- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
I'm just going say one last bit before I stop interjecting CURRENT YEAR -1000 politics into the fantasy thread:
Coyote and Crow's stage "what if outside influences never arrived in the Americas" is a really interesting thought experiment, but it falls on its face at premise. What it sets out to do is impossible.
Firstly, you can't excise outside influence. The "Native Americans" aren't the original inhabitants. The original Americans were murdered (and evidence suggests cannibalized) by people crossing the berring straight. Even if we want to put a "Ok, anything that happened before the Great Pyramid was built is water under the bridge" line on the sand, Vikings were landing in Canada 400 years BEFORE the Aztec empire existed, back when the Inca were a tribe being bullied by their neighbors.
The Spanish had their empire in mexico rise and decay nearly 200 years before Lewis and Clark crossed the continent. Russian Whalers & seal hunters had been landing all up and down the pacific coast from alaska to Baja to hunt & reprovision for a few hundred.
Which doesn't sound like all that until you remember these small contacts happened BEFORE what these racists view as the "natural state" of Indians. The Mississippi Mound Builders were likely genocided by a tribe that was in turn genocided by the tribe we know as the Creek. The Iroquois hadn't been "a thing" for more than about 200 years when the british landed; they merely absorbed other tribes instead of out-and-out genociding them. The "Longhouse Alliance" was still a fairly new thing.
When the Mayans were building their pyramids, the Ancient Egyptians had long since been taken over by the Romans.
Hardly any of these cultures left behind any writing, mostly just proto-writing. There is no written record, just guesses made by archeologists assuming that there wasn't a wild difference between the conquerors and the conquered. Which is generally a reasonable guess since they didn't have any pack animals until the Spanish introducted (or reintroduced) horses.
Organized, large scale Civilization just couldn't maintain a grip in the Americas; when Cortez showed up, The Mayans had been collapses for over a hundred years and had reverted to shitting in holes in the Jungle, the Aztec'sEmpire Triple Alliance was about to rip itself apart because there wasn't anyone left to kill that they could reach, and the Inca were already being drained by having to put down rebellions when Pizarro showed up. There is a reason the rulers were brought down by tiny contingents of soldiers.
Ironically, the Mayans - due to there being no central authority and most of the culture being small villiages squatting in jungles - were the hardest to conquer and only subdued due to the invaluable help of Aztec warriors which is why Montezuma's Grandson was elevated to Spanish nobility.
Second, even if we want to ignore those contacts attempts, because until the Spanish show up in force its all admittedly pretty minor, you have to murder everyone not in the Americas to do it.
You cannot leave the middle east alone. Again, they had a huge cultural overlap with Europe & Roman/Greek thought. You have to depopulate it. They also knew the world was round, and the size. Without the European navies constantly flattening Ottoman dicks, it would only be a matter of time before they tried their hand.
You can't even leave Africa alone. Mansa Musa purportedly sent expeditions west to see what was accross the ocean.
The only old world civilizations you don't need to straight murder are the Nips and the Chinks. The Nips were mostly too isolationist to try going east. And the Chinks were too focused on their own Chinkery so its conceivable they'd never try to expand - they did a series of Voyages of Discovery* in the Indian ocean, making contact with cultures the way to Ethiopia and then.... never bothered following up.
* This is a bit of misnomer; the Chinese already knew about most of the places their naval expeditions went to due to contacts with traders. Not a lot, often just that they existed and general location, but they knew there was something to find.
And unless we're counting Polynesians as Indians, you MUST kill those cannibalist, genocidal, environment-raping mother fuckers. They are the Southern Hemisphere vikings, and were already poking at the Aleutians and the Chilean coast when Europeans ruined it for them.
Thirdly, as I touched on in the first point, its impossible to reconstruct pre-columbian america. No one had a fully developed system of writing before European contact. the Maya had very detailed codexes (most of which the spanish burned) and carved rocks. They barely rose to proto-writing, they were more like uniformly stylized murals. But its all religious myths and king genealogies. The Aztecs were very close, but again they had agreed upon representations of gods, people (both individuals and collective groups) but nothing that could express abstract thoughts or complex ideas. "King here. King kill many enemies. Gods happy! His son kill him. Then go kill brother and his friends. Gods Happier!"
The Spanish have some accounts of about as "pure" as you can get native americans, but by and large they weren't interested in the people they encounterd, largely because they were dirt farmers.
You have reports from groups like De Soto's, but even then a lot of tribes they encountered had already heard the Spanish were coming.
What the Koyote & Krow Krew are goign off of is mostly the Lewis & Clark expedition, which is about as good a freeze frame of the peak of North American indians.
But remember: the spanish had been there for 300 years at this point and they brought horses. The traditional ways of life were already over.
Its because we are typing 888 walls of text which ups the odds of quote bug.
You are right that fragments of Roman culture persisted, and there were innovations like the horse yoke developed during this time (and the development of the heavy plow) but it was small and slow. Part of it was the brain drain - anyone with knowledge and means was mainly going to the centers of learning the middle east.
The dark-age barbarism of power vacuum is something I like to use my campaigns. While Europe was collapsing, Vikings were going to down the volga to trade with the Persians for crucible steel swords. Shit is bonker.
