WI: Humans never crossed Beringia

What would be the result?

I'm not to focused on America, because it's way simpler to figure out. Anyways for one that's a lot more people in Asia
 
Wouldn't America be then populated by ice age Europeans that crossed the North Atlantic ice shelf? Though their small numbers would certainly impact population spread and density.

I think the biggest impact is wether or not these guys have enough time to create the great civilizations that sprang up in Mexico and Peru, and how their absence impacts Spanish dominance.
 
What would be the result?

I'm not to focused on America, because it's way simpler to figure out. Anyways for one that's a lot more people in Asia

I don't think so. You're not changing the carrying capacity of Asia in any way. Reducing human areas to expand into means less humans, not the same number in different places.

Wouldn't America be then populated by ice age Europeans that crossed the North Atlantic ice shelf? Though their small numbers would certainly impact population spread and density.

There is not real indication that this ever happened.

I would be fine with a timeline that started with the assumption that the Soultrean notion was accurate though.
 

Riain

Banned
The immigrants would have to follow the coastal route.

Incidentally, I'm amazed that the peopling of the Americas is still an essentially contested concept. Personally I like the idea of 2 waves, 1 in the 28-22,00 years ago timeframe and another about 16-12,000 years ago.
 
Wouldn't America be then populated by ice age Europeans that crossed the North Atlantic ice shelf? Though their small numbers would certainly impact population spread and density.

Form what I know the Solutrean hypothesis (colonized America from Europe via Ice sheet) is a fringe theory that have only scant following among archeologists geneticists, linguists or antropologists
 
Well, America would be colonized by Polynesians sooner or later.

Probably later -- they didn't even start settling Hawaii and Easter Island until about 500 AD; if the Vikings still show up to North America around 1000 AD, likely Polynesians will only have arrived on the west coast of the Americas a few centuries earlier, arriving at land truly untouched by man for thousands of miles.
 
actually, a good point there ... without skraelings to fight them off, Vikings would probably be able to solidify their control over Newfoundland and slowly push south from there, and given their more solid control of the land, the importance of Greenland (if only as a refueling station/trade post) wouldn't detoriate as much as OTL, and the knowledge of Vinland wouldn't be forgotten (at least nowhere near as likely as OTL) ,which would mean somewhat earlier exploration of America, likely spearheaded by Norway, Denmark and the British Isles, protentially with The Hansa joining as well running the trade routes,

How far south they would be able to push before the naval technology would advance enough for Iberia to cross, is very hard to guess through
 
Someone would have populated the Americas even if humans never crossed Beringia. The native Siberians near the Bering Sea crossed over often and the Polynesians might have discovered it. Of course this population may well be smaller and would certainly have different cultures.
 
Probably later -- they didn't even start settling Hawaii and Easter Island until about 500 AD; if the Vikings still show up to North America around 1000 AD, likely Polynesians will only have arrived on the west coast of the Americas a few centuries earlier, arriving at land truly untouched by man for thousands of miles.

Polynesian West Coast, and Viking East Coast?

This would make a brilliant TL.
 

Puzzle

Donor
Would the megafauna still be around? We could have Vikings riding mammoths fighting sabretoothed tigers! Isn't there some evidence that the little ice age was caused by the reforestation of North America after European illnesses killed everyone? Would this have led to a generally cooler world?
 
Would the megafauna still be around? We could have Vikings riding mammoths fighting sabretoothed tigers! Isn't there some evidence that the little ice age was caused by the reforestation of North America after European illnesses killed everyone? Would this have led to a generally cooler world?

This is not a clear point. Even if it's clear than humans played an important role in the extinction of most of the megafauna, this was not the unique factor that caused it.

Other fauna crossed Beringia along the humans and probably some of them carried diseases. And climate changes were due to happen anyway.

Probably the changes in megafauna would have been different than IOTL and surely would be not that sudden, but I do not think that they would have remained untouched in the long term.
 
Wouldn't America be then populated by ice age Europeans that crossed the North Atlantic ice shelf? Though their small numbers would certainly impact population spread and density.

I think the biggest impact is wether or not these guys have enough time to create the great civilizations that sprang up in Mexico and Peru, and how their absence impacts Spanish dominance.

Okay the premise is that Humans don't cross to Anerica for tens of thousands of years. The first to see America are probably the Vikings.

Also how would that bigger Siberian and presumably Bigger Mongolian and Manchurian population affect the world.

what would cooler Earth mean.

Could the Vikings really be more successful in a place with no domesticated plants, how would other colonisers deal with the fact.

With no domesticated Plants how is the Columbian Exchage doing?
 
Last edited:
So we'll not have the various polar Siberian maritime cultures cross the Bering Sea? Inuit languages are found on both sides of that sea.
 
Regarding the effects on Asia, I think they would be minimal. The settlement of the Americas involved a relatively small number of actual immigrants. There is no reason to believe that the millions of people subsequently born in the Americas would be born in Asia. I don't think population densities in NE Asia would be substantially higher. If there was any Pleistocene settlement from NW Europe (a very controversial and not well documented theory

The absence of humans in the Americas until the first millenia AD would have a major impact on the flora and fauna of the Americas, and major impacts on the food resources available to be transferred to the old world: staple crops such as maize, potatoes, tomatoes and, many varieties beans and squashs well as a few other luxuries and drugs such a chocolate would not exist. Population growth in Europe and elsewhere might be limited by this.

Eventually advanced cultures from the old world would reach the Americas, and they would probably find it more difficult to settle many areas without the benefit of all the native crops that evolved/were bred and the technologies associate with their propagation as well as resource and geographic information that could be extracted (willingly or otherwise) from the inhabitants. Pleistocene megafauna might (or might not) still be present and they would fairly quickly be hunted to extinction or near extinction for the same reasons it is believe PaleoIndians had a lot to do with this in OTL.
 
So we'll not have the various polar Siberian maritime cultures cross the Bering Sea? Inuit languages are found on both sides of that sea.

Yes, but given the circumpolar nature of their cultural adaptation, they might not spread to the south in the same way or in the same numbers that the Beringians did.
 
Top