WI: No humans in the Americas

What if humans did not settle in the Americas as they did in prehistoric times, and instead the Europeans discover an America filled with prehistoric mega-fauna?
 
I'm afraid that your question will have to be moved to the ASB forum due to the implausibility of this hypothesis.

But certain things are for sure here:
-with no friendly natives to teach the settlers how to survive effectively, settlement itself will be much slower, waiting until scientific development is ready for better analyzing of the local fauna and flora (to see which is poisonous and which is more safely digestible, etc.)
-imported slaves will see much more use due to no local natives to enslave.
-borders between colonies will seem very straight and artificial, like what happened in OTL Africa. Perhaps even more than so.
-settlement in the mountainous areas will be much harder (again due to no local natives to teach settlers how to survive in such a harsh environment).
-we probably won't see controllable/farmable native flora like maize flourishing in the area. But that's corroborating with my chosen theory that such types of flora were allowed to survive due to human action.
 
I don't think all of the megafauna would be there, since although humans helped tipped the balance against many species, humans weren't the only factor in the extinctions. But many would, including some no doubt interesting species that thanks to human activities, will go extinct a few thousand years behind schedule.

The BIGGEST thing for Europe is the lack of New World crops. If we go by the example of Australia, which had several undomesticated spices that were never used (but are used nowadays as "bushfood"), we can expect that barely anything in the New World is gonna be domesticated and make its way to Europe. So no maize, no potato, no chile pepper, no tobacco (that might be a good thing in the long run, but not good for encouraging settlement), etc.

-borders between colonies will seem very straight and artificial, like what happened in OTL Africa. Perhaps even more than so.
-settlement in the mountainous areas will be much harder (again due to no local natives to teach settlers how to survive in such a harsh environment).

What you wrote is basically true, but borders in the New World are already very random (all those square-shaped US states, for instance), the rest are drawn according to mostly logical principles, like rivers, mountains, watersheds, etc. Why would this change?

Also, why would settlement in mountainous areas be any more difficult than settlement elsewhere? If people are at all surviving in the New World, then why would it necessarily be that much harder to survive in the mountains?
 
Well contrary to popular belief, people in the Americas were not entirely isolated from the rest of the world. The world's climate is affected by all of the world. A more easy to determine example is how the growth in forests in the Americas by Native American planters appears to be the cause of the Little Ice Age in Europe.

The Little Ice Age allowed the French to easily invade the Netherlands due to armies being able to march on ice, about 10% of the population in most European countries died of fanine, it killed off half of Iceland's population, the crop growing practices of all of Europe changed in response to the shorter growing seasons, and some researchers believe this period lead to the centralization of power under monarchs.

What could Europe have looked like without all that happening?

I'm afraid that your question will have to be moved to the ASB forum due to the implausibility of this hypothesis.

I think calling this ASB is a bunch of nonsense. That term is incorrectly used so often. This is incredibly unlikely but not impossible. Madagascar is a massive island right next to humanity's home continent and yet it wasn't settled at all until around either 300 BCE or 250 CE (and it wasn't by people from Africa). New Zealand wasn't settled until the 1400s.

It's unlikely but not as absurd as you are claiming.
 
Also, why would settlement in mountainous areas be any more difficult than settlement elsewhere? If people are at all surviving in the New World, then why would it necessarily be that much harder to survive in the mountains?
The Americas have some very high and wide-spanning mountain chains.
And not to mention the natives in these places, who spent thousands of years adapting their physique to the local climate. The lack of such natives for settlers to intermarry with would mean problems for adaptation, meaning there's gonna be either slower settlement or none at all.
 
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ASB. It is so unlikely because of NA's proximity to Asia (hello, Bering Strait) as to make it improbable for it NOT to be settled. We're talking an entire hemisphere that you can walk from one end to the other (okay, you might have to take a ferry NOW across Panama, but then you could walk it), not an island you have to stumble across in a boat/canoe/ocean liner/kayak.
 
