Fruit of the Thorns: The Domestication of Mesquite

Hobelhouse

The idea of this TL is based on a series of posts I made in the Cool Potential Domestications thread, laying out the possibility of domesticating mesquite trees as a food crop in the Desert Southwest of North America:
mesquite1.jpg

I will be reworking these posts as part of the TL, but they should lay out the basic idea. The mesquite tree is fast-growing, produces an edible pod, and tolerates drought conditions extremely well. If domesticated, it could have brought the Southwestern cultures and Mesoamerica to new heights of flowering... and perhaps, in some world, it did. This is the story of such a world. The historical background will be forthcoming later, but first, some flavor:
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K'yawadinne, or "Quiadene" [OTL Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico]. August 29, 1527.

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca winced as his Capoque handler butted him in the ribs with the butt of his spear. “Go!” he cried in his heathen tongue, or at least so Alvar surmised. He had started getting used to hearing things shouted at him in foreign languages, and the guard's words had an all-too familiar inflection. He got off his knees as he and the other captives started to march onto the dock. They were a mixed bunch... some Guaycona and Mendicans captured in raids, much like the one that had captured his group of twenty-one men from across the sea. There had been more of them, before, though. At least 50 men had died in the night and he did not know how many more had escaped. But even they had been a remnant of the force Alvar had arrived with. There had been a thousand men [1] when they had arrived in Tampa Bay, so many moons ago. Narvaez... How many men had paid the price of his stupidity? Every tribe they had encountered had told them there was gold north, south, east, west of them, and Narvaez had believed them all. They had never seen all that much of it though, even after they had split the land and sea forces to “have two hounds chasing our fortune”, as Narvaez had said. Alvar had come to suspect that there was no gold, and that most of the natives of this accursed continent had decided that the best way to deal with a bunch of heavily armed strangers looking for gold was to tell them there was gold that-a-way, over where that tribe they didn't like lived. After blundering their way to uncharted lands in the far north of Florida, while half the men perished due to skirmishes, misfortune, and dwindling food supplies, Narvaez had ordered them built makeshift rafts to try to reach New Spain.

As his second-in-command and the king's unofficial eyes and ears on this expedition, Alvar had assumed command when Narvaez slipped into a raving fever the night the boats were launched. An inauspicious time to become captain, though he had failed to be forced to go down with his ship when they sailed straight into a hurricane. The surviving rafts, which did not include Narvaez's, had beached on that miserable island [2], which they had called Malhado, after their misfortune. They had tried to repair their rafts, a feat difficult for 120 starving men with few tools, and perhaps they had attracted too much attention when Gomez's party had tried to 'borrow' those sharp stone axes from the heathen village... the next night was the dreadful night of the raid. The tribesmen, who called themselves Deaguanes, had traded the pitiful survivors off to the Comones, for a whole bushel of those strange pods the natives made their wine out of, who had in turn passed them off to the Capoques for several baskets of hides. The Capoques, in turn, were taking them off to be traded to new masters, far from that island. As best he could tell, they had gone south, which gave him heart, for this was closer to the newly conquered lands of the Aztlan. But part of him was sorely afraid... they were getting closer to the Empire of the Chichiman, whose religion was just as bloody as that of the Aztlanos. Was he being sold to have his throat slit over a pagan altar? The thought chilled his blood. He supposed he would find out shortly... they had sailed up a great large for a short ways, and at this point the riverbanks rose sharply. A set of stairs led from the docks up to to the top... and as he climbed to the top, he suddenly realized his destination. He had gathered, in his shaky grasp of the common pidgin, that the place they were going was called "Quiadene" and was a great village, but nothing in his voyage had prepared him for anything so imposing.

