Pecari rex, Equus regina: American Domesticates 3.0

[twovultures]

A Hole in the Butterfly Net

The Feast

They were killing him with hospitality, thought Mea’ole. When the other members of his expedition had found the strange pair living in this new land, they had been wary and apprehensive. The two old men had walked to the beach as they were sailing up, waving wildly and speaking a language that sounded more like the chattering of birds than any human speech.

Lauati had suggested killing them right then and there-they didn’t know what these men wanted. But everyone on the boat was exhausted and weak from the journey from Samoa, and these strangers were old but wiry and tough, and could very well have won if a fight broke out. They gestured for the crew to follow them, but no-one wanted to. Only Mea’ole had been brave enough to do so.

At first, he was nervous as he followed them through a footpath in the forest to a small hut, wondering how many more people were in this new land. But then one man started a fire by himself, and the other walked into the garden near the hut without calling for any neighbors or family to aid him, and Mea’ole realized that they were alone.

“Perhaps these men are castaways” he thought to himself as they busied with gathering and preparing their food. He had heard stories of relatives who had disappeared at sea, swept away by storms and angry spirits to never be heard or seen from again. If so, though, why had they forgotten their language? Had they gone crazy, after all this time?

But as time went on, he saw that their faculties were working quite well. They quickly made a fire, and started grinding some hard seeds in a small mortar. It took a long time to make the meal. As the hours passed Mea’ole wondered fearfully if these men were actually casting some kind of strange spell using these unfamiliar ingredients instead of cooking. However, almost as soon as these thoughts entered his head the men were feeding him.

The seeds that they had ground they mixed with water and cooked on a stone, making a flat, odd sort of food with a consistency and taste similar to breadfruit. They sprinkled small berries and a white powder on the food, folding over the flat part and offering it to him. Mea’ole found it absolutely delicious, though after several weeks at sea anything could taste delicious. But it was warm food, and that’s what mattered. What surprised him, however, was that the men kept making more. And more. And more.

“Aren’t you worried about running out of food for yourselves?” he asked them, but all his question got was more broad smiles and food shoved in his face. In addition to the berries and ground seeds was a small red fruit that burnt his mouth when he bit it. He yelped in pain as the fruit sent a sensation of fire on his tongue, prompting much mirth from his hosts who quickly gave him some fleshy, orange fruit to counteract the taste.

Now he was full to bursting, but they hadn’t stopped. He realized with horror that they were now making some kind of soup in the gourd from which they had scooped out the soothing orange flesh. If his stomach didn’t explode after this, he would have to get the others so these men could target them for their feast and leave him alone.
“They have not had guests for a very, very long time” Mea’ole realized suddenly. How many years of isolation had these two gone through, that they were treating him like a long lost child?

30 Years Earlier

“Land” croaked Maza Uk. The others didn’t seem to hear him. Maza Uk swallowed, wetting his parched throat and tried again, as loud as his weakened body could allow. “Land” he said. The others heard, and looked up. Palapcha Ampu, Pii Pa, and Saq T’zi’maasaat, a landlubber [1] who had sailed with them, all followed his gaze. Sure enough, in the distance, was something that was recognizably an island.

“Thank the gods” Saq T’zi’maasaat managed to say in a hoarse whisper, while the others stood up and pulled the tattered remains of their sails into position to bring them to the island. It had been a long time since they had seen land of any sort. Palapcha claimed it was almost 3 months since they’d gotten caught in the storm and swept away. Saq T’zi’maasaat sometimes thought it was longer than that, like he had been floating on the sea with the other three for an eternity or more.

After their supplies had run out they had survived by catching sharks that swam up to their boat, and over the last week had even managed to grab a seagull that had landed on the boat, probably intending to eat them. The irony would be amusing, if Saq didn’t feel that he was so close to death. When they crashed onto the island, he had to crawl off the boat, rolling into the surf and pulling himself onto the beach with his hands and knees. The others had more energy, pulling him to the shelter of the island’s vegetation. Their spirits inflated by their salvation, they gently ribbed him as a landlubber.