The Americas have some very high and wide-spanning mountain chains.
And not to mention the natives in these places, who spent thousands of years adapting their physique to the local climate.

What?

The lack of such natives for settlers to intermarry with would mean problems for adaptation, menaing there's gonna be either slower settlement or none at all.

How would that in any way slow down European settlers? I'm pretty sure that Europeans are perfectly capable of living in high mountains.
 
The Americas have some very high and wide-spanning mountain chains.
And not to mention the natives in these places, who spent thousands of years adapting their physique to the local climate. The lack of such natives for settlers to intermarry with would mean problems for adaptation, menaing there's gonna be either slower settlement or none at all.

I meant the Appalachian Mountains in my first post, which are closest to any zone of settlement. I don't think the Andes would be the first of anyone's choices of settlement, since it's on the West Coast and Europeans wouldn't know of what lies hidden beneath (gold, silver, copper, etc.). Nor would the Rockies, since that's so far inland. I don't the Valley of Mexico would be that horrible either for any settlers. Other than that, is there any real issue? The real big issue is the fact that the mountainous regions tend to have poor soil for farming, but again, those areas aren't the first choices of anyone for settling, and by the time anyone tries to settle them, they'll have already been established.

Also, what might the Polynesians do? Could we see Polynesian settlement on the West Coast of South America, thus giving Europeans at least one non-European civilisation to encounter? I'd predict that although they might not domesticate any South American crops, they'd still have a decent spread in South America despite them only having a few centuries before Europeans show up. And Europeans might leave them alone for longer than they left the Inca alone, too.
 
I think calling this ASB is a bunch of nonsense. That term is incorrectly used so often. This is incredibly unlikely but not impossible. Madagascar is a massive island right next to humanity's home continent and yet it wasn't settled at all until around either 300 BCE or 250 CE (and it wasn't by people from Africa). New Zealand wasn't settled until the 1400s.

It's unlikely but not as absurd as you are claiming.

This is false
 
I think calling this ASB is a bunch of nonsense. That term is incorrectly used so often. This is incredibly unlikely but not impossible. Madagascar is a massive island right next to humanity's home continent and yet it wasn't settled at all until around either 300 BCE or 250 CE (and it wasn't by people from Africa). New Zealand wasn't settled until the 1400s.

It's unlikely but not as absurd as you are claiming.

It doesn't help that "ASB" is used for so many different things, the term is very close to useless as a description.
 
This is false

How so? The original settlers of Madagascar were Austronesian and Bantu. It is not clear to me which group was first, but I suspect it was the Austronesians.

New picture emerges on human settlement of Madagascar

More than 4,000 years ago, a proto-globalization process started in the Indian Ocean, one of the outcomes being a great human migration of African and Asian peoples spreading across the Indian Ocean to inhabit the fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar. Austronesian peoples came from Borneo on boats, and Bantu migrants crossed over from East Africa. Overall, the Malagasy is thought to be composed of more than a dozen ethnic groups, and the specific geographic, linguistic origins and settlement dates are still hotly debated.

To get at the heart of Malagasy genetic ancestry and reconstruct their history, a research team led by Dr. Francois-Xavier Ricaut investigated genome-wide genotyping data of Malagasy populations along with populations across the Indian Ocean, including two groups of anthropological interest: the Banjar and the Ngaju from Southeast Borneo

A new picture has emerged on the settlement of Madagascar.

Ricaut's group has shown that the Malagasy genetic diversity is 68 percent African and 32 percent Asian. Based on their evidence, the Banjar were the most probable Asian population that traveled to Madagascar. The genetic dating supports the hypothesis that this Austronesian migration occurred around 1,000 years ago, while the last significant Bantu migration to Madagascar began 300 years later, perhaps following climate change in Africa.