A little ways before him rose a... he supposed it must be a city, but it was as near alike to a castle. The whole edifice resembled a blocky cluster of anthills made of wood and a dusty-colored material. It rose to what looked like seven stories, all studded with a maze of ladders and doors and windows, but the general chaos of the layout made that hard to tell. Natives clambered about with apparent ease, passing through narrow T-shaped doorways, climbing ladders, and passing across wooden bridges laid between towers. As they approached the edifice his group of guards and captives passed a group of women harvesting pods from thorny trees with with curved sticks... a group of them picked up baskets and followed behind them, bringing them into the city. As they got closer, he realized the whole first floor of the structure was one unit, a shared sealed base the anthill rose from with no doors and windows; briefly he wondered how they would overcome this obstacle, but then he heard a loud rattling slam. Ahead of him, a wooden stairway had been lowered; he saw it was attached to a frame of pulleys for easy raising. They marched, with just enough room for single file, and passed up to the top of this wall. Ahead of them was a narrow alley. He wondered where they should go, but he simply followed the line. A guard stood in all the doors and alley forks where they should not go, and so the line followed the path of least resistance. As he passed through thr narrow alley, he wondered at how many people must live in this town. The maze-like nature of the structure made it hard to tell, but it could not be less than two thousand and was probably larger. He noticed clothing, peppers, and strange hides hanging on lines overhead. Just as he was starting to wonder how long his trip would last, the alley opened up into a large open area, lined with wooden catwalks on the towers around it, where crowds of natives stood. A guard barked a command in his foreign tongue, and some of the native captives formed a line, shortly followed by the few dozen from other tribes and the rest of the captives. Alvar joined them, being a quick learner, but a few of his fellows needed education from the butt of a spear.

A procession of natives, some with weapons, some not, issued from another alley than the one they had entered. Some of the appeared to be guards, and some appeared to have too much silver jewelry to mark that as their profession. Alvar realized this must be the slave auction. The well-dressed heathens began to inspect their new merchandise. The presence of the Spaniards, and the three Moors who had accompanied them, was clearly a marvel to these people, and the slave buyers were quite impressed with the full beards they had grown in their destitution. One of them closely inspected Alvar, getting in his face and looking over his entire body, even under his rags, shaming him. He was particularly well-dressed. The man had jade earrings and wore a red-and-black striped tunic. Around his neck was a silver sunbeam necklace, and he wore arm and leg bands studded with turquoise. Alvar wondered, despite himself, where the silver had come from. Perhaps Narvaez should have asked about silver instead, he mused darkly. He was relieved that their presence had inspired such wonder, however; the Chichiman were all too familiar with Spaniards, and their reaction would have likely been one of gloating more than curiosity; these people here, though, had clearly never seen a white or black man. Perhaps he would not have his throat slit shortly, he thought. The wealthy man's silver flashed in the baking sun as he whirled to speak to some of the guards. They moved forward, and separated Alvar, Esteban, Carlos, Alonso, Andres and Pablo from the group along with some of the native captives. They'd been bought. The guards led them to a narrow door, which led to stairs. Stairs down... to the shut-in first floor. Alvar suddenly hoped that the wealthy man would be passing them on again soon. The black and gloomy basement of an anthill on a foreign shore was no place he desired to call home...

[1] The 1527 Narvaez expedition is OTL history, except OTL it has set out with nearly twice as many men, for reasons to be elaborated on later. By this point in their unfortunate journey OTL, the expidietion was down to Cabeza de Vaca and three companions. More of them have survived TTL since there more to begin with, and perhaps chance has been slightly kinder.

[2] OTL Galveston Island

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Thoughts? Comments? I'll be typing up more tommorrow most likely. Anyone who would like to speculate on the impact of mesquite domestication in the Americas, please do so at length. I have some general ideas for the direction of TTL, but not too much set in stone as of yet. I am postulating for narrative convenience that the mesquite tree allowed the Hohokam culture of the Colorado basin to adopt an agricultural lifestyle around 1000 BC... all butterflies will emanate from there. But, there will be more detail to come.
 
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Hobelhouse

And now an update as I promised....
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From Principles of Genetics, 6th edition, edited by Dr. Erick Stamford and Dr. Sarah Baumgarten. Published 2014, Plymouth University Press; Plymouth, Plymouth Republic, United Republics of Columbia.

Euploidy is a term used in genetics to refer to the normal state of a genome: having the correct number of maternal and paternal chromosomes. A genome that deviates from this condition is called aneuploid. Aneuploid genomes come in many forms. Klein's Syndrome [1] is a well known example, which is caused by a duplication of chromosome 21. This results in various abnormalities such as impaired mental development and a distinctive set of facial features. A genome that is missing a chromosome, or a portion of one, is also aneuploid. The syndrome known as 'cri-du-chat syndrome' is caused by the absence of a portion of chromosome 5. This syndrome results in severe abnormalities in infants, giving it its name after the cat-like cries of its victims. In most animals, aneuploidy is fatal or at best results in severe physiological problems. However, in plants, for reasons that are still not entirely understood, aneuploidy can be neutral or even beneficial under certain conditions. The ability of plant genomes to not just cope with, but thrive when duplicated chromosomes are present is a subject of intense research in modern times.

