Pre-Columbian Native American cultures, PODs and alternate histories discussion

[Godot]

This gets brought up a lot but it isn't really plausible to the degree you're imagining given the way epidemic disease works. Basically, Iceland and Greenland were fairly free of disease (including smallpox) until the end of the Middle Ages. Further, the long travel time to the New World acts as a natural quarantine for all but a few diseases (ones with long incubation period plus long period of infectiveness) so in the end I don't think you'd get much more than chickenpox/shingles, mumps, and whooping cough transmitted by humans. Further, you have the factor that because of relative lack of trade and lack of dense population, the disease wouldn't become endemic like smallpox was in Europe and Africa. We see this in remote parts of the Old World, like in Siberia and certain parts of Africa, the people suffered just as heavily from epidemic as New World natives did.

That said, just a few epidemic diseases in the New World might have huge consequences since those would be removed from the long list of plagues Europeans brought and societies would have a better social response to disease.

Yeah, this makes sense. I was thinking like... what if one Norseman was really, *really* sick, and just brought over all kinds of things, but your points make more sense. Hell, one of the more interesting outcomes (surviving Incan empire) may not even play out as I want it to, since there's no guarantee the diseases spread that far South even in 500 years thanks to limited trade links.

Ah well. Thanks anyway!

 

[Gloss]

I'm glad this thread has returned to the frontpage and I've found it! I've done some work on a timeline, but I keep running into the problem of the POD.

Namely - a more successful Vinland colony leads to European diseases spreading in the Americas all the way back in 1000. Thus, by the time Europeans re-arrive in 1492, the continent(s) already have some degree of resistance to disease. Native Americans and Europe are left on more equal footing.

However, I have no clue if this makes sense, and I can't personally judge if the POD *would* lead to a more disease resistant Americas. Or maybe it would, but would butterfly so severely recognizable structures like the Haudenosaunee wouldn't even exist? Dunno. Looking for feedback!

This gets brought up a lot but it isn't really plausible to the degree you're imagining given the way epidemic disease works. Basically, Iceland and Greenland were fairly free of disease (including smallpox) until the end of the Middle Ages. Further, the long travel time to the New World acts as a natural quarantine for all but a few diseases (ones with long incubation period plus long period of infectiveness) so in the end I don't think you'd get much more than chickenpox/shingles, mumps, and whooping cough transmitted by humans. Further, you have the factor that because of relative lack of trade and lack of dense population, the disease wouldn't become endemic like smallpox was in Europe and Africa. We see this in remote parts of the Old World, like in Siberia and certain parts of Africa, the people suffered just as heavily from epidemic as New World natives did.

That said, just a few epidemic diseases in the New World might have huge consequences since those would be removed from the long list of plagues Europeans brought and societies would have a better social response to disease.

I think the best pair of PODs would be either a more deeper one, a millennia or even 2 before the Columbian exchange that accelerates the development of Lowland South American, Caribbean and Northern American societies or one that has a lucky streak of events around contact, the first allows to have more to work with outside of the classic Mesoamerican and Andean region, the second can allow for a more recognizable world and more recognizable native groups in general but could still mean half of the Americas are colonized.

 

[Tyler96]

I'm glad this thread has returned to the frontpage and I've found it! I've done some work on a timeline, but I keep running into the problem of the POD.

Namely - a more successful Vinland colony leads to European diseases spreading in the Americas all the way back in 1000. Thus, by the time Europeans re-arrive in 1492, the continent(s) already have some degree of resistance to disease. Native Americans and Europe are left on more equal footing.

However, I have no clue if this makes sense, and I can't personally judge if the POD *would* lead to a more disease resistant Americas. Or maybe it would, but would butterfly so severely recognizable structures like the Haudenosaunee wouldn't even exist? Dunno. Looking for feedback!

A further question: how long would it take for epidemics to spread throughout the Americas from a single point of contact in the northeast, compared to OTL where there were more intensive contacts in (the more populous) central America? And if they do spread throughout the Americas in devastating fashion, to what extent would the population have been able to bounce back by 1492?

 

[Arkenfolm]

A further question: how long would it take for epidemics to spread throughout the Americas from a single point of contact in the northeast, compared to OTL where there were more intensive contacts in (the more populous) central America? And if they do spread throughout the Americas in devastating fashion, to what extent would the population have been able to bounce back by 1492?

If we take the near-ASB approach of putting a smallpox victim in Vinland and having them infect a village, it could be literally anything between "it kills a village or two" and "it kills villages as far south as modern New York"). Trade routes existed but were not well traveled due to the overall low population density. IOTL areas like the Pacific Northwest remained free of almost all European disease until the mid-18th century, almost immediately before European traders started visiting.

