Lands of Red and Gold, Act II
- Thread starter Jared
- Start date
twovultures
Donor
I know that Australia has feral horses IOTL. Will we see this happening ITTL, or will any escaped horses find themselves in a peasant's cooking pot?
Lycaon pictus
Donor
Not for a long time. With so many farmers and ranchers dying in epidemics and leaving their flocks behind, peasants will have more ducks and emus on their hands than they know what to do with.
Also, with every state and statelet in Aururia wanting its own cavalry, live horses are probably worth their weight in kunduri. Especially since they can only breed so fast (assuming the Dutch and English are shipping over any fertile males and females, rather than just shipping them geldings to keep them dependent).
Who wouldn't want one of those giant hopping rats to add to their collection?
That's among his many other talents. He was also an accomplished artist, for instance, and some of the Yadji knowledge of paints and dyes is better than what was known in Europe at the time, so he may well come up with some interesting Aururian-themed paintings during his time in the Great Gold Island.
Yes, I did. Good catch, thanks. The rule always seems to be that there's at least one error in there, no matter how many times I check something.
I like that both this Timeline and the Bloody Man seem to be sitting on the same years right now.
And the race to 1660 is on...
There will be feral horses eventually. How long it takes before they're seen as something to ride rather than something to roast will depend on the location. Some peasants will see them as a nuisance more than anything else - horses, like cattle and sheep, will love to feed on the leaves of wattles, which will make them a problem. On the other hand, some peasants may want to run away, and horses would help with that.
This will be a point, though it's also worth remembering that a horse gives a lot more meat than even an emu, and it's easier to hunt some animal rather than feed it yourself. Aururian peasants still hunt kangaroos if they come near their lands, for instance, and a few would-be feral horses may end up the same way. On the other hand, catching those horses would be hard unless you had guns, or something to ride of your own.
Certainly if anyone official gets to hear of feral horses nearby, they'll want them captured alive.
There are some horses breeding at the moment in Tjibarr, and probably more will follow in Durigal over the next few years, but mostly the Aururian states will be relying on imported horses for a while yet.
The Sandman
Banned
Why do that when there's still that one king who has a breeding population of the noticeably larger moa?
Once the idea of animals as something you can ride past childhood spreads, all you need is an eccentric ruler of that country to get the idea of putting his moa to use beyond having them as something interesting to hunt and get eggs or feathers from. And their slow growth rate isn't quite as much of a problem when they're being raised for labor, since that lets you recoup the years of investment over a similarly lengthy period.
The Sandman
Banned
Aururian Moa Cavalry! This MUST happen!
Make it so!
I was thinking more along the lines of couriers and labor animals. Breeding a moa to carry an adult human or a small-to-medium-sized bit of cargo might be possible, and maybe even use as draft animals if you can get them to work in teams. But an individual moa carrying the amount of weight needed for a cavalry steed is probably right out, even before taking temperament into account.
Fun fact: Australia has a population of feral ostriches.
In the late nineteenth century, there was an attempt to farm ostriches just north of Port Augusta (TTL's Dogport). The attempt failed. But the ostriches were released (or escaped). As far as I know, they're still around.
While moa cavalry is one of those ideas which sound tempting, the timing is unfortunately rather off. Up until the European invasions, moas were seen as sacred beasts used for the purposes of royal hunting only. The slow breeding rate also more or less precluded any attempts to selectively breed them - not that there were many efforts anyway.
After European invasion, well, there's horses around. Why go to all the trouble of domesticating very picky feeders (moa are browsers, not grazers) when you can just use horses? There's at most a narrow window of a generation or two before enough feral horses spread (or are imported) for people to get the idea of using moas as beasts of burden, overcoming royal prejudices, etc.
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
So will prince Rupert be going back home with any pet moas? They would be a accompaniment to his magic poodle http://www.poodlehistory.org/PARMY.HTM and his lascivious monkey http://lolmanuscripts.blogspot.com/2008/05/exact-description-of-prince-ruperts.html
Also, how prevalent are donkeys (both feral and domestic) in Australia at this point in the story? When will the locals find out they can be bred with horses?
Also, how prevalent are donkeys (both feral and domestic) in Australia at this point in the story? When will the locals find out they can be bred with horses?
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Since its a bit late for cavalry, why not use the idea of moas as pack animals? They certainly would have the strength to carry goods around, especially up north in the jungles.
That's where the practice should come around. Somone wanting to carry goods through the jungle attaches a pack and some goods to a Moa, and boom! Moa jungle caravans!
