WI and AHC: elephants survive and become domesticated in the Americas

[Muwatalli']

There was a thread about this before, but I didn't want to revive that so I started a new one.

What if elephants (more specifically Gompotheres and Colombian Mammoths) survived in the Americas, and became domesticated?

Would that be possible? And of the two would be more suitable for domestication? Will they be handy for the native Americans as domesticated animals? And how will this affect European-American contact in the future?

 

[Kaiphranos]

That's going to be tough--as I recall, even today elephants are not domesticated, only tamed--since they don't breed well in captivity, it's easier to go catch wild ones as babies.

Beyond that, it's difficult to say. I don't know how much use an elephant will be in a corn/beans/squash agricultural setting--for that matter, the domestication of the elephant might preclude the development of corn, if it happens early enough. In which case, you might not get sedentary civilizations in North America at all--nothing north of Panama but hunter-gatherers and nomadic elephant herders...

 

[Cuāuhtemōc]

snip.

Yes because the domestication of the elephant stopped sedentary civilizations from developing in the Old World. Oh wait. It won't stop people from settling down and start growing crops. The mammoths would make excellent pack animals, particularly the dwarf mammoths. Hell the idea of mammoth cavalry would be pretty cool.

 

[GrandpaTanaka]

Yes because the domestication of the elephant stopped sedentary civilizations from developing in the Old World. Oh wait. It won't stop people from settling down and start growing crops. The mammoths would make excellent pack animals, particularly the dwarf mammoths. Hell the idea of mammoth cavalry would be pretty cool.

In the Old World people developed agriculture before domesticating (taming & using really) the elephant. He is suggesting that if the elephant is domesticated before any agriculture, the people will stay herders, which makes sense. There is less of a need for growing crops when you have plenty of elephant meat to eat, and the crops they had wouldn't be enough to feed their animals.

Now, if elephant "domestication" happened later, after agriculture was established, they would certainly make excellent pack animals and would dramatically increase the size of empires in the area.

 

[Errnge]

In the Old World people developed agriculture before domesticating (taming & using really) the elephant. He is suggesting that if the elephant is domesticated before any agriculture, the people will stay herders, which makes sense. There is less of a need for growing crops when you have plenty of elephant meat to eat, and the crops they had wouldn't be enough to feed their animals.

Now, if elephant "domestication" happened later, after agriculture was established, they would certainly make excellent pack animals and would dramatically increase the size of empires in the area.

Eh, if you are herding mammoths, or mastadons even, they will need a LOT of food, and it is likely that farming will be required eventually to provide for large herds.

Also, I think that if mammoths survived, it would definitely make European takeover more... interesting

 

[Kaiphranos]

Yes because the domestication of the elephant stopped sedentary civilizations from developing in the Old World. Oh wait. It won't stop people from settling down and start growing crops. The mammoths would make excellent pack animals, particularly the dwarf mammoths. Hell the idea of mammoth cavalry would be pretty cool.

But in the Old World, elephants were domesticated after agricultural societies had developed. In the New World, the extinction of the mammoth seems to predate the beginnings of the teosinte-->maize domestication process, possibly by as much as several thousand years. If you introduce domestic mammoths before that process really gets started, what is the chance that it never gets very far at all? Are your teosinte-proto-farming societies going to have as much of an advantage against mammoth herders as they would against hunter-gatherer types?

Then again, it may depend more on where and when this domestication takes place, and what sorts of climates will be suitable for the domestic creature...

 

[GrandpaTanaka]

Eh, if you are herding mammoths, or mastadons even, they will need a LOT of food, and it is likely that farming will be required eventually to provide for large herds.

Also, I think that if mammoths survived, it would definitely make European takeover more... interesting

I wasn't envisioning them herding them in the sense of sheep, goats, llamas; but more like following around a herd of elephants, sort of how like for many years before properly domesticating them the Sami (Lapplanders) would follow herds of reindeer.

True domestication of elephants, with planned breeding and actual control of a herd, is extremely unlikely anywhere on earth, maybe impossible.