AHC : America discovers Europe

POD is before 1100

Bonus point if it is Aztec or Inca and if they discovers Europe in 1200

My guess is :
A strong leader unifys North America in the 10century. Lets just say its under the Aztecs. Then when the Viking arrived, They captured some long boats and develop it for 200 years. I200 : Sunset invasion..
 
The Mayans had a maritime tradition. I believe that they traded with Cuba. We visited an archaeological site in Florida that some anthropologists believe had Mayan influence.
 
POD is before 1100

Bonus point if it is Aztec or Inca and if they discovers Europe in 1200

My guess is :
A strong leader unifys North America in the 10century. Lets just say its under the Aztecs. Then when the Viking arrived, They captured some long boats and develop it for 200 years. I200 : Sunset invasion..

Uniting North America? ASB

My guess

Vinland is partially successful and the colonists are assimilated into the Skraelings, the iron weapons and desieses travel down to Mexico where a different Aztecs (less religious fevor) utilize the tech to build a even more impressive and centralized society. Several deadly plagues and worse Mongol invasions (get to germany) devastate europe until 1600's when Aztec ships are spotted one dthe horizon
 
While your scenario is highly especific and I find implausible, I'll like to state my opinion before you get flooded in cries of 'ASB!'

I don't think Native Americans sailing to Europe is an impossible scenario. Most people discount their naval skills. The Caribbean peoples had large canoes that they used to trade between islands, and the Patagonians are well known for their exploration of lands upriver; some people from Chaco, in central South America are descended from Patagonian peoples. And just in case anyone still thinks the Native Americans were all nomads with the exception of the Inca and Aztecs, they were not. Many of them were organized in cities and complex societies, and the current estimates for population before the plagues and conquest are higher than ever.

However, the Europeans had huge advantages compared to the Native Americans, most prominently of them sails, compass and navigation instruments. It is crazyness to compare the native canoes to a caravel (except for size; some were longer than Columbus' caravels). However, what if some natives have developed seafaring to the extent of the Old World civilizations? Perhaps they discovered the sail for better fishing voyages, and some enterpeneurs use them to trade across the Atlantic coast. They could look, maybe like Trirremes (after all, it would combine the canoe with sails). Then, maybe some of those 'Trirremes' get lost outside the coast of Brazil and contacts Africa. Or some fishermen going north make contact with Viking expeditions. I doubt however, that a 'Sunset Invasion' is plausible at all. The Old World will not fall to disease as the Americas, and the Americans are still at a technological disvantage.

It depends on how does this happen, you don't need a huge conquering empire. The Caribbean peoples could create a trading empire across the Atlantic coast, or maybe even the Amazonic peoples (that we know so little about, but they had complex societies and were expert fishermen). It is highly improbable, but NOT impossible, and possible even without European influence.
 
There may have bee a few Inuit to wash up on European shores from time to time, but that was post Vinland.
 
What about the Mayan Empire discovering Europe in another way?

In between the 11th and 12th Century, a Mayan fleet, is swept along the Peru Current, along the North Equatorial Current, before landing in the East China Sea.
Here they meet the Song dynasty and begin trading information as well as goods. A lot of the information is about a distant land in the West (west to China) called Europe?
 
Inuit contact is easy.

PoD: Erik the Red killed in battle. Proto-Inuit (Dorsett culture, etc.) expand across empty *Greenland, eventually discover *Iceland by 1100. First contact with Ireland by 1200.

Aztec-wank is ASB. FYI pre-1100 they're a bunch of hunter-gatherers in Colorado-Utah area ("Aztlan").

For Mayans, first you need an actual Mayan fleet, which wasn't anything that interested them OTL. Mayans reach China is ASB: no ships in NA even remotely big enough to hold enough food/water, nothing even remotely approaching a shipbuilding tradition to set that in motion. Perhaps we could see some "Mayanized" Carib or Arawak go Polynesian and spread up the coast, eventually reach Europe?
 
It's not a stretch for the Inuit to make contact. After all, their kayaks have washed up on Ireland so it's highly plausible that they could set up trade with Iceland and make it through the Arctic Circle. As for the Mayans, well there is a difference between sailing the Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean and traveling the Atlantic, but I could see them reaching Macronesia and the Canary Islands
pre-collapse. That would be a good,mutual exchange for both Mayans and the Guanche, giving goats and cattle while the Guanche acquire some metal and maybe seafaring skills. Even so Europe and Africa are higher advanced than the Natives of the Americas.
 

Sycamore

Banned
What about in an ATL where the Aimoré people of Eastern Brazil (who it appears are actually the descendants of Polynesian settlers who managed to make it that far up the Eastern coast of South America) actually maintained their ocean-going traditions (enabling a POD as late as 1200CE), and subsequently set sail across the Atlantic in search of new lands (discovering and settling Europe- if the Azores, Canary Islands and/or Madeira count as 'Europe'- by either the 13th or 14th century)?
 
