So let's say by whatever luck of animal migration periods during Pangea, or better luck for horses in the Americas post the trans-Bering migrations, the Americas keep their horses and have a wider variety of animals to farm for meat, eggs, and milk. What new cradles of civilization might pop up?
Minor nitpick, but Pangaea is way too far back for such a POD, the latter timeframe works well enough.
What new cradles of civilization might pop up? I assume Mesoamerica is still a major center, but how about the Mississippi and Ohio River regions?
I’d argue the region was a cradle of civilization in OTL (the Eastern Agricultural Complex and such, though later agriculture was very Mesoamerican derived), so I don’t see why not. A more long term civilization would do better in the Upper Mississippi than the Lower half (constant flooding and changes in course, led to the collapse of a lot of different cultures in OTL). There’s also the underlooked Tennessee Valley, which has a perfect geographic position. If you go further north, there’s the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence. While the river valleys of the East Coast are good on paper, they seem more like they’re poised to adopt that kind of lifestyle rather than develop it in situ.
OTL corn made it's way north from Mexico and was farmed here before the Mississipian culture collapsed. Is trade across the Gulf of Mexico even remotely possible? How much more hostile is the Gulf weather-wise and geography-wise versus the Med?
That’s a likely route through which the the corn got there (there’s evidence of corn in Eastern North America as early as 1000 BCE, but it only really kicked off after more friendly breeds to the local climate were introduced), and in light of recent evidence, it seems like trade in the Gulf (Mobile Bay and the Veracruz coast in specific are two areas that seems to have had close ties) was far more extensive than once thought. It’s a shame that we know so little about pre-Columbian sailing capabilities in the region.
I’d hardly compare the Gulf of Mexico to the Mediterranean, it’s much larger and isn’t much of a sheltered sea. More coastal oriented sea travel is probably what we’re looking at.
I assume that the Great Plains and the deserts would be home to nomads maybe similar to the steppe nomads of Eurasia like the Turkic peoples (hell, after horses were re-introduced, the Comanche and Apache certainly played the part of Scythians, Turks, or Mongols), but how about another sedentary civilization on the West Coast? Any regions over there that might work for a cradle of civilization? Maybe an OTL Pueblo-like culture spreads to California from Arizona?
It’s an often used comparison, but with such an environmental altering, there’s the possibility of more extensive desertification taking place in the region. The river valleys of the region would definitely be more sedentary, and I could see two major riverine trade routes becoming more entrenched in the region, one along the Missouri, and another along the Red River.
The Pacific Coast never really needed large intensive sedentary civilizations (personally think that what we got in OTL was perfect for the region), they had plenty of resources already accessible (and as a result had truly humongous populations of mostly non-agricultural people) though the river valleys of the Pacific Northwest have potential for that (and there’s always the possibility of a spread southwards).
As far as an Oasisamerican lifestyle becoming entrenched in California, it wouldn’t work at all in the region. The environments are really different, and as a result, the cultures that developed there are highly specific to their respective regions.
. The Mississippian was still in existence to a degree in the 1500's when the 1st Spanish explorers like DeSoto started passing through. I believe the Natchez tribe around Vicksburg MS were considered sort of their last hold-outs...