Fun Fact Thread! (previously fun fact for the day, not limited to 1 per day anymore.)

[darthgently]

26 minutes ago, farmerben said:

Polynesian vessels with outriggers are inherently faster than European ships with ballast.  They discovered Hawaii and Easter Island some time before 1200 AD.  If they made it to the mainland, they did not leave evidence like introduced species.  

I had a sketched out alternative historical fiction in my head a few decades back wherein Fletcher Christian and his mates, after scuttling HMS Bounty off Pitcairn, ended up in piracy sailing euro-polynesian kitbashed catamaran designs big enough to mount cannon and being a hit and run thorn in the side of the British Navy in the Pacific.  Eventually the new designs lead to Polynesia becoming much more unified and organized.  I still think about in now and then, and how it may have influenced US and other regional history.  I figured Polynesia would definitely become more of a Pacific military and trading power with Japan getting repelled and quelled early on in its eastward island hop WWII expansion.  Maybe the Opium Wars never happen etc.  I got lost in the implications and had no idea of the point of the story so mostly let it go

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

. I was thinking maybe they thought they could reach Europe by sailing that way

https://news.yale.edu/2020/07/24/globalization-began-early-1000-yale-historian-contends-book

This book goes into some interesting details about the movement of population and trade back then - debunking 'China found America first' and 'Islam discovered America first' via some very credible explication of travel, trade and the impact of ocean currents and wind. 

Vis China - they certainly could have found America by following the coast north and then tracing the Alleutian Islands south... But she points out that like the Vikings (who did visit) they'd have found almost zero trade goods of interest.  About the only thing the Vikings took was lumber. And casualties. Some slaves. 

There is a story about some Japanese sailors that got caught in a storm and survived 14 months at sea to wash up on the Washington coast - most died of Scurvy 

55 minutes ago, darthgently said:

  I figured Polynesia would definitely become more of a Pacific military and trading power with Japan getting repelled and quelled early on in its eastward island hop WWII expansion

Go back and review the Japanese experience in WW1 and interwar period.  The severe lack of 'modern' natural resources (coal, iron / steel, oil) almost precludes a Polynesian / Island (Japan) empire that does not conquer China / SEA first 

[darthgently]

5 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

https://news.yale.edu/2020/07/24/globalization-began-early-1000-yale-historian-contends-book

This book goes into some interesting details about the movement of population and trade back then - debunking 'China found America first' and 'Islam discovered America first' via some very credible explication of travel, trade and the impact of ocean currents and wind. 

Vis China - they certainly could have found America by following the coast north and then tracing the Alleutian Islands south... But she points out that like the Vikings (who did visit) they'd have found almost zero trade goods of interest.  About the only thing the Vikings took was lumber. And casualties. Some slaves. 

There is a story about some Japanese sailors that got caught in a storm and survived 14 months at sea to wash up on the Washington coast - most died of Scurvy 

Go back and review the Japanese experience in WW1 and interwar period.  The severe lack of 'modern' natural resources (coal, iron / steel, oil) almost precludes a Polynesian / Island (Japan) empire that does not conquer China / SEA first 

In my imagination, Polynesia would become like the Portuguese, but in the Pacific.  Trade and transport would be their main power, up and down the coasts of the Americas, the Pacific Islands, and Asian nations,  with Midway and Hawaii as  major trade hubs.  But access to resources didn't seem to be a problem given their multiple relationships to economies and resources around the Pacific rim, especially the Americas.  Given their beginning in opposition to Britain, they find strong trade with Spain, America, even the Dutch.  Perhaps they colonize Alaska before Russia.  Too many possibilities

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

34 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Trade and transport would be their main power

Minoan and BA Assyrian empires suggest this could be a viable strategy. 

Of note - being a 'neutral' / unaligned trading power in a post - globalization economic scenario is a possible success story (there is a lot of speculation of fragmentation of the current system - and economists speculating of what it looks like) 

[DDE]

11 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Of note - being a 'neutral' / unaligned trading power in a post - globalization economic scenario is a possible success story (there is a lot of speculation of fragmentation of the current system - and economists speculating of what it looks like) 

Gues whose own worldbuilding 'project' includes a new, maritime trade-focused quasi-state great power arising from an anti-piracy pact in the Celebes Sea... 