This ability of plants is more than just a scientific curiosity; it has made possible the civilizations that led to the discovery of genetics itself. Many of our most important food crops are not diploid, that is, having one set of chromosomes each from the male and female parents; rather, they are polyploid: having extra complete sets chromosomes from their parents. This is typically caused by a nondisjunction event during meiosis where instead of creating two gametes containing one copy of each chromosome, one empty gamete and one gamete carrying two copies of the chromosomes are created. If this abnormal gamete is fertilized by a normal haploid gamete with one copy of a chromosome, the resulting organism may appear normal, but will likely be sterile, since having odd numbers of chromosomes increases the likelihood of creating aneuploid gametes during disjunction (see section 7-2). However, if fertilized by another similarly abnormal gamete that also contains two copies of a chromosome, then fertile offspring can result: even numbers of chromosomes are treated normally during disjunction. Thus, triploid plants tend to fail to reproduce, while tetraploid, hexaploid, and even octoploid plants are able to reproduce normally, provided they can self-fertilize.

Why is this important? A number of reasons. First, the size of a cell tends to be directly correlated with the size of its nucleus. Since polyploid plants have more DNA, they have larger nuclei, and hence tend to be larger in general, which is vital for a food crop. Second, the surplus genetic material provides redundancy: a dominant gene on one of the copies may be able to compensate for negative recessive genes on the others. The duplicate genome may also introduce more genetic diversity to the organism, though the extent of this depends on the type of cross that created the polyploid organism. Some polyploid organisms are alloploid: they result from the cross of two closely related species, and introduce relatively greater amounts of genetic diversity. Modern wheat is hexaploid, and believed to be the result of two such crosses, as illustrated in Figure 7-5.

Figure 7-5. Modern wheat was created through an extensive breeding process over several thousand years which resulted in a hybrid genome containing chromosomes of three wild species.
i-e0f0c2197df894cd28f715270487aee2-wheat_polyploid.png


Other polyploid plants result from the cross of two individuals of the same species, and are considered autoploid. This is believed to have been key in the creation of crops such as modern maize and bread mesquite. The modern bread mesquite, Prosopis prolifica, is believed to have resulted from a cross of two individuals of the honey mesquite, Prosopis glandulosa, sometime around 2000 BC in the southwestern river valleys of North Columbia. The honey mesquite plants has pods of about 20 cm length on average; but the tetraploid bread mesquite has an average pod length of 40 cm. Since the plant's tetraploid condition also prevented it from back-crossing with wild mesquite, barring a similar chance event like the one that produced it, the early Ojozam [2] of the Aquimel Valley [3] were able to easily use artificial selection for characteristics they preferred...

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From Mesocolumbia: The Peoples of the Sun by P. Ramirez. Published 1996, Universidad de Puerto de Plata; Puerto de Plata, Nuevo Leon.

...While the Toltecs were in the midst of their cultural flowering, a new blossom was spreading in the northwest. The valley of the Aquimel is a harsh and unforgiving environment, one that the ancestors of the Ojozam had become well-adapted to even in their nomadic state. However, the hand of man would soon make its mark on the desert. Bread mesquite pods dating to circa 2000 BC first appear in the archeological records in excavations at Cuivomaz near the mouth of the Aquimel River... at this point, though, the Ojozam clearly were still living a semi-nomadic lifestyle. The bread mesquite pods were in a closer-to-wild state, being only about 30 cm long on average compared to the modern size of 40-45 cm. Nonetheless they were still used much in the same way as their modern counterparts. Mortars and pestles show the signs that dried mesquite pods were pounded into flour, which would have been baked into bread much like it is today. The sweet pulp of the fresh pod could be refined into a molasses or brewed into a sweet mead; and even the sap could be turned into a kind of resinous candy. However, these uses had been known to the inhabitants of the area for thousands of years; while bread mesquite made it possible to enjoy them more often, it was only a minor improvement over wild mesquite to a nomadic people, whose lifestyle did not lend itself to cultivating bread mesquite groves to their full potential.

