Lands of Bronze and Fire - An American Domestication Timeline, Take Two
- Thread starter Huehuecoyotl
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Huehuecoyotl
Monthly Donor
I'm flattered. Rest assured that I'm actually actively working on the next few updates. 
I remember reading this TL when it first came in 2014! Great to see it back.
As someone who is also doing a Mesoamerican TL my attempt seems ham fisted compared to this simple yet interestingly written TL.
As someone who is also doing a Mesoamerican TL my attempt seems ham fisted compared to this simple yet interestingly written TL.
TheScottishMongol
Banned
I was unaware this was still going until very recently. Glad it's been nominated for a Turtledove, I'm a huge fan!
Huehuecoyotl
Monthly Donor
I promise that this was a joke. 😰Just for this, I'm taking another sabbatical. See you all in 2024.
While reading through this morning I noticed that a lot of the image embeds in the thread were broken; I've reuploaded all of them and intend to go through them again later to add alt text/captions as an aid to people with visual impairments, if any happen to follow my work.
Regarding the story, I intend to post another update pretty soon. According to my notes, the next couple of posts are supposed to be about California and the Pacific Northwest, so after some requisite reading I'll let you guys know what's been going on up there.
Happy Library Card Sign-up Month!
Oh my God, my favorite timeline is back. After my horrible day, this has literally brought me to tears. I'm so freaking excited.
It's funny, actually. I was wondering how to go about writing a Doctor Who story about the Battle of Atsadzhil (called, of course, The Song of Fallen Stones) just a little bit ago.
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XIV. The Golden West
Huehuecoyotl
Monthly Donor
Golden West: Quijhant's First Civilizations
From "A Primer on the Renewed Period of Columbia: Volume One" by Thomas Liebknecht
[1 ]
While the nearby lowlands of Petsiroò flourished at the dawn of the 10th century BCE, the region we now call Quijhant was just beginning to catch up to the established centers of Columbian civilization. The first humans seem to have peopled the region by around 19,000 years before present, coexisting for a time with the fauna of the famous Saxtakhit Tar Pits [2] before most of the charismatic Ice Age megafauna died away. The first Quijhantes found themselves in a veritable garden that was now all their own; even with big game hunting now obsolete as a survival strategy, they could still more than amply feed themselves through other means. The rich forests and rivers of the region fed a ballooning human population that, by 1000 BCE, had outgrown Petsiroò's pre-Collapse numbers. This was in spite of the fact that Quijhant was comparatively slow to adopt the Three Sisters or, for that matter, livestock rearing. Hunting, gathering, fishing, and forest gardening would remain the predominant means of subsistence in most parts of Quijhant even through the first half of the Renewed Period.From "A Primer on the Renewed Period of Columbia: Volume One" by Thomas Liebknecht
[1 ]
Accordingly, for the most part Quijhant sat out the Formative Collapse without really noticing it had happened. Traders seldom crossed the deserts into Quijhant except to periodically bring turquoise and copper in exchange for woven baskets and animal skins. When they stopped coming, the Quijhantes were no worse for wear without their luxury goods and did as they always did. Outbreaks of epidemic diseases like mucoa and the black cough spread in the area between 1200 and 1050 BCE in occasional fits, but had mostly subsided by the end of the 11th century. As the population rebounded and trade contacts resumed, the Three Sisters finally found a new home in the vast, fertile plains of the Central Valley.
Criss-crossed with rivers, particularly the meandering Tiye'utch [=San Joaquin], and home to freshwater lakes, the Valley had previously been home to hunting bands and fishers of the Miwok and Yokuts peoples. The spread of farm fields across the region had profound effects, not least of which was the domestication of the water-pig. The Columbian water-pig (Hydrochoerus hesperotiganites) is a different species of what is, in Madeira, called a capybara. These large rodents are known for being particularly calm and gregarious, mingling freely with herds of other mammals. Once ranging over much of the west, this species' range contracted with the climatic changes after the last Ice Age, eventually persisting only as a small population in the wetter areas of the Central Valley. Although hunted by people for millennia, the spread of farming ditches and irrigation channels in the region brought the water-pig into closer contact with human society for the first time. Opportunistic poaching for pelts and meat eventually gave way to pup-rearing and breeding, with the docile animals kept easily in small pens or even in some cases living in the house. By 980 BCE, it had joined the ranks of Columbia's independently domesticated animals, at which time domesticated uurung and sheep were also spreading throughout Quijhant.
