WI: The American Megafauna never went extinct

Chimera0205

Banned
What if the Native Americans hunted in a much more sustainable way and managed to not genocide everything bigger than an Alpaca from the continent. now obviously there pops are still lower than before the Natives came but everything from the Mammoth to the American Lion still exists on the continent and maybe some animals like NA horses, Toxodons, Mammoths, and Dire Wolves might even be domesticated. How does this affect the continent?
 
Well first Native American will have horse big horse but horses so they will be able to ride them they will also have many other animals they will basically be Africa expect on steroids the predators will be crazy
 
Pretty sure Gray Wolves and Mountain Lions were already out competing Dire Wolves and Saber tooth cats. If North American Giant Ground Sloths, Mammoths and Mastodons didn't go extinct, they would probably have suffered a similar fate to the North American Bison: hunted in mass quantities during the Old West Period. Hell, with the demand for ivory, the mammoths and mastodons would most likely be hunted to extinction by new settlers pretty quickly. Although I'm not sure if a 45-70 Trap Door Springfield would be enough to take one down. Then again, the .577 Black Powder Express cartridge was already developed by the 1870's. Bye bye mammoths :(.
 

Chimera0205

Banned
Pretty sure Gray Wolves and Mountain Lions were already out competing Dire Wolves and Saber tooth cats. If North American Giant Ground Sloths, Mammoths and Mastodons didn't go extinct, they would probably have suffered a similar fate to the North American Bison: hunted in mass quantities during the Old West Period. Hell, with the demand for ivory, the mammoths and mastodons would most likely be hunted to extinction by new settlers pretty quickly. Although I'm not sure if a 45-70 Trap Door Springfield would be enough to take one down. Then again, the .577 Black Powder Express cartridge was already developed by the 1870's. Bye bye mammoths :(.
dude this is a MASSIVE butterfly. the odds of america as we know it still forming are virtually non existant. Hell the addition of horses and other easily domesticated megafauna might be enough for the natives halt the europeans in there tracks the same way Africa did until the industrial revolution.
 
Pretty sure Gray Wolves and Mountain Lions were already out competing Dire Wolves and Saber tooth cats. If North American Giant Ground Sloths, Mammoths and Mastodons didn't go extinct, they would probably have suffered a similar fate to the North American Bison: hunted in mass quantities during the Old West Period. Hell, with the demand for ivory, the mammoths and mastodons would most likely be hunted to extinction by new settlers pretty quickly. Although I'm not sure if a 45-70 Trap Door Springfield would be enough to take one down. Then again, the .577 Black Powder Express cartridge was already developed by the 1870's. Bye bye mammoths :(.
the old west period would never happen because there a wealth of animals to domesticate
 
dude this is a MASSIVE butterfly. the odds of america as we know it still forming are virtually non existant. Hell the addition of horses and other easily domesticated megafauna might be enough for the natives halt the europeans in there tracks the same way Africa did until the industrial revolution.


I don't see how it would change much as soon as European settlers arrive. Those animals are going the way of the dodo as soon as they get there. Why would the domestication of horses stop European settlers? The natives are still going to be WIPED OUT by diseases and other methods. History is going to go pretty much the same, except we'll have even more animal species to feel bad about over hunting.

Sub Saharan Africa was only able to halt Europeans because diseases killed them in far greater numbers than it did native African peoples.
 

Chimera0205

Banned
I don't see how it would change much as soon as European settlers arrive. Those animals are going the way of the dodo as soon as they get there. Why would the domestication of horses stop European settlers? The natives are still going to be WIPED OUT by diseases and other methods. History is going to go pretty much the same, except we'll have even more animal species to feel bad about over hunting.

Sub Saharan Africa was only able to halt Europeans because diseases killed them in far greater numbers than it did native African peoples.
do you not know where those plagues came from and WHY the natives didnt have them? the answer is domesticate animals. every one of the European plagues from domesticate animals. if the natives have more domesticates then at the absolute worst they will be drastically more resistant to European plagues and instead of 90% die off it would be more like 10 or 20. still bad but not apocalyptic like before. not to mention more domestics mean they probs have a plague or two of there own to give to the Europeans.
 
do you not know where those plagues came from and WHY the natives didnt have them? the answer is domesticate animals. every one of the European plagues from domesticate animals. if the natives have more domesticates then at the absolute worst they will be drastically more resistant to European plagues and instead of 90% die off it would be more like 10 or 20. still bad but not apocalyptic like before. not to mention more domestics mean they probs have a plague or two of there own to give to the Europeans.

Smallpox BY FAR precedes the domestication of livestock, like horses (which were only domesticated around 3500 BC). Europeans had domesticated livestock far more than Native Sub Saharan African peoples and were still wiped out whenever they intruded in the interior by disease. There's a reason European regiments would rebel rather than being sent for garrison duty to the Caribbean, because of the mortality rate of Yellow Fever (A Sub Saharan African Disease). Domestication also didn't stop the Black Death in Europe. It's simple, the Native Americans didn't build immunity due to their isolation from the Old World, not because of a lack of domesticated animals.
 
Top