I'm indigenous, and my culture is a shadow of its former self. This got me thinking: what sort of a world would it be where indigenous cultures are all thriving everywhere? Then I followed that thought for way too long and built an alternate history world.
It would be a world of strong local flavor: everywhere you go, there's vernacular architecture, traditional clothing, local food. Inuit cultures rule the Arctic. Aztecs rule Mesoamerica.
I've written an alternate history that I won't bore you with. Imagine there was never a 'Great Divergence' (where the West pulled ahead) but instead various cultures developed at roughly equal speeds, and maybe shared technology more rather than use technology to exploit/oppress.
Technical services are on a guild-system. The guilds recruit young people, train them up, and each local community (tribe, if you like) has a deal with the important guilds: you give us your services and we give your members food, board, other privileges. This explains why technology (like the steam engine) spread around the world without being used by one culture to oppress another. A person would have tribe-membership, with its duties and perks, and maybe guild-membership too, with its duties and perks.
The Americas and Australia are totally different in this alternate history, because they never got Europeanised. Imagine a developed (21st century) Aztec culture, Cree, Inca etc. with the internet and electricity and so forth. Every culture is in its bloom of glory – it's a world of strong culture. I understand this opens me to charges of exoticism, but counterpoint: my own culture (not gonna doxx myself) is among them. Some worldbuilding is all about physics, some is all about military theory; this is all about anthropology, all the strange and fabulous variety of human religions, fashions, food.
There are international elements to counter the extreme localism. In the alternate history, in the age of the steamship and telegram, international culture emerged. (This 'internationalist' phase actually happened in the mundane world as well: the first modern Olympics was in 1896; Esperanto appeared in 1887. It just wasn’t very successful.) Speak your local languages at home: the internet, academia etc. are in the global language. There’s art in local languages (storytelling, etc.) and there's international culture in the international language – the equivalent of The Simpsons or Star Wars that you can joke about when speaking with someone from the other side of the world.
Another internationalist element would be cultural exchanges. Imagine you’re a Rus in Russia, and a Himba troupe come to stay in your community for three nights, do dance and storytelling, share your food, flirt. This is a form of diplomacy.
Thriving indigenous cultures implies thriving ecosystems, as the two are inseparable. So it’s kind of a solarpunk/environmentalist world. Which fits with the idea of local economies/local cultures.
Awesome, hope to see more of this! I have my own project somewhat similar to this...it's a different world altogether, not alt history though, but heavily inspired by it. The cultures in my world are often paired up with one or more across the world for inspiration, so eg. Central American/Indian/West African or NA Plain/Turkic/Mongolian
I am not indigenous but I was sick of fictional worlds being just another Europe-but-magic and I am fascinated by the similarities in language, culture, and mythology between "pre-modern" culture (almost entirely non-European, but I ended up including pre-Christian Europe to a small extent). I especially admire things which are truly impressive on a global historical scale but somehow lost to time, like how nations formed confederations eg. the Haudenosaunee, or the wide trade and communications networks eg. Plains Indian Sign Language.
Anyways I just wanted to share that I love to see this kind of anthropological worldbuilding. If you wanted some other examples, I liked the Spirit Island board game and hope to check out the ttrpg Coyote and Crow sometime (C&C is prob the closest to what you are doing)
I am fascinated by the similarities .... like how nations formed confederations eg. the Haudenosaunee
Right! Exactly! Three similarities we see over the world –
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Tribal confederacies. The Caledonians in Scotland, various Pashtun confederacies in history, various North American ones.
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Small tribal units and big ones. Among the Mapuche, several lov formed a rehue. Among the Māori, whānau confederated into larger hapū; hapū confederated into larger iwi. Among the Bedawin, several bayt formed a goum.
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Tribal assemblies: þing among the Nordic folk, veche in the Slavic world, sangha in India, becharaa among the Semai, Jirga among the Pashtun
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Community halls or 'third places': the mudhif of the Marsh Arabs, the Toguna of the Dogon, Bulgarian Chitalishte, Caravanserai of the desert people
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Managed commons: the tabu of the Hawai'ians, the hima of the Arabs
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Customary law, often with restorative justice: xeer in Somalia, coutume in France, pashtunwali, Albanian kanun. Law without cops of a Babylon-type centralised state.
So I think it's somewhat valid to generalise that there exists a pattern called 'tribal', and then it's interesting to generalise that to the whole world. Was it historically universal? No of course not, but no other model was either. The Westphalian nation-state emerged and became dominant, I'm imagining what if tribal confederalism became dominant?
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How the the continents of the Americas or Australia or really any other places that were subject to European colonization would look today without the advent of said colonization has always been on my mind, but I can never really imagine them in detail due to a lack of knowledge about their cultures or how they would develop in an alternate fictional scenario that diverges from our own.
Australia
Here's a cool map of Australia: https://i.ibb.co/PWB1Nhy/map-221445.png
I think Australia could be almost fully hunter-gatherer, because of its low population density.
The trickiest bit about Australia is the architecture. There really doesn't seem to be much evidence of indigenous architecture. The book 'Gunyah, Goondie and Wurley: the Aboriginal Architecture of Australia' gives some attempt.
Australia generally had no class distinction: https://d-place.org/parameters/EA066#1/30/153
And no slavery: https://d-place.org/parameters/EA071#1/30/153 , https://d-place.org/parameters/EA070#1/30/153
People are more nomadic than settled: https://d-place.org/parameters/EA030#1/30/153 (This is generally a difference between the world I'm building and the mundane world; a large percentage of people live nomadic lives, including in North America, Central Asia, etc.)
