What if Vikings stayed in America - part 2 | Alternate Afterthought

So what if the Vikings had stayed in North America after all? This is the continuation of the alternate history scenario I featured in an earlier video. It is based on Jared Diamonds ideas put forward in his book "Guns, germs and steel" where he postulates that geography had put many indigenous peoples at a disadvantage once European colonists arrived, especially the Native Americans or Indians of the Americas.

For starters, the natives had limited access to useful livestock like horses and cattle. They also missed out on innovations like iron metallurgy and the wheel, to name a few. To make things worse, they had no immunity to imported diseases like smallpox decimating entire populations. The Norsemen or Vikings settlement in North America, or present day Eastern Canada, could have injected not only Eurasian technologies into the Americas, but also inoculated them with immunity to smallpox, thanks to the cowpox they could have brought over.

This would have made a major impact on many indigenous cultures and civilizations like the Eastern Woodland culture, the Mississippian culture, the Mesoamerican Maya and Aztec civilization and the Incas of South America. The original Norse Americans would be mostly confined to the North East of North America. Once European colonial powers would eventually arrive they would find a completely different situation from that in our own timeline.

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********* CREDITS *********

REFERENCES:

"Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" - Jared Diamond (1997) - ISBN 9780393317558

IMAGES:

Mississippian culture copper plaques: Herb Roe (2012) http://www.chromesun.com

North Dakota Native Prairie: Rick Bohn / USFWS https://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwsmtnprairie/32811662233

Maps of the Americas based on materials from: http://www.johomaps.com/

Northwest view from Old Mine Road (Delaware): Nicholas A. Tonelli https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flickr_-_Nicholas_T_-_Span_(1).jpg

MUSIC:

Ambient music & Outro:
http://freesound.org/people/frankum/

COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL:

Any copyrighted material used in this video is done so for purposes of education, review and/or satire and thus covered by "Fair Use". No ownership is claimed for any such materials other than my own.

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