The Aquimel River mouth, did, however, offer incentives to settle down. The area was rich in fish (a wealth which has sadly been destroyed now that the Aquimel barely flows past Conalquiquim [4]). Wild saltgrain [5] grew in the estuary, free for the harvesting. The area would show increasing population density for the next several hundred years. The exact cause of this buildup is not entirely clear. Mesquite pods recovered from sites show an increasing preponderance of the bread mesquite variety, which became both more numerous and larger as time went on. Whether population density drove the selection of larger pods, or whether larger pods drove an increase in population density, is the subject of intense debates among archaeologists of the Ojozam. What is clear, however, is that this increase would, in the fullness of time, result in a growing strain on existing resources, requiring the invention of methods to increase them. The alternative, in such a sharply bounded environment like the Aquimel Delta, would be inevitable environmental exhaustion and collapse. The early Ojozam succeeded in finding a way to head off this fate: By 1000 BC, the first irrigation channels are apparent at the sites of Cuycaiqui and Ononmaz [6], where the Ojozam first adopted a fully sedentary agricultural lifestyle. At this point, the crops familiar to the Toltecs, such as maize, beans, and squash, come into extensive use. While remains of these crops have been found dating to 3500 BC in various sites in Hydraulicolumbia[7], showing that they had spread from Mesocolumbia[8] some time before, they do not seem to have been fully appreciated until the Ojozam were able to incorporate them into their newly settled lifestyle. Maize, while extensively farmed in some areas, would never be quite as important there as it would be to peoples further south, but beans and squash and chilies comfortably grew in the shade of the mesquite groves, where the nitrogen fixed in the soil by the tree roots gave them an extra boost. Over the preceding thousand years, bread mesquite had slowly spread through most of the Aquimel and Gila Valleys, and down the coasts of the Gulf of Aquimel [9]. But it was the package of irrigation, mesquite, and accessory vegetables that would catapult it into Mesocolumbia over the next thousand...
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Quiadene. August 30, 1527

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca looked up through the ventilation shaft. The... basement? Dungeon? It seemed odd to call it that when he knew he was not actually underground – anyway, it was not quite as dark as he had first feared. Narrow rays of light streamed in through these small holes in the ceiling and provided, if not good, then sufficient illumination to see his neighbors. He and his newly-bought fellows now inhabited a cell, large enough for all its occupants (about thirty in total, native, Moor, and Spaniard) to at least sit down comfortably. He had expected worse.

He did not know what had happened to the rest of his comrades. Eight of them were here now; Alvar and five others had been brought with the first batch of purchases, and three more had been brought later, presumably after they had been passed over in one round of bidding or another. The rest, though, must be then in other cells like this one. He prayed that soon they would be reunited... in the meantime, he resolved to find out as much as he could about the fortress city he was now imprisoned in.

One of the native slaves knew a bit of the pidgin that Alvar had been slowly picking up. Over the following three days Alvar was able to establish that this was indeed Quiadene; that it was part of a “big land” that “go-up-river”; and that their new owner was a “big man” - a noble? - by the name of Atzitsana. Alvar asked what he wanted with them, or “What big-man us do?”, which seemed close enough; the native, whose name was Cacope, replied “Big-man us go up-river, do big-work.” “Big-work?” replied Alvar. “Yes, jecojani,” said Cacope. “What jecojani?” said Alvar. Cacope mimed swinging something over his head, then pinched his earlobe. “No understand,” said Alvar. Cacope pointed to his neck, then grabbed his wrists and ankles, and made a show of ooh-ing and aah-ing at them. Esteban, a Moor who had once been a slave of the Spaniards and now was a slave of Atzitsana, perked up at this performance. “Does he mean... jewelry?” he said to Alvar in Spanish. Comprehension dawned. “Yes... no... I think he means silver,” Alvar said, “I think they're taking us to the silver mines...”