I suppose if the polynesians could cross the Pacific on balsa wood than long distance sea crossings with primitive tech are at least possible in theory...
 
POD is before 1100

Bonus point if it is Aztec or Inca and if they discovers Europe in 1200

The Inca stared going in the 1400s in the Andes mountains. The Aztec began their rise in the 1400s as a people in central Mexico. You're requiring mountain people to cross the Atlantic 200 years before their empires arose.

My guess is :
A strong leader unifys North America in the 10century. Lets just say its under the Aztecs. Then when the Viking arrived, They captured some long boats and develop it for 200 years. I200 : Sunset invasion..

Well, its 400 years or so before the Aztecs rose.

Also, ancient people generally don't seem to have operated on the paradigm where they broke apart other peoples stuff to learn how they worked. With a couple of exceptions. That seems to more a modern thing resulting from centuries of seeing stuff like that as powerful assets.

Also, you are not going to unify North America without some fairly massive gains on transport technology. Just people on foot is not going to cut it for more than fairly limited areas.

I agree that the best bet is a merge between Norse and some local tribal grouping. Leading to a transfer of seafaring tech, crop package and stories about riches to the east. A few centuries later, you could have a powerful, population-dense power with seafaring skills and stories encouraging explorations eastwards.
 
A number of people have suggested that to achieve this PoD the North Americans adopt Norse technology. If so then that implies that Europe has discovered America and contradicts the PoD.

Inuit contact is easy.

PoD: Erik the Red killed in battle. Proto-Inuit (Dorsett culture, etc.) expand across empty *Greenland, eventually discover *Iceland by 1100. First contact with Ireland by 1200.
There are reports of Inuit canoes reaching the Scottish isles if not Scotland itself.
 
A number of people have suggested that to achieve this PoD the North Americans adopt Norse technology. If so then that implies that Europe has discovered America and contradicts the PoD.


There are reports of Inuit canoes reaching the Scottish isles if not Scotland itself.

1) Kayaks or umiaks, not canoes, technically.
2) the Inuit are newcomers to the Arctic. They hadn't reached Greenland when the Norse settled there, for instance, although they did arrive before the colony died out.
 
I suppose if the polynesians could cross the Pacific on balsa wood than long distance sea crossings with primitive tech are at least possible in theory...

Speaking of Polynesians, if they had truly understood their contact with South America or just gone further up the coast in general, they might have been able to contact the Inca. Imagine the Inca having not only knowledge of sailing but also the fact that the East Indies exist. Even if the Polynesians don't really understand their situation, the Inca can still become aware of the long chain of islands stretching across a vast ocean, and maybe some Incans go exploring with the assumption that the Polynesians had to have come from somewhere.

Now imagine they go there and discover the Asian mainland, even China. It's all pretty implausible but I don't think impossible, because the Inca at least had a centralized authority and decent methods of scientific development.

I know this thread is focused on North Americans discovering Europe, but I think the ramifications of South Americans discovering Chiina would be equally immense. It could even lead to East Asian cultures being more interested in exploring the Pacific.
 
There's an old story about mexicans landing in the elbe mouth area around 60 bc, but the original account makes it basically certain that they were from India.

"When he [Celer] was proconsul in Gaul, he was presented with certain Indians as a present by the king of the Boti; asking whence they had come to these lands, he learned they had been seized by a storm from Indian waters, that they had traveled across the regions between, and at last landed on the German shores"(Pliny).

This indicates that their language was at least known.
 
Speaking of Polynesians, if they had truly understood their contact with South America or just gone further up the coast in general, they might have been able to contact the Inca. Imagine the Inca having not only knowledge of sailing but also the fact that the East Indies exist. Even if the Polynesians don't really understand their situation, the Inca can still become aware of the long chain of islands stretching across a vast ocean, and maybe some Incans go exploring with the assumption that the Polynesians had to have come from somewhere.

That may have happened IOTL during the reign of Topa Inca Yupanqui. Their accounts have the exact rationale you propose, to find the origins of remote island merchants they encountered on their Western coast. If true, they didn't get very far, at most Galapagos or Easter Island.

Edit: See this.
 
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Zlorfik

Banned
There's an old story about mexicans landing in the elbe mouth area around 60 bc, but the original account makes it basically certain that they were from India.

"When he [Celer] was proconsul in Gaul, he was presented with certain Indians as a present by the king of the Boti; asking whence they had come to these lands, he learned they had been seized by a storm from Indian waters, that they had traveled across the regions between, and at last landed on the German shores"(Pliny). .
Does this not strike anyone else as mad?
A group of indians getting blown off course from the indian ocean... around Africa, up the entire atlantic, and into the north sea...
or a group of very confused mesoamerican sailors pulling a reverse columbus.
 
You need a PoD far back, avoid the extinction of domesticable great mammals in the Americas, and somehow make trade between the Missisipians, Mesoamericans, and Andean more commonplace (ships?) ; the exchange of ideas and the industrial output of domestic animal s are going to lead to some huge and complex civilizations by the 1200s
 
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