Re: Alternative histories and paralele universes

On Wed, 6 Jan 1999, Kristian Jensen wrote:

> Matt wrote:
> >Interesting.  I hadn't thought of that as a possible explanation
> >for why the Tokana have horses.
> >
> >My conlang Tokana is spoken on the Pacific Coast of North America
> >in an alternate universe which never saw an industrial revolution,
> >a population explosion, or the rise of world-wide empires.
> >Instead, the people of the world are divided into a number of small
> >nations and tribes, which bear no resemblance, either cultural or
> >historical, to the civilisations of our universe (the split with
> >our universe happened many thousands of years ago).
>
> You could of course have had horses always existing in North America
> and not in the old world. This would then perhaps explain why the
> Tokana universe never saw an industrial revolution, a population
> explosion, or the rise of world empires. I don't know how much of
> this thread you followed, but the premise and general concensus
> appears to be that the reason why the New World developed its
> civilizations much slower than the Old World was: because the New
> World lacked potential burden animals, and because the spread of
> agriculture would have to be North-South in the New World rather
> than East-West in the Old World. By removing one of the two
> advantages the Old World had over the New, and then giving this
> advantage to the New, then you'll slow things down a little in the
> Old World but speed things up a little in the New. I think the
> overall effect of this would still result in a universe like
> Tokana's.
Perhaps.  I don't think I'll pin anything on horses, however, since
I believe that their extinction in North America predates the point at
which the Tokana timeline diverged from our own, which was roughly
10,000 to 20,000 years ago.  My idea is that the Tokana universe has
an identical geological and natural history to our own, differing only
in the details of where/when/how human cultures and civilisations
arose and spread.  Of course, I understand that any significant differences
between the Tokana universe and our own might have to be precipitated by
certain natural differences (different climatic factors, for example).
If the Tokana universe and our own had *completely* identical natural
histories, then we might have expected their human histories to turn
out more similar, I guess.  So I might have to push the Date of
Divergence farther back into the past (100,000 years ago?), in which
case the ecological/evolutionary fate of horses might have turned out
differently.

> >In my universe, then, North America has not been conquered
> >wholesale by large European nation-states (although some trade and
> >even immigration may have taken place).  And yet the Tokana have
> >horses.  In my timeline, though, horses were first introduced
> >through trade from Asia.  The Tokana belong to a vast exchange
> >network of small tribes extending along the Pacific rim from (what
> >we know as) Taiwan and Japan up the coast of Siberia to the
> >Aleutians, across to North America, and then down the coast all the
> >way to Mexico.  It was along this network that horses, cows, and
> >various kinds of plants were first introduced to the New World.
>
> I'm just curious as to why this network does not extend to include
> South America in the Eastern half of the Pacific Rim and the
> Philippines, the Moluccas, New Guinea, and Melanesia in the Western
> half of the Pacific Rim.
The Northern Pacific Rim network (to which the Tokana belong) was
established by treaty, and has quasi-official status.  I would call it
an international trade organisation, except that there are no 'nations'
as such in this part of the world.  Peoples living at either end of
the Northern Pacific Rim network obviously have trade relations with
neighbouring peoples to the south, and may even belong to official
trade networks which include them, but due to distance and an absence
of technology for long-distance communication, it's difficult for the
Tokana to trade with them directly.  (So no bananas, cinnamon, or teak
for the Tokana, I guess...)

Matt.