[1]Known OTL as Down's Syndrome
[2] OTL O'odham peoples, also known as the Pima, Yuma, and various other tribes of Arizona, and corresponding to the Hohokam cultural area of the ancient Pueblo peoples of the Southwest. Ojozam is pronounced similarly to "O'odham" (meaning "people" as so many ethnonyms do), but it is rendered in a Castillian-influenced orthography due to historical reasons TTL.
[3] OTL Colorado River. From O'odham Akimel, "River"
[4] A medium-sized TTL city near OTL Mexicali, Baja California
[5] OTL known as Palmer's saltgrass, a pseudocereal which thrives in brackish conditions and excretes salt on its leaves. This plant has been bred to produce exponentially better yields in hopes of finding a crop that can be irrigated by seawater; here the Ojozam have improved its yield, though not to the extent of modern techniques, and it will remain a niche crop outside of the Gulf of California at least till modern times.
[6] Ojozam ruins near the river delta
[7] TTL historical term encompassing the civilizations of the Desert Southwest, referring to their resemblance to the ancient water-based (hydraulic) civilizations of Egypt and Sumeria.
[8]TTL term for Mesoamerica
[9]OTL Gulf of California
 
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Hobelhouse

Hey, DValdron. I'd like your input if you have a moment. I know you did a lot of research on the invention of metallurgy lay out the likely course of Thule technology for your TL. So here's a map of active copper mines in the US:

1024px-US_copper_mine_locations_2003.svg.png


A keen observer would notice that many of these mines cluster along the Gila River, quite close indeed to the emerging civilization along the *Colorado. Many presently exhausted mines also litter the region which would still be available for them. Native copper is readily available, and the ores are mostly copper oxides, which is good since all you need to refine them is to reduce them with heat and carbon. So, what do you think it would take to spur them to develop advanced metallurgy?

I'm mulling the possibility of having them discover bronze as well; however, tin deposits in North America are rather... sporadic. There are some small deposits in New Mexico, a couple in California, and rather more in central Mexico (northernmost are in Durango). The most likely source though is in San Luis Potosi, which had some mines which produced lead, zinc, and silver concurrently, along with small amounts of tin. Bronze might be something the Central Mexicans come up with TTL, provided with a steady supply of imported *Arizonan copper... but what would push them to make the discovery? Simple experimentation? A smelting accident? Something else?
 

DG Valdron

My main computer is in the shop, but I'll come up with something.

Some thoughts on copper - native copper cultures are quite common. Anywhere there's significant copper deposits you'll find it.

Basically, the thing with copper is that it's relatively soft, but you can pound an edge to it.

Think stonework. Basically, that's tough work. There's a handful of techniques to work Stone - but mostly it comes down to fracturing. You hit one stone with another stone, it breaks and you get an edge. Get a stone with really good fracture properties and you can make very subtle refined shapes. There's also grinding, that comes along later.

Now, really good toolstone, chert or flint, that's not common. It only occurs in a few areas in a territory, and the best stone may be from dozens or hundreds of miles away. And it's pretty labour intensive.

Now, the thing with copper, is that in geological processes, heat and pressure anneals it into lumps or nuggets. Not very big, but large enough. They get washed down waters by erosional processes, and because their weight, their specific density is uniform, they tend to end up in the same place. So they congregate. Where you find one lump of copper, you tend to find others. Same principle actually with gold.

Now, thing with copper is that if you pound it with a rock, it doesn't fracture. It flattens.

If you pound it hard and long enough, you can get a nifty edge, and when you lose the edge, you just pound it some more.

That's not bad. Particularly if getting a nice proper edge is a social priority, and the source of good flaking or fracturing stone is a twenty or thirty mile walk away.

So the first virtue of copper is not much more than that it's useful and available.

Now, here's the cool thing. Copper has a low melting point. Not so low that you could melt it in a campfire. But the nice part is that a campfire can raise the temperature enough to get it, if not melty, then malleable. Makes it a lot easier to pound into shapes. Remember, making tools is labour intensive. So a discovery that saves a little labour is going to be adopted. It's an easy discovery to make.

And it makes it a lot easier to pound nuggets of copper together into a larger unit or tool. You can't do that with stone. You only ever reduce a stone to smaller stones, and if you make a mistake, no takesy backsies. With copper and a fire, you can work backwards, make small things into bigger things, and you get takesy backsies.

So, if there's a really good source of copper, then it seems that inevitably the culture will start to work it into tools and ceremonial objects. There were at least half a dozen local indigenous copper cultures. The copper inuit was one. The Alquonquin Copper culture around the great lakes was a big one. There were mexican and meso-american copper cultures, another around British Columbia/Alaska, etc.

