What if the Europeans hadn't discovered the New World until 1692?

Another what if topic (sorry to waste your valuable time).
If the peoples of the Americas had 200 more years before the eventual discovery of their lands and themselves by the Europeans:
Which cultures could have been dominant in their part of the Americas at the time? Incas and Aztecs? would any of the ceased to exist? difficult to ascertain?
What about the North American Indian (Amerindian) tribes, would the Iroquois or the Cherokee come to dominate the East? neither?
Any other possible occurrences or inventions by the Native American people before that date?

I don't really think it would had made a significant difference for the north unless they had used those 200 extra years to invent antibiotics.

daft said:

What about the North American Indian (Amerindian) tribes, would the Iroquois or the Cherokee come to dominate the East? neither?

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It's not likely. The Iroquois and Cherokee came to the forefront largely because of European intrusion into North America, because of the roles they were obliged and/or able to assume on the frontiers of European America. Before European contact, the major polities in North America were the chiefdoms of the Mississippi and the South-East, and those in the Upper Mississippi and Ohio collapsed before European contact because of climactic changes, while whose of the Lower Mississippi and South-East largely collapsed quite rapidly in the early 16th century after contact with European diseases. Possibly, if these chiefdoms were able to grow larger and more complex, and then Europeans made a more deliberate effort at conquest, the structures of the chiefdoms might have been preserved and you might see a mestizo society like those of Latin America, rather than a settler society. But even then I'm not sure, because many of the chiefdoms were well into the interior, so they would likely be decimated by disease before Europeans could reach them.

I think the biggest change would actually be in Europe itself, as a result of the absence of the economic (and indirectly, political) consequences of American colonisation. Most immediately the Hapsburgs have to make do without American precious metals, and in the long term you're looking at the slower development of a consumer market because of the lessened availability of goods like sugar and coffee and the non-availability of tobacco and chocolate, and of course the delayed introduction of cotton into textile production. Basically I think we'd be delaying the industrial revolution- and because of that delay, it wouldn't constitute a "revolution", even to the debatable extent it already does.

Traitorfish said:

I think the biggest change would actually be in Europe itself, as a result of the absence of the economic (and indirectly, political) consequences of American colonisation. Most immediately the Hapsburgs have to make do without American precious metals, and in the long term you're looking at the slower development of a consumer market because of the lessened availability of goods like sugar and coffee and the non-availability of tobacco and chocolate, and of course the delayed introduction of cotton into textile production. Basically I think we'd be delaying the industrial revolution- and because of that delay, it wouldn't constitute a "revolution", even to the debatable extent it already does.

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I imagine an extension of the severe silver shortage that plagued Europe and Asia throughout the 15th century would have really changed things in Europe as well. The wealth the Habsburgs gained from their discoveries helped the dynasty sure, but it also really helped Europe in general. It may have also impacted Japan vis à vis their status with China as they probably would have been able to leverage their large silver mines (iirc Japan was the largest silver exporter outside of Spain/Europe in the 16th/17th centuries) with Ming China's extreme demand for silver not being answered by the influx of currency brought by the discovery of mines like Potosí.

Didn't the Habsburgs just waste most of their American wealth on wars in Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries, though? It's at least possible that a less wealthy and powerful Habsburg dynasty might have meant fewer, shorter wars.

Phrossack said:

Didn't the Habsburgs just waste most of their American wealth on wars in Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries, though? It's at least possible that a less wealthy and powerful Habsburg dynasty might have meant fewer, shorter wars.

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I mean it wasted it in the sense that most of them didn't amount to a whole lot, but it's not like they didn't have good reason to wage them. That's just the cost of having a continent-spanning dynastic empire. A world in which Spain doesn't gain the lucrative silver mines and thereby enrich the Habsburg coffers, I imagine, is one in which the Habsburg empire disintegrates more rapidly. Certainly the Austrian and Spanish halves break. Of course the 80-Years War is, to a large extent, contingent on a series of unlucky events on the part of the Habsburgs, so I can't really say whether or not those still even occur.

the tarascans had copper weapons in 1480, so that would have probably been more widespread if the spanish hadn't bum rushed mesoamerica less than half a century later (though i'm not sure why the aztecs didn't start using copper by the time spain came, considering that's who the tarascans had beaten with said copper, so they obviously knew the benefits).
so basically, there wouldn't have been much of a difference, except for maybe a few more empires throughout the americas that had time to centralize and get copper weapons. the europeans would still win, though it would be later on in history.

