WI: Polynesians make contact with Mayans

tallwingedgoat

WI 500 years before 1492, the Polynesians establish limited trade link with the Mayans. What could they do for each other and how would both peoples be effected? The most useful technology the Polynesians could teach the Mayans would be seafaring. The other way around, I suppose the Mayan agricultural package?

I realize there were probably some contact between the two peoples historically, evidenced by the use of sweet potato among the Pacific Islanders. This POD would involve a more elaborate cross fertilization.
 

Admiral Brown

tallwingedgoat said:
WI 500 years before 1492, the Polynesians establish limited trade link with the Mayans. What could they do for each other and how would both peoples be effected? The most useful technology the Polynesians could teach the Mayans would be seafaring. The other way around, I suppose the Mayan agricultural package?

I realize there were probably some contact between the two peoples historically, evidenced by the use of sweet potato among the Pacific Islanders. This POD would involve a more elaborate cross fertilization.
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Weren't the mayans on the Atlantic side of Central America? I guess they could have made it to the Pacific (maybe after the "collapse" some Mayans move westwards instead of Eastwards), but the Polynesians would have to be very lucky to reach precisely that small part of the North American coast that we are assuming the Mayans will populate.

IF that happens, the Polynesians might get corn, an perhaps also writting, the Mayan numerical notation, and their calendar. Mayans might get their Polynesian seafarting tecniques, chickens and pigs, all of which will benefit them greatly. If contact happens arund 992, nobody will get metalurgy, as, IIRC, the Classical Mayans didn't have metalurgy (but maybe that technice had already reached Mesoamerica from South America by 992, cause that's more than a century after the collapse of the classical Mayans)
 

tallwingedgoat

Admiral Brown said:
Weren't the mayans on the Atlantic side of Central America? I guess they could have made it to the Pacific (maybe after the "collapse" some Mayans move westwards instead of Eastwards), but the Polynesians would have to be very lucky to reach precisely that small part of the North American coast that we are assuming the Mayans will populate.

IF that happens, the Polynesians might get corn, an perhaps also writting, the Mayan numerical notation, and their calendar. Mayans might get their Polynesian seafarting tecniques, chickens and pigs, all of which will benefit them greatly. If contact happens arund 992, nobody will get metalurgy, as, IIRC, the Classical Mayans didn't have metalurgy (but maybe that technice had already reached Mesoamerica from South America by 992, cause that's more than a century after the collapse of the classical Mayans)
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What Hresvelgr said. Mayan cities were mostly on the Caribbean side, but they had access to the Pacific. I would imagine if the Polynesians reached the coast of Mexico, they would inevitably learn where to find the nearest civilization to trade with.

Though the Mayans had no metal, the Andeans did use bronze jewlery (don't know when they developed it though). Maritime trade would link the Mayans with the Andeans and of course the Caribbean and Amazonian peoples. I didn't know the Polynesians had chicken and pigs. They certainly could use corn, cassava and sunflower seeds of the Mayans.

Is missing the Mayan Classical era that important? I am flexible about the POD, having no objections to a century earlier Polynesian arrival.
 

Atom

It would make a lot more sense if they found the Andean peoples. Its not impossible, just kind of odd in my opinion.
 

tallwingedgoat

Atom said:
It would make a lot more sense if they found the Andean peoples. Its not impossible, just kind of odd in my opinion.
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No objections. If the Polynesians can make it to Mesoamerica they can certainly make it to Peru. However I'm not sure how advanced the Andeans were in the 10th century. Furthermore, the Andeans could not influence the Caribbean, seafaring knowhow or not.
 

Lugal

Rather than the Maya it was more likely that they would have made contact with the Zapotec, since they were on the Pacific coast.

I also agree with the above posters that Polynesians would have gone to South America rather than Mesoamerica (and probably did in OTL).
 
9 Fanged Hummingbird

9 Fanged Hummingbird

Lugal said:
Rather than the Maya it was more likely that they would have made contact with the Zapotec, since they were on the Pacific coast.

I also agree with the above posters that Polynesians would have gone to South America rather than Mesoamerica (and probably did in OTL).
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Why would Zapotecs be more likely than Maya? We already established that the Mayans also lived on the Pacific coast.
 

