A Different Sort of Man. Turn 2, 9,000 BCE: The rise of agriculture in the western hemisphere, and the first domestication of animals.

The Noh-ahians make contact with the people of coastal Peru, spreading their religion there

In the spirit of "Beginning" and "A New Dawn", I bring you yet another pre-historic cooperative alternate history: A Different Sort of Man!

The map theme this week is: Domesticable animals. Got a bit messy this time, apologies! Next week will be domesticable plants, though some are already in the works, as can be seen in the events below.

Events:

The current year is 9,000 BCE.

Northern Chileans have domesticated the llama, the alpaca, and the guinea pig, and have begun worshiping a Llama God known to them as Noh-ah.

Artifices have begun to experiment with agriculture in the Mississippi River Basin, Coastal Peru, and Central Mexico. In the Mississippi River Basin and Central Mexico, the crops that artifices have achieved the most success with have been the "three sisters" of maize, squash, and beans. In Coastal Peru - spreading down into northern Chile to the Noh-ahian people - the primary crops are potatoes and quinoa. Large-scale farming has not yet been achieved in these areas, however.

Deforestation of the Amazon begins to occur, with Amazonian artifices cutting down any vegetation that they can manage with their Neolithic tools. While the larger trees of the Amazon resist the cuts of stone axes, swathes of land have been carved out for habitation and hunting by the Amazonian artifices. Additionally, the Amazonian artifices have begun to modify the Amazon river and its tributaries, creating primitive dams resulting in slower, wider flows of water.

Artifices in the southeastern United States begin using their ample clay deposits to experiment with primitive pottery and clay shaping, though no significant pottery culture or proper pottery techniques have yet to be developed.

Concept:

6.2 million years ago, in OTL, the Robust and Gracile Capuchins diverged from one another onto two different evolutionary paths. In this timeline, a third genus of Capuchins also diverged: The Walking Capuchin, otherwise known as Cebinae Ambulatus. Many different species arose in the Ambulatus genus, include the three foot tall Ambulatus pumilus, the eight foot tall Ambulatus gigas, the long-tailed Ambulatus flagellum, and - the heroes of our story - the intelligent Ambulatus artifex.

Arising out of what we would recognize as the Brazilian Cerrado savannah region, A. artifex has managed - by around 350,000 years before our own cpresent time and thanks to the wonders of convergent evolution - to achieve a roughly human brain structure, along with a roughly human body shape; this is roughly the same time as anatomically modern Homo sapiens arose in Africa, a truly serendipitous event! Since that time, A. artifex has spent the past three hundred thousand years establishing dominance over the western hemisphere, eliminating and out-competing their fellows in the Ambulatus genus, and fighting back attempts by H. sapiens to cross the Bering Land Bridge - this conflict is only remembered in the myths of Siberian humans and Alaskan artifices both as when they fought strange man-like creatures in the distant past, and has not otherwise alerted H. sapiens or A. artifex to the presence of another sapient species on the planet.

Artifices are distinguished from humans in a few different ways. First of all, artifices still possess a tail, which has some modest degree of prehensility. These tales are not prehensile enough for them to manipulate tools or perform other tasks involving fine manual dexterity, but they can still use it to grab and awkwardly throw things. Tails can be longer or shorter, hairless or hirsute, and more or less flexible depending upon ethnicity and genetics. Their "default" skin coloration coming out of the Cerrado is light, with rosy tints to it, though obviously different ethnicities may have developed different skin coloration as a result of migrating to different climes. Their thumbs are not opposable, and they instead practice a "lateral pinch" with their thumb for manual tasks; in compensation, their fingers have developed a slightly wider range of movement, but not extremely so. Finally, they possess three premolars in contrast to the two of H. sapiens, resulting in a slightly larger mouth than humans have. Artifices domesticated the coyote (Canis latrans) and drove out the wolf (Canis lupus) from the western hemisphere.

For now, there will be no butterflies affecting the Eastern Hemisphere. Butterflies will begin to appear on first contact with Europeans, which can occur either in the 8th and 9th centuries when Europeans - either Irish monks or Scandinavians - begin to settle Iceland, in 986 CE when Europeans first reach Greenland, or in 1000 CE when Leif Erikson (or possibly others) land in what they called "Vinland" in OTL. Artifex-initiated contact with the Eastern Hemisphere is possible, but I would like to see a build up to it, first.

While I will not require the advancement of the artifices to exactly follow the advancement of humans, I'll leave some dates to serve as guidelines:

11,000 BCE: First signs of agriculture and livestock domestication.

8,000 BCE: First known wall constructed at the Jericho proto-city.

5,000 BCE: First evidence of copper smelting and the beginning of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age).

4,000 BCE: The rise of civilization and urbanization in Mesopotamia, India, China, and Egypt.

3,300 BCE: First reliable evidence of tin-copper smelting, and thus the beginning of the Bronze Age.

2,200 BCE: First reliable evidence of functional iron working, though not in mass-production.

1,200 BCE: Beginning of mass-production of iron goods.

10,000 BCE - 4,000 BCE: 6 turns, 1,000 years each.

4,000 BCE - 2,000 BCE: 10 turns, 200 years each.

2,000 BCE - 1,000 BCE: 10 turns, 100 years each.

1,000 BCE - 500 BCE: 10 turns, 50 years each.

500 BCE - 0 CE: 20 turns, 25 years each.

At 0 BCE, we'll assess the situation and see how to move forward from there.

Now go, friends, and guide the artifex race on their journey through time! Any and all suggestions are welcome, and I will try to implement as many as possible so long as they aren't too outlandish.

I’d say now is the point to create the first proto-city. I’d say putting it in the Andes first would make the most sense, since it would be the most defensible region to build a city.

Hi, I know this is an old post but I'm using this map for reference. What does the light gray say?