GoodSarmatian said:

I don't really think it would had made a significant difference for the north unless they had used those 200 extra years to invent antibiotics.

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Leif Erikson's crew was - unfortunately for Native Americans - healthy, and did not spread European diseases among the Skraelings.

Had that happened in ca. 1000, native people in both Americas would have been largely resistant to European diseases 500 years later.

They didn't need antiobiotics. What they needed was going through those disastrous epidemies 500 years before Columbus.

Traitorfish said:

It's not likely. The Iroquois and Cherokee came to the forefront largely because of European intrusion into North America, because of the roles they were obliged and/or able to assume on the frontiers of European America. Before European contact, the major polities in North America were the chiefdoms of the Mississippi and the South-East, and those in the Upper Mississippi and Ohio collapsed before European contact because of climactic changes, while whose of the Lower Mississippi and South-East largely collapsed quite rapidly in the early 16th century after contact with European diseases. Possibly, if these chiefdoms were able to grow larger and more complex, and then Europeans made a more deliberate effort at conquest, the structures of the chiefdoms might have been preserved and you might see a mestizo society like those of Latin America, rather than a settler society. But even then I'm not sure, because many of the chiefdoms were well into the interior, so they would likely be decimated by disease before Europeans could reach them.

I think the biggest change would actually be in Europe itself, as a result of the absence of the economic (and indirectly, political) consequences of American colonisation. Most immediately the Hapsburgs have to make do without American precious metals, and in the long term you're looking at the slower development of a consumer market because of the lessened availability of goods like sugar and coffee and the non-availability of tobacco and chocolate, and of course the delayed introduction of cotton into textile production. Basically I think we'd be delaying the industrial revolution- and because of that delay, it wouldn't constitute a "revolution", even to the debatable extent it already does.

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Let's say we teleported the 1490 AD Americas back to 490 BC, and gave them two thousand years to develop and meet the European on a more equal footing. So it's blatantly impossible to predict the geopolitics, but what general variables might have changed? Could they have prevented the demographic changes? Would they actually have advanced in any fundamental respect?

Mouthwash said:

Let's say we teleported the 1490 AD Americas back to 490 BC, and gave them two thousand years to develop and meet the European on a more equal footing. So it's blatantly impossible to predict the geopolitics, but what general variables might have changed? Could they have prevented the demographic changes? Would they actually have advanced in any fundamental respect?

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teleported back, as in, they knew that there would be some people coming to kill them in 2000 years? i could see it turning into a legend like the norse ragnorak.
but, if they were able to steal a few guns and horses and take them back in time with them, they'd probably be able to reverse engineer the guns after awhile and obviously breed the horses.

Mouthwash said:

Let's say we teleported the 1490 AD Americas back to 490 BC, and gave them two thousand years to develop and meet the European on a more equal footing. So it's blatantly impossible to predict the geopolitics, but what general variables might have changed? Could they have prevented the demographic changes? Would they actually have advanced in any fundamental respect?

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The trick with the "teleporation" framing is that North America c.1490 was already a very different place than North American c. 1200, and a lot of that had to do with climactic shifts. The period c.800-1200 saw the development of complex, stratified societies in the Mississippi Valley and the South-East, encouraged by the Medieval Warm period, which underwent a serious decline in the period 1300-1500 with the onset of the Little Ice Age. There were still paramount chiefdoms along the Southern Mississippi and in the South-East in the 16th century, when the Spanish managed to smallpox them out of existence, but they don't seem to have been on quite the same scale scale as those a few centuries earlier, the largest of which had been situated on the Central and Upper Mississippi and the Ohio and had completely collapsed by the time Columbus even set foot in the Americas.

We can probably look at it a different way and say, what if North America had two thousand years head start? In which case, yes, I think a lot would have changed. with complex societies along the Mississippi for two thousand years you'd be looking at entrenched agricultural societies, probably organised as city-states and perhaps a few larger empires. This would mean a much higher population, so aside from anything else there'd be a lot more Indians around in c.1500 and therefore, presumably, today. I imagine it would also mean the development of larger polities among the Indians of the North-East and Great Lakes, because although they'd probably retain their semi-nomadic, hunter-horticulturalist lifestyles, they'd find themselves under pressure from the Mississippi chiefdoms who would probably raid the semi-nomads for tributes and slaves. The chiefdoms might also encourage a more substantial trade network than we saw historically, which might further push the semi-nomads to unify in pursuit of local trade-monopolies, as seems to have occurred after European contact. Some form of metallurgy is also possible, I guess, but I don't know enough about that to comment, and would probably emerge out of Mesoamerica or the Andes anyway.

awesome said:

teleported back, as in, they knew that there would be some people coming to kill them in 2000 years? i could see it turning into a legend like the norse ragnorak.
but, if they were able to steal a few guns and horses and take them back in time with them, they'd probably be able to reverse engineer the guns after awhile and obviously breed the horses.

