Fantasy idea
Jun. 7th, 2019 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrMany times over the years, I've wondered what it'd take to have had the natives in the New World have a better chance against the invadersexplorers from the Old World.
They had several strikes against them. First mostly Neolithic civilizations. Even bronze Age would have helped, though they'd probably have needed at least Iron Age tech to have a real chance.
Second, no "beasts of burden" beyond dogs in North America and llamas and their relatives in South America. Add in lack of wheeled transport and you've got some real disadvantages.
Third, lack of immunity to Old World diseases. That was a real killer.
All of these would be better off if there'd been *some* sort of semi-regular contact between the Old World and the New World. But how?
While there's some evidence of contacts from Europe, Africa and Asia, they were not at all regular. and in many cases too late in history to help with some of the problems.
One comment to a post somewhere a year or so back, got me thinking about the Mongols and how they might have been able to teach various folks in the New World a lot of useful things.
But getting them to North america even *once* would be really difficult, much less getting any sort of regular contact.
Something else reminded me of various books that had "gates" or other things that swapped people between worlds or different places on worlds. Of course, that moves things from "very alternate history" to "fantasy.
Still it was an interesting idea. I figured somewhere in the northern plains would be a good site for North America. and Mongolia for Asia.
Imagine my surprise when checking maps revealed that Mongolia is at about the same latitudes as the Dakotas. And they are almost 180 degrees apart. Interesting.
If I ever do anything with this, it'd require a lot of info about who lived in the Dakotas from (say) the era of Clovis points and the like up to pre-Columbian times. Likewise for Mongolia in the same periods.
I'm thinking an "area" effect. Some chunk of territory "swaps" with a chunk in the other place. So what was a chunk of the Dakotas swaps with a chunk of Mongolia. And later swaps back.
Say at the moment the moon becomes full.
Be quite a sight as you go from night to daylight, or sunrise to sunset.
Need to find some chunks of roughly equivalent terrain for each "end".
While it'd spook the hell out of the first folks to discover it, after a few thousand years, it'd probably be accepted as "normal magic" for the folks within a few hundred miles. Likely be tale tales farther away.
But eventually, there'd be folks deliberately using the effect. Hunting, exploring, getting away from a feud...
Not sure what would leak" to Asia, but I could see a lot of stuff going the other way.
The Vikings might have an even worse time with the Skrealings.
Columbus versus the natives on the islands he landed on might not go much different.
Cortez might get a rude shock. And I suspect the French and English explorers would get a *much* ruder shock if they tried behaving the way they did in our timeline.
Just the fact that the Indian populations wouldn't be decimated by disease would make a big difference. Add in better weapons and horses from the start and they'd have a *much* harder time annexing all that territory.
They had several strikes against them. First mostly Neolithic civilizations. Even bronze Age would have helped, though they'd probably have needed at least Iron Age tech to have a real chance.
Second, no "beasts of burden" beyond dogs in North America and llamas and their relatives in South America. Add in lack of wheeled transport and you've got some real disadvantages.
Third, lack of immunity to Old World diseases. That was a real killer.
All of these would be better off if there'd been *some* sort of semi-regular contact between the Old World and the New World. But how?
While there's some evidence of contacts from Europe, Africa and Asia, they were not at all regular. and in many cases too late in history to help with some of the problems.
One comment to a post somewhere a year or so back, got me thinking about the Mongols and how they might have been able to teach various folks in the New World a lot of useful things.
But getting them to North america even *once* would be really difficult, much less getting any sort of regular contact.
Something else reminded me of various books that had "gates" or other things that swapped people between worlds or different places on worlds. Of course, that moves things from "very alternate history" to "fantasy.
Still it was an interesting idea. I figured somewhere in the northern plains would be a good site for North America. and Mongolia for Asia.
Imagine my surprise when checking maps revealed that Mongolia is at about the same latitudes as the Dakotas. And they are almost 180 degrees apart. Interesting.
If I ever do anything with this, it'd require a lot of info about who lived in the Dakotas from (say) the era of Clovis points and the like up to pre-Columbian times. Likewise for Mongolia in the same periods.
I'm thinking an "area" effect. Some chunk of territory "swaps" with a chunk in the other place. So what was a chunk of the Dakotas swaps with a chunk of Mongolia. And later swaps back.
Say at the moment the moon becomes full.
Be quite a sight as you go from night to daylight, or sunrise to sunset.
Need to find some chunks of roughly equivalent terrain for each "end".
While it'd spook the hell out of the first folks to discover it, after a few thousand years, it'd probably be accepted as "normal magic" for the folks within a few hundred miles. Likely be tale tales farther away.
But eventually, there'd be folks deliberately using the effect. Hunting, exploring, getting away from a feud...
Not sure what would leak" to Asia, but I could see a lot of stuff going the other way.
The Vikings might have an even worse time with the Skrealings.
Columbus versus the natives on the islands he landed on might not go much different.
Cortez might get a rude shock. And I suspect the French and English explorers would get a *much* ruder shock if they tried behaving the way they did in our timeline.
Just the fact that the Indian populations wouldn't be decimated by disease would make a big difference. Add in better weapons and horses from the start and they'd have a *much* harder time annexing all that territory.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-08 10:55 am (UTC)Although, I'll point out that some of the proto-mongols did make it across the Bering strait, 12-15 thousand years ago. That's where the native Americans came from partly.
And Phoenician traders used to sail across regularly, that's where the early egyptians got their cocaine and tobacco from. [remains of which have been found in tombs.]
But if we posit that this contact continued to late enough in history that the Natives would have acquired immunity to late european diseases, then without Cortez introducing whatever caused the epidemic that wiped out 90% of their population... they would outnumber Europeans by significant factor. They had a large, well organised civilisation.
That alone would be enough to prevent wholescale genocide. Early settlers would have to negotiate for land rights, not just walk in and take it. That sets a precedent.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-08 02:30 pm (UTC)Third try:
Over and over, we are learning that there was never just one human migration into an area (Greenland was inhabited in the northern part by Inuit for many centuries before the Scandinavians "discovered" it). Also, migrations were rarely one-way. ("Hey, cousin! Yeah, last time you saw me I was just a kid. Anyway, we went east then south, and found a place completely empty of other people! Come on over! There's no competition like there is here.")
You left out weather. Or maybe it was climate. Much of North and Central America had been through an unusually lush period and built up their populations. (In the book _1493_ Charles Mann goes into a lot of this.) However, at the time of the European exploration and conquest large parts of the continent - especially the North American southwest - was experiencing prolonged drought. On the other hand, the Jamestown settlers actually encountered representatives of a large-scale native government. (That's how they wound up being given swampland to build on.) They just didn't recognize it.
As for wheels, I have read that the Aztecs had wheeled toys, but never bothered building roads suitable for wheeled vehicles.
In _Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies_ Jared Diamond explores - among other things - why the Europeans were so far ahead of the rest of the world technologically.
Silicon Shaman's comment about megafauna reminded me that Australia had a large land lizard as big as a crocodile which may have still had a few examples wandering around when the Europeans arrived. Of course, the continent (yes, the cartographers finally made up their minds that it's a continent and not an island) doesn't need those to be naturally dangerous. It has the most poisonous snake, the most poisonous spider, the most poisonous jellyfish, the most poisonous snail and the most poisonous monotreme. It also has the saltwater crocodile. Big ones can swallow an adult human whole.
Besides diseases, the Europeans brought hogs (wild hogs in the southern US are still a massive threat to agriculture and occasionally to people) and honeybees (which the natives called "biting flies". Of course, they also brought earthworms.