I'm very curious what the modern age would look like if Europe hadn't found the Americas until the 1600s, or the 1800s... what would modern technology look like? Modern culture? Would the Americas eventually have sufficient technology (primarily medicine) such that they would be able to resist invasion? How long would that take?<p>There is, of course, no way of knowing, but if American civilizations had thrived instead, and continued to be "peaceful and democratic" as the article put it, it seems somewhat plausible that we wouldn't be running into these "Tragedy of the Commons" problems... or, at least, that we would be making good progress on mitigating them.<p>I'm pretty sure that's wishful thinking, though. I'm still interested in what sort of cultures and technologies would have come out of that seed.