Now, let's consider the economics and utility of copper. Copper has advantages over stone or stonework. But it's not nearly as widely available. So a local copper culture will use it for tools. But where copper travels a long long distance, the economics shift, it becomes more valuable than for simple tools - you can get a stone tool easier, faster, cheaper from a local or regional deposit. But over a long distance it becomes more valuable used for a ceremonial object. That's what happened to the Alquonquin copper culture. Started out as tools, that use faded out, and it became primarily ritual and ceremonial objects, jewelry, whatnot.

Consider the economics and utility of tools as a whole. Any tool is valuable if you have to make it or trade for it, and your life depends on it. But some tools get more and heavier use than others. An arrowhead will do its job for an instant. The time it takes for the arrow to fly to and into its target. A scraper, on the other hand, will be used continuously for hours, although intermittently, when there's a hide to scrape.

Agricultural tools? Agricultural tools take a lot of wear and tear, take a lot of hard use, and over the long term. Day in, day out, hours of use, year after year. Agricultural tools will generally be worked longer and harder, more intensively or steadily, and over a more continuous period of time, over a longer period of time than any other sort of tool. You've got a lot more population density, so you need a lot more tools.

You come up to the limits of stone very quickly. Stone breaks, you're screwed. Better to have tools or a tool substance you can repair, or fix up.

So if you've got a Mesquite agricultural society, particularly one that requires specialized tools, copper is going to go over pretty big.

How's that for a start.
 

Hobelhouse

A good start. Edged tools are going to be important. A lot of wood to chop, and mesquite is hard wood. And the deposits are quite accessible so they are going to be swimming in copper by pre-industrial standards. The Pueblo people OTL had copper, but they did not use it very extensively. Here they have about a 1500 year head start and a much higher population base so I expect it to be used much more extensively.

The question I'm wondering most about - well, one of them - is how the transition from native copper to mining ores happens. I'm guessing simple accidents? Seems like the combination of heat + ore + carbon would happen accidentally easily enough if you're already heating copper frequently.

The Pueblo peoples OTL knew about ovens. How hard is it to adapt that knowledge to make one capable of melting copper? Copper melts at... oh, jeez, 1085°C. Kitchen oven ain't gonna cut it, no sir. But it would definitely help in the softening process, and by incremental improvements they might arrive at a design capable of melting the stuff. Then you could start to cast things.

What fosters a bronze culture? I'm guessing it starts once you figure out how to melt metals and mix them together to see what happens. They'd probably start mixing copper and gold or silver to give it that bit of extra strength. Tin, though, that's harder. Native tin is like a unicorn, it never happens. It's always in cassiterite or some other ore. So what inspires people to figure out it's there, and then to mix it with copper?
 

DG Valdron

Hobelhouse said:
A good start. Edged tools are going to be important. A lot of wood to chop, and mesquite is hard wood. And the deposits are quite accessible so they are going to be swimming in copper by pre-industrial standards. The Pueblo people OTL had copper, but they did not use it very extensively. Here they have about a 1500 year head start and a much higher population base so I expect it to be used much more extensively.

The question I'm wondering most about - well, one of them - is how the transition from native copper to mining ores happens. I'm guessing simple accidents? Seems like the combination of heat + ore + carbon would happen accidentally easily enough if you're already heating copper frequently.
Click to expand...

Basically, you start to run out of easy placer deposits. There's not a universal nugget size. You get fair sized nuggets, and pebble and bead sized nuggets and smaller and smaller all the way down to identifiable grains. Use up the good nuggets, you start working with smaller and smaller. You probably end up using or developing higher temperatures locally.

Most of copper working is going to be on site - at or near the actual deposits. So if you get a really hot fire, you might notice some extra carbonized copper slag in the ashes that wasn't there before.


The Pueblo peoples OTL knew about ovens. How hard is it to adapt that knowledge to make one capable of melting copper? Copper melts at... oh, jeez, 1085°C. Kitchen oven ain't gonna cut it, no sir. But it would definitely help in the softening process, and by incremental improvements they might arrive at a design capable of melting the stuff. Then you could start to cast things.
Click to expand...

Matter of airflow and containing the heat. I'd suggest rather than cooking ovens, a kiln oven might do the trick. Air fueling or pumping air in will do the trick.


What fosters a bronze culture? I'm guessing it starts once you figure out how to melt metals and mix them together to see what happens.
Click to expand...

