WI: The Younger Dryas didn't happen?

Crediting the YD w/ 1) megafauna extinction in NA, 2) extinction of Clovis culture in NA, 3) climate change from wet/warm prior to YD, to 'freeze' during YD, to 'warm and dry' post YD... which, OTL, is credited with the rise of agriculture...

So what if the YD didn't happen and Agriculture developed in a different, much slower, way?

I'm thinking of a short timeline, from prehistory into copper or maybe bronze age, starting with that premise. That is, from mid-paleothic to lower neo-lithic. In other words from 80k BC to ca 2000 BC. and this would be the POD. Short because I'll not linger pre 9000bc, and I'll just be overviewing the impact around the globe to climate & culture.

The Saharan desert never forms, Mesopotamia never dries out, (at least for a lot long than OTL) but there is no 'crush' or limited food source in the regions either.

Sea levels start lower and rise more slowly, right?

Clovis culture doesn't die off, but instead thrives on megafauna... possibly domesticating it? (thinking water buffalo were domesticated into cattle, right?) With camels, horses, and warmer climate N. America & Clovis develops much like a compressed Asia?



I'm asking for opinions and/or assistance, this being my first TL thought after lurking here for a while.
 

Blair152

Banned
Crediting the YD w/ 1) megafauna extinction in NA, 2) extinction of Clovis culture in NA, 3) climate change from wet/warm prior to YD, to 'freeze' during YD, to 'warm and dry' post YD... which, OTL, is credited with the rise of agriculture...

So what if the YD didn't happen and Agriculture developed in a different, much slower, way?

I'm thinking of a short timeline, from prehistory into copper or maybe bronze age, starting with that premise. That is, from mid-paleothic to lower neo-lithic. In other words from 80k BC to ca 2000 BC. and this would be the POD. Short because I'll not linger pre 9000bc, and I'll just be overviewing the impact around the globe to climate & culture.

The Saharan desert never forms, Mesopotamia never dries out, (at least for a lot long than OTL) but there is no 'crush' or limited food source in the regions either.

Sea levels start lower and rise more slowly, right?

Clovis culture doesn't die off, but instead thrives on megafauna... possibly domesticating it? (thinking water buffalo were domesticated into cattle, right?) With camels, horses, and warmer climate N. America & Clovis develops much like a compressed Asia?



I'm asking for opinions and/or assistance, this being my first TL thought after lurking here for a while.
I don't know. The Younger Dryas period isn't my field of expertise. The Greenland Ice Sheet never forms?
 
I like this kind of thing, so I'd like to see where you go with it.

Perhaps there would be more forest in Scandinavia due to this? A small effect at first, to be sure.

I think human hunting would kill off a lot of the megafauna regardless, but if some species survive it would be huge. Horses and camels would make the great plains resemble something much more like the Great Plains. If Old World agriculture is delayed but New World agriculture isn't, it would narrow the gap between the hemispheres significantly.

Old World agriculture seems likely to be a more dispersed phenomenon, with simultaneous cradles throughout Africa and Asia. I would look into other possible climatic issues in this period, they might have an effect.
 
Don't know about the rest, but North American horses and Mammoths apparently survived the younger Dryas (and the extinction of the rest of the North American megafauna) for several thousand years. That came out recently in a study of trace DNA in the permafrost. Very cool stuff.
 
Don't know about the rest, but North American horses and Mammoths apparently survived the younger Dryas (and the extinction of the rest of the North American megafauna) for several thousand years. That came out recently in a study of trace DNA in the permafrost. Very cool stuff.

Found the journal articles describing that. Very cool stuff - horses & Mammoths apparently existed up into 7600 BP - which isn't that long ago (about 5000BC) - in the interior of Alaska and in the plains around the southern parts of the Yukon river.

Personally, I think it shows they followed the retreating glaciers of the YD :)

For the POD, I'm beginning to shift over to the YD never ending, rather than never happening.

This keeps the atmosphere warmer and wetter in the tropics and colder in the north (yeah, I know, but it does, I've cross checked it many times, it's a function of jet streams and thermal ocean currents) as well as sea levels being dramatically lower (100-150 METERS lower) at the time (14-18kya). Gradual global warming (the natural phenomenon) would eventually raise that, but still not to todays levels - maybe only 50m or so lower. This does create very interesting, almost paradise-like, conditions from the western Sahara to the eastern Mesopotamian and Anatolian areas... at around a time of 2500-7500 years ago.

Hee, if I wanted to do a Sumerian wank (complete w/ Conan), it'd certainly lend itself to it.

Anyway, I'll be posting notes and thoughts here for review and for my own singlepoint reference lol

The timeline will probably start at 20,000 years before present, and use a BP (before present) or kya (thousands of years ago) marking, just so I can unify a lot of different resources into one timeline. It'll run up to at least 8000 BP (6000 BC), the founding of the Egyptian protocultures. If I can keep it that long, I may start focusing on 2nd timeline and detail the rise of cultures from 8kya to 0.

Some things I'm looking at currently:
Glaciers to the 45th parallel in the w. hemisphere and 40th in the eastern from 20kya to 9kya, and receding only slightly to 40 in west, and 35 in the east, by 5kya (2000 BC)
Ancient Bison (2-3x larger than current NA bison), smilodons and PaleoIndians living together in the same ecosphere.
Domesticated mammoths being used to explore the lower regions of NA.
Domesticated bison providing nomadic herders
Giant Sloths = hunted to death tho - too slow and stinky to survive much population of humans.
Smilodons and other megafauna predators would be worshipped as totemics under an animalism type of worship.

Just some thoughts... I'm still working out ideas about human migrations during the timeframe.

Any suggestions or thoughts of things to think about?
 
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