American Indians: The Interrupted Trajectory

Wonderful thread! Didn't know the Tarascans had bronze!  Bronze working would definitely accelerate development, IMO. Here are some of my speculations:

Intro: What if the Black Death killed 99% of people in the Old World, reseting the clock and allowing the Americas to develop in isolation?

1500-1700

Aztecs: They would probably finally conquer the Tlaxcalans and would continue to expand northward, resulting in more boarder conflict with the Tarascans. They will also probably learn how to make bronze as the technology spreads from Tarasca. Expansion towards the SE would be stopped, or at least slowed, by the Mayans and the Zapotec. The use of the chinampas farming method increases. In the late 1500s they start creating colonies in the northern territories, the Tarascan frontier, and on the Pacific coast to ease overcrowding in Tenochtitlan as well as to help hold conquered city-states, defend from invasions, and to guard important trade routes.

Tarascans: They spread westward to the Pacific and northward. They pick up writing and chinampas agriculture from the Aztecs. Bronze tools and weapons became more common. The military became increasingly "professional," unlike the Aztec military. They begin to fortify thier cities more and Aztec-style monumental architecture becomes more common. They also start creating colonies in the late 1500s in order to help with overcrowding and with protecting strategic interests.

Mayans: long past thier glory days but still around and starting to recover a bit. Are a big PITA for the Aztecs.

Incas: They get pigs, chickens, and boat-building techniques from the Polynesians, the livestock causing a population boom and the better boats a commercial boom. the population boom results in new settlements popping up across the empire, and by 1700 Incan coastal colonies stretches from central Chile to Costa Rica, and thus they come into contact with the Meso-American peoples. by the late 1600s bronze technology and Mexican crops reached the Incas and chickens, pigs, llamas, and Andean crops reached Mexico.

Amazonia: The locals get pigs and chickens from the Incas, a big boost to them and allows an expansion of the Terra Preta (TP) culture.

Central America: local city-states pop up on the west coast in the 1600 as a result of trade between the Incas and Meso-Americans and compete vigorously with the Incan colonies.

North America: The old mid-western heartland of the Cahokian culture is in decline but along the Gulf Coast it expands rapidly, coming into contact with the Aztecs. It develops rapidly and acquires bronze technology around 1700.

Later, 1700-1900.

Originally posted by pinguin Incas having boat building techniques from the Polynesians?

It's an interesting possibility! Once could easily see coastal fisherman learning of Polynesian ship-building and navagation techniques. When you have a long, stretched-out empire along a mountainous coast travel by sea is the much better option then travel by land.

Contact is inevitable. Certainly before 1750, probably even before. Result is the same, gunpowder empire in S America.

Yes true. But if say there is a contact by 1750, and lets say its by Europeans and Brits or Spainiards for the sake of arguement, then they have the best chance of survival. Unless the natives could take a huge leap in tech and magically developed immunity (the former is possible, unlikely, the latter impossible) they had had it when the euros or anybody else came. Too rich, too weak.

In constructing this alt history, I would start with a relative comparison of where the most advanced native groups were at in 1492 compared to historical Old World cultures. I'd say that, for the most part, they were right at the end of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) period, with a few having crossed over into the very first stages of the early Bronze Age. That gives us a date of about 3500 BC relative to the Fertile Crescent and Egypt, and in many ways there were alot of similarities (monumental architecture, advanced agriculture and irrigation, and so on).

This leads us to a few basic observations.

First, the Americas - despite having developed agriculture and the first cities around the same time as those in the Old World - developed much more slowly. This is mostly due to geography. The Americas are smaller in land mass, with a smaller total population. Also, the Americas have more of a north-south axis, while Eurasia has an east-west axis with a bigger "civilization belt". This slows development. In addition, diffusion is retarded because there is no equivalent to the Silk Road, and no horses. So we can give the Americas a handicap of, say, +50% in terms of timeline for development.

Next, it is silly to presume that the Incas, Aztecs, and Mayas are going to continue to write the history of civilization in the Americas. Egypt and Sumeria faded in importance in the Old World. Instead, the modern age began in areas that, in 3500 BC, were dark forests at the fringes of a continent that was inhabited by extremely primitive tribal groups. We can safely say that the centres of power are going to change, they could be anywhere, and there's no real way to predict them. They will probably be in areas that were highly underdeveloped in 1492. Mexico and Peru will remain important, but they will probably be eclipsed by other areas.

Keeping the +50% handicap in mind, it took the Old World 4500 years to reach 1000 AD. It will take the Americas about 7000 years to get there, i.e. about AD 8500 or so. Even without the handicap its going to take them til about AD 6000.

As far as the industrial revolution, in the Old World, this was made possible in large part by the discovery of the New World. New food crops vastly increased the food supply in Europe, allowing more specialization. Larger cities could be supported with less farmland. Without the introduction of these new foodstuffs (not to mention the influx of wealth), its not certain whether the industrial revolution would have happened when it did - if at all.

Originally posted by pinguin At 3500 BC? I am not so sure. I would believe the highest cultures of Peru and Mexico are closer to 1000 BC as average. Although it is true they were relatively backwards to the Mediterranean and Asian civilizations, in some aspect they were more advanced.

3500 BC was not that primitive ... they had cities, roads, and some maths and sciences. Inventions of the 4th millenium BC included ploughs, the potter's wheel, sewage systems, bronze, sails, oversized boats that could carry cargoes or a few dozens of passengers, and a variety of musical instruments, small tools, pictographic writing changed to cuneiform, etc

It might be a little conservative, so I guess we could look at other millenia:

3000-2000: more advancements in maths and sciences (discovery of pi, etc), widespread construction of monumental buildings (ziggurats, pyramids etc), papyrus, chariot, etc

2000-1000: alphabets, iron, monotheism, anatomy, loads of sciences

1000-0: Massive spread of urbanization into undeveloped, formerly tribal lands, huge advancements in engineering, shipbuilding, tools, great leaps in science and invention (too many to mention).

Looking at things this way, I do agree that 3500 BC is probably too early, but 1000 BC seems a bit too liberal.

Either way we're still talking about them needing thousands of years to get to the equivalent of 1500 AD or so. I can't see them getting there before the year 4500 at best, by which time Eurasians will probably be colonizing the moon.


Edited by edgewaters - 01-Nov-2008 at 10:13

Originally posted by pinguin Europe could had reached the level of Europe in just 500 years or perhaps would had taken 10.000 years!

Mmm ... I don't know about that. It takes time for inventions to spread, and sometimes you have to wait for precursor technologies to filter through before you can move along to the next technological phase. Not to mention infrastructure and cities. The urban corridors of the Americas were still mostly limited to the regions where agriculture had originated, similar to the Old World in the Fertile Crescent stage. Urban society hadn't really expanded that far: it's not like roads connected Florida with Columbia, like Europe by the Roman era. 

Americans lacked string instruments. Although this seems unconnected, stringed instruments propelled the development of mathematics.

How odd! I never thought about that.


Edited by edgewaters - 01-Nov-2008 at 18:56

I agree, the mayor factor that would make natives take off technologically would be stablish, constant trade between mesoamerica and the andes. Both cultural areas had tons to learn from each other. But such contact would only be achieved trough sea trade, and unlike the mediterranean it would have to be trough long sea trading crossing tropical seas. And land trading didnt look any better.

Tho a smaller multiculturalism was being lived under the post classical in mesoamerica, mostly due to the Mexica empire. they brought together mesoamerica and centered it in Tenochtitlan, all trade pretty much went there, that coupled with the Mexicas tolerance for other cultures, made a nice place for mesoamerican multiculturalism.