What if North America was flipped? (land, hospitable, areas)

[Calisonn]

Historically where would cities have developed? When I say flipped I am taking about something like this:

https://i.imgur.com/GAWbR1k_d.webp?m...idelity=medium

[ParaguaneroSwag]

European and Asian migration doesn’t took like it would be historically much different. East coast would be more Mexican/ Central American and west coast would be more caribbean

[Calisonn]

I was thinking more about where cities would have naturally developed. I'm also thinking that Baja California would be part of the United States.

[annie_himself]

I have a feeling that the lack of navigable rivers severely affects how deep the colonies pushed into the interior. Also many of the Caribbean islands would be further from European colonization.

[atadytic19]

I guess coastal Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas would have decent socal type weather, while the inland areas of those states would be really hot. The Great lakes area would have worse winters than now. Early Settlements from Europe would probably be slowed from settling far west by the continental divide making California, Oregon and Washington a lot more dense than the east coast is now.

[SunGrins]

Speculating -- There would be a country somewhat like Chile along the east coast, probably settled by Vikings from Scandinavia very early, who followed the Aleutian chain across the Atlantic. The mountains would have served as a formidable barrier in the 1300s and the seafaring Vikings would have expanded along the coast into the 1500s. The interior valleys would be slightly wetter and more hospitable and would be approached from the Gulf of California. It is doubtful that there would be an indigenous population or much of one.. If there was, there might be less intense pressure on the Indian cultures, which might have coalesced into a stronger indigenous nation in the interior. The west coast would be settled slightly later from Asia. The Canadian maritime areas would be settled first by seafaring Japanese and then they would spread south along the western coastal areas. The Portuguese and Spanish might have been able to establish trading enclaves (think Goa and Macao). The English and French would have probably been too late as almost everything would have been claimed by 1450. There might have been opportunities still in South America. The Russians might have established settlements in Iceland or Greenland. Things generally would have happened sooner and some European countries would not have been ready. It depends on how the currents and winds would have worked.

[arr430]

Rainfall is a functiom of oceanic air masses and what happens to them when they pass over various land terrains. And, as Annie-h mentioned, navigable waterways is the key to everything . We cannot escape from the fact that NA developed only when Europeans brought technology across the Atlantic. The Coast and Rocky ranges have very few sweet spots where civilization could grow.

Actually, Europe as we know it might not have flourished, without the NA-based Gulf Stream to moderate Europe's climate and we'd have beeen colonized by the Chinese, over the Bering land bridge into thi mild lowlands which are New York and Virgina.

[annie_himself]

Could the Polynesians explored all the way to the Caribbean?

[jennifat]

If North America was reversed, then plate tectonics and the way the ocean currents behave would have created a completely different makeup of Earth's landmasses that may have even affected the evolution of life on our planet. Humans may not have even become the dominant species or even evolved at all, for any number of variables.

It wouldn't be as simple as trying to hypothesize what European or even East Asian colonization of North America would have looked like because those cultures may not have ever existed.

[arr430]

Originally Posted by annie_himself

Could the Polynesians explored all the way to the Caribbean?

The other way, they got all the way to Madagascar, and developed the first civilization there, which flourished quite quickly.