 

[Petike]

Some interesting anthropological and cultural lectures on certain North American cultures.

Antropology of the Cherokee people throughout their known history.

The historical evolution of northwest coast art.

Tlingit hunting methods on ice-floes during the winter season.

Native placenames of several cultures from southeast Alaska.

 

[CASSICTOR2]

Okay how about keeping the megafauna of the America survive longer as well as the horse.

This make the natives people finally know the wheel and valuable to use these animals to travel with riding horses or even a terror birds to trade, this rapidly grow their Civilization more stable and connected than IOTL.

 

[twovultures]

Okay how about keeping the megafauna of the America survive longer as well as the horse.
View attachment 790091
This make the natives people finally know the wheel and valuable to use these animals to travel with riding horses or even a terror birds to trade, this rapidly grow their Civilization more stable and connected than IOTL.

I think you may find this timeline interesting possibly.

 

[CASSICTOR2]

I think you may find this timeline interesting possibly.

Yeah I did read that but it never got finished

EDITED: OH S*** IT ACTUALLY CONTINUING BETTER READ THIS

 

[twovultures]

Yeah I did read that but it never got finished
View attachment 790104
EDITED: OH S*** IT ACTUALLY CONTINUING BETTER READ THIS

If nothing else, I gave it an ending that I hope satisfies.

 

[CASSICTOR2]

If nothing else, I gave it an ending that I hope satisfies.

I never actually read it for a long time but thank you for being an awesome writer so far

 

[Petike]

Indigenous Americans broke the cycle of destructive wildfires. Here's how they did it (Science.org)

An interesting article on Amerindian wildfire management (especially in Oasisamerica in the Southwest) that I came across yesterday.

As always, lessons from older history can be "surprisingly" relevant in the present as well. We mustn't give in to "chronological snobbery".

This was a particularly revealing sentence in the article:

“At local scales, this clearly shows people were able to blunt the impacts of fire,” says University of British Columbia, Vancouver, forest ecologist Lori Daniels, who was not involved in the study. “This is what Indigenous people have been telling us for a long time, but I don’t think Western science has always listened.”

 

[Petike]

Yeah I did read that but it never got finished

EDITED: OH S*** IT ACTUALLY CONTINUING BETTER READ THIS

I never actually read it for a long time but thank you for being an awesome writer so far

With all due respect, this is NOT a meme thread. This is also not a thread about you or your feelings about finished or unfinished timelines. Please refrain from derailing this discussion, even if it's a less frequented discussion.

This is a thread for serious historical discussion, not for making a joke out of everything. If you want to post memes you think are funny, please use the Media and Fandom, Non-political Chat or Political Chat forum.

 

[twovultures]

Here's an article with some potential significance: Phylogeny showing that the dispersal of the sweet potato into Polynesia was NOT the result of Polynesians reaching the Americas, but instead occurred as a pre-human event. Genetic analysis of sweet potato samples taken by the expeditions of Captain Cook show that wild sweet potatoes made it into the western Polynesian islands over 100,000 years ago, before humans were even in the Americas.

From an AH.com perspective, it shows two things. Firstly, there was in fact a curtain of separation between the human worlds of Polynesia and America, and authors do not need to account for butterflies effecting Polynesia if they create alternate scenarios for the Americas; secondly, Polynesians reaching the Americas is now an Alt-Hist scenario rather than allohistorical, and may be worth investigating deeper.

From my perspective, this study makes a lot of sense. If the Polynesians had reached the Americas, why did they take sweet potatoes back, and not maize? The claim that maize was culturally unfamiliar to them unlike root crops doesn't hold up, because they also didn't bring back cassava, a root crop that produces more calories than sweet potatoes and can grow under drought conditions in poor soils. I do not think it disparages the ancient Polynesians to say that they did not successfully make the trip to the Americas; the fact that they domesticated a wild plant in the remote islands of the South Pacific independently of any Native American influence is as good a testament to their ingenuity.

 

[Pesterfield]

Alaska and the Great Lakes both had mature copper cultures and the potential to move to bronze.
Unfortunately, Doug Muir's Bronze Age New World has been lost I think, might be worth looking at the idea again.

 

[Arkenfolm]

Here's an article with some potential significance: Phylogeny showing that the dispersal of the sweet potato into Polynesia was NOT the result of Polynesians reaching the Americas, but instead occurred as a pre-human event. Genetic analysis of sweet potato samples taken by the expeditions of Captain Cook show that wild sweet potatoes made it into the western Polynesian islands over 100,000 years ago, before humans were even in the Americas.