Lastly, the authors propose that a language shift occurred in Southeast Borneo after the migration of Banjar to Madagascar. It is thought that the Banjar, currently speaking a Malay language, presumably spoke a language closer to that reconstructed for Proto-Malagasy. This linguistic change would have followed a major cultural and genetic admixture with Malay, driven by a Malay Empire trading post in Southeast Borneo. The collapse of the Malay Empire during the 15th and 16th centuries could correspond to the end of the Malay gene mix into the Banjar population.

"Our study is the first to reconcile data and hypotheses coming from linguistic, archaeological and genetic research to build an anthropological scenario placing the Malagasy ancestry in the Banjar group, living 6,000 km away," says Dr. Ricaut.
 
It doesn't help that "ASB" is used for so many different things, the term is very close to useless as a description.
That's true ASB can be a post where Britain is ISOTed to 105 or a Star Wars fan fiction. Nether-less Humans that didn't cross the Bering strait enters that category as well.
 
That's true ASB can be a post where Britain is ISOTed to 105 or a Star Wars fan fiction. Nether-less Humans that didn't cross the Bering strait enters that category as well.

It can also be a geological or evolutionary POD (which I think probably ought to have their own subforum), or simply a term of abuse for an implausible or badly-thought-through scenario.
 
How so? The original settlers of Madagascar were Austronesian and Bantu. It is not clear to me which group was first, but I suspect it was the Austronesians.

New picture emerges on human settlement of Madagascar

More than 4,000 years ago, a proto-globalization process started in the Indian Ocean, one of the outcomes being a great human migration of African and Asian peoples spreading across the Indian Ocean to inhabit the fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar. Austronesian peoples came from Borneo on boats, and Bantu migrants crossed over from East Africa. Overall, the Malagasy is thought to be composed of more than a dozen ethnic groups, and the specific geographic, linguistic origins and settlement dates are still hotly debated.

To get at the heart of Malagasy genetic ancestry and reconstruct their history, a research team led by Dr. Francois-Xavier Ricaut investigated genome-wide genotyping data of Malagasy populations along with populations across the Indian Ocean, including two groups of anthropological interest: the Banjar and the Ngaju from Southeast Borneo

A new picture has emerged on the settlement of Madagascar.

Ricaut's group has shown that the Malagasy genetic diversity is 68 percent African and 32 percent Asian. Based on their evidence, the Banjar were the most probable Asian population that traveled to Madagascar. The genetic dating supports the hypothesis that this Austronesian migration occurred around 1,000 years ago, while the last significant Bantu migration to Madagascar began 300 years later, perhaps following climate change in Africa.

Lastly, the authors propose that a language shift occurred in Southeast Borneo after the migration of Banjar to Madagascar. It is thought that the Banjar, currently speaking a Malay language, presumably spoke a language closer to that reconstructed for Proto-Malagasy. This linguistic change would have followed a major cultural and genetic admixture with Malay, driven by a Malay Empire trading post in Southeast Borneo. The collapse of the Malay Empire during the 15th and 16th centuries could correspond to the end of the Malay gene mix into the Banjar population.

"Our study is the first to reconcile data and hypotheses coming from linguistic, archaeological and genetic research to build an anthropological scenario placing the Malagasy ancestry in the Banjar group, living 6,000 km away," says Dr. Ricaut.
I think its great you use pop science articles about Madagascar but this is infact a simplification of Indian Littoral settlement, trade and migration. The populations of Madagascar has gone through several waves from the b.c. to the proto-Merina expansion. All however touch off in Africa and along with people show a rather mixed origins before arriving on the island.

One can plainly see in the archeo-linguistic work done that a Swahili inflected Austronesian language spread, not a Austronesian language later augmented by Swahili/sabaki. Even in the mythos of Merina and others an indigenous population is said to have existed we are finding the beginnings of this later stone age population. Really take time to read actual anthropological papers by say Roger Blench before doing a quick google search please.
 
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