“Don’t worry” said Pii Pa. “Now that you’ve gotten your sea legs, we can send you out on the boat by yourself.”

Saq T’zi’maasaat did not find that very funny. But he was embarrassed that he had not been able to weather the voyage as well as these seasoned sailors and so kept his mouth shut. He wished that he had some way to repay them for saving his life, and vowed at that moment that he would indeed help them as they had helped him.

As he regained his strength, he took initiative-building shelters for all the other men, tending the camp fires and helping in hunting the birds of this new island. The latter was easy-most of the birds seemed to be slow and stupid. They simply sat there and let themselves get clubbed. Fish were easy to catch too-Saq simply walked the beach at low tide, picking small fish and crabs out of the tidal pools to feed his companions.

The one thing that Saq T’zi’maasaat would never do was to get back on a boat. As it was, his companions were hopelessly lost. They had a vague idea of which direction the world lay, but they did not know how or if they could sail back to it. They did, however, explore the island on which they found themselves, circling the beaches in small coracles they built for themselves. There were no iguanas or tortoises on this island, just birds, insects, and unfamiliar plants which even Saq, an experienced farmer, couldn’t make heads or tails of. This land had saved them, but it was in many ways fearful and alien.

That all changed one night, when Palapcha Ampu and Maza Uk rowed back to the beach, shouting from the water that they had discovered something. They landed on the sand and ran up to the shelters, all the while excitedly jabbering. Saq T’zi’maasaat and Pii Pa wondered what exactly it was they had discovered that would be so life changing.

As the 4 met, Maza Uk grabbed several hide bags from the boat-odd, since they had boiled and eaten all the hide on the voyage to the island. Saq T’zi’maasaat’s heart began to beat rapidly. If they had destroyed their own hide bags that mean that these bags were from another boat.

When Maza Uk opened them, every man present yelled out for joy. The bags held maize, beans already sprouting shoots, and other seeds. Maza Uk explained through tears of joy that they had found another boat, empty of people but full of cargo, probably blown away by the same storm.

“Tonight” Maza declared, “we will all eat like kings!”

It fell to Saq to prepare the food. And he prepared it extremely well, making a stew from the corn and beans that could indeed have fed an Ajaw, perhaps even the Great Emperor-but he did not use all the seeds, hiding them from the others.

It was a compulsion that he couldn’t quite control. After 3 months of near starvation on that boat, he had the urge to hide away food when it was presented to him. The others did it too. He had found leftovers of the meals he had cooked them half buried in sand or in the branches of trees. He had always ignored these, knowing that he did the same. He knew that they felt anxious and scared when they hid their food, just like he did.

But this time, he was happy and smiling. The memories that came to him as he hid away the seeds was not the time on the boat, feeling the hunger dig into him, but growing up in his home village and working on the farm there. He remembered his father showing him different seeds, telling him how to tell them apart and what each plant produced. He was giggling, thinking ahead to what these seeds could mean.

“We will never go hungry again” Saq T’zi’maasaat whispered to himself.




[1] Not literally, but the closest equivalent in these sailor’s language


Posts on *Mesoamerica coming up, I just thought that this thread was overdue for a story.

 

[Berserker]

very awesome to read update!

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Apart from pulling a plow, the other huge application for a horse is carrying or dragging weights around. Not inconsequential, but it does need to be considered carefully. Over long distances, water transport is the way to go for bulk, its the neolithic equivalent of anti-gravity.

Heh. Good line. True, even.

There's a cultural learning curve to working with horses. Believe it or not, hooking up a horse to a cart is not a natural intuitive thing. Most likely, we analogize to things we do with humans. So the first use is to carry packs. Llama carried packs, but didn't do much else.

For things like hauling a cart, you'd have to generalize from a human activity - pulling a sleigh or travois. Horses don't push or dig, so if you have a push or dig style of agriculture.... it'll take a while to figure out how to use a horse to drag something. The sorts of plows that allow best use of a horse need to evolve.
....

Harnesses, traces, tethers all need to evolve. The horsepower was revolutionary and doubled the labour capacity of horses. But that was a fairly late development. No telling where or if it will show up.