Lugal

Hresvelgr said:
Why would Zapotecs be more likely than Maya? We already established that the Mayans also lived on the Pacific coast.
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The Quiché kingdom was not founded until the 1200's. In the timeframe, c. 1000 AD, the Zapotecs, although they were in decline, then would probably dominate the trade (I have no doubt there would have been trade with both Zapotec, and Maya and probably Mixtec as well)
 

Geekhis Khan

Lugal said:
The Quiché kingdom was not founded until the 1200's. In the timeframe, c. 1000 AD, the Zapotecs, although they were in decline, then would probably dominate the trade (I have no doubt there would have been trade with both Zapotec, and Maya and probably Mixtec as well)
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So Real Polynesians Don't Meet Quiche? *ducks*
 

Valdemar II

Banned
While the introduction of long range ship may result in a spread of Mayan culture to Caribian the real effect will be, that there will establish contact between the Andean and Mesoamerican cultures and likely also with Amazonian, resulting in a fusion of the different agricultural packets and methods. So likely the "Mexicans" will receive the potato and, the chicken and the llama, while Mayans will gain access to the "black soil" of Amazonian, while maize growing agricultural citystates will spread in the Caribian. It will be quite a different America which will met Columbus.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Of course, to get duck egg or duck meat quiches, we need to get a domestic duck involved.

Fortunately, the Muscovy duck was domesticated in South America already, and it's just a matter of getting some to the Maya.
 

AmIndHistoryAuthor

Banned
Lugal said:
Rather than the Maya it was more likely that they would have made contact with the Zapotec, since they were on the Pacific coast.

I also agree with the above posters that Polynesians would have gone to South America rather than Mesoamerica (and probably did in OTL).
Click to expand...

They did, and elsewhere.

http://mi.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=9&num=1&id=217&cat_id=488

The article reports evidence from DNA studies that Polynesians may have sailed to Chile or Peru and returned home to the islands. Genetic studies of Indians in both North and South America show that some are linked to Polynesians living in Samoa. The tribes include the Cayapa, Mapuche, Huillichi, and Atacameño in southernmost South America, and the Nuuchal Nulth of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. These findings are “consistent with direct but low levels of gene flow across the entire Pacific Ocean,” according to Borg and Cann. Offspring of Polynesians and Indians could have migrated north from South America to Vancouver Island....

Meanwhile, other new DNA data have failed to resolve the long-standing question whether Asian ancestors of the Polynesians came into the Pacific through Melanesia (west of Polynesia) figuratively by an “express train” migration that took only a very short time, or whether a more complicated genetic history waits to be unraveled. Some geneticists and anthropologists maintain that the new information fits nicely with a theory of rapid settlement by people from Southeast Asia, but others are dissatisfied. Much more complete sampling of the human genome must be done before the complex matter can be resolved. Henry Harpending, a population geneticist at the University of Utah, holds that interpretations of settlement history that propose only one or two mi­ration routes and a limited portion of the possible DNA evidence are not convincing. Such models fail to “consider other explanations such as migration from South America.”3
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

AmIndHistoryAuthor said:
They did, and elsewhere.

http://mi.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=9&num=1&id=217&cat_id=488

The article reports evidence from DNA studies that Polynesians may have sailed to Chile or Peru and returned home to the islands. Genetic studies of Indians in both North and South America show that some are linked to Polynesians living in Samoa. The tribes include the Cayapa, Mapuche, Huillichi, and Atacameño in southernmost South America, and the Nuuchal Nulth of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. These findings are “consistent with direct but low levels of gene flow across the entire Pacific Ocean,” according to Borg and Cann. Offspring of Polynesians and Indians could have migrated north from South America to Vancouver Island....
Click to expand...

Note that BYU as a Mormon institution has strong reasons for wanting a historical connection between America and Polynesia. ...
 

Geekhis Khan

Well, duck quiche aside, I think what this WI needs is some form of possibly long-term, regular interactions. Could, say, a (semi)permanent Polynesian trade colony have begun on the SA coast? What if some Easter Island dissident group left the main island for greener shores and founded a small enclave? What if they manage regular trade with the proto-Inca, but remain politically and culturally distinct enough to maintain the seafaring traditions? They might eventually reach the Mayans or else spread boating/nav tech and Polynesian crops/livestock to others who will. Any potential three-way Mesoamerican-Andean-Polynesian trade interaction means truly awesome counterfactual possibilities.
 
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