The discovery of the New World, which was fortunate for some and very unfortunate for the others, had never happened on this small piece of the internet territory.
On the Oct. 12, 1492, the lookout of the caravel Pinta, Rodrigo de Triana, napped on, dreaming about his sweet little home in Seville, while the caravel swept by the misty costs of Guanahani (the Bahamas), not noticing anything out of an ordinary. Or, maybe, a month earlier, leaving the Canary islands, the three caravels turned anywhere but westwards. Or maybe a storm…
This or that way, the so-called Americas were never “discovered” and the coastal waters of the Bahamas continued glittering placidly on the sunny morning of Oct 13, while the Lucayan, Taino and Arawak people went about their usual business.
The Yucatan city states kept flourishing, having thrown off their Mayapan rulers and to their west the Aztecs’ Triple Alliance went on expanding, raiding the neighboring Tarascan Empire, while instituting more reforms separating between the classes.
In North America, the Anasazi descendants were slowly recovering from the Great Drought period, developing irrigation techniques appropriate for a seasonal rainfall and fighting off their newly acquired Navajo neighbors. And to their east, all along the Mississippi and its tributaries, the small towns of the Mississippians descendants tried to live on, according to their illustrious ancestors’ rules, surrounded by the multitude of great and small mounds, the remnants of the glorious past, green with a thick layer of an autumn, water-soaked grass.
Both regions lived in a relative peace, less familiar to their celebrated ancestors. But in the north the Great League of the Iroquois was expanding, flourishing under the wise laws of the Great Peacemaker, fighting their neighbors and spreading their un-heard of democracy far and wide.
And so the 15th century had ended and the 16th had begun, with both Americas living on undisturbed.
But this premise belongs to historical fantasy, while I’m engaged with historical fiction, so my current novel and the ones to come are all about the pre-Columbian past of this beautiful continent.