WI No Bering Strait Icing Over

[AmIndHistoryAuthor]

Hello, new member here. Only my second post, though I've been enjoying the past week reading the forum.

Like my nick says, I write history and althistory, though aimed closer at using althistory to understand IRL history, both through writing it and using it in teaching. No alien space bats.

I wrote an althistory essay that was part of an essay collection. Now I'm looking to turn it into a short story.


“If Columbus Fought Afro-Phoenicians and Pizarro Fought Maoris: Other Possible Diasporas to the Americas,” from Alternate Histories: Native America, Croton-on-Hudson, NY: Golson Books Ltd., 2006.
http://www.amazon.com/Turning-Points-Alternate-Prehistory-PointsActual/dp/1851098291


Briefly, the synopsis and very broad timeline.


POD: No Bering Strait icing over.


Most likely, very little changes. Most of the evidence is against the Bering Strait theory being true, from archaeological sites to linguistic evidence to literally thousands of oral traditions contradicting it.


Not to mention the BS theory makes the deeply racist assumption that American Indians were too stupid to build boats, when we know boats have been built in Asia for 50,000 years. More likely the migrations happened much earlier and repeatedly.


But for the sake of argument (and the essay), even if you do assume the BS theory is right, it still doesn't stop later migrations we know happened, Athabascans and Inuit.


IRL, Athabascans related to the Dene, Gwichin, and Slavey migrated from the northern Arctic and Subartic and bcame the Apache and Navajo in the southwest US and Hoopa in the northwest US around 1000 years ago. The Naishan Apache split off and became a Plains tribe.


In the POD, these tribes spread and occupy almost all of North America.


Almost all of South America becomes Maori. We know for a fact now that Maori DNA has been found in S American tribes, as well as in Mexico and a British Columbian tribe. This agrees with Maori and other tribal oral traditions


IRL, it's quite likely (but not definitively proven) that there were voyages from the Afro-Phoenicians to the coasts of the Americas, possibly even intermittent trade. The evidence includes European accounts of Africans in Quisqueyah (Hispaniola) and what becomes Panama, Honduras, and even near present day Brownsville TX, all during intitial European contact, pre-trans-Atlantic slave trade. That, plus identical words for trade items in Amerindian languages and African ones, plus trade items like guanine found in both regions.


So in the POD, Afro Phoenicians occupy the Caribbean islands and the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, northern coast of South America, possibly east coast of North America.


Thus the title of my essay. Columbus fights and loses vs Afro Phoenicians. Perhaps some of the smaller islands fall to the Spaniards.


Pizarro also would lose to the Maoris he wars with. The British, even with 19th century firearms, did not find them easy to triumph over. With just blunderbusses and cutlasses, the Spaniards would have little success.


All three, Athabascans, Maoris, and Afro Phoenicians, have more resistance to Euor imported diseases in the POD. The period between their last contact with domesticated large animals (the source of much of Euro immunities) is more recent. Losses to disease are closer to Euro losses to plagues, like bubonic, 25-50%, rather than 90-99%.


Even in the absolute worst case scenarios, lots of playing off one tribe vs another, the Europeans colonize the Americas like they did Africa, mostly on the coast at first and then only later in the 19th century with higher tech able to get to the interiors. This rather than wholesale genocide with a >90% population and land loss.


Any possible US would be a strip along the eastern coast. And since the Six Nations influenced early American ideas embodied in the Constitution, there would be no USA, but more likely an ABA, a loosely Affiliated Bands of America modeled on Athabascan democracy traditions, consensus, band "leaders" being more counselors than anything else.


A few more points. The Vikings would have almost no impact. The archeological site in Newfoundland was just a small village of less than 100. Other possible early Euro contacts pre 1450 are unlikely, no real evidence of it I know of.


Looking forward to your comments and critiques.

 

[Hapsburg]

Most likely, very little changes. Most of the evidence is against the Bering Strait theory being true, from archaeological sites to linguistic evidence to literally thousands of oral traditions contradicting it.

Not really. A few fringe scholars does not a general opinion make.
So...contrary to what you say, the likelihood is that there will be massive changes. No people in the New World when the Europeans discover it, for one.

 

[AmIndHistoryAuthor]

Not really. A few fringe scholars does not a general opinion make.

What you claim might have been true, oh, twenty years ago.

Hardly a fringe opinion at all when the lines are split clean down the middle these days. I'd say roughly half of all historians, anthros, and archaeologists now realize the BS theory has little to back it up and has more in common with "creation science" than anything else. And the ones still supporting it tend to be the old guard, slowly dying off, who sometimes suppressed evidence opposed to the BS theory by intimidation, censorship, and ruining careers if you didn't tow the party line. (Google "Clovis Mafia".)

And did you mean "fringe scholars" like Louis Leakey, the most celebrated and accomplished archaeologist of all time? He was one of the earlies to stand up to the Clovis Mafia. Only his stature saved him from the fate of other scholars opposing the BS theory several decades ago. Today, thankfully there's actually open debate on the issue.

The idea that the continents would remain empty is nonsense on a couple levels. Nonsense in part because the Pacific Ocean currents routinely pull a couple dozen small boats off course from Asia all the way to North America each year.

Nonsense also because it ignores that Pacific Islanders are some of the finest sailors and navigators the world has ever seen, and like I pointed out, we've found their DNA among Indian tribes.

And like I said earlier, there's a pretty obvious racist assumption in imagining American Indians could not have built boats.

After all, kayak is hardly a word or invention that came from Europe.

Also, would've been nice if you'd actually read the post before commenting. Or do you think Maoris and Africans don't count as people?