Along with the foreign crops of maize, beans, and squash, the Quijhantes would continue to cultivate their own native plants, but in greater numbers. In many places like the northern forests of the region, agroforestry would prove to be the most popular method of farming, with evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum), the starchy tubers of the common yampah (Perideridia gairdneri), and the berries of manzanitas (genus Arctostaphylos) picked among stands of live oak trees along with the Three Sisters. Further south, groves of juniper (Juniperus californica) sprouted up, emulating the juniper farms of Petsiroò.
Photograph from the University of Taanashdats Anthropology Collection. A Miwok shepherd and his animals in central Quijhant, ca. 1900. [3]
Owing to its head start and a relative lack of natural defensive boundaries in the Valley, Talilint was able to expand explosively over just three decades, dominating most of the Valley by 950 BCE. The Valley's plentiful soldiery were spent cheaply, with most army tactics not yet having progressed past the "human wave" stage. In contrast to the brutality of the battles, the captured cities themselves were left mostly alone, treated merely to robbery of treasure and the tearing down of fortifications, as well as their gods being made to show ritual obeisance to Talilint's. Otherwise, the local elites continued to administer the same territory as before, poorer, but alive. Talilint's chief was elevated as the first king of the Valley in either 948 or 947 in a ceremony resplendent with hours of rapturous dances and the parading of the idols of the fallen cities through the streets.
Having obtained this position of dominance, after a generation's wait to replenish the men lost in the initial wave of conquests, this First Miwok Kingdom (for there would, of course, be others) moved south and west. The conquest of the southern Central Valley was a comparatively easy task, proceeding over more of the same flat terrain with which the Miwok were so familiar, albeit more slowly than the first round due to the spread of bronzework and improving military tactics. Tight ranks of spearmen locked in deadly pushing contests were now the order of the day, and the resistance of the Yokuts spears only grew stiffer as refugees of previous conquests flooded in to bolster their ranks. Ultimately, numbers told, and the independent Yokuts cities of the southern valley were thrown down like the others before them.
Westward progress would prove to be a far more difficult ordeal, with Miwok armies forced to contend with the coastal ranges and a recalcitrant native population. By the 8th century, Ohlone cities were already firmly established around the Bay, and the first among them was the city now known as 'Onont. With the rise of sea trade in this era, this city had started to flourish as a base for traders in its own right, as well as being home to expansive fisheries. In future centuries, it would of course become the center of a powerful seafaring kingdom. Left to its own devices, it certainly might have done so early, in the First Renewed Period, had these expansionary wars not taken place; a popular what-if for writers of counterfactual history.
It was this city, with its commanding position at the mouth of the Bay, which would lead the resistance against the advancing Kingdom; no mean task, as the various cities of the Bay area had been embroiled in on-and-off wars over the preceding decades. Although this coalition would perform admirably, it was ultimately these old tensions that would undo the alliance, as treachery from within reared its head. Having convinced some traditional rivals to 'Onont that they would fare better under the king's rule than under an 'Onont-led confederacy, the Miwok Kingdom orchestrated one of the most epic betrayals in the history of the continent at the Battle of the Bay (616 BCE), where, in the midst of a massed infantry charge on the Miwok center, the confederate forces of three cities suddenly turned and attacked the 'Onont flanks. What proceeded was a massacre, punctuated two years later by the brutal sacking of the city itself.
The ruined city was a costly, but worthwhile, acquisition for the Kingdom, which was now able to achieve hegemony over trade in Quijhant as well as demographic and military force. Its probing attacks at the Pomo lands to the northwest achieved little, as the clans there were able to melt into the forests and evade direct confrontation, while the fishers and farmers of the Chumash lands in the south nervously watched, anticipating that their turn would be next. During all this, the Kumeyaay, right on the border of the western extremity of Petsiroan civilization, had their eyes turned south and east rather than north, learning skills that would benefit them in the next few centuries.
To an outside observer in 600 BCE, it seemed like the First Miwok Kingdom would dominate the region and become the continent's greatest power. But over the following centuries, internal pressures and environmental disaster would derail this rise to power and institute a new paradigm in Quijhant that would influence much of Columbia's west for ages to come. This, and more, will be covered in the second volume of this work.