Granted, that's north of Polynesia proper, but it gives more ground and extant population to work with.

[darthgently]

5 hours ago, DDE said:

Gues whose own worldbuilding 'project' includes a new, maritime trade-focused quasi-state great power arising from an anti-piracy pact in the Celebes Sea... 

Granted, that's north of Polynesia proper, but it gives more ground and extant population to work with.

Hey, if you want free ideas or a sounding board, hit me up.  I haven't been able to shake this path of pondering for decades since I got into sailing, Age of Sail history and fiction, and a fascination with trade and exploration.  And a strange fixation on the story of HMS Bounty.  Captain Bligh was amazing, getting that small boat with his officers across the Pacific after the mutiny, and Fletcher Christian is a strange and fascinating case for certain

[TheSaint]

Maybe The Lounge needs a worldbuilding thread?

[darthgently]

Just now, TheSaint said:

Maybe The Lounge needs a worldbuilding thread?

Hint taken, ha ha

[TheSaint]

11 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Hint taken, ha ha

Oh, no hint here. I just think a worldbuilding thread would be splendid. Trust me, when it comes to thread drift, I'm The King of the Drifters.

[DDE]

2 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Maybe The Lounge needs a worldbuilding thread?

Ban me from there, then. I use alt-history with a point of divergence in the mid-2010s. Too many familiar and controversial faces.

[kerbiloid]

Some use alt-history.
Some use ctrl-history.
Some use shift-history.
Some use ctrl-Z.

Some look at the last BIOS update in XV cent.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 4/2/2024 at 11:32 AM, darthgently said:

the other hand, Polynesians accomplished a heck of a lot along these lines by combining novel sailing craft and techniques, knowledge of local current, wind, and natural cues as each generational wave gradually learned the new area explored and being pumped by an incredibly exploratory impulse

There is a section in that book I referred to above showing first wave immigration reached Samoa  as early as 800 BC.  Third Wave (Hawaii, New Zealand Rapa Nui) didn't happen until the 1200s (AD) - quite possibly due to technology innovation like the double canoe or changed climate (think extended El Nino that changes wind patterns) and likely increased population that would support /drive migration. 

Here's another resource 

https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1586/polynesian-navigation--settlement-of-the-pacific/

 

[AtomicTech]

13 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

There is a section in that book I referred to above showing first wave immigration reached Samoa  as early as 800 BC.  Third Wave (Hawaii, New Zealand Rapa Nui) didn't happen until the 1200s (AD) - quite possibly due to technology innovation like the double canoe or changed climate (think extended El Nino that changes wind patterns) and likely increased population that would support /drive migration. 

Here's another resource 

https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1586/polynesian-navigation--settlement-of-the-pacific/

 

Interesting that this graph implies the existence of Polynesians in S. America!

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

13 minutes ago, AtomicTech said:

Interesting that this graph implies the existence of Polynesians in S. America!

Yep - there is evidence that the populations met in the Pacific 

archaeologist Paul Wallin, who provided peer review for the Nature study, traced human settlement across the Pacific and suggested that migration from Colombia went first to the South Marquesas Islands, and afterward arced south and east toward Palliser, Mangareva, and finally Easter Island.

“The earliest genetic signal of Native Southern Americans found by the authors in Polynesia was from people of the Southern Marquesas Islands, and the authors argue that Colombians mixed with Polynesians there around  1150 AD,” he wrote. “This date is so early that it could even suggest South Americans reached there before Polynesians arrived.”

In other words, it was not the Polynesians who sailed to South America but instead, as postulated by the Kon-Tiki, the South Americans who sailed west.

 

https://www.idtdna.com/pages/community/blog/post/dna-links-prehistoric-polynesians-to-south-america#:~:text=“The earliest genetic signal of,1150 AD%2C” he wrote.

 

There was speculation that around the time Scandinavian explorers were reaching Mayan areas that Pacific Islanders were reaching SA. 

More recent genetic studies have complicated that narrative. 