 

[Nugax]

Almost all of South America becomes Maori. We know for a fact now that Maori DNA has been found in S American tribes, as well as in Mexico and a British Columbian tribe. This agrees with Maori and other tribal oral traditions

Citation? These things are very vague, and a few sailors are unlikely to establish a viable population.

All three, Athabascans, Maoris, and Afro Phoenicians, have more resistance to Euor imported diseases in the POD. The period between their last contact with domesticated large animals (the source of much of Euro immunities) is more recent. Losses to disease are closer to Euro losses to plagues, like bubonic, 25-50%, rather than 90-99%.

Endemic diseases do not work that way, you need constant exposure to keep up general and herd immunity. Easter Island would be a far more likely model for disease deaths from Eurasian diseases (since the Polynesia settlers would most likely not be 'Maori') where smallpox death was nearly total. Plus so what if they have 'only' 50% death from Smallpox the Colombian exchange will introduce several handfuls of diseases all at once. -With a tens of thousands of less years of population growth you're not going to see million strong empires like the Incans or Aztecs. The European takeover will not be decapitation attacks like the Spanish with the Aztecs and Incans, but it would be as inevitable as the English on the East coast. -The British had problems with the Maori because the latter had acquired European arms well before the conflict and the relatively tiny amount of effort the British extend, not due to some innate combat ability that would remain true despite 500 years of divergence...

 

[Mike Stearns]

Interesting POD, except that the currents in the Bering Straight, coupled with its width, slightly more than 50 miles, make it very unlikely for the Bering Straight to freeze solid. Rather, the theory to which you are incorrectly alluding, is that of the Bering Straignt Land Bridge, which was caused by a radical drop in seal levels, in some cases up 100 meters, worldwide during the last ice age. That theory has been proven based on ice core samples taken from Russian and Alaskan glaciers and is supported by computer generated climate models.

 

[zoomar]

This whole post is nothing more than an attempt to use a geological WI ("what if it was impossible for people to enter the new world thru Beringia") to support an alternate explanation for the peopling of the new world.

The author's claim that "roughly half of all historians, anthros, and archaeologists now realize the BS theory has little to back it up and has more in common with "creation science" than anything else." is pure unadulterated poppycock. I dare Mr AmIndHistoryAuthor to find very many articles in reputable journals such as American Anthropologist or the Journal of the Society for American Archaeology which equate the "BS Theory" to Creationism or any other psuedoscience. Yes, there will be some articles that present arguments and evidence that some humans settlement of the new world may have also occured through the south pacific or even north atlantic, but I am aware of no reputable American archaeologist with an actual PhD degree in the field who would claim that no people came to the new world through the Bering straight and/or Beringia.

It is simply a fact that the archaeological, anthropological, and genetic evidence overwhelmingly supports the notion that the people encountered by the Vikings and Columbus were primarily the descendents of Asians who crossed over from Siberia, perhaps as early as 40,000 BCE, but primarily from more recent migrations in the 15,000-12,000 BCE period, and later.

You also have created a "Clovis Mafia" straw man, based on the frustrated comments of one archaeologist who felt his excavations should have been accepted at face value. I followed your advice, googled, and am resoundingly unipressed when the first item started by referencing Newsweek magazine. Most modern archaeologists do, in fact, accept the possibility that the peopling of the new world may have begun prior to 12,000 BCE. Academic journals do regularly contain articles describing work on sites (both in north and south america) which suggest the likelihood for human occupation in the new world at least as early as 20,000 BCE.

Yes, the scientific orthodoxy in 1950 was that "Clovis" was the first evidence of human peopling of the new world, and yes, a very high standard of proof was required before an alternate theory would be considered worthy of serious consideration (just as a very high standard of proof was required before a pre 5,000 BCE occupation was accepted before that). And yes, people who proposed vast antiquity or a non-Siberian source for Native Americans were considered cranks. Problem was, they largely were cranks and their evidence never met the standards archaeologists demand to accept paradign-changing theories. This is not a mafia, this is how science progresses. If we accepted every new idea based on one poorly documented experiment or test result, we'd all be waiting for cold fusion while we wrote journal articles about Velikovsky's comets changing the history of Viking settlements in Minnesota and destroying the main evidence for Space Aliens building the Pyramids.

No, perhaps the Americas might not be empty if nobody came over here through Beringia, but you are simply fooling yourself when you answer your own question by saying it wouldn't be very different.

 

[Michael Busch]

Stearns is correct. The land bridge has existed transiently for the past several million years, and explains the spread of a large number of species (such as the woolly mammoth) between the Americas and Eurasia as well as humanity.

Disregarding the heretical views in the OP, preventing the bridge from forming requires removing the last Ice Age, or sufficient tectonics to lower the seafloor between Russia and Alaska by tens of meters. I suspect that such drastic changes to the environment would prevent our ancestors from winning out in the competition between all the genus homo sub-species, unless you invoke ASBs.

 

[Michael Busch]

Stearns is correct. The land bridge has existed transiently for the past several million years, and explains the spread of a large number of species (such as the woolly mammoth) between the Americas and Eurasia as well as humanity.

Disregarding the heretical views in the OP, preventing the bridge from forming requires removing the last Ice Age, or sufficient tectonics to lower the seafloor between Russia and Alaska by tens of meters. I suspect that such drastic changes to the environment would prevent our ancestors from winning out in the competition between all the genus homo sub-species, unless you invoke ASBs.

 

[Sovereign12]

Says this book is edited by a Rodney P. Carlisle who headed the History Department at Rutgers University (Newark campus?) until 2002.
Doesn't Leo Caesius work Newark campus? Maybe he knows him.