From an AH.com perspective, it shows two things. Firstly, there was in fact a curtain of separation between the human worlds of Polynesia and America, and authors do not need to account for butterflies effecting Polynesia if they create alternate scenarios for the Americas; secondly, Polynesians reaching the Americas is now an Alt-Hist scenario rather than allohistorical, and may be worth investigating deeper.

This is still debated, and there are more recent studies that suggest that study you posted is faulty. Further, there is the fact that it seems the sweet potato spread across the Pacific west-east no earlier than the settlement of Easter Island. Linguistically the word "kumara" and its cognates seem to be akin to the Quechua word for sweet potato, which given the other evidence, doesn't seem to be a false cognate like the proposed Polynesian-Chumash contact. I can't find the actual paper, but here is a summary of the counter-argument.

There is also a native breed of chicken in South America that is Polynesian in origin and gene inflow from Polynesia, so Polynesians visiting South America seems indisputable at this point.

From my perspective, this study makes a lot of sense. If the Polynesians had reached the Americas, why did they take sweet potatoes back, and not maize? The claim that maize was culturally unfamiliar to them unlike root crops doesn't hold up, because they also didn't bring back cassava, a root crop that produces more calories than sweet potatoes and can grow under drought conditions in poor soils. I do not think it disparages the ancient Polynesians to say that they did not successfully make the trip to the Americas; the fact that they domesticated a wild plant in the remote islands of the South Pacific independently of any Native American influence is as good a testament to their ingenuity.

Because how were they to know? Whatever contact existed must have been sporadic at best, meaning they would rather take what interests them for whatever reason. If the stay was short, or even a few years, then they wouldn't know anything about the soil conditions or drought tolerance cassave works with. And of course, the Polynesians didn't even take the entirety of their own agricultural package to the eastern Pacific.

 

[Petike]

We continue this general discussion thread with the following documentary video...

Once again, something that looks at the modern day, cherry-picked claims of non-Native Americans about there supposedly being "ancient proof by Native Americans" for someone's pet theory. Pet theories that unscientifically and insensitively dismiss the actual content of particular Native American cultures' oral histories and their context. This time, it's bigfoot enthusiasts (audible groan), abusing Native American cultures for their wild claims, including straight up distorting the cultural context of the cultures they claim "offer proof".

As you'd expect, there's no actual substance to the claims and many had been cherry-picked and confirmation-biased up the wazoo. NO Native American cultures, whatsoever, knew or believed in yeti apemen from the fevered imaginations of post-WWII euro-Americans. None. Even the term 'sasquatch' is made up, or mangled from a different native word, which had a meaning more akin to "hermit living in the wild", "loner mountain man", that sort of thing. In short, the notion that Native American cultures of any kind knew about bigfoot / sasquatch is complete and utter ahistorical bull.

Trey's done some very detailed research into all these claims and compared them to what the actual cultural context or historical context was and is. Well worth the watch. There's a lot of pseudoarchaeological and pseudohistorical claims surrounding just about any Native American cultures, all under the cynical motivation to make something appear acceptable by lying that "it is ancient, the natives knew it", even though that's not how things actually were.

 

[Petike]

Alaska and the Great Lakes both had mature copper cultures and the potential to move to bronze.

Perhaps.

Unfortunately, Doug Muir's Bronze Age New World has been lost I think, might be worth looking at the idea again.

You can find the archived version here. Over the years, there have also been AH.com continuation attempts.

 

[Odinson]

We continue this general discussion thread with the following documentary video...

Once again, something that looks at the modern day, cherry-picked claims of non-Native Americans about there supposedly being "ancient proof by Native Americans" for someone's pet theory. Pet theories that unscientifically and insensitively dismiss the actual content of particular Native American cultures' oral histories and their context. This time, it's bigfoot enthusiasts (audible groan), abusing Native American cultures for their wild claims, including straight up distorting the cultural context of the cultures they claim "offer proof".

As you'd expect, there's no actual substance to the claims and many had been cherry-picked and confirmation-biased up the wazoo. NO Native American cultures, whatsoever, knew or believed in yeti apemen from the fevered imaginations of post-WWII euro-Americans. None. Even the term 'sasquatch' is made up, or mangled from a different native word, which had a meaning more akin to "hermit living in the wild", "loner mountain man", that sort of thing. In short, the notion that Native American cultures of any kind knew about bigfoot / sasquatch is complete and utter ahistorical bull.

