WI: The Americas discovered in the Middle Ages

If its pre-Black Death, would anyone try to flee the plagues to America?

Or, conversely, would the American Indians be even more ravaged by the plague brought along with refugees?

Well as Measles, Small Pox, and others killed off enough as is, The Black Death might have added to more woe. But seeing as North America did not have the trade routes to as conveyers of the Black Death, I do not think it would have been the cause of decimation that it was in Europe and Asia.

If there had been enough ships, then you might have seen cultures and creeds flee to NA to get away from purges from Europe.
 
Very true, but then there were already rats and fleas here already. Just a matter which burns out first, the people or the rats. :(

Oh? What rats are native to north america, that live in contact with people?
Mice, probably, and theyd be enough, but i dont believe there were rats.
 
Oh? What rats are native to north america, that live in contact with people?
Mice, probably, and theyd be enough, but i dont believe there were rats.

there are 3 (I think) species of woodrats and packrats (if those are true rats). One species of woodrat was eaten by N. Americans, and packrats are widely known for their nocturnal pilfering visits to human camps. Not sure if these could carry the fleas/plagues like common rats though...
 
I know little of the Middle Ages, but one of the ideas going into this was, if it's in the early part of the Middle Ages, what would they do with America? Because wasn't it for a long time that vast swaths of Europe were still made up of roaming tribes itself?
 
Who is really in a position to do anything about the discovery though? I don't know that much about much about the middle ages, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Iberia was embroiled in the Reconquista, England was caught in horrible succession crises after the Norman invasion, and France is not cohesive or powerful enough to project power off the continent until the Renaissance. England seems the most plausible to exploit new world discoveries, but even then, not very well.
 
Who is really in a position to do anything about the discovery though? I don't know that much about much about the middle ages, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Iberia was embroiled in the Reconquista, England was caught in horrible succession crises after the Norman invasion, and France is not cohesive or powerful enough to project power off the continent until the Renaissance. England seems the most plausible to exploit new world discoveries, but even then, not very well.

Which leads me to... THE ISLAMIC POWERS!
 
What are we defining as the Middle Ages for starters? The only Islamic power that would probably gain anything with a reason to do so is a state in Morroco with little interest in Iberia, and possible at odds with whoever controls Egypt.
 
Of course, America was discovered earlier. It's just no one was interested. To Central America did not get, and in North and South that interesting? Savages with stone axes and feathers stuck in different places in the woods running around? Overpopulation in Europe has ever had.
But when Columbus said it was India and China, then all at once it became interesting.:)
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I had read that the fishermen had been getting their catches from the Banks for quite some time. Might of been interesting if they had pushed for semi permanent camps and make contacts/wives from those tribes.


They easily could have done this. A few villages left would leave few records, especially after the die off.

My paternal grandfather line is Basque by DNA. I can trace the ancestry to 1740 in this line in the Cherokee lands west of British control. Then then turned back to "whites" after the expulsion. One possible explanation is that a Basque fishing village (really subpart) moved to somewhere in North America to fish the Grand banks (say Nova Scotia), and they had gone native by 1740 in North Carolina. And likely they had gone native (abandoned fishing) by whatever date the Carolina first received large scale "white" settlement.

Lot of speculation, but start with my DNA says there was a Basque village west of the British line of control in 1740 who either identified as Cherokee or were what we would now call an autonomous zone in the Cherokee land. How did this happen? And remember, since we are looking at the major part of my DNA, if it was just a few Basque, it would have been breed out. This line shows 0% North American DNA. So it had to be a village large enough to have self contained breeding for centuries (At least 3 IMO).

Note: Other explanation is the Clovis people in Eastern USA came from Basque area in last ice age.
 
My paternal grandfather line is Basque by DNA. I can trace the ancestry to 1740 in this line in the Cherokee lands west of British control. [...] Other explanation is the Clovis people in Eastern USA came from Basque area in last ice age.

I am coming to believe that this is in fact the case. The evidence that the Solutreans crossed the Atlantic c. 18,000 BP and became the Clovis people is increasingly convincing to me. It's a radical idea to be sure, but radical ideas are not always wrong.
 
Top