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Description
Hi guys, this is my first deviation, and my second Inkscape map. It's not as good as I would like (many inaccuracies, cities in the wrong places), but I am somewhat comfortable posting this. I credit dofreal for the picture in the bottom left ( the one with the boat) and of course Every Grass in Java for creating such an amazing vision of the Pre-Columbian Americas.

This map is a tribute to my favorite alternate history timeline, "A Land of Sweetness" on AlternateHistory.com. Here is the write up, although you can also read it on the map:

In Jared Diamond’s seminal book, Guns, Germs and Steel, he argues that one of the primary disadvantages of New World civilizations compared to the Old were their isolation: the Andeans were isolated from the Mesoamericans, the Mesoamericans isolated from the Mississippians, and so on. This led to no formalized long-distance trade, and very little diffusion of ideas.
But what if this was different?
In the alternate history of “Land of Sweetness”, the Taíno of the Caribbean discover the outrigger and the sail, making maritime trade possible for the first time in the history of the New World. One event leads to another, and soon, sea routes criss-cross the Pacific and the Atlantic, the thousands-year long isolation of the disparate civilizations of the New World broken.
The New World of 1408, some three hundred years after the invention of the sail and outrigger, is one which radically departs from the New World of our time line. Mayan traders ply the South American coast, risking life and limb to trade for llama wool and bronze. Panama is home to the vast trading city of Ācuappāntōnco, where Mesoamerica and the Andes intermix. Yucayan (Taíno) explorers reach as far north as the Chesapeake bay, and there is talk of finding out if the Atlantic is really an endless ocean after all.
Not only trade changed in this brave new world. The exchange of ideas have brought about revolutionary changes in the political sphere as well. In Mesoamerica, Ah Ek Lemba, a Pre-Columbian Alexander the Great, dreams of world domination as his huge armies and his equally vast war-fleets conquer in his name, his strength only matched by the desperate coalition assembled to stop him. In the Andes, a new empire arises in Ecuador, and in the Caribbean, a radical, iconoclast and proselytizing religion has taken hold. In North America, coastal tribes buoyed by trade start forming centralized kingdoms of their own. The New World is amidst a revolution of trade and ideas: but will it be enough to survive the onslaught of the Old?

Description
Hi guys, this is my first deviation, and my second Inkscape map. It's not as good as I would like (many inaccuracies, cities in the wrong places), but I am somewhat comfortable posting this. I credit dofreal for the picture in the bottom left ( the one with the boat) and of course Every Grass in Java for creating such an amazing vision of the Pre-Columbian Americas.

This map is a tribute to my favorite alternate history timeline, "A Land of Sweetness" on AlternateHistory.com. Here is the write up, although you can also read it on the map:

In Jared Diamond’s seminal book, Guns, Germs and Steel, he argues that one of the primary disadvantages of New World civilizations compared to the Old were their isolation: the Andeans were isolated from the Mesoamericans, the Mesoamericans isolated from the Mississippians, and so on. This led to no formalized long-distance trade, and very little diffusion of ideas.
But what if this was different?
In the alternate history of “Land of Sweetness”, the Taíno of the Caribbean discover the outrigger and the sail, making maritime trade possible for the first time in the history of the New World. One event leads to another, and soon, sea routes criss-cross the Pacific and the Atlantic, the thousands-year long isolation of the disparate civilizations of the New World broken.
The New World of 1408, some three hundred years after the invention of the sail and outrigger, is one which radically departs from the New World of our time line. Mayan traders ply the South American coast, risking life and limb to trade for llama wool and bronze. Panama is home to the vast trading city of Ācuappāntōnco, where Mesoamerica and the Andes intermix. Yucayan (Taíno) explorers reach as far north as the Chesapeake bay, and there is talk of finding out if the Atlantic is really an endless ocean after all.
Not only trade changed in this brave new world. The exchange of ideas have brought about revolutionary changes in the political sphere as well. In Mesoamerica, Ah Ek Lemba, a Pre-Columbian Alexander the Great, dreams of world domination as his huge armies and his equally vast war-fleets conquer in his name, his strength only matched by the desperate coalition assembled to stop him. In the Andes, a new empire arises in Ecuador, and in the Caribbean, a radical, iconoclast and proselytizing religion has taken hold. In North America, coastal tribes buoyed by trade start forming centralized kingdoms of their own. The New World is amidst a revolution of trade and ideas: but will it be enough to survive the onslaught of the Old?