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I'm assuming Mouthwash means the Americas before European contact, given that his specified date of 1490 is two years before Columbus reached America.

Traitorfish said:

The trick with the "teleporation" framing is that North America c.1490 was already a very different place than North American c. 1200, and a lot of that had to do with climactic shifts. The period c.800-1200 saw the development of complex, stratified societies in the Mississippi Valley and the South-East, encouraged by the Medieval Warm period, which underwent a serious decline in the period 1300-1500 with the onset of the Little Ice Age. There were still paramount chiefdoms along the Southern Mississippi and in the South-East in the 16th century, when the Spanish managed to smallpox them out of existence, but they don't seem to have been on quite the same scale scale as those a few centuries earlier, the largest of which had been situated on the Central and Upper Mississippi and the Ohio and had completely collapsed by the time Columbus even set foot in the Americas.

We can probably look at it a different way and say, what if North America had two thousand years head start? In which case, yes, I think a lot would have changed. with complex societies along the Mississippi for two thousand years you'd be looking at entrenched agricultural societies, probably organised as city-states and perhaps a few larger empires. This would mean a much higher population, so aside from anything else there'd be a lot more Indians around in c.1500 and therefore, presumably, today. I imagine it would also mean the development of larger polities among the Indians of the North-East and Great Lakes, because although they'd probably retain their semi-nomadic, hunter-horticulturalist lifestyles, they'd find themselves under pressure from the Mississippi chiefdoms who would probably raid the semi-nomads for tributes and slaves. The chiefdoms might also encourage a more substantial trade network than we saw historically, which might further push the semi-nomads to unify in pursuit of local trade-monopolies, as seems to have occurred after European contact. Some form of metallurgy is also possible, I guess, but I don't know enough about that to comment, and would probably emerge out of Mesoamerica or the Andes anyway.

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This is all just off the top of your head?

Yeah, but I've studied this stuff academically so if I wasn't able to barf it out on request, I'd be doing something wrong.

Traitorfish said:

I'm assuming Mouthwash means the Americas before European contact, given that his specified date of 1490 is two years before Columbus reached America.

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hmmm, i guess i read that as "1490s." my mistake.

anyway, they'd definitely develop a lot, but they still hadn't seen guns or anything like that, so i'm still not sure they'd be on an equal footing technologically, unless they had help from europeans themselves. there would definitely be a lot more metal weapons, whether they'd be bronze or iron, but still no guns.
if we teleorted some 1590 native americans to around 1290, then they'd have guns and there might even be enough time to recover from the smallpox.

awesome said:

hmmm, i guess i read that as "1490s." my mistake.

anyway, they'd definitely develop a lot, but they still hadn't seen guns or anything like that, so i'm still not sure they'd be on an equal footing technologically, unless they had help from europeans themselves. there would definitely be a lot more metal weapons, whether they'd be bronze or iron, but still no guns.
if we teleorted some 1590 native americans to around 1290, then they'd have guns and there might even be enough time to recover from the smallpox.

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Few Native Americans had firearms in 1590. Most groups hadn't encountered Europeans yet, and even the Spanish conquistador expeditions of Cortes and Pizarro favored the crossbow, lance, and sword over firearms. At the time, the vast majority of firearms were matchlocks, and I don't recall Native Americans using any of those. They favored the bow, and with good reason; it was the weapon they were most used to and most proficient with, and it tended to have a higher rate of shot and more reliability than matchlocks. Furthermore, the bow was easily made by native bowyers with local materials, as were the arrows, while firearms would have to be captured or traded for. Flintlocks started replacing traditional weapons in the New World in the late 17th/early 18th centuries, and even then many native peoples stuck with the old weapons well into the 19th century. By this point, this was probably usually because they could not acquire enough firearms for everyone, but the old weapons still had their uses. The Comanche apparently briefly tried out firearms early in the 19th century and soon rejected them for their traditional bows, spears, and clubs, which were more effective from horseback than muskets.