Nomads move about 14 times a year: https://d-place.org/parameters/B013#1/29/169
Move about 100km a year at the coast, 500km inland: https://d-place.org/parameters/B014#3/-29.38/144.14 (The Gidjingali, to give a counterexample, are a sedentary people, probably because there's good fishing there)
No money: https://d-place.org/parameters/B033#1/29/169 (This is a major point about the world I'm building; there's no money. There's an economic system of duties and perks.)
Possum cloaks: https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/possum-skin-cloak
Bush tucker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_tucker
So my version of Australia is mostly nomadic hunter-gatherers, but they have solar panels, batteries, vehicles. When they go on their huntgather walks, they use vehicles like this – in actual fact they made it work with just walking (no wheels), so with a vehicle like that it should work and be easier. Another thing that would be important around the world I'm building, but especially in Australia is airships: they're solarpunk, use very little energy, don't require roads.
South America
South America divides broadly into three cultural zones: the Andes where’ve got groups like the Inca, the Amazon where you’ve got groups like the Tupí-Guaraní, and the Southern Cone where you’ve got groups like the Mapuche. Here’s the broad map
Here are two more detailed maps: 1, 2
Generally no class distinction in the Amazon: https://d-place.org/parameters/EA066#1/30/153
Southern Cone people include people of the canoe, the Mapuche with their trademark hats with brims, and people whose lives are tied to llama-alpaca herds.
The Incans had a welfare state and sophisticated agriculture, with lots of root crops: obviously the potato, also other lesser known ones like maca.
Caribbean
Taíno + Arawak + Carib people. They eat the hutie. Mangroves are an important ecosystem
North America
- In the desert southwest, you have people of the pueblo, who live in large stone cities. Chaco Canyon is a pueblo-city corresponding to the conurbation of mundane Vegas, Phoenix, etc. They did lots of underground architecture; in my world you would descend into a stone passage with those vibes to catch the subway.
- On the plains are people of the buffalo. This is the best example of my point that thriving culture requires thriving ecosystems. They are nomadic, following the herds. They can use motorvehicles for this. The ‘chickee’ is a waystation on the plains, and they use it to recharge vehicle batteries, etc. A truck stop, basically. The tribal confederacy is responsible for its upkeep.
- Inuit culture in the far north
- South of that, subarctic people like the Cree, where it’s still cold enough to wear a lot of fur.
- Northwest coastal people such as the Tlingit and Salish are characterised by plankhouses and totem poles.
- East of them (but not as far east as the buffalo-folk) you find sedentary people like the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara. Their agriculture is based on the Three Sisters. Their architecture is earth-covered.
- The area around the Great Lakes has people like the Haudenosaunee. They are sedentary rather than nomadic. Saukenuk is a major city. Their architecture is bark-clad longhouses (the size of apartment-buidlings, in my world).
- The mound-builder culture is the culture of the southeast. In the hot parts (Florida) they go about in loincloths. Cahokia is their major city; it’s interesting to think about a 21st-century Cahokia, where city-blocks are mounds, and there are bicycle-lanes between the mounds, and you enter a earth-and-wood tunnel in a mound to catch the subway.
- In California, the acorn is the staple food. You can think of Californian food as fishing+acorns+insects. A weird 1951 paper (doi:10.1525/aa.1951.53.4.02a00050) talks about how Californians had the Protestant work ethic. Here’s a beautiful map of California
Generally no class distinction in North America: https://d-place.org/parameters/EA066#1/30/153
North America is not the population centre of the Americas; central America is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas
I feel like, at first, you need to address a kind of Columbian Exchange. The easiest way to start seems to be Viking contact with the Americas being more in depth, transferring Iron Age technology along with some beasts of burden.
From that, I don't know if the collective of humanity would choose guilds as keepers of technology and trades. There may also need variance in the role of the state and religion in managing the various technae.
I don't know if indigenous people always mean protecting the environment. There is a lot of Europe and North Africa that showed signs of environmental deterioration since antiquity including deforestation and weaker farm yields. Hell, the loss of American megafauna came at the hands of the indigenous population.
You may also want to look at natural geography may interact with human development. China became a natural area where a country would build itself up and fall apart, does something similar happen in the Mississippi River floodplain? European settlers may have found a variety of small settlements during colonization, but that was after a cataclysm in the Americas. It is possible a Native American country on equal technology would have been able to build a larger empire, similar to the mound builders.
Firstly, thanks for engaging!
I feel like, at first, you need to address a kind of Columbian Exchange. The easiest way to start seems to be Viking contact with the Americas being more in depth, transferring Iron Age technology along with some beasts of burden.
So the horse is native to America. "By about 15,000 years ago, Equus ferus was a widespread holarctic species. Horse bones from this time period, the late Pleistocene, are found in Europe, Eurasia, Beringia, and North America". One of the tweaks I'm making in the alternate history is that the American horse never became extinct. (In fact, it became extinct in America, was domesticated in Eurasia, and then the domestic version was reintroduced to America.)
There may also need variance in the role of the state and religion in managing the various technae.
This is a world without the Westphalian nation-state. Yknow the way in the boring world, the Westphalian nation-state became the main thing? That didn't happen here. It is still the tribe. And tribes confederated in a way I didn't detail yet. As for religion: that's also different, mostly animist or pagan, never Abrahamic.
The Westphalian nation-state isn't required for more robust forms of government.
The Aztec Empire had a feudal form of government before being conquered by the Spanish while the Inca Empire was a lot more centralized. The Iroquois Confederation may be a group of tribes, but there is also a deep governance structure to ensure consensus building. There is also a lot of variance in non-European Old World civilizations.
To just say they are tribes without going deeper into governance is going to make them seem very cookie cutter, which they weren't.
