Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

[nexus]

Due to plague, natural disaster and other handwavium, Europe never truly emerged from the Dark Ages; similar events affected the African continent. Asia remained largely insular. Meanwhile on the American continents the various native cultures were allowed to develop virtually uninterrupted until the modern day.

 

Discuss.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

Well, there were no Dark Ages, plague doesn't work that way and I've never noticed that Asians were particularly insular, but granting the handwavium? The Americas might be in the dawn of the Iron Age by now. Aztecs in llama-drawn chariots conquering Iroquois barbarians?

Or something like that.

[nexus]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

Well' date=' there were no Dark Ages, plague doesn't work that way [/quote']

 

Plagues and other natural disasters inhibited technological and cultural development keeping Europe in no position to expand and colonize that's all I'm saying. But I didn't feel like writing out alternate time line for Europe from somewhere near then end of the end of the Roman Empire to now for an Alternate Earth thread. It's not even the point of the thread; its how the Americas might have developed.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

The Aztecs appeared to be on the way toward developing a true empire, and might have continued to expand; alternatively, the many resentments among their subjects could have violently broken up their kingdom into smaller states, as was more often than not the case in Meso-America. The Mayas had brief periods where one city-state or another would dominate its neighbors, but no real tradition of overall centralized government, so I wouldn't necessarily expect that to change.

 

OTOH the Inca Empire which had united the Andean region was highly organized and centralized, and probably still in its main expansionist phase at the time of the Spanish conquest. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it endured for generations, if not centuries.

 

I've heard it posited that the introduction of the wild horse to North America by the Spanish led some semi-settled peoples to return to a fully nomadic way of life. If there's any validity to that premise, we might have seen a continuation of settlement increase among the peoples north of Mexico, particularly without the European diseases which decimated many aboriginal chieftainships. The Mississippian Mound Builder culture might have benefited the most from those changes, becoming increasingly urban and centralized.

 

Historically there was no contact between the Meso-American and Andean cultures, over the many centuries of their existence. The distances and geographical barriers between them were considerable. However, they might come into contact if they continued to expand, possibly through trade via intermediary peoples, like the Chibcha confederacy of the Columbian plateau. I would think that there was a greater chance that a Mississippian polity might eventually establish trade relations with the nations of Mexico, as even in the real world their trade routes extended to the Gulf of Mexico.

[Cargus10]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

For a good take on "might have been", get thee a copy of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. It goes into great length as to why the Europeans conquered the world, and not the Americans or Africans. Anyway, some rambling ideas off the top of my head...

 

1. It can be argued that the Black Death actually advanced European technology. Two reasons for this: 1. It eroded some faith in the monolithic Catholic Church, allowing people to begin to question their decrees and 2. The reduction in population lead to a huge labor shortage, which in turn made the serfs and peasants much more "valuable" and able to command higher wages or concessions...accelerating the growth of the freeholder classes.

 

2. The Americans had zip for useful, easily domesticable draft animals. Really, all they had were the llamas, alpacas, etc. And these were fairly small and didn't have a great range. This lack of speedy transportation makes larger empires untenable.

 

3. The North/South alignment of the Americas means that there was no easy way for common staple crops to be shared between different states. In Eurasia, the E/W axis meant that wheat, oats, etc. could be grown over a large swath of land. In America, if you go too far north or south, the differing climate meant that staple, well known crops began to do much more poorly at the edges....squash, corn, etc. couldn't spread as far, also limiting the size of a potential nation.

 

4. The note above about the Aztecs being subject to revolt by their subject states is spot on. The Conquistadors used this against the Aztecs at every turn, and in fact got a lot of support from the tribes that were angered by the tribute in slaves, goods, and sacrificial victims demanded by the Aztec.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

2. The Americans had zip for useful' date=' easily domesticable draft animals. Really, all they had were the llamas, alpacas, etc. And these were fairly small and didn't have a great range. This lack of speedy transportation makes larger empires untenable.[/quote']

 

That's certainly a valid observation, but the Incas maintained order, communication, and transportation of goods over a very substantial territory, most of it mountainous, with little more than foot power and their magnificent road system. Of course the Incas seemed to have a knack for accomplishing stuff that seems pretty absurd to contemplate: farming mountainsides, crowning peaks with megalithic buildings, that sort of thing.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

4. The note above about the Aztecs being subject to revolt by their subject states is spot on. The Conquistadors used this against the Aztecs at every turn' date=' and in fact got a lot of support from the tribes that were angered by the tribute in slaves, goods, and sacrificial victims demanded by the Aztec.[/quote']

 

Aztec "government" of conquered opponents wasn't much more developed than bullying them for tribute. Their political and social mechanisms hadn't yet evolved to the level of stable imperial administration, especially since they were still part of a confederacy of allies, albeit the dominant part. It's questionable whether they could have held their fractious territories together long enough to achieve such a state.

 

What I wonder is whether the Meso-American cultures might have ultimately discovered bronze working. When you consider what they achieved using only flint, obsidian, and copper tools, it makes me dream of what they might have done with bronze. Certainly if they made contact with the Andean cultural region they would likely have picked that up first, exchanging writing and perhaps their knowledge of astronomy and mathematics with the South Americans. By the standards of technological evolution in the Old World, those of the New World had odd "gaps" in their development; but these two great civilizations could have filled some of them in for each other.

[Cargus10]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

Good point about the cultures linking up. Add into that the possibility of hooking up with Mississippean cultures and their farming and governing ideas, and something really interesting could have emerged.