Map of Quijhant in the First Renewed Period. [5]
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[2] - La Brea.
[3] - The tree is a California juniper, Juniperus californica. IOTL, Miwok traditional clothing is mostly deerskin. Thanks to TTL's domesticates, this fellow's trousers and moccasins are uurung hide, and he also has a wool poncho. His richer countrymen might wear more ornate versions spangled with feathers and seashells similar to some OTL Miwok clothing, but the shepherd wears simpler fare.
[4] - The site of modern Emmaton, CA.
[5] - The place names introduced in this update all derive from native languages of California, albeit with a different orthography. From the Southern Sierra Miwok language: Kelant = snow, Tiye'utch = sleepy, Kosumunt = salmon, Talilint = strong or strength, 'Onont = gold. From Chumashan: Saxtakhit = windy.
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Déjà vu... All that research I did for Caliphornia really helped with this one. As a side note, I'm not really used to making illustrations like the one above, but I thought it would be appropriate to start introducing them to aid in visualizing certain things as this timeline moves along.
There is a lot to say about religion in TTL California, so I saved it for a separate update. But first, I believe we're finally due a closer look at those uurung-riders and the Missisippi valley in the next one. See you then.
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XV. A Pounding of Hooves
Huehuecoyotl
Monthly Donor
A Pounding of Hooves: The Rise of the Sosoni [1]
From "A Primer on the Renewed Period of Columbia: Volume One" by Thomas Liebknecht
A scene from the ancestral Sosoni homeland. [2]
From "A Primer on the Renewed Period of Columbia: Volume One" by Thomas Liebknecht
A scene from the ancestral Sosoni homeland. [2]
The high deserts at the eastern fringe of the Alinta Mountains are an inauspicious place to begin this part of our story. Here there were no great rivers, no farmlands, nor, until recently, had there been any uurung. A myriad of different tribes and nations populated the region between the Alinta Mountains and the Nabototo River, moving in an ever-changing constellation. While some had the privilege to live in areas of plenty and settle in one place to enjoy the bounties of nature, others were compelled to take up a nomadic lifestyle, never remaining in one place for long, and following herds of Columbian bison as their main source of food.
At the dawn of the 10th century BCE, another people were added to this constellation. Historically, the Sosoni [=Shoshone] were predominantly a people of the Great Basin, dwelling in large numbers around the Great Bitter Lake. A diverse group of many tribes speaking many dialects, they had grown into uurung and sheep herders as these domesticated animals spread north into the Basin during the late Formative. The Sosoni were not destined to win the contest for ultimate control of the lake shore, however, as expanding farming and herding cultures from the south gradually pushed them into the open plains. Bereft of their ancestral homeland, minus a few small bands who would remain isolated among the newcomers, the bulk of the Sosoni nation emerged near the headwaters of the Tetsiyaa [=Platte] River around 900. Here they would remain for some time with their flocks of fluffy, wool-bearing uurung and their sheep. They might have remained there, too, had it not been for a great deal of ingenuity, and a bit of luck.
The mixing of uurung breeds from Nuuyoo and Petsiroò was well underway by the 9th century, with centuries of diversification having already taken place. The Sosoni had not historically been farmers, and so in their homeland in the Great Basin they had little use for paixaay breeds, whose principal use so far had been as draft animals. In their new home, however, they came into close contact for the first time with tribes that did use larger uurung with stronger backs and longer legs to clear land for grazing. Just where the idea to climb onto one's back originated is impossible to say, but the first people to make it practical were the Sosoni, who invented a simple cloth harness to support a human rider - the precursor to the first saddles.
The now mobile and growing population of the Sosoni picked up stakes and migrated to greener pastures between the Bis [=Rio Grande] and Tatsempin [=Arkansas] Rivers, where they came into contact with the sedentary river-side towns that marked the eastern border of Petsiroò. These were prospering farming communities held by Shiwi'ma- [=Zuñi] and Tanoan-speaking peoples, clustered along the northern run of the Bis in smatterings of adobe houses. They were used to occasional raids by tribes from the plains, but nothing like what would fall upon them beginning in 806 BCE. [3] Clubs and spears, already so deadly on foot, were even deadlier from the high vantage of a camelid's back, allowing for a much longer reach, as well as a considerable force multiplier. The ill-prepared pueblos had high walls, built after centuries of conflicts from both west and east, but swiftly found their outlying farmlands ransacked and their populations besieged. By 805, several of these small cities had fallen, while the mobile Sosoni forces wrapped around the river to raid deeper into Petsiroò.