Magnifying horse power through teams of horses is also an innovation, not necessarily an automatic thing.

Don't forget that they have used dogs in a similar role since before they came over the Bering Strait. In particular, they may well have practice harnessing dogs, singly and in teams. Note that iOTL Cree for horse is simple "mistatim" = big dog (missi- or mist- =big; atim=dog). So the learning curve may not be quite as steep as you think.

It may depend partly on whether they had dog sleds 13000 years ago....

 

[DG Valdron]

I'm not sure that they did.

The Proto-Inuit Thule culture that came over 3000 years ago from Siberia had dogs. As did the Chuchki and Koryak cultures.

On the other hand, the Dorset culture that the Thule displaced from most of the north didn't use slead dogs. So the innovation of dogs as pack animals may have been fairly recent. Not sure.

I can't find much to date back the use of sled dogs, or dogs pulling travois in North America.

 

[twovultures]

Yeah, I actually purposefully didn't put in "this is the exact year B.C. that the nomads switched from dogs to horses to pull loads" because I have not been able to find any information on when the use of dogs to pull travois started.

In the archaeological record, it would be pretty hard to distinguish the 10,000 year old remains of a travois from a random log.

 

[Danbensen]

Is it at least clear that dog-travoises were pre-columbian?

 

[twovultures]

Is it at least clear that dog-travoises were pre-columbian?

I believe that is accepted, yes. Pre-Columbian is a pretty wide range of time though.

 

[Danbensen]

In the absence of good data, I won't complain if you make something up

 

[DG Valdron]

In the absence of good data, I won't complain if you make something up

Sounds fair.

If and when Travois become relatively common for carrying/dragging stuff, its just a matter of time before someone decides to try it on a dog.

And just a matter of more time before someone makes it work.

And just more time until its commonplace.

But come to think of it, they'd probably pack loads on horses first.

 

[Danbensen]

>>its just a matter of time before someone decides to try it on a dog.<<
Written on many a headstone.

 

[twovultures]

If and when Travois become relatively common for carrying/dragging stuff, its just a matter of time before someone decides to try it on a dog.

While probably true, I don't think the use of dogs to carry travois will be very common if horses are around. Yes, pound for pound dogs are more efficient than horses, but dogs are also so much smaller than horses that this efficiency doesn't translate into larger loads.

Combined with the fact that a dog with a heavy load to drag will not be able to simultaneously act in the position as a sentry or herder, and using travois on dogs just doesn't seem worth it. It probably will happen, especially for someone who loses their horses, but it won't be too common.

The change will be from horse carrying packs on their backs to horses carrying packs on travois, rather than from horseback to dog travois.

 

[Zireael]

Love the update! Brilliant!

 

[twovultures]

Rise of Empires

The Middle Columbians
The civilizations of Middle Columbia were extremely diverse, containing multiple language families and a heady mix of ethnicities, states and alliances. As the heartland of farming, various unrelated tribes had been exchanging information on gathering and growing plants going far in prehistory, and when sedentary agriculture developed there was much less displacement and absorption compared to the advent of pastoralism in North Columbia as proto-farming was far more widespread than proto-Pastoralism. The highlands and forests provided havens for farmers from invading pastoralists, who quickly became absorbed into the mix of the disparate farming cultures.

The earliest civilization of Middle Columbia, with its records of the first plagues and great stone heads, created a cultural template for the other cultures to follow and share. It was from this culture that notions of blood sacrifice involving killing animals and piercing ears, lips and genitals emerged, as well as the rubber ballgame that was one of the major foci of diplomacy among the entities that followed this template, and was seen as the mark of high civilization.

The Middle Columbian civilizations were fed by intensive-though carefully managed-farming. Farmers cleared parts of forests with stone axes, planting maize, beans, and squash in these clearings for one to two years at a time and letting them rest 5 to 15 years at a time depending on the soil quality. Farmers also tended private gardens in which they grew fruits such as avocado, and planted hardy manioc in forests.