 

I haven't the foggiest idea WHAT, however

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

Here's an intriguing thought: in the real world the Iroquois confederacy ultimately extended its influence as far south-west as the Mississippi Valley. It could have been interesting if the "civilized" Mound Builders came into conflict with the Woodland "barbarians." The Mississippians had superior numbers, but their chieftainships weren't united, whereas the Iroquois were well organized and surprisingly flexible and subtle, militarily and politically.

 

The pressure of war might even prompt the Mississippians to unite. "Cahokian Empire," anyone?

[Cargus10]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

were the Cherokee & Creek considered Mound Builder cultures? I think they had a bit more in common with the Iroquois...but the Cherokee did some really amazing things, albeit a good bit after the period we are talking about here.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

were the Cherokee & Creek considered Mound Builder cultures? I think they had a bit more in common with the Iroquois...but the Cherokee did some really amazing things' date=' albeit a good bit after the period we are talking about here.[/quote']

 

The scholarship I've seen indicates that the Creek were most likely descended from the Mississippians, but the Cherokee immigrated north from Iroquois territories. Neither group continued the mound-building tradition, which had pretty much died out in the Sixteenth Century.

 

It's fascinating to consider how the evolution of certain Indian national identities were shaped by European contact. For example, the Cherokee became united as a people under pressure from colonial settlers; OTOH the strong Powhatan confederation of Virginia was nearly wiped out by the English. I've read assertions that the Iroquois became more aggressive and influential due to their involvements in the ongoing conflicts between French and English.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

Well' date=' there were no Dark Ages, plague doesn't work that way[/quote']

 

There are some bad ideas about how the world works lurking behind the "plagues kill everybody" and "Dark Ages" tropes. I'm a boringly serious person, so I wanted to make that point right off.

Now, on with the cool counterfactuals!

First, what kind of handwave destroys the old world? How about having a graser play on the Eastern Hemisphere in a rewrite of the Niven "Inconstant Moon" scenario. For most people directly exposed to enough gamma radiation to sterilise a woman, future generations are likely to be their last concern, but across the extent of an entire continent one could probably find enough people under shielding to have a good old fashioned war for control of the remaining fertile people. I offer this possibility because maybe the news of an angry bunch of Vikings coming to steal their children to get the Greenlanders to up-stakes and run for Vinland. I'm not painting a picture of a Viking New World here, but some level of intercontinental fertilisation makes this whole exercise a great deal easier to grasp.

Now, it seems pretty clear that Diamond's long continent versus tall continent thing (which is actually much older than Diamond) is wrong. Corn culture is in evidence very early in New York, so no gradual northwars movement, then. It urban development lags north of Mexico, there are far more complex reasons for it than that the corn doesn't grow.

It also seems at least logical that mound-building is an activity, and one deeply embedded in the eastern woodlands mental universe, rather than an activity of a specific people. Everyone built mounds, for a variety of reasons ranging from the practical (granaries need to be above the floodplain!) to the deeply esoteric, as sites of world renewal cult. The mounds do not indicate a local or culturally specific blooming of urban mentality, and the mound complexes probably were not towns at all. Nor did the Mound-Builders disappear or become decadent or whatever. Cahokia was not so much abandoned as moved up to nearby Kaskaskia as prestige trade goods began coming down the Illinois instead of up the Mississippi. --Or, anyway, it is a theory.

Diamond's point about animals is better-found. Argument goes round and round about beasts of burden, but as a big booster of taxpayer-funded R&D, I'm going to continue to plump for military uses here. Eurasia had bronze and mixed pastoral/arable agriculture in the same timeframe as the Americas. The difference is that it went over to industrial-scale bronzeworking about 18ooBC-1600BC and from there to the Iron Age. The reason for that, I think, is the chariot. And there are no horses in the New World, which is where my Greenlander scenario comes in.

What would an Iron Age New World look like a thousand years after the arrival of some skilled horse mercenaries? I could easily see power in the Northern hemisphere tending to concentrate on the Kentucky stud country and "emirates" controlling the horse trade with the trans-Mississippi. Kentuckian Empire in the east, Emirates of Des Moines and Vicksburg, Republic of New Orleans. New England might make a good Prussia to Kentucky's Austria. There probably would be some Norse touches detectable still. The New World could even be Christian, if it were wanted. But of course it would be overlaid by more typically Western Hemisphere cultural elements, whatever those might be.

[Cargus10]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

If you posit horse-breeding areas as sites of empire generation, don't forget that Virgina and the Shenandoah valley was (is still?) exceptional horse country plus has the benefit of being highly fertile and with good river access to the ocean. I'd think there'd at least be a good chance of that being an "empire seed".

 

I'm not quite as quick to dismiss the tall vs wide continent theory. Yes, corn has a wide range. But corn is in general less nutritious than wheat or rice, and has fewer required vitamins (Pellagra, for example, is an issue with an all-corn diet).

 

Plus, you can't make beer out of corn! That may sound like a joke, but there have been some serious theories that part of the impetus for a more settled civilization was to allow the beer to ferment...

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant

 

I'm not going to get into the nutritional value of corn, here. This got big play in grand theory pre-WWII (along with the whole "no B vitamins in rice thing). Corn's defenders have had their day since, and anyway there are other crops in the maize complex. (Also, pellagra, like malaria and psoriasis, was widely accepted in folk medicine to have symptoms or treatments with potential skin-darkening outcomes. Its social role in rural America --you do the math-- has complicated purely medical understandings.

All that said, the recent work has focussed on the claim of propagation lag, which is Diamond's explanation for the delay in the emergence of cities in eastern Woodlands North America.

As for Shenandoah horses --d'oh! You're so right, Cargus10.