The beleaguered cities' suzerain, the South-Wind Emperor, was not at all pleased with this development, and was determined to stamp out these riders from the east. At this time, the roads of Petsiroò were still only dirt, and usually just wide enough for two wagons to go abreast, and deep ruts from their wheels were starting to play havoc on travelers, slowing the Petsiroan warbands' response. By the time of their arrival, the Sosoni were already firmly entrenched in the riverside pueblos, but their fortification there would not be half as problematic for the imperial troops as the flanking attacks from the uurung-riders. One can only imagine how stupefied they were when encountering this style of warfare for the first time; with their column strung out for miles due to the poor, narrow road, the imperial warband was easily picked at by Sosoni raiders and their orderly procession disrupted.
Facing total collapse, the South-Wind soldiers retreated, harassed all the way. It is a matter of luck that the majority managed to fall back to hillier terrain in the west, where they took defensive positions. Here, at last, they held an advantage, as the Sosoni were unaccustomed to the terrain of Petsiroò's heartland. Facing an uphill battle against imperial spears, the Sosoni wisely withdrew back to their new base along the river, and waited.
This pattern would hold for the next few years, with imperial forces probing at the Sosoni and the Sosoni probing back. All the while, more cities fell, though the Sosoni remained incapable of progressing further into the highlands. The Empire's relief effort had proved a dismal failure, an embarrassing blemish on a military record that had been sterling so far. Knowing, however, that they could not allow the Sosoni to make their way into the Ashih-hi River valley and ransack the economic base of the Empire, the Petsiroans moved again in 802. Making use of night raids to burn and disrupt the field camps of the Sosoni, the Petsiroans managed to get their hands on riding uurung for the first time. It would be years before they could breed their own, but for now the true challenge was learning to ride the captured beasts. This, too, was an unexpected challenge, but one which they took to with determination.
More inconclusive raids and counter-raids proceeded through 798, when the first Petsiroan cavalry finally took to the field. These were principally lightly equipped skirmishers modeled after those of their Sosoni foes, equipped with throwing spears and short bronze blades. What they lacked in experience, they made up for in better materials and equipment, and most of the early clashes between the two were inconclusive. The art of mixing cavalry and infantry tactics was clearly far from being perfected, with little in the way of coordination on the Petsiroan side. The most they managed in these early clashes was to send Sosoni cavalry fleeing toward hiding spears and archers, a strategy which saw limited success as the Sosoni could still easily dance away in reaction and escape more often than not.
Gradually, however, the utility of mixing the two necessitated harder efforts by the Petsiroans, who by 792 BCE had grown more adept with their new mounts. These efforts would be tested that year when the Empire brought about a climactic end to the war. The South-Wind forces feigned a major retreat, purposefully creating a free corridor toward a small town near what is now called the Roasted Bluff along the eastern part of the Ashih-hi. The town sat on the northern side of the river, and a short distance to the north was elevated terrain. The Sosoni were undoubtedly wary, but with the promise of being able to loot the rich towns of the region, they nevertheless took the bait, summoning up the majority of their field forces for a great raid into the Ashih-hi heartlands to end the imperial resistance once and for all. As they came upon the town, they were surprised by whoops and war-cries from the north, where the imperial forces made themselves known. When looking west and east for a route to escape, however, they found that imperial skirmishers on uurung-back were boxing them in, with the river at their backs. The main imperial force poured down the hillsides in a vengeful fury.
The Sosoni soon became uncomfortably acquainted with the bronze spears of Petsiroò, which they'd scorned for years, now no longer having the luxury to keep away. The Petsiroans even brought them on uurung-back, as among the infantry charge there were riders in tough leather armor with heavy spears. The region's lancers would be famous in later centuries, and based on the inaugural performance of this primitive model at the Roasted Bluff, it is hard to disagree with that assessment. At days' end, the bodies of men and uurung bloated in the evening sun - by far, most were Sosoni.