And yes, I realize that I seem to be nitpicking needlessly, but I just seized the chance to discuss a transitional era of weaponry that interests me.

awesome said:

hmmm, i guess i read that as "1490s." my mistake.

anyway, they'd definitely develop a lot, but they still hadn't seen guns or anything like that, so i'm still not sure they'd be on an equal footing technologically, unless they had help from europeans themselves. there would definitely be a lot more metal weapons, whether they'd be bronze or iron, but still no guns.
if we teleorted some 1590 native americans to around 1290, then they'd have guns and there might even be enough time to recover from the smallpox.

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I don't think that guns would do them them any good. First, they weren't going to be in a position to make more of them, because they simply lacked the technological capacity to produce iron or gunpowder. Indians always relied on Europeans to obtain and repair firearms and supply gunpowder, and the materials they used to produce musketballs were of European origin as well. A 16th century musket in 13th century America is really just a big metal tube.

Second, guns were never the deciding factor anyway. Bows were more effective than smoothbore muskets in both range, rate of fire and accuracy; the advantage of the musket was really that it took very little training to use, and that was never really the issue in the Americas. Even the Europeans didn't actually lean that heavily on guns; the conquistadors preferred crossbows, which were more effective in most respects, but we remember the guns because of the psychological effect they had on peoples who had never faced them before.

edit: Or, what Phrossack said.

Phrossack said:

And yes, I realize that I seem to be nitpicking needlessly, but I just seized the chance to discuss a transitional era of weaponry that interests me.

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it's all good. i originally wanted to say 1990, but figured that was way too far into the future.

By what I'm reading from Traitorfish's post, if the Little Ice Age didn't happen, the situation with the Native Americans would be completely different?

Tolni said:

By what I'm reading from Traitorfish's post, if the Little Ice Age didn't happen, the situation with the Native Americans would be completely different?

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I'd think that would be true for the whole world, including the Native Americans.

Phrossack said:

Flintlocks started replacing traditional weapons in the New World in the late 17th/early 18th centuries, and even then many native peoples stuck with the old weapons well into the 19th century. By this point, this was probably usually because they could not acquire enough firearms for everyone, but the old weapons still had their uses. The Comanche apparently briefly tried out firearms early in the 19th century and soon rejected them for their traditional bows, spears, and clubs, which were more effective from horseback than muskets.

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There are apparently good reasons to assume that there were already hundreds of guns in circulation among the Indians by 1650, at least by what is presented here:
http://www.amazon.com/Most-Pernicio...WJ0_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407220265&sr=1-1
And indeed pretty much the only reason bows would have been preferred over guns, of any kind, was the lack of availability. And as long as there were multiple rival european factions present and providing trade and gifts, availability of guns and ammunition wasn't much of a problem, apparently.
I'm not so sure the Comanche are making any kind of repesentative case, if that story is indeed correct. On the northern plains, guns, any guns were prized possesions, and even small numbers had a significant impact.


From what I have read on the French and Indian War, bows were pretty much obsolete by that time, and securing guns and ammo supply for the Indians, and trying to cut it off by their respective enemies were extremely important objectives.

Traitorfish said:

Second, guns were never the deciding factor anyway. Bows were more effective than smoothbore muskets in both range, rate of fire and accuracy; the advantage of the musket was really that it took very little training to use, and that was never really the issue in the Americas.

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I never quite got those arguments. The historical record seems to show that almost anywhere where there was a real choice between guns and bows, guns were used, even by "warrior peoples" where the time for training wasn't an issue. Certainly so by the time flintlocks came around.

How exactly are bows, of any kind, outranging guns, of any kind? Even crappy guns have a much, much higher muzzle velocity than the best bows. A lead ball is much less affected by wind and foliage than an arrow.
Even a smoothbore musket with a very large windage will put about half of the shots into a man sized target at hundred yards on the shooting stand, a distance where an Indian archer would probably not even try to hit a target.

Higher rate of fire is the only argument that makes sense to me, yet this would be more than counterbalanced by a much, much large wound effect of a musket ball compared to an arrow.
And for the skirmish and ambush type of warfare in the eastern woodlands, rate of fire is probably not much of an issue in the first place.

Arrows won't penetrate armor and shields in most cases, where only under rare circumstances armor or shields would be effective against guns.