of miles of desert, and reach more fertile lands in the north, and then maybe maybe a small group settles up near Ecuador. But what they can't do is undergo a cultural change and decide to settle all the Andes mountain valleys and form a (more) complex civilization, because as was mentioned the Andes will have massive increases in glaciation.

The only real way they could have an impact beyond "Hey Europeans, these mostly worthless islands are ours. We know you probably don't care" would be if they reached the pampas in Argentina. And maybe they could, since they have 400-ish years to spare and possibly more depending on how much more slowly colder Europe develops. But even if, despite all the improbability (but hey, super improbable things have happened in real life history), the Polynesians transition from an ancient oceanic explorer society to a sedentary agricultural society, they aren't going to have the external pressures needed to move into the Iron Age, so they just... die from diseases and get conquered when Europeans arrive, probably.
 

Prism

Siberia's only a stones throw away from Alaska making it very easy for immigration to occur in that direction, then you have the Oceanic people who were more than capable of making the journey especially the Polynesians. Basically, the Americas were going to be settled sooner or later.
 

Brady Kj

As I've said a few years ago, the only way for the Americas to remain uninhabited is if aliens sent an army of robots to guard the American coasts for ten thousand years and shoot everyone who comes near with their robot laser guns.

Which, by the way, I think would make an awesome timeline. Especially if when the robots' batteries are nearly dead, vikings get their hands on some of those guns.
 

Napoleonrules

Banned
Ugh, more Polynesians made it to America crap. I love the geo-climatic changes mentioned above. That is the most realistic. Also- the Great Plains of Canada and the USA will be more forested as it was Native Americans who kept it swept with fires, not lightning. Recent archaeology in the Amazon proves that prior to European diseases it was one of the most heavily populated areas and that the most diverse and richest soils in the Amazon correspond to slash and burn and human gardens (it's in National Geographic, look it up).

When someone says "No Native Americans" I think we can stop with the "well Na dene and Inuit aren't native americans"... just because they were later arrivals doesn't change them from being Native Americans, we can stop with the distinction. It's like saying Hungarians aren't Europeans because they speak a Uralic language.

Polynesians will have about as much impact on the land as OTL Vikings, if they ever actually make it.

Biggest butterfly- when the Vikings make it to Newfoundland (and possibly farther south) they aren't driven off by natives and they have an easier time...IF the climate makes it feasible for them to have actually reached Greenland in the first place. Greenland was inhabited by the Norse around 300 years BEFORE the Inuit, if the climate in ATL allows the Norse to be there, they can step over to North America. Probably don't do much in an uninhabited continent with no riches or people to trade with, but may become the genesis for an indigenous people who Europe forgets and are later contacted by Cabot when he reaches the area.

No gold exploited by natives= less likely the Spanish will care to go certain places. This creates huge butterflies in the European wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. Creates less incentives for the Pope to divide the world between Portugal and Spain.
 

Gurroruo

Actually the Norse would fail TTL, because instead of being driven off by natives, the lack of natives means the soil is unbroken and the crops are uncultivated and fixing that problem takes generations.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Gurroruo said:
Actually the Norse would fail TTL, because instead of being driven off by natives, the lack of natives means the soil is unbroken and the crops are uncultivated and fixing that problem takes generations.
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1) wrong. The Beothuk or Dorset didn't have any agriculture, the soil is no different TTL from iOTL.

2) the Icelanders were more pastoralists than farmers, really. Even barley didn't grow well in Iceland. So the soil is less of a problem for them anyway.
 

pa_dutch

Tannenbuam said:
And all those Natives would stay in Siberia and Mongolia. Maybe thus affecting the Mongol Empire or a civilized southern Siberia.
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Population density and development of society is limited by a region's climate, resources, and carrying capacity, so we're definitely not going to see Aztec and Inca state-level civilizations in the Taiga... It isn't like the ancestors of the Native Americans carried the secrets of civilization with them over Beringia. Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations developed because the environment their ancestors moved to allowed them to. If those ancestors never left Siberia, they'd have societies almost identical to today's Siberians, though perhaps with different languages.
 

Gurroruo

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
1) wrong. The Beothuk or Dorset didn't have any agriculture, the soil is no different TTL from iOTL.

2) the Icelanders were more pastoralists than farmers, really. Even barley didn't grow well in Iceland. So the soil is less of a problem for them anyway.
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You learn somethijng new everyday, but we still aren't going to see the Norse Empire covering America. Who may never develop into a society.

pa_dutch said:
Population density and development of society is limited by a region's climate, resources, and carrying capacity, so we're definitely not going to see Aztec and Inca state-level civilizations in the Taiga... It isn't like the ancestors of the Native Americans carried the secrets of civilization with them over Beringia. Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations developed because the environment their ancestors moved to allowed them to. If those ancestors never left Siberia, they'd have societies almost identical to today's Siberians, though perhaps with different languages.
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The natives could migrate elsewhere within Eurasia, but yes this is true.
 

pa_dutch

Gurroruo said:
The natives could migrate elsewhere within Eurasia, but yes this is true.
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That's suggesting there was a large surplus of native Siberians needing an outlet, which to my knowledge there wasn't. Those who went to America simply wandered across by their own accord, and their populations bulked up after the migrations.
 

Gurroruo

pa_dutch said:
That's suggesting there was a large surplus of native Siberians needing an outlet, which to my knowledge there wasn't. Those who went to America simply wandered across by their own accord, and their populations bulked up after the migrations.
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Yes, they wandered in search of land which means that instead of wandering to America over Beringia they could wander elsewhere to find good land and good game.
 

Ciryatur

With a POD that far back, it's probably safe to say everything is butterflied, especially with regards to climate. If North Africa stays wet, then the population pressures that brought about civilization along the Nile would either be much less significant or gone completely. The same could possibly be said of Mesopotamia. Civilization as we know it may well develop later.
 

pa_dutch

Gurroruo said:
Yes, they wandered in search of land which means that instead of wandering to America over Beringia they could wander elsewhere to find good land and good game.
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...Which probably wouldn't change much aside from maybe language. Whoever the ancestors of the first Native Americans were, the languages diverged so much that linguistics researchers can't find any common traits uniting all of them, let alone links to Siberian languages. The people who became OTL Native Americans would simply mix into the other native Siberians, and any who went south or west might just mix into the ancestors of the Japanese, Koreans, Manchurians, Turkics, and so on.

Look at it this way: The Inuits went as far as Greenland. If Alien Space Bats suddenly placed another large, hospitable island next to Greenland, within close kayak-rowing distance, of course some pre-modern Inuit would get enough curiousity and seize the opportunity to settle it. There isn't, so they didn't.
 
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