Trial and error, mostly error I would think. Mostly, you'd have people not even really realizing or appreciating that there are distinct metals. Initially, the perception would be that all malleable metals are essentially the same - the key quality is that you can pound them into shape, they soften when you heat them up, and can melt with enough heat. Deposits are harvested locally. So its all just varieties of 'copper.' If all you have are copper or varieties of copper, then its no big deal to mix copper from different sources, and if some of it results in happy accidents, that's noted.


They'd probably start mixing copper and gold or silver to give it that bit of extra strength. Tin, though, that's harder. Native tin is like a unicorn, it never happens. It's always in cassiterite or some other ore. So what inspires people to figure out it's there, and then to mix it with copper?
Click to expand...

Basically, what you'll see is 'copper culture' smithing generalizing to anything that resembles copper - including gold, silver, etc.

If you get to the point of being able to smelt and cast copper, then... you can get alloys.

Any thought to Arsenical bronze?

Also, a thought - the West Africans I think jumped to Iron working without a prior copper culture.
 

Hobelhouse

Once upon a time there was Juguertamacai. Juguertamacai was all and knew all, for all else was nothing. He strode back and forth across the nothing, for no amount of time, for even time was something and there was nothing other than Juguertamacai.

Juguertamacai determined to His satisfaction that nothing was indeed nothing, and He decided to create something. As there was nothing else but Juguertamacai, He knew that something must flow from Him. He stretched out His palm and His sweat flowed from it, and became the world. At first it was just earth. Then, from the earth He fashioned a mesquite tree. This tree had no thorns, as it was the first tree and perfect. Then, from drops of His blood he fashioned a tribe of red ants, which lived off the pods and gum of the tree. The red ants built and built upon the edges of this earth until it was as big as the whole world. Juguertamacai reached down from the heavens and fashioned the mountains, valleys, and streams of the new world. He took more sweat to make all the plants of the field, and shed more of his blood to make the animals that ran through them. Then, He took a shining gem from deep within the earth and placed it in the heavens. He placed it in the east, but that did not work; He placed it in the west, but that did not work either. Finally He decided it must travel from east to west, and that worked perfectly. He placed the moon similarly, and crushed a diamond in His hands and threw it across the sky to make the stars. The sun always shone brightly but was never too warm, for it was perfect.

Juguertamacai saw all this and was pleased, for it was something where before had been nothing. But He was also disappointed, for He had made many somethings, but none of them really surprised Him, for they were all products of His mind. He resolved to make a something that could create as He could. He mixed the earth with His blood and gave the mixture a piece of His flesh. The mixture sprang into the form of a man and a woman, who were the First Man and the First Woman, and they knew neither sickness or age, because they were perfect. Juguertamacai was pleased, and gave them the freedom to create as they liked, and went to take a nap, dreaming of what He would discover when He woke up.

When He woke up, however, He was sorely upset. For the First People, knowing neither sickness nor age, had spread to cover the whole earth. The whole earth was so thick with people, in fact, that even the perfect Mesquite trees were not enough to fill their bellies, and they had resorted in tears to killing and eating each other. Juguertamacai wept to see His creations reduced to such a state. He decided He must start again, with limits on His creating creations this time, and He kicked down the pillars of the sky, and the sky fell, and destroyed everything.

Now Juguertamacai remade the world, but this time it was not perfect. In the new world, the sun burned the grass at midday, and every cactus had thorns a foot long. To make the Second People, He mixed in only a tiny amount of His flesh, and they were not perfect. In fact, they were so flawed that the Second People quickly became elderly and frail, and gave birth to babies that were already old. Juguertamacai soon saw after he woke that they were too busy being old and dying to do any creating, and He decided that this would not do either. He kicked out the pillars of the sky again, and the sky fell, and destroyed everything.

Juguertamacai made a third world, which he decided would be perfect again. And it was - almost. This time He mixed in His spit instead of His flesh to make the Third People. The Third People did not age or get sick, but they did not spread out of control. For they made many creations, but these were cruel and terrible, because the Third People did not know love. The Third People made sport of killing and roasting other Third People, and doing other unspeakable things besides, such that by the time He woke up there were very few Third People left. And Juguertamacai, upon waking and finding no love in them, decided this would not do either. Once more He kicked down the pillars of the sky, and the sky fell, and destroyed everything.