Domestic mammals did not change this rhythm overly much. By sending peccaries out to mast in fallow fields, farmers both sped up the process of re-fertilizing the fields and ensured a supply of meat, freeing them from the need to hunt. Ultimately, though, most of their daily labor time gained from not hunting simply turned to their gardens.

Horses were not a massive game changer for Middle Columbian farming either. In these tropical environments, maize was incredibly productive and animal labor did not add very much beyond what a single peasant could accomplish with a hoe. Horses were useful for helping to clear fields, but past that were not of much use to the average farmer.

Where horses excelled was where farming failed, in the tropical savannahs. In these areas, herdsmen would drive out large herds, often the collective property of the village or of the noble lords that governed them. Several times a year, the horse herders would drive their charges back to the villages and cities to supply new animals for sacrifice and feasting, burning the savannahs as they left to encourage the grass to grow. Horse meat was (and still is) considered a delicacy in Middle Columbia, and horse leather was useful for a wide variety of reasons, including armor in times of war.

The threat of war helped unify the disparate villages of Middle Columbia into city-states. These states were normally headed by hereditary monarchs, and less commonly by oligarchies of nobles. The city-states of Middle Columbia were more rigidly hierarchical than the chieftainships of the Woodland cultures of North Columbia, giving people less of a chance for social climbing. Although peasants did fight, during the early rise of the city-states war was a highly ritualized affair that mostly took place between nobles. The opposing sides would march or ride to the chosen sight of battle on a mutually-agreed date. The warriors would all face each other, fighting as much to ensure their personal glory as to win whatever prize was at stake for their home city. Warrior matched up with warrior, and once locked in combat it was taboo for a man to disturb two fighting warriors.

This type of warfare allowed the various city-states to develop quite a few innovations, as they were relatively unencumbered by the need to pay for a large army. The writing of the Gasjbataná is the most famous example, but other significant advances in astrology and math were made by other city-states, rivaling those made by the Old World. The city-state was an extremely productive political system.

It would, however, have to contend with the empire of conquest.

The Creation of Empire
Although our world saw empires in what this world knows as Middle Columbia, these were tribute empires where autonomous city-states paid taxes to a central city and not conquest empires, like those of the Old World’s Chinese and Romans. The conquest empire in this world was made possible in the Columbias around 200 BC, with the invention of a new horse riding tool: the solid tree saddle, carved with copper knives traded into Middle from South Columbia.

Made of leather placed over a wooden frame, the solid tree saddle gave riders much more stability. In addition to saving a lot of wear and tear on the horse’s back and rider’s nethers, it elevated the rider above and forward on the horse’s back. From there, the rider could easily throw a spear or fire arrows at enemies from a safe distance. These saddles did come with stirrups, although the leather loops that riders put their feet into did not provide much stability.

The first saddles were built by the Nisbeedxe, one of the rival city-states of the Gasjbataná. Although first created to make riders comfortable as they went off to war, their full military significance was quickly realized by a young prince, 4 Dog Reed Bundle. An expert archer, 4 Dog Reed Bundle discovered that he could not only fire arrows from his horse, but maneuver around the battle field while he did so. In a ritual battle, he and his coterie slaughtered many nobles from Gasjbataná without ever even coming into contact with them.

The norms on honorable combat inexorably broken, the two cities declared two new sorts of war- Gasjbataná declared that it would exterminate the city of murderers, Nisbeedxe declaring that it would subjugate its arrogant rival. The conquerors won over the would-be genociders: both sides used horses, but Nisbeedxe had the superior tree saddles. Their cavalry confronted and destroyed Gasjbataná’s cavalry by using a pincer movement to trap them and destroying them with arrows, giving their own foot soldiers a boost in morale which allowed them to win the day.

The nobility of Gasjbataná, the class largely responsible for giving the gift of writing to the Columbias, were removed from power. Nisbeedxe nobility were put in their place. 4 Dog Reed Bundle himself was put into position as lord of Gasjbataná, ruling it on behalf of his home city; and on the death of his father, took control of that kingdom as well, using horse couriers to keep the governments of both cities in communication. It was a method he would repeat with much success, gaining a reputation as a great and glorious conqueror. Under orders of his descendants centuries later, his southern vassals would erect a great monument naming him "Kaloomte' B'alam", which Europeans would record as "Jaguar Emperor".