Still, it points to a global population able to expand to the farthest reaches of the world circa 1000AD.  The climate studies (Medieval Warm Period, etc) suggest that the 'Anomaly' wasn't limited to just Europe but was a global change in climate warm enough to encourage Human population growth and migration. (this is somewhat controversial) 

Big thing about looking backwards in time is that warm weather coincides with population growth and technological expansion while cold weather coincides with contraction, disease and famine - both are drivers of migration and warfare - but dramatically different in character. 

[kerbiloid]

(Offtopic)

Spoiler

This is a molecule of ethanolamine, and it's a good doggy, marking the territory.

 

[magnemoe]

On 4/5/2024 at 4:26 PM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Yep - there is evidence that the populations met in the Pacific 

archaeologist Paul Wallin, who provided peer review for the Nature study, traced human settlement across the Pacific and suggested that migration from Colombia went first to the South Marquesas Islands, and afterward arced south and east toward Palliser, Mangareva, and finally Easter Island.

“The earliest genetic signal of Native Southern Americans found by the authors in Polynesia was from people of the Southern Marquesas Islands, and the authors argue that Colombians mixed with Polynesians there around  1150 AD,” he wrote. “This date is so early that it could even suggest South Americans reached there before Polynesians arrived.”

In other words, it was not the Polynesians who sailed to South America but instead, as postulated by the Kon-Tiki, the South Americans who sailed west.

 

https://www.idtdna.com/pages/community/blog/post/dna-links-prehistoric-polynesians-to-south-america#:~:text=“The earliest genetic signal of,1150 AD%2C” he wrote.

 

There was speculation that around the time Scandinavian explorers were reaching Mayan areas that Pacific Islanders were reaching SA. 

More recent genetic studies have complicated that narrative. 

Still, it points to a global population able to expand to the farthest reaches of the world circa 1000AD.  The climate studies (Medieval Warm Period, etc) suggest that the 'Anomaly' wasn't limited to just Europe but was a global change in climate warm enough to encourage Human population growth and migration. (this is somewhat controversial) 

Big thing about looking backwards in time is that warm weather coincides with population growth and technological expansion while cold weather coincides with contraction, disease and famine - both are drivers of migration and warfare - but dramatically different in character. 

Polynesians used American plants who was the first evidence and north and south America is very hard to miss moving eastward or westward. 
More interesting they must obviously have discovered Australia New Guineas was  in used but it was just hunter gathers in Australia. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Polynesians used American plants who was the first evidence and north and south America is very hard to miss moving eastward or westward. 
More interesting they must obviously have discovered Australia New Guineas was  in used but it was just hunter gathers in Australia. 

Yep.  Most of the world population was some form of hunter-gatherer or semi-nomadic in the year 1000.  Or rather - outside the densely populated (Citified & static) Afro-EurAsian belts (Japan, China, India, Persia & Fertile Crescent, Mediterranean) & parts of Meso America - most people moved quite frequently; even agrarian societies like those in SEA and most of the Americas / most of Africa / Northern Europe & Asia would plant something then move around while it grew and come back for it later.  The more advanced would intensively farm & hunt an area for about a decade until the land was useless then move several days walk away and start over.  Advanced farming with improved plows arrived in Europe around this time, enabling food surpluses which in turn enabled cities and economic diversification.

What is interesting to me about looking at Polynesian, Australian, Native American (etc) populations and why they never reached the Iron Age - the likely answer is lack of large domesticated animals.  In the Americas, the largest was a Llama - which can carry 90 lbs (so can a human) and so we don't get wheeled carts and draft oxen / horses / mules pulling heavy loads or doing work.  Those places stop tech at the 'high stone age' - which just works for them (so long as outside competition doesn't disrupt the show).

The cool thing about humans, though, is that we have evidence of trade going back to Gobleki Tepe and Catalhoyuk.  Certainly, if the Polynesians met up with other folks from the Americas they'd have traded with them.  But to your point about American plants being found in the Pacific - the thesis of the above article is that it was Americans who first settled some of islands closest to SA and later met Polynesians.  So it was likely Americans bringing plants into the Pacific rather than Polynesians landing in the Americas and bringing American plants back with them.

Still - either would have worked; the smart folks are still arguing about the details!

