Is it possible for the death of a single peasant to change history appreciably?

[acgoldis]

Hi! I was reading all of these ideas where a king dies early and history changes. So, it occurred to me: supposed an unnamed, unrecorded peasant dies in the year AD 500 in France. Could the death of an individual peasant change history? If so, how?

Obviously, the peasant himself could not talk to kings or influence royal decrees and so forth, and it would be unlikely that the king or even many royal governors know him/her personally. However, consider the following.

1. Six degrees of separation. Lots of people may know people who know this peasant. For instance, the lord of the manor may go to his/her funeral and keep him from doing something his/her supervisor needs.
2. A ruler somewhere down the line in medieval France may have this peasant as an ancestor (for instance, if a commoner is elevated to the aristocracy on the basis of merit).

How much of an effect (on average) could the death of a single peasant have hundreds of years later?

Here's a case you can consider: a 20-year old woman who has had a child survive infancy dies in childbirth whereas in OTL s/he survives. You can also consider the case where someone who dies in OTL survives.

Thanks in advance,

ACG

[Trotsky]

Would Joan of Arc's dying before she started hearing voices have any effect on Anglo-French history?

[Taikun]

What if he was the ancestor of someone important? Maybe a famous artist? Or politician? Or whataver else? Maybe the ancestor of Napoleon?

EDIT: Consider that he could be the ancestor of really many people after a few generations

[lothaw]

Ask the fellow who offed Franz Ferdinand.

[Leistungsfähiger Amerikan]

My view is that the butteryfly effect=huge history changes. Consider, when your having sex, the one sperm out of millions will make a child. So if the act of having sex is delayed for even a second, then a totally different human being will be made. And also considering that a single peasant could interact differently with other people(in some ATL), these other people would then interact differently with even more people, a few generations later will be completely different from OTL.

[vipiirion]

IIRC, the founder of the Han dynasty was a peasant...and it may have been the same for the Ming. Either of those guys dying, or an ancestor, would have a big effect.

[Zyzzyva]

In general, using the mathy hard butterfly effect, yes, by definition any change no matter how small will cause divergence.

[godsown1991]

I'd say yes. Perhaps that peasant was meant to serve in the army, and would kill the man who, without him there, would kill an important commander. Perhaps that peasant was meant to grow the wheat that would be responsible for helping to end starvation in a part of the kingdom. Perhaps that peasant's descendants would be important people? Perhaps perhaps perhaps.

I don't subscribe to the "stepping on a butterfly in the past could transform human into giant bugs in the future" brand of the butterfly effect, but I find that, in history, most things seem to be connected in some way to me.

[Roberto]

I like to call this the Catterpillar Effect. Basically, the smaller the POD, the longer it takes for the repercussions to kick in. For example, Thande's TL has the POD as a King tripping at his coronation. That results in him banishing his son to Virginia, and the political climate of the time is tweaked. But after a while, the effects are felt around the world.

There are, of course, effects to every change. What if this peasant's ancestors do something big? What if his existence later had a slight effect on somebody more important that changed how that second person acted later on? Sure, with a relatively "unimportant" change it doesn't seem like much could happen, but it will with time.

[Nicole]

Originally Posted by Zyzzyva

In general, using the mathy hard butterfly effect, yes, by definition any change no matter how small will cause divergence.

Originally Posted by Leistungsfähiger Amerikan

My view is that the butteryfly effect=huge history changes. Consider, when your having sex, the one sperm out of millions will make a child. So if the act of having sex is delayed for even a second, then a totally different human being will be made. And also considering that a single peasant could interact differently with other people(in some ATL), these other people would then interact differently with even more people, a few generations later will be completely different from OTL.

This is how I feel as well... by the next generation you'll have a lot of people around who are at least subtlely different than OTL due to sperm/egg difference, and those people will do things differently...

[AirshipArmada]

Peasant woman dies in child birth >
1) husband is depressed and less productive > less food is grown > a horse gets hungry and difficult to handle > one more soldier dies in a battle > whole line of people are never born
2) depressed husband gets drunk and gets into a fight, breaking the nose of handsome lad > lad not so handsome any more, ends up marrying a different woman > entire line of descendants changed.
3) depressed husband becomes a drunkard and looses his right to farm his little plot of land > a different man farms the plot instead and his family prospers.