That's where the practice should come around. Somone wanting to carry goods through the jungle attaches a pack and some goods to a Moa, and boom! Moa jungle caravans!
Moas arent really useful for anything cool as as cavalry mounts or pack animals just having them survive as a royal hunting right is cool enough. On the matter of cool is Haast's eagle still around in otl it got extint when moa became extint for lack of a suitable prey animal but im thinking(hoping) that emus may be a suitable substitute. But competition with humans will probably doom them anyway.
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
IIRC Jared has said that they are goners. Although I wonder if feral emus would be a viable moa substitute for them?
Yipes, Wittselbach(sic) Britain soon!
Will this hasten a union between England and Scotland, and what will this mean for the Palatinate.
Will this hasten a union between England and Scotland, and what will this mean for the Palatinate.
Prince Rupert will certainly pick up a pet or two more while he's here - though I wouldn't bet on any of them being moas. Even to most Aururians, moas are a myth at most.
Donkeys are mostly just in Tiayal (Atjuntja lands) at this point. Maybe a few have made it to the Mutjing lands by now, though the warfare there will probably have turned most of those donkeys into lunch.
Since the Atjuntja still don't have much in the way of horses, probably no-one's figured out mules yet. All will happen in good time, but not yet.
The problem is that there's not really anything that moas can do which horses can't do just as well, and there's already selectively bred horses available to do it.
Moas will be lucky if they even survive the social disruptions of plagues, warfare etc over the next few generations, since all it takes is a little social breakdown for the moas to be hunted out of existence. Turning them into pack animals, while it would sound cool, is probably pushing the plausibility envelope.
Haast's eagle is unfortunately extinct. Lack of prey (there's not that many feral emus that early), human competition, and particularly clearing of habitat - the Maori have cleared a lot of the forest.
Wittelsbach Britain will only happen if Charles II died heirless. It's just that since Charles I died before producing any other male children, at the moment his sister Elizabeth's children (Frederick Henry, Rupert and Maurice etc) are the heirs.
The Palatinate is actually no longer in their inheritance, thanks to the Twenty Years' War. The Bavarian branch of the Wittelsbach grabbed a lot of it; the Habsburgs kept the rest. Frederick Henry has been created Duke of Munster as something in the way of compensation.
The Sandman
Banned
Kind of surprised Haast's Eagle wouldn't have been kept around as a status symbol or trained as a war animal, given that the improved agricultural situation in Aotearoa means more state or proto-state formation, with all the need for pomp and circumstance among its rulers that implies.
And in the long run, they'd have a better shot at surviving than the moa, because a)being killed for meat isn't their main purpose and b)eggs or chicks would make very good gifts for other rulers, thus allowing them to spread more widely.
In the wild they're doomed, of course, at least in Aotearoa, but if any were to have gotten over to Aururia then I think you'd eventually see a feral population surviving by taking wild kangaroo and emu.
...come to think of it, I'm surprised that moa eggs haven't been similarly used as a diplomatic tool.
...and now I'm imagining a *Maori tradition of "falconry", with the centerpieces being Haast's Eagle and the kea.
And in the long run, they'd have a better shot at surviving than the moa, because a)being killed for meat isn't their main purpose and b)eggs or chicks would make very good gifts for other rulers, thus allowing them to spread more widely.
In the wild they're doomed, of course, at least in Aotearoa, but if any were to have gotten over to Aururia then I think you'd eventually see a feral population surviving by taking wild kangaroo and emu.
...come to think of it, I'm surprised that moa eggs haven't been similarly used as a diplomatic tool.
...and now I'm imagining a *Maori tradition of "falconry", with the centerpieces being Haast's Eagle and the kea.
Cool, but not really possible. Some estimates place the maximum population before human arrival at only a thousand pairs. That makes them incredibly delicate as a species.
The Maori still came in and still wiped out the moa and cleared most of the forest very quickly, which was what hurt the species to begin with. Replacement food in the form of feral emus would have been too long in coming.
All those reasons you state above are why the modern Maori kingdoms might like to use something like the eagle, but none of those reasons really apply to the communities that would actually have coexisted with the eagles. By the time there was an environment in which the eagles could possibly be desirable, they'd be long extinct. It's pretty close to suggesting the Romans use saber toothed tigers in the arena.
Also, falconry is a long way from domestication - its taming one dangerous wild animal, rather rendering than a population of them safe. That's because most raptor species are inherently not social birds, and hence there's little instinctive groundwork to build on. Add in a bird that instinctively views every large biped as a food animal with a dangerous kick.... Yeah, it's not happening.
Also, eventually they would eat one of their owners' children, so.
The kea, though. Fun.