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Yep.  Most of the world population was some form of hunter-gatherer or semi-nomadic in the year 1000.  Or rather - outside the densely populated (Citified & static) Afro-EurAsian belts (Japan, China, India, Persia & Fertile Crescent, Mediterranean) & parts of Meso America - most people moved quite frequently; even agrarian societies like those in SEA and most of the Americas / most of Africa / Northern Europe & Asia would plant something then move around while it grew and come back for it later.  The more advanced would intensively farm & hunt an area for about a decade until the land was useless then move several days walk away and start over.  Advanced farming with improved plows arrived in Europe around this time, enabling food surpluses which in turn enabled cities and economic diversification.

What is interesting to me about looking at Polynesian, Australian, Native American (etc) populations and why they never reached the Iron Age - the likely answer is lack of large domesticated animals.  In the Americas, the largest was a Llama - which can carry 90 lbs (so can a human) and so we don't get wheeled carts and draft oxen / horses / mules pulling heavy loads or doing work.  Those places stop tech at the 'high stone age' - which just works for them (so long as outside competition doesn't disrupt the show).

The cool thing about humans, though, is that we have evidence of trade going back to Gobleki Tepe and Catalhoyuk.  Certainly, if the Polynesians met up with other folks from the Americas they'd have traded with them.  But to your point about American plants being found in the Pacific - the thesis of the above article is that it was Americans who first settled some of islands closest to SA and later met Polynesians.  So it was likely Americans bringing plants into the Pacific rather than Polynesians landing in the Americas and bringing American plants back with them.

Still - either would have worked; the smart folks are still arguing about the details!

Iron making was discovered once as I know, after thousands of year of bronze age. Iron was known Tutankhamen was buried with an iron dagger made from meteoric iron who is mindbogglingly, it was still the bronze age back then.
So I guess its hard to discover how to make iron but then discovered it was much cheaper than bronze and also easier to make locally in an large village. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

39 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Iron making was discovered once as I know, after thousands of year of bronze age. Iron was known Tutankhamen was buried with an iron dagger made from meteoric iron who is mindbogglingly, it was still the bronze age back then.
So I guess its hard to discover how to make iron but then discovered it was much cheaper than bronze and also easier to make locally in an large village. 

It's not so much the discovery of Iron as the ability to produce it in quantity sufficient for it to become the basis of the economy / tools & weapons.

Why the technology was limited to the Afro-EurAsian continent is quite interesting - especially given how simple it is.

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

why they never reached the Iron Age - the likely answer is lack of large domesticated animals.  In the Americas, the largest was a Llama - which can carry 90 lbs (so can a human) and so we don't get wheeled carts and draft oxen / horses / mules pulling heavy loads or doing work. 

The metallurgy is a by-product of mass pottery crafting, when you have to mix the clay from different places, and to check different compositions, adding every available powder (like crushed green stones aka malachite, or dried orange mud aka bog ore), like here https://www.youtube.com/@primitivetechnology9550/videos.

Thus, the metallurgy is caused by the local wide need in pottery (we need as many jars as we can!), by using mixed materials from different sources (we need any material we can get!), by competition between the potters (wow! colored pots! looks much better than simple ones!), and at the root - by locally raising food producing, due to high density of local population, due to ability of settled farming rather than usual hack-and-slash semi-nomad agriculturing, due to some external local source of fertilizer, which lets you run your primitive farming before you adopt crop rotation and other primitive high-tech.

In turn the fire pottery crafting is required when you have often rains (and thus can't burn your pots under sun), and a lot of trees to turn them into charcoal.
None of this can be said about the so-called Fertile Crescent, but is absolutely normal in South Europe. That's why I (not alone) am sure that all those MidEast pra-civilisations is a fairy tale from 1001 night and Aladdin cartoons, and the real birthplace of the human civilisation (including fire pottery, metallurgy, settled farming, primitive cities, and so on) is the Central Italy, between the Phlegraean Fields and Vesuvius as the source of volcanic ash fertilizer, and what's now called Tuscany aka Etruria with its fertile plains.
Actually, the (South) Europe is the best and probably the only place in the world, optimal for the civilisation birth, as it's a place of different seasons and various resource sources, joined together.