Now Juguertamacai remade the world again, and a new People, from His flesh again this time: less than for the First People but more than for the Second. Then He mixed in the tears He had cried for the other Peoples with the earth and His blood and His flesh, and the mixture sprang into being as the Fourth People. This Fourth World and its People were only a little bit imperfect. Here the sun was sometimes too warm, but not always, and the people did get sick and die, but not too fast. Though He sorely wanted to take a nap, Juguertamacai resolved to stay awake until He had a People He was sure could create satisfying things that had love in them. He made two helpers to assist him with this task. First, the moon became a mother, and gave birth to Ban, the Coyote. Then, the sun became a mother, and gave birth to Niuvi, the Buzzard. Niuvi watched from the skies and Ban watched from the land to make sure the Fourth People did not spread out of control.

Soon enough they went back to Juguertamacai. "The Fourth People are growing out of control. They eat all of the pods of the mesquite tree, before it can replenish them, and too few survive to be planted in the land," said Ban. "Yes," said Niuvi, "I can count their numbers from the skies. They do not last forever, but there are so many of them, and they have so many babies. In time they will have nothing left to eat but each other." Juguertamacai heard this, and He was troubled, for among other things He was suspecting He was never going to be able to take His nap. But He knew He had a bit of time before the Fourth People grew too much, and He resolved to think of a way to further slow down the Fourth People as He did not want to kick down the pillars of the sky again. Suddenly, He came upon an idea. He took the spirit of the cactus and married it to the spirit of the mesquite tree. Their children were strange: a bread mesquite bearing thorns, and a prickly pear cactus bearing fruit. But the Fourth People, on encountering the thorns, pricked their hands and shed blood; and they could no longer harvest the fruits quickly enough to use them up and grow out of control. Juguertamacai was pleased, and went down again for His nap. Since that time, Ban and Niuvi have watched over the Fourth People, ensuring that Juguertamacai's plan remains in control. And the thorns of the prickly pear and mesquite remind us of the plan, and how Juguertamacai shed His own blood and sweat to create, as must we. That is how the world came to be as it is today.

Now, let me tell you the story of the Flood...

-Ojozam creation myth, related to Spanish missionary Xavier de la Corunya by a very talkative elder, 17th century
 
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Hobelhouse

I think I do need to lay some of my cards on the table before I go much further.

So, basically all our information on the ancient Pueblo peoples is sketchy. We don't really know who they were. We don't know what language they spoke. The modern Pueblo peoples claim descent from them, but there was clearly a lot of people moving about after the wider Pueblo culture began to crash in the 12th century so it's hard to tell who was "authentically" Pueblo. The Anasazi collapsed and migrated south after the 12th century; hence the only name we have for them is the one their Navajo replacements came up for them, "Ancient Enemy". The Mogollon in the south were replaced by Apachean peoples around 1400 and are mostly distinguished by their pottery, though the Hopi and Zuni, speakers of two entirely unrelated languages (Hopi is Ute-Aztecan and Zuni is an isolate), claim descent. The O'odham peoples claim descent from the Hohokam, and speak an Ute-Aztecan language, so they have been drafted into the role of prototype for the Ojozam civilization. Many of the surviving Pueblos today speak various related Keresan languages, and others speak yet another family of Tanoan languages. So, it's a little hard to tell who exactly was living where in 2000 BC!

I am going to be making decisions on the nature of the emerging civilizations mostly based on gut historical feeling, narrative convenience, and which language resources I can find online easily. By the nature of this medium I need to be able to make up personal and place names, which I can't do if nobody even knows what the language sounded like. I'd like the *Anasazi to grow into something interesting, but I have no idea how to talk about them. I'm stumped on what to do with them other than contrive to kill them off or pull an invented language out of my ass. I already have something akin to that planned for the proto-Mogollon.
 
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fasquardon

With regards to who the Pueblo actually were, the answer may well be "all of the above". There is no reason to suspect that the Pueblo ever spoke a single language - we have plenty of other examples of peoples who have had different languages but the same material culture. Also, the various migrations and replacements are unlikely to be total things. So peoples who migrated into the area later on could also be descendants of the original inhabitants, due to the modern peoples actually being the descendants of a mix of migrants and remnant Pueblo peoples.

As far as bronze goes, there is a tin deposit that was worked in ancient times in Northern Mexico - this appears to be the only tin source in pre-modern North America. See here. Tin often gets traded a long way, so the alt-Pueblos might enter the Bronze Age - likely bronze would still be fairly rare though.

Also, I am really enjoying your writing style.

fasquardon
 
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