With their forces in the field routed, the Sosoni warbands assessed their position and decided to get out while the getting was good. The river pueblos could hold for a while, but they saw no need to waste more lives on this expedition when it seemed that permanent settlement was growing more unlikely by the day. They burned the occupied towns and retreated back east into the plains with their plunder, leaving a devastated region for the Petsiroans to reoccupy.
Thus by early 791, the invasion was ended, but intent on not letting their embarrassment go unpunished, the Petsiroan riders would come again once the region's roads were in better shape. They pursued the Sosoni into the plains beginning in 785, ransacking villages and slaughtering their herds. This seemed to be the breaking point for the Sosoni, who decided these pastures were not green enough and began a migration east. With their honor satisfied, the Petsiroans returned home, unaware of the events they had just set in motion.
The massive earthworks of Poverty Point show the sophistication of the Nabototo River Valley societies before their conquest. [4]
By this time, the continent's longest river, the Nabototo, had seen large communities growing by its banks for centuries. The first mound-building cultures seem to have been established along the lower Nabototo by 3500 BCE, proceeding on and off with occasional collapses in organization visible in the archaeological record. By the 8th century, mound-building society had spread north and east, and was now firmly established across the great rivers of the region. The largest and most powerful site in this period was Poverty Point, which despite its size and evident power had declined around 1100. The descendants of those who built it were still living in the area when the Sosoni arrived, where they enjoyed a sophisticated, hierarchical culture ruled by priest-kings focused on the mound sites. They fed themselves with vast fields of maize, which had arrived a century or two earlier, as well as incipient cultivation of broadleaf arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia), fish, and game. [5] Although populous and sophisticated, they were also illiterate, and their real name has not been passed down to us. The conquest that would soon unfold erased much of their language, though their culture itself would not die out.
The Sosoni found these mound-builders easier targets than their late foes, the Petsiroans, for these people had no bronze and no tall walls except for wooden pallisades that the Sosoni could burn with abandon. The cities and ceremonial centers were ransacked and the population mostly enslaved, with the Sosoni taking over as the new ruling class along the lower Nabototo. It would not take them very long to begin to adopt the same religious and cultural ceremonies as their conquered population, and for the natives to begin to adopt the Sosoni language, as well as their domesticated animals.
Now settled in one place, the Sosoni gradually forgot their nomadic roots over the following century and a half, forging a powerful state that soon spread north and west along the great rivers. The lingering effects of their long journey, however, had still not settled, and would ultimately cause problems for the new Sosoni state further down the line. This will be explored in the second volume of this work.
The evolving face of the Great Plains and Nabototo watershed in the First Renewed Period. [6]
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[2] Image credit: sierraclub.org
[3] This same series of events was summarized very briefly back in Update VIII.
[4] Image credit: brittanica.com
[5] IOTL, maize cultivation probably had not spread to this region by this early date. Its presence here is a butterfly, which means the Poverty Point culture has lasted a little longer, for all the good it did them. Broadleaf arrowhead is a plant with nutritious tubers that grows in very wet soils around riverbanks; it was extensively harvested, but not cultivated as far as I know, by historical Native Americans.
[6] As is typical, all new names introduced in this update derive from Native American languages, with the loose exception of the Soso River, which is really just contracted from "Sosoni". They're as follows. From Dené [Navajo]: Tł'iish (snake), Bis (adobe). From various Shoshone dialects: Tetsiyaa (fork), Puimanih (copper), Tatsempin (star), Akoaih (bear). The name Kícpaarukstiʾ (holy waters) for the Missouri is from the South Band Pawnee language and is unchanged from OTL. There is one name from Ofo - Sompka (fin/wing) - which was a Siouan language originally spoken in the Ohio valley before it was displaced and eventually made extinct. We don't know the language(s) of the historical Adena culture (whose name is unchanged for convenience, as with Poverty Point) but I've decided to call upon the Ofo language to fill in some gaps in the Ohio region. The names of the Great Lakes ITTL are all known native names from OTL, from the Ojibwe and Wyandot languages. Lake Ontario, just off screen, is still Ontario.