The Amerindian, Polynesian, African, etc. peoples live in the natural surrounding which is either rainy, or rocky, or sandy, or sunny, and all of that limits their settlements with local villages of settled or semi-nomadic hunters-gatherers with facultative farming. They don't reach the population level of mass-production. Look at the demographic table on 1900. Total population ~ 2bln, and what about by-continent?

Hunters-gatherers = 0.1 human/km2, steppe herders 1 .. 2  human/km2, primitive farmers 10 humans/km2, advanced farmers 100+ humans/km2.
That's also what we need to know about the Mongolian invasion^(tm), Tamerlan and so on.

The American empires are same fictional, just because when you have to send 100 pedestrian soldiers without draft animals, you have to send 1000 pedestrian carriers, and all of that - to defeat 1 000 rebels, armed with same wooden clubs as the soldiers, knowing the place, and having prepared.
You can neither have a big army, nor reach something farther than a week travel by foot, nor make deposits to hire mercenaires.

While in say, Italy, or any other Europe and semi-Europe, you can have a gang of 100 horse riders with iron weapon, which can quickly  easily massacre any village or tribal settlement in a hundred of kilometers around. Having a fortress at the famous local sanctuary (probably of Vulcan, of course), they can cut out any traces of family/tribe communes, making the survivors a loyal population of then-founded intertribal city (in Russian - sloboda), and hold them all under one hand. Founding such cities as outposts, they can easily create a local empire. Don't you wonder, where the family/tribal European communes had disappeared to?
None of that is available outside of special conditions of the Southern Europe.

Edited April 7, 2024 by kerbiloid

[darthgently]

9 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

What is interesting to me about looking at Polynesian, Australian, Native American (etc) populations and why they never reached the Iron Age - the likely answer is lack of large domesticated animals.  In the Americas, the largest was a Llama - which can carry 90 lbs (so can a human) and so we don't get wheeled carts and draft oxen / horses / mules pulling heavy loads or doing work.  Those places stop tech at the 'high stone age' - which just works for them (so long as outside competition doesn't disrupt the show).

Was selective animal breeding practiced in the new world?  Without it, draft horses and oxen would not have been available as soon outside the Americas.  Animals can pull as a team also, once wheels are there. Enough llamas could pull a  big cart of ore.  I think kerbiloid is more on to it as it being more of an emergence from multiple factors.  Trade, and intensity of trade, drives things like making distinctive glazes for ceramics.  This generates a market competition which rewards a more methodical curiosity and experimentation  with materials.  The same intensity of trade provides materials from far away places.  And writing systems allow for a more methodical and multigenerational exploration of materials.

[DDE]

The humble Tatra T3 ended up being used in Moscow for sixty eight years.

(this is not a Cities: Skylines: Snowfall ad, but!)

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, DDE said:

Tatra T3

The best.

[darthgently]

9 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Why the technology was limited to the Afro-EurAsian continent is quite interesting - especially given how simple it is

Another factor is that many of the Central and South American civs were in very mountainous terrain which made roads for carts a problem.  Wheels wouldn't have helped much.  Similar to the mountainous areas of Africa with difficult to navigate rivers with many high falls.  So single track paths and pack animals are what is converged upon

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, darthgently said:

Was selective animal breeding practiced in the new world?  Without it, draft horses and oxen would not have been available as soon outside the Americas.  Animals can pull as a team also, once wheels are there. Enough llamas could pull a  big cart of ore.  I think kerbiloid is more on to it as it being more of an emergence from multiple factors.  Trade, and intensity of trade, drives things like making distinctive glazes for ceramics.  This generates a market competition which rewards a more methodical curiosity and experimentation  with materials.  The same intensity of trade provides materials from far away places.  And writing systems allow for a more methodical and multigenerational exploration of materials.

I always thought the new world started later from hunter gatherers so they started farming later so it was still bronze age civilizations at the end but its probably oversimplification. 
Probably more to do that they was pretty alone, not all the web of civilizations we had in Eurasia competing and share discoveries
And the idea of teams of animals was an good one. Earliest use of horses was chariots simply as horses was donkey sized back then.