WI: Humans never crossed Beringia

[Gurroruo]

It is my understanding that Tropical rain forests represent the most significant carbon sink, not temperate North American forests. There was only minimal deforestation in the Amazon basin prior to the arrival of Europeans and deforestation in the Maya lowlands was probably of generally limited duration during the Classic period. The extent and impact of native deforestation practices in North America is debatable. Since all American civilizations were pre-industrial and did not use carbon-rich fossil fuels I frankly doubt that they had much impact on global climate and temperature one way or the other.

There were around 40 million people in the Americas, the forests suffered.

 

[zoomar]

There were around 40 million people in the Americas, the forests suffered.

It would be nice if you provided actual facts to document this suffering, and it's actual effect on global climate, not presumptions.

 

[Constantinople]

The "Empty America" timeline by Doug Hoff that I reposted here (see my signature) features an empty America. Obviously an ASB no-butterflies in the Old World timeline, but very well written, hugely expansive and fun to read.

 

[Umbral]

There was only minimal deforestation in the Amazon basin prior to the arrival of Europeans and deforestation in the Maya lowlands was probably of generally limited duration during the Classic period.

I believe the deforestation in the Amazon was quite extensive. It was a densely populated cultivated agrarian landscape. While the extent of the cultivation is only tentatively guessed at, it seems the same agricultural techniques (Terra Preta creation) were used across a large number of climates in the Amazon. Guesses as to the extent of the cultivated areas keep being revised upwards.

The first Europeans to follow the Amazon up to its source described the Amazon as a densely populated landscape of roads and fields. Newer research tends to support this.

 

[riggerrob]

Does the idea that the proto-Inuit were maritime cultures predispose them to maintaining that settling pattern? Basically do they focus on continually moving down coast for expansion, rather than moving inland?

How many waves of migration OTL?
Did the first wave walk all the way to Clovis or Chile?
We have archeological evidence of villages along the coast of BC dating back 10,000 or 12,000 years to the end of the last Ice
Age.
The last waves of Thule and Dorset moved straight east because all the warmer lands were already populated.

 

[Gurroruo]

Hey guys what would megafauna in the Americas be like?

Also besides the comments about climate already mentioned is there anything else?

 

[Prism]

Highly unlikely that Siberians wouldn't colonize America. Not with Alaska only a stone's throw away. Some Inuit tribes were interacting with some Siberian tribes in OTL.

 

[Gurroruo]

IT'S A WI. That means that besides the fact what would happen.

 

[Workable Goblin]

It would be nice if you provided actual facts to document this suffering, and it's actual effect on global climate, not presumptions.

There is in fact a well-documented dip in atmospheric CO2 about the turn of the 17th century, which is consistent, based on modern observations of carbon dioxide sinking by plants and soil, with the effects of fallowing large amounts of former agricultural land and the cessation of fire management practices. Because it takes several decades for peak carbon uptake to occur, and because it took some time for European diseases to spread through the Americas, the timeframe is consistent with the cause being the death of large numbers of American Indians and the resulting abandonment of agricultural land, combined with the spread of forest into formerly cleared land.

Interestingly, global temperatures also begin to decline as this dip occurs, and do not begin to increase again until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which had brought atmospheric CO2 levels back to their 1550 levels (the highest since about 1000 AD) by about 1800. There doesn't seem to be any lag, so I wouldn't be comfortable attributing the Little Ice Age to it, but at the very least this fall in CO2 probably exacerbated an ongoing natural fluctuation.

 

[riggerrob]

Yes, but given the circumpolar nature of their cultural adaptation, they might not spread to the south in the same way or in the same numbers that the Beringians did.

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OTL Asians migrated to the Americas in multiple waves.
The last wave occurred about 800 years ago when the Thule Inuit migrated from Siberia. After Ghengis Khan disrupted their supply of iron , they migrated eastwards to exploit iron deposits in the Canadian Arctic. They quickly moved across the high arctic islands by umiak and dog sled. Umiaks were also handy for hunting bowhead whales. They mainly ate sea food: whales, seals, fish and birds. Until the present era, the scarcity of wood forced Thule Inuit to make boats from drift wood covered in seal skin (additive manufacturing). Thule Inuit displaced the earlier Dorset culture from the Canadian Arctic. Thule Inuit migrated during the medieval Warm Period and by 1200 AD were clashing with Greenland Norse.

Recently, archeological digs have confirmed another wave of immigration between 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. This wave of immigrants also came by boat, but they paddled southward along the mountainous coast. Remains of fishing villages have been found along the Coast of British Columbia.
As glaciers retreated from coastal fjords, migrants from Siberia floated down the coast in boats. Once settled on the coast of British Colimbia, they learned subtractive manufacturing techniques to craft massive dug-out canoes from the huge cedar trees crowding the coast.

 

[Bavarian Raven]

Heck, there's good reason to believe the initial English settlement of NE North America woould have failed without Native crops and crop knowledge. French colonization was based on trade for native resources. No natives no trade. Any expansion of Viking settlements (or others) would be much slower without Native resources and the knowledge of native crops provided by Indians.

Vinland would likely succeed. The norse were much more adapt (and hard working than the initial english settlement, which consisted mostly of "gentlemen"). The norse also had an agricultural package suited to that region. In fact, expect them to flourish once the initial settlements take off...