As a side note, you might notice the Mississippi Delta looks a bit funny. The Delta has changed shapes many times over the centuries due to fluvial deposits and erosion from the tides of the Gulf. According to an image on Wikipedia, this is roughly how it looked approx. 1000 BCE. Because I'm a hypocrite, I didn't apply this same logic to the changing courses of North America's rivers because it would be too much work. Mea culpa.
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It's taken five years, but we are finally at the end of the First Renewed Period. This era's trend of the spread of domestication and agriculture, and the entry of new regions into the historical record, will continue in the second half of the period, the Second Renewed Period. Introductory post for that coming soon.
Apparently this is my longest update so far. Sure felt like it.
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XVI. The Second Renewed Period
Huehuecoyotl
Monthly Donor
The Second Renewed Period (600 - 206 BCE)
From "A Primer on the Renewed Period of Columbia: Volume Two" by Thomas Liebknecht, Imperial University of Augsburg Press, 1999
A meadow of calliopsis flowers in 'Eetsiya. [1]
From the roots of the Formative Period, a flourishing, continent-wide society was now growing across Columbia. The spread of sails, of road networks, and of uurung-riding was beginning to link areas that had developed separately for thousands of years, ushering in an unprecedented period of technological and cultural advancement. As we saw in the first volume of this work, however, this was not without its drawbacks, including the spread of epidemic diseases and increasingly large and costly wars. The transition between the First and Second Renewed Periods was marked by the onset of fragmentation and warfare, both internal and external, among the large states that had taken shape in the preceding epoch.From "A Primer on the Renewed Period of Columbia: Volume Two" by Thomas Liebknecht, Imperial University of Augsburg Press, 1999
A meadow of calliopsis flowers in 'Eetsiya. [1]
This period of fragmentation and reorganization was succeeded by a second florescence of science and culture, with even more regions beginning to experience both the benefits and drawbacks of Columbia's plants, animals, and technology as a result. Most dramatic of all of these introductions was Madeira [=South America], which at the close of this era was first incorporated into a now pan-Hesperidian cultural and technological sphere. The exchanges that resulted from this contact would ultimately bring the Renewed Period to an end at the close of the 3rd century BCE.
It is my hope that, as with the first volume of this series, the student of history will come away with a greater appreciation for the importance of the Renewed Period to Hesperidian history, and be able to place these civilizations in a shared context with those developing in the Old World at the same time.
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Chapter One: Will cover the early development of the Maya culture.
Chapter Two: Will describe the Second Reformed Period in Nuuyoo, including the rise to importance of the Teneka Valley city-states and the Nivdavay Empire.
Chapter Three: Will explore the rise of the first civilizations in 'Eetsiya.
Chapter Four: Will discuss the trade networks of the Tuuwaya becoming more complex and tightly interwoven.
Chapter Five: Will summarize the Scorpion Wars of Petsiroò.
Chapter Six: Will introduce the first cultures of the Great Basin and their religious impact on Columbian society.
Chapter Seven: Will touch upon the breakup of the First Miwok Kingdom and the rise of powerful thalassocracies in Quijhant.
Chapter Eight: Will look in detail at the development of early societies in the Panthalassic Northwest.
Chapter Nine: Will include the flourishing and fall of the first Sosoni Empire in the Nabototo River valley.
Chapter Ten: Will discuss the rise of new cultures in the Eastern Woodlands.
Chapter Eleven: Will cover the first great Hesperidian exchange, including its effects on Madeira.
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[1] - AKA West Mexico. Image source: behance.netAs usual, there will probably be some in-between updates among these main updates listed above. So if there's an area, technology, or cultural thing you're curious about not listed here, let me know; I might be able to write it in somewhere.
100 million is towards the high end of pre-Columbian New World population estimates, with middle ground estimates being around 50-70 million, the majority of whom were in Mesoamerica and The Andes. Granted, my source for that is the Wikipedia page, so take it with a grain of salt. ITTL I'd guess the population of the Americas would be around 150-200 million, with the largest increase relative to OTL being in the U.S., which I could see having a population around 50 million ITTL. Regardless, it'll be much harder for any European state to colonize TTL's Americas than OTL's, especially when the New World has some endemic diseases of its own.I haven't crunched all the numbers yet, but Charles Mann and others have concluded that OTL's Americas were home to something like 100 million people in 1492, roughly one fifth of the entire world's population. ITTL, the population of the Americas could be anywhere from two to four times higher, very possibly making Hesperidia account for a good one half of the world's population in 1492.
