Ex-Gondwana

Wow, i didn't realise so many people daydreamed about alternate histories! It was something for filling in time in my head as a kid but still occasionally go there but i mostly kept my alternative worlds to my self.........until i just discovered this forum....
Well, I don't know if anyone has ever considered it but my alternative history that keeps coming back to my imagination (when i got time to indulge) is that Antarctica and Australia didn't rift apart 45 million years ago and remained together as a (semi) super continent reminant of Gondwana. This would have many implications to climate as the Southern Ocean is cold and keeps Australia dry but perhaps with Antarctica still attached the climate would be somewhat wetter? I can immagine that the Antarctic climate would be similar to Tasmania to a point (The fossilised vegetation of Antarctica has many living remenant species in Australia and South America!).
Well when i was younger i even drew a map of the two continents together but dont really know how here. Imagine the difference with the extra room and resources! Would the French, Dutch and anybody else tried to lay greater claims to such a landmass (assuming that the Brittish had first claim as in the real history). Even Aboriginal history may have been different, with the possibility of some plant species in the different climate lending itself to domestication as a crop! And imagine what animal species may have existed! Perhaps one or more independant civilisations or even empires may have arisen from the region.
Well thats just my contribution to the wonderfull world of alternative history............

Interesting idea. The one little problem is that, with a divergence so ig and that far back, you stand a really good chance of changing the climate and ecosystems of the world so much that you end up accidentily scuppering the development. I don't know enough about the subject to decide what factors were important to the development of humans, but that POD is bound to mess with quite a few of them. You could get humans if you're lucky, but it'd look kind of awkward.

Just some helpful criticism. Don't worry; we do this to each other's ideas all the time.

Welcome Aboard!

I also find geological, geographical, or astronomical alternative histories fascinating. Your mini Gondwanaland is interesting, especially since our earth has so little truly temperate land in the southern hemisphere. Creating a large continental landmass extending north from antarctica and including Australia (and New Zealand as well, possibly) could have some interesting effects on the biological and cultural history of earth.

You will find two kinds of people on this board: (1) those who would suggest - as Ivan did - that the longer ago a point of divergence (POD) occurred, the more likely it will in turn result in other changes (the so-called "butterfy effect") making it very improbable anything remotely like our world will develop, and (2) those who will happily accept that a single POD may have no significant change on other important developments. Many of us go both ways.

Questions I might ask about this huge southern landmass are: (1) what effects might this have on global weather patterns, (2) could there be significant survivals of animals/plants which went extinct in our world, (3)what human groups might have settled it first and would it have provided a better springboad for cultural evolution than generally hot and arid Australia, (4) might more civilized Asian or polynesian populations have spread to Gondwana before Europeans got there - presuming human history outside of the S pacific area was pretty much as OTL, and (5) with large population and a more temperate/wetter climate could this area have devloped more as China and/or north america did?

Be sure and check out the "ASB" section. A lot of people consider any ATL's based on alternate geographies too speculative for this forum.

Well geological PODs aren't really my cup of tea but I just wanted to say welcome to the board!

leej did a thread like this in the ASB forum called "3rd World" you might wanna check out. Here's the pic he added. And as a fellow noob, I also say welcome.

I like the idea. Basically all we have to accept is that human kind does not in fact get butterflied away... or if it does, some other intelligent hominid arises. Anything you choose to accept or not accept after that matters only for the story you are trying to construct. You could assume the timeline goes remarkably similar to ours, with Europeans discovering Australia/Antartica finding primitive people there... or it goes similar to ours except the Euros discover Aztec/Inca levels of advancement in this new continent... or it goes similar to ours except Euros discover a 19th century level of modernization... or the space-age but isolationist Australarcticans discover all of the other continents when they put a satellite in orbit in 1500 AD...Australarcticans discover America. Or maybe the timeline in the rest of the world is very different. Indo-Europeans are butterflied away and Islamic (Islam somehow not butterflied) African nations discover and colonize Australarctica, but are tossed out by heavy cavalrymen riding some sort of giant marsupial beast that never went extinct in this TL.

Maybe the climate is so favorable in this supercontinent that overpopulation is rampant, and to lower it a tradition of females going to war along with males arises(thus killing off baby making potential with each conflict). Now perhaps when they discover or are discovered by the rest of humanity, they are a matriarchal society in which women are the only warriors, and perhaps after killing a certain number of enemies(also women, thus ensuring that their enemies also do not become populous) they retire to make babies and we have female polygamy, due to the larger numbers of men than women, so they and their children are tended to by the husbands while the women war heros win elections and whatnot.
Hmmm, someone could easily write a seven book series about that...

Good POD Bizarro. Many husbands per woman is polyandry. Great idea rewster.

Assuming that there isn't some sort of drastic climate change, I see Austalarctica having a climate similar to NA or Europe... tropical in the far north, arid deserts south of that, temerate regions below that, tundra, then polar ice. The continent would be the smallest, but have the highest average elevation (lots of bi mountains under that ice pack.

If we assume the human migrations take place roughly the same as in OTL, we see human settlement by proto aborigines around 50,000 years ago. I'm not to familiar with abnoriginal anthropology, but I assume that they didn't advance past a late stone age culture is mainly due to climate and lack of usable resources. With more land to the south, the human migration would continue to land with a more suitable climate for civilization to develop. How advanced this cuture develops is an interesting question. I think it would most likely be at late iron age levels with a military centered around infantry (I don't think there would be any surviving megafauna useable as beasts of burden). I'm thinking a dominant civilization like the Maya or Inca with Roman Empire level technology.