About Doug Hoff's Empty America

[james_davis_nicoll]

I can't seem to find the first entry. What prevented anyone from migrating to the New World before the Vikings?

[Answered in comments: It's not specified in the initial post]

If you prevent anyone from coming over the top of the world it won't prevent the Polynesians from colonizing the Americas (Sweet potatoes got to Polynesia from the New World Somehow). Well, it won't unless you have extremely well aimed butterflies, able to use the secondary and tertiary effects of whatever the barrier to colonization is up north to prevent anyone from using the trans-Pacific route.

Comments

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

Well, obviously people DID migrate to the New World before the Vikings.

And who's to say the odd hardy band of Polynesians didn't set up somewhere on the West Coast, only to assimilate to the local culture after a couple generations?

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

Duh, understanding FAIL. This is an alternate history scenario, isn't it, of the "land bridge never happend" variety.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Yeah, except I don't know what caused the lack of migrations (except I do seem to recall the "Arctodus Simus proves to be an exceptionally effective barrier to human migration" WI didn't go anywhere).

[kate_nepveu]

This appears to have links: http://emptyamerica.blogspot.com/

[dubiousprospects.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

I believe that the genetic evidence is that there *was* a transpacific migration. (See http://www.flickr.com/photos/bldgblog/2398034248/ for some maps.)

At the peak glacial ocean level low, the east coast of North American is much larger; the west coast is hardly larger at all because it's almost all subduction boundary, but it is larger. Given that moving inland is both difficult and undesirable -- there's less food there -- I do wonder if the good arrival date locations are now under the sea.

Thanks

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

no specific POD

Hrm.

Whatever it was, it had to prevent, what, at least four different migrations? And whatever it was had to be such that it didn't interfere with migrations in the other direction (No miocene migration of equines into the Old World is going to leave a mark on human history).

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

You'd need to depopulate Northeast Asia. The Inuit and related peoples came in long after Beringia had gone under and long before the Norse.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Someone had boat technology 40,000 years ago because the Wallace Gap didn't stop us from getting to Australia. If there are boats, it's hard to keep humans out of the New World indefinitely.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Didn't the Māori only arrive in New Zealand about 1000 CE? Possibly as late as 1300 CE? If I was trying to invent a virgin Americas for Europeans to find I might have Polynesians on the west coast, but just barely starting out since their first attempts fail for whatever reasons. And the Europeans would then conveniently ignore them. "It was a virgin New World free for our claims, ours by right of first discovery and settlement." "What about those people with the taro on the west coast?" "Oh hush you, they don't count."

Or I might do like Turtledove did and have some animal in the Americas that would make initial settlement very hard and thus a reason for the first small bands to get wiped out (including Vikings) and only get generalized European settlement with better guns and/or large groups with crossbows. He used Homo erectus in A Different Flesh, which I thought fairly clever.

Or it could only seem virgin with the population of the Americas having been decimated by a disease. Perhaps one that was not terribly virulent in of itself, but that would make a large percentage of the people who contract it sterile and thus making it where the generation after the disease will be so small and spread out that humanity in the Americas is reduced to next to nill. Given the slow population growth of people prior to germ theory this would mean an almost virgin Americas if it happened in the 500 years prior to first contact.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Are you sure it wasn't hot air balloons?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

IIRC, evidence of the sweet potato in Polynesia goes back to at AD 1000 and perhaps as early as AD 700.

Or I might do like Turtledove did and have some animal in the Americas that would make initial settlement very hard

Someone or other suggested that Arctodus Simus might have filled this role until relatively recently (it's been long enough since I came across this that I don't recall what changed in this model to let humans migrate into North America) but looking at the fossil record, the usual pattern is that humans armed with fire and pointy sticks are more than a match for annoying and/or tasty megafauna.

