Re: Alternative histories and paralele universes

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.
>
>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.

Regards,
-Kristian- 8-)