Thus did 4 Dog Reed Bundle found the Gaayu’be’ena’a, an empire based not on tribute of independent cities to each-other, but on the domination and control of a territory by an imperial center. The Gaayu’be’ena’a would grow over the next few centuries, and dominate the center of Middle Columbia for a thousand years.

It would take them a while to reach this level of control, as their conquests were quite piecemeal. The Gaayu’be’ena’a spent a century expanding to control the valley and surrounding highlands of the territory that would never be called Oaxaca. From there, it took another century for them to expand westward, finally binding the coast of the Antilles Sea to their empire, and seizing control of the supply of vanilla.

These rough borders would bind their empire with few fluctuations over the years. To their south, the various city-states formed military alliances with each-other to counteract the power of the Gaayu’be’ena’a. Within these alliances, ritual combat and ball games were done to solve conflicts, but against the empire or rival alliances, the only solution was total war, using horses and conscripted peasants in long, bloody battles. In this instance, the horse had transformed society in a negative way by making deadlier wars possible.

To the north, the semi-nomadic desert people sometimes raided the empire, sometimes traded, and sometimes accepted the empire’s dominion. Among these people dominion was always weak, and consisted mainly of promises (not always kept) to not attack and to protect merchants from the empire as they went north across the deserts. While this tentative and constantly shifting control did contribute a little to the protection of trade routes between Middle and North Columbia, an easier and faster route was opening in the east across the sea.

THE ANTILLES SEA
By the time of the rise of the Gaayu’be’ena’a, the sailing technology of the Awapi had transferred across the narrow isthmus and was allowing for a great change in maritime societies. Sailors now moved across the Antilles Sea, joining the islands and the farming communities living there to the mainland.

This introduced baba and black spot to the farming communities. It was a devastating blow, causing many deaths in the islands, but it was not a fatal one to the Antillean peoples. Their numbers would grow back from the plague, buoyed by the introduction of the double-hulled canoe and the sail, as well as the introduction of the horse. Having already developed a cultural template for animal husbandry by raising peccaries, the island peoples were quite happy to adopt the meat and power of the horse from merchants and settlers coming from the mainland.

Ultimately, the island peoples were only peripherally involved in the struggles of the Empire and its rival city-states, even as a steady stream of settlers from the wars of the mainland developed a Creole culture and transferred technologies such as the solid tree saddle. With the advent of horse warfare, the disparate chieftainships of the Antilles Sea began to form into kingdoms inspired from the social structure of mainland immigrants. The smaller islands united, while the larger islands would split between several kingdoms. These new political units still kept much of their traditions-the kings and priests used hallucinogenic substances to commune with the gods and spirits, and family ties were measured through connection with the mother. The islanders eschewed the bloodsport present in Middle Columbian religious practice, preferring to purify themselves through fasting rather than bloodletting. They did enthusiastically copy the Middle Columbian ball game as a method of diplomacy and entertainment, therefore bringing themselves into the sphere of civilization as far as mainland visitors were concerned.

Using the new kinds of kanoa introduced from the mainland, the islanders were able to reach North Columbia. There, they encountered the great southeastern kingdoms, where they did a brisk trade in chocolate, rubber, and other goods from Middle Columbia. Although trade existed across the deserts and mountains that separated these civilizations, water-based contacts would allow for much faster contact and a greater interchange of people, culture, and trade goods-as well as ecologies, as the wild spider monkeys, ocelots and boas of the Thimongona peninsula (OTL: Florida) show.

CONTACTS WITH SOUTH COLUMBIA
Innovations such as the tree saddle were spreading to South Columbia via Martial Ocean trade. As Nisbeedxe went on their war of conquest, a new kind of horse was brought to South Columbia to be purposefully introduced to the Kechay Mountains. More closely related to the spotted breeds of the Great Plains than the desert horses that lived on the Martial Coast, this cold resistant population had been brought into Middle Columbia as a novelty and become established in the highland areas.