Also:
The midwife responsible for the woman's death swears never to make the same error again.
4) She redoubles here efforts and gets better at being a midwife > over the span of her life two dozen babies that would have died otherwise, now live.
5) A spinster, jealous of the now locally famous midwife, accuses her of witchcraft > the wife of a local official finally finds her voice and defends the midwife to her husband > the husband waves the charges of witchcraft aside and makes the spinster feel a fool > spinster moves far, far away (25 miles) > widowed butcher in new town falls in love with spinster and they marry > happy butcher sells more meat and prospers > diet of entire village is improved and people are healthier and live longer.
5b) wife of official who finally found her voice defending midwife now starts influencing her husband in many of his decisions > policies of entire town are altered

and so on, and so on.

Minor people are important to the flow of events. The problem is that their lives are not documented so we can't even guess what the world would be like if they had taken other paths.

[robertp6165]

Originally Posted by acgoldis

Hi! I was reading all of these ideas where a king dies early and history changes. So, it occurred to me: supposed an unnamed, unrecorded peasant dies in the year AD 500 in France. Could the death of an individual peasant change history? If so, how?

Obviously, the peasant himself could not talk to kings or influence royal decrees and so forth, and it would be unlikely that the king or even many royal governors know him/her personally. However, consider the following.

1. Six degrees of separation. Lots of people may know people who know this peasant. For instance, the lord of the manor may go to his/her funeral and keep him from doing something his/her supervisor needs.
2. A ruler somewhere down the line in medieval France may have this peasant as an ancestor (for instance, if a commoner is elevated to the aristocracy on the basis of merit).

How much of an effect (on average) could the death of a single peasant have hundreds of years later?

Here's a case you can consider: a 20-year old woman who has had a child survive infancy dies in childbirth whereas in OTL s/he survives. You can also consider the case where someone who dies in OTL survives.

Thanks in advance,

ACG

One peasant born in 500 AD would have likely have literally tens of millions of descendants by 2009 AD. So at the very least, even if the death of this peasant in and of itself changes nothing else in history, there will be tens of millions of people who won't exist in the ATL. At least some of these people are likely to have made important contributions to the flow of history in OTL. The butterflies from all this could possibly be such that the world in 2009 would be completely unrecognizable from OTL.

[Riain]

The bulk of armies of that time were made up of peasant stock. I'd imagine the bloke who put the arrow through the eye of Harold Goodwinson at Hastings was a peasant.

The odd peasant did hit the jackpot and instantly become influential by wealth and position. Perhaps doing the right thing in front of the King and being rewarded for it, or stumbling onto some wealth.

[Condottiero]

In Pavia (1525), François I was about to be killed but one spanish soldier realized who he was and he was spared and captured. Just imagine that soldier was not there and the french king was killed...

[Mr Stereo1]

Nice idea, a timeline on it would be nice seeing how the butterfys turn out.

[RPW@Cy]

Isn't Turtledove's TL-191 essentially an exploration of this thesis? Granted, I'm not sure it's strictly appropriate to call the soldier who found the missing orders a peasant, but he was certainly completely unexceptional in any other way (presumably OTL is the timeline in which he died at birth...).

[Roberto]

Originally Posted by RPW@Cy

Isn't Turtledove's TL-191 essentially an exploration of this thesis? Granted, I'm not sure it's strictly appropriate to call the soldier who found the missing orders a peasant, but he was certainly completely unexceptional in any other way (presumably OTL is the timeline in which he died at birth...).

I don't know, that change is a little closer to the "front lines", ie the orders played a big part already in how the war would turn out.

Say for example, that some farmer dies in 1750, and so his son is never born, and the son never kills a merchant. Since this merchant is never killed, he has kids and grandkids, and one of them fights in the Civil War on the Confederate side, and found the lost orders, saving the Confederacy.

That's an example of what this thread was talking about. Technically speaking, the POD is that the farmer dies instead of living, but the changes are only seen and felt by the time they've reached something that has importance on a wider scale.

[boredatwork]

yes.

what if that peasant was an ancestor of nostradamus, voltaire, robbespiere, napoleon, rouseau, giscard, tallyrand, richelieu, the bourbons, etc?

heck, what if the peasant was an ancestor of pasteur?

[Oni]

Short answer: yes.

Realistic answer: Divergence will (in most cases) depend on how far back in the timeline it happens. The death of a random peasant 100 years ago won't (on average) have nearly the effect of one killed off 1000 years ago. If you go back far enough it would be possible to have an entire culture never exist.

Then again there are more than a few important folks who where just a generation removed from mediocrity, so to speak. Then it would boil down to what that important individual accomplished and what the odds of parallel accomplishments are. The majority of inventors, scientists and the like would have had someone else make the same breakthrough in short enough time.

[King Thomas]

How about Wat Tyler?