Home erectus was no match for us in the old world. Why would it be in the New World?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Homo erectus would not be any match for us, it would just have to slow us down. The goal isn't to keep humanity out of the Americas forever after all. If there is competition I assume it would slow down settlement of the Americas particularly in the choke point stage of first settlement. First settlements of whatever sort are vulnerable. Therefore it seems reasonable to assume that if they manage to hold back the first Americans until after the land bridge goes away then they'd have a chance to make it just a little too hard for Polynesians at the end of thousands of miles from whatever island. What they could not stop would be the Inuit so it would be a question of how early humans got really good at surviving in the high Arctic environment and started pushing down into the Americas from the north.

Oh poo. Looking at wikipedia I find that humans were living happily in the north of Greenland by 2500 BCE. Another idea ruined by horrible facts.

Re: Thanks

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

Pat Wrede appears to have solved the problem with magic. And possibly dragons. (I know nothing about the book beyond the linked review & comment thread).

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I would not have used Arctodus Simus as my plot device. I'd have invented some sort of 'terror bird' from South America and had it be a pack hunter that was just a bit to smart for humans with pointy sticks to get a good handle on.

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

If it's an alternate history, it was clearly zeppelins.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I had a WI where Europeans are baffled by the existance of herds of domesticated animals with no shepherds in evidence (and also by the way human expeditions keep disappearing). Eventually they realize that what they took to be predatory flightless birds are in fact the invisible shepherds: the same process that turned wolves into herding dogs occurred in the new world without the intervention of humans. The shepherd birds tended to be species specific, each herding a particular kind of animal.

Actual terror birds had dinky brains so I had to imagine there was an undocumented lineage that was very bright, grey parrot bright.

Re: Thanks

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

Ooh, racefail invaded that thread after the last time I read it.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

That sounds quite plausible. Something weird out of S. America is often the solution when a plot device is needed. I was going for something evolving in a Jurassic Park style raptor, but I like the evolved from parrots idea.

[gohover.livejournal.com]

I have in my notes "Dr Valerius Geist of the University of Calgary has speculated that Arctodus simus and other bears may even have delayed the human invasion of that continent." and
"The Arctoduspaleozoologist Valerius Geist speaks about "the predator hell hole which was Pleistocene North America" and argues that it was uninhabitable to human beings until around 15,000 years ago."

I'd have to google for the source of those notes, but why did the Arctodus Simus WI not go anywhere? Would it be reasonable to posit that a) Geist is right, and b) Arctodus Simus doesn't go extinct as early as it does? Or was that the WI?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

why did the Arctodus Simus WI not go anywhere?

I presented it in a boring and uninspiring manner.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

OK, who wants to get Mythbusters to examine the idea of neolithic dirigibles?

[kynn.livejournal.com]

Never heard of this before, but did some quick googling to read up on it.

I dunno, an elaborate fantasy designed to write the American Indians out of history seems fucking creepy to me, based on repeated real-world attempts to do the same thing to the same people.

Re: Thanks

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Anyway, magic is the most boring possible barrier imaginable. Might as well say "wizards did it".

[gohover.livejournal.com]

Huh. I find the whole subject pretty exciting. I found the whole quote here:

"The Arctoduspaleozoologist Valerius Geist <geistvr@cedar.alberni.net> speaks about "the predator hell hole which was Pleistocene North America" and argues that it was uninhabitable to human beings until around 15,000 years ago. In addition to the still surviving Black Bear, "there were three short-faced bear species, all larger, two specialized as super carnivores (one about 7-8 feet at the shoulder, and one as a super vegetarian convergent with Europe's cave bear. Nasty customers all. In addition there were true lions, only twice the mass of African specimen, two species of large sabre toothed cats, jaguars, large cheetah-like running cats and big dire wolves." Grizzly bears came later, across the Bering land bridge, along with humans.


from cogweb.ucla.edu/Chumash/EntryDate.html

And then there are Amphicyonids (which I like because they sort of answer the question: cat is to lion as dog is to ?), and even, if you don't mind dipping into a really different era for your source material, Andrewsarchus, which looks very scary and quite inspiring!

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Or a wild beachside chili party leading to a truly epic case of group flatulence.