Makes me think of the twitter thread where a TTG map maker was taking the piss and rejecting the map of New Orleans as 'unrealisitic'
Coyote and Crow's stage "what if outside influences never arrived in the Americas" is a really interesting thought experiment, but it falls on its face at premise. What it sets out to do is impossible.
Firstly, you can't excise outside influence. The "Native Americans" aren't the original inhabitants. The original Americans were murdered (and evidence suggests cannibalized) by people crossing the berring straight. Even if we want to put a "Ok, anything that happened before the Great Pyramid was built is water under the bridge" line on the sand, Vikings were landing in Canada 400 years BEFORE the Aztec empire existed, back when the Inca were a tribe being bullied by their neighbors.
The Spanish had their empire in mexico rise and decay nearly 200 years before Lewis and Clark crossed the continent. Russian Whalers & seal hunters had been landing all up and down the pacific coast from alaska to Baja to hunt & reprovision for a few hundred.
Which doesn't sound like all that until you remember these small contacts happened BEFORE what these racists view as the "natural state" of Indians. The Mississippi Mound Builders were likely genocided by a tribe that was in turn genocided by the tribe we know as the Creek. The Iroquois hadn't been "a thing" for more than about 200 years when the british landed; they merely absorbed other tribes instead of out-and-out genociding them. The "Longhouse Alliance" was still a fairly new thing.
When the Mayans were building their pyramids, the Ancient Egyptians had long since been taken over by the Romans.
Hardly any of these cultures left behind any writing, mostly just proto-writing. There is no written record, just guesses made by archeologists assuming that there wasn't a wild difference between the conquerors and the conquered. Which is generally a reasonable guess since they didn't have any pack animals until the Spanish introducted (or reintroduced) horses.
Organized, large scale Civilization just couldn't maintain a grip in the Americas; when Cortez showed up, The Mayans had been collapses for over a hundred years and had reverted to shitting in holes in the Jungle, the Aztec's
Ironically, the Mayans - due to there being no central authority and most of the culture being small villiages squatting in jungles - were the hardest to conquer and only subdued due to the invaluable help of Aztec warriors which is why Montezuma's Grandson was elevated to Spanish nobility.
Second, even if we want to ignore those contacts attempts, because until the Spanish show up in force its all admittedly pretty minor, you have to murder everyone not in the Americas to do it.
You cannot leave the middle east alone. Again, they had a huge cultural overlap with Europe & Roman/Greek thought. You have to depopulate it. They also knew the world was round, and the size. Without the European navies constantly flattening Ottoman dicks, it would only be a matter of time before they tried their hand.
You can't even leave Africa alone. Mansa Musa purportedly sent expeditions west to see what was accross the ocean.
The only old world civilizations you don't need to straight murder are the Nips and the Chinks. The Nips were mostly too isolationist to try going east. And the Chinks were too focused on their own Chinkery so its conceivable they'd never try to expand - they did a series of Voyages of Discovery* in the Indian ocean, making contact with cultures the way to Ethiopia and then.... never bothered following up.
* This is a bit of misnomer; the Chinese already knew about most of the places their naval expeditions went to due to contacts with traders. Not a lot, often just that they existed and general location, but they knew there was something to find.
And unless we're counting Polynesians as Indians, you MUST kill those cannibalist, genocidal, environment-raping mother fuckers. They are the Southern Hemisphere vikings, and were already poking at the Aleutians and the Chilean coast when Europeans ruined it for them.
Thirdly, as I touched on in the first point, its impossible to reconstruct pre-columbian america. No one had a fully developed system of writing before European contact. the Maya had very detailed codexes (most of which the spanish burned) and carved rocks. They barely rose to proto-writing, they were more like uniformly stylized murals. But its all religious myths and king genealogies. The Aztecs were very close, but again they had agreed upon representations of gods, people (both individuals and collective groups) but nothing that could express abstract thoughts or complex ideas. "King here. King kill many enemies. Gods happy! His son kill him. Then go kill brother and his friends. Gods Happier!"
The Spanish have some accounts of about as "pure" as you can get native americans, but by and large they weren't interested in the people they encounterd, largely because they were dirt farmers.
You have reports from groups like De Soto's, but even then a lot of tribes they encountered had already heard the Spanish were coming.
What the Koyote & Krow Krew are goign off of is mostly the Lewis & Clark expedition, which is about as good a freeze frame of the peak of North American indians.
But remember: the spanish had been there for 300 years at this point and they brought horses. The traditional ways of life were already over.
Its because we are typing 888 walls of text which ups the odds of quote bug.
You are right that fragments of Roman culture persisted, and there were innovations like the horse yoke developed during this time (and the development of the heavy plow) but it was small and slow. Part of it was the brain drain - anyone with knowledge and means was mainly going to the centers of learning the middle east.
The dark-age barbarism of power vacuum is something I like to use my campaigns. While Europe was collapsing, Vikings were going to down the volga to trade with the Persians for crucible steel swords. Shit is bonker.
Makes me think of the twitter thread where a TTG map maker was taking the piss and rejecting the map of New Orleans as 'unrealisitic'