Trey's done some very detailed research into all these claims and compared them to what the actual cultural context or historical context was and is. Well worth the watch. There's a lot of pseudoarchaeological and pseudohistorical claims surrounding just about any Native American, all under the cynical to make something appear acceptable by lying that "it is ancient, the natives knew it", even though that's not how things actually were.

I'll definitely have to give this a watch at some point this week!

 

[Arkenfolm]

As you'd expect, there's no actual substance to the claims and many had been cherry-picked and confirmation-biased up the wazoo. NO Native American cultures, whatsoever, knew or believed in yeti apemen from the fevered imaginations of post-WWII euro-Americans. None. Even the term 'sasquatch' is made up, or mangled from a different native word, which had a meaning more akin to "hermit living in the wild", "loner mountain man", that sort of thing. In short, the notion that Native American cultures of any kind knew about bigfoot / sasquatch is complete and utter ahistorical bull.

I don't see how the many "wild man of the woods" beings in Amerindian myth can't be described as a form of Bigfoot, even if only sometimes they were giants. A lot of the modern Bigfoot myths originated on the West Coast too, so it's very possible that Bigfoot is in part inspired by these old myths.

I don't think Bigfoot is real, so these stories are no more evidence for Bigfoot than grainy videos. Bigfoot is undoubtedly just a modern take on the "wild man of the woods" myth which is common in cultures historically and present.

 

[Flashman]

A concept I've been thinking about recently: Natives across the south east are well known to have produced and exported the yaupon holly for the creation of the black drink, a ceremonial caffeinated beverage. It was widely consumed, from Cahokia in the north to Mesoamerica in the south. Its uses were ritually bounded, it's caffeine content isn't the highest, and it came with unpleasant (though ritually instrumentalized) side effects.

The thought occurs to me that all three of these factors likewise apply to the initial cultivation of both tea and coffee: These beverages were initially used for ritual and medicinal purposes rather than as a recreational beverage, and they had to selectively breed them to increase caffeine content while lowering side effects. Coffee and tea were of course extremely important cash crops, and of course some even make the argument that their consumption had non-negligible on the societies that partook.

Perhaps I'm putting the cart before the horse, and there are certain social and economic conditions needed to cause the recreational consumption of such beverages, but I wonder about the intensification of production of yaupon holly, both increasing the quantity and selectively breeding to make it a more pleasant beverage. Perhaps the cause of this could be the expansion of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex itself to the piedmont and the northeast, thereby creating new markets for the beverage.

However you get there, it seems like intensification of production could be a big deal. If consumption passes from the ceremonial to the recreational, it could be a huge boost to development along the gulf coast where the yaupon berry grows, perhaps leading to even more impressive urban centers and societies at the time of the Columbian exchange (and of course already in OTL there was plenty impressive in the region). "Black Drink Chiefdoms" could become major movers and shakers. And perhaps, given their coastal location, it could lead to the intensification of contact with Mesoamerica...

I always wondered what could be the consequences of more extensive contact between Polynesia and the Americas. Say their expansion doesn't suddenly pause for 1000 years, ensuring that they reach Rapa Nui many centuries earlier (say, around 500 AD). This gives them plenty of time to settle the Galapagos and other places (Cocos Island, the Islas Marías and maybe even the Channel Islands), which can then serve as points from which they interact and trade with the Andean and Mesoamerican civilizations.

Use of the Galapagos as a jumping off point is limited by the extremely limited fresh water supply. Them getting to the Channel Islands is, of course, the dream.

A sort of more acceptable version of that dilweed Hancock seeing the ancient and medieval Chinese behind literally everything worldwide.

I think you're thinking of Gavin Menzies. I'm sure Hancock's discussed it at some point, as the pseudoarchaeology world is really quite limited in the number of topics it covers, but the Chinese Treasure Fleets aren't really Hancock's primary beat.

On a similar note to my Yaupon Holly thoughts - One big deal of a sustained contact between Easter Island and the Andes (or elsewhere on the Pacific Rim) could be sugar cane. Sugar cane was part of the Polynesian package, and there's plenty of places it grows well in the America. Sugar is of course a huge cash crop. Perhaps most notably, beyond the flavor it adds, it could be used to intensify pre-Columbian alcohol production among native societies. Natives did of course have some alcoholic beverages, mostly beers, wines and meads, but cane sugar would allow them to create refined spirits like rum. Huge commodity of course, with significant social and (potentially) medical/scientific impacts.