This will be significant.
XVII. Lands of Jade and Turkey
Huehuecoyotl
Monthly Donor
Lands of Jade and Turkey: The Early Years of the Maya
From "A Primer on the Renewed Period of Columbia: Volume Two" by Thomas Liebknecht, Imperial University of Augsburg Press, 1999
A view from the Maya Highlands. [1]
At the beginning of the Formative Period, the Naizaa gap, which separated the feet of the Nava Mountains [=Sierra Madre] from the Maya Highlands, also separated camelid-herding pastoralists from the heartlands of the Maya. The humid, low-altitude climate of this gap, while not lethal for uurung as it would be for their Madeiran cousins, was still not a friendly environment; they struggled to breed there, with their young in particular experiencing a higher mortality rate. As a result, a lot of the shared cultural development of the Nuuyoo civilizations did not pass to the east for a very long time; the only significant intermingling the Maya had with outsiders prior to this period was with the remnants of the Epi-Otopa civilization, who were likewise not herders.From "A Primer on the Renewed Period of Columbia: Volume Two" by Thomas Liebknecht, Imperial University of Augsburg Press, 1999
A view from the Maya Highlands. [1]
This development, however, was really only delayed and not forestalled entirely. At the start of the Renewed Period, domesticated sheep crossed this gap, and shepherding became a staple of highland Maya culture. The uurung, eventually, followed after several attempts at establishment attested in the archaeological record. Thus, a little late, the Maya became linked with broader Isthmocolumbian history for the first time.
These early Maya multiplied in the Renewed Period, filling their highlands until they spilled into the lowlands to the north. Small bands of Mayan-speaking hunters and gatherers, of course, had already dwelled in the Mayaba for centuries at this point, but it was this influx of farmers and herders that would transform the region into a closely connected network of urban societies in the comparatively short span of a few centuries. These flourishing cities shared much in common with each other, and with their regional neighbors in Nuuyoo, including a complex ritual calendar, ball courts, and still at this point in time human sacrifice.
But despite these commonalities, unity between the lowland Maya was something of a fairy tale. Just as often as they'd band together, cities would feud and wage war over herding territory or for the pride of the ruling families, with captives giving up their hearts and entrails in grisly rituals atop the region's many pyramids. This latter practice grew more complicated logistically as the region's population ballooned in the Second Renewed Period, with larger masses of soldiery corresponding as well to a greater volume of captives. Just one inscription from an archaeological site in the Mayaba records the sacrifice of more than 300 captives from a neighboring city in 286 BCE, a spectacle which was said to have transformed the steps of their greatest pyramid to waterfalls of blood, and to have stained the soil red for weeks. [2]
The growing scale and intensity of warfare also coincided with mass clearings of the Mayaba jungles to make room for huge herds of sheep to feed the growing cities. Terraforming for the purposes of farming, the expansion of cities, irrigation channels, and road networks also radically transformed the Mayaba, permanently erasing vast swaths of the tropical rainforests which once covered much of its breadth. Centuries of this treatment depleted the region's soil, leading to an onset of droughts, crop failures, and die-offs of livestock. As the third century drew to a close, the whole region was in flux, with the so-called Maya Collapse abruptly ending the political order that had prevailed in the peninsula since the 800s.
It was not this, however, but the inopportune arrival of invaders from the west that would truly mark the end of this great Maya epoch...
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[1] - Essentially the highland regions of Chiapas and southern Guatemala. Image source: landedtravel.com
[2] - Readers will recall that a previous update suggested that human sacrifice in Mesoamerica would die out in the centuries leading up to and immediately after the turn of the Common Era. Herr Professor Liebknecht's evident astonishment at the practice reflects the fact that this was already ancient history by the time of European contact, and thus a particularly strange, distant source of disgust to even latter-day Mesoamericans.
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I'm not altogether satisfied with this one, but I was glad to get it done anyway. The Yucatán isn't very different ITTL from its Preclassic counterpart IOTL in most of the broad strokes. Just a matter of scale - and lots of sheep. The much higher human population and demands of livestock rearing exacerbated the environmental factors which are suspected to have affected Maya societies during the various collapses of OTL. I'll go into some more detail about the fallout of this in the next era's Maya update.