From there, they were brought to South Columbia by canny merchants who realized that a more cold resistant horse could be very valuable to the people in the mountains. The transfer was not one way. Although the camelids of the Kechay Mountains were too sensitive to tropical temperatures to survive the 6-week voyage in the Awapi boats, the merchants still brought alpine goods to Middle Columbia, including potato seeds. Although first used to feed peccaries, the highland peoples realized their potential and within a century they were planting potatoes in what was for the region quite marginal land.

These interchanges would have a dramatic affect on all the populations involved. South Columbian agriculture would increase the highland Middle Columbian population, while Middle Columbian technology would dramatically change the social and political structure of highland South Columbia.

 

[Chris Triangle]

I'm a little confused about the geographic situation here. A little more detail on where the big city states were and where some of thos wars occurred would be nice.

Heck of a thorough timeline though. If I didn't know better, I'd think I was reading a well-researched history book.

Also, could I put new world archaelogical finds on my wish list for this TL?

 

[twovultures]

I'm a little confused about the geographic situation here. A little more detail on where the big city states were and where some of thos wars occurred would be nice.

Heck of a thorough timeline though. If I didn't know better, I'd think I was reading a well-researched history book.

Also, could I put new world archaelogical finds on my wish list for this TL?

Thanks for the compliment! I do hope it's not too dry, though. I worry that I might be going too far in that direction.

I'll post a map showing the Empire's borders and some of the trade routes. I'm afraid that mapmaking is not my forte, however.

New world archaeological finds? Like future allohistorical archaeologists digging up archaeological finds in the New World? Yes, I think that could be managed.

 

[DG Valdron]

Thanks for the compliment! I do hope it's not too dry, though. I worry that I might be going too far in that direction.

I have that worry all the time. But then again, this is the audience for that sort of thing. My advice is to not be self conscious, just write and keep on writing. Trust that you'll have dull spots, but just concentrate on riding them out and that your readers will follow you through the slow bits, because we all know that better stuff has been and better stuff will be. There's nothing wrong with your prose styles overall.

I'll post a map showing the Empire's borders and some of the trade routes. I'm afraid that mapmaking is not my forte, however.

There are terrific mapmakers on here. Enlist one of them. Works for me.

 

[altwere]

I think your doing a great job.

 

[twovultures]

The key shows the Gaayu'be'ena'a territory, and some neighboring alliances. It also shows some groups that will be covered shortly.

Key:
North Columbia
Gaayu'be'ena'a:
Dark Red: Territory conquered under 4 Dog Reed Bundle
Blue: Territory Conquered by 0 A.D.

Purple: Martial Coast Alliance
Light Green: Keehkutz Alliance

South Columbia
Green: Chiclayep Empire
Pink: Guapondeligua kingdom
Yellow: Cajamarca kingdom
Orange: Pachayep proto-Kingdom.

And the lines, of course, represent ocean-going trade routes.

 

[Diez Mil Cantos]

Nice map, kinda gives context to the developments
BTW no states in the Colorado and Mississippi regions? I thought there was some state formation happening there?

 

[9 Fanged Hummingbird]

Sorry to nitpick, but "ahauahau" isn't exactly a plausible title. You can't just apply Persian grammar (at least it sounds like you're trying to replicate Shahanshah or something) into Mayan like that. I've never actually heard of a title like "King of Kings" in Mesoamerica either for that matter. A more plausible term for a powerful warlord would be kaloomte', which had IOTL been applied to powerful leaders from the west such as Siyaj K'ahk', a Teotihuacano general who conquered much of the Maya lowlands. Also, why is Guatemala mostly empty? I notice this on a ton of maps here that show Pre-Columbian America, it seems like most maps do this. But IOTL Guatemala has been more densely populated than Yucatan for most of history, especially in this early period where there were already massive Maya cities all over Guatemala around the time of the birth of Christ and the Roman empire yet cities in the Yucatan were much smaller when actually existent.