I wouldn't be surprised if a thread like this already exists, so my apologies if it does, but here's the gist of it:

As the title says, change up early ethnic/tribal migration routes in an interesting way (for example a large Indo-European group in Syria and the Levant). This is kind of similar to the "alternate ethnic groups" thread, but there are a few differences:

Rules:

1. Migrations must be fairly early on in history or before written historical documents, i'll say basically up to the post-roman barbarian migrations for Europe and East Asia
2. central Asia, Siberia, and the Americas get more leeway for a few reasons:
Central Asia just had a lot of major migrations later in history.
The Americas and Siberia developed at a slower rate, so they wouldn't have been able to record these huge movements as early as other areas would.
3. Colonial settlement, creole cultures, etc. are not what this is about. I'm talking about major migrations of complete tribes or the large-scale spread of a language family (so the smallest recommended scaleis something the size of the magyar migration)
4. Any change is allowed. You can have a group go somewhere, or have a group that moved OTL stay, just keep it plausible

Basically, the migration should not be remembered very well (with the exception of central Asia), the group should seem to the average observer like it's always been there.

Template
(You don't have to use it, just some questions to get you thinking)

Change/POD (what happens):

Time (when it happens):

Major effects on history/Summary of the history of the group:

Likely cultural development:

Good OTL analogue (part of cultural development, very optional):

Any Maps:


Anything else you want to add, because I will inevitably miss something:
 
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Example:

Since I used this as an example in the first post, Imma use it here. This is by no means a very well thought out scenario, just a rough example.

Change/POD (what happens):
An Indo-Iranian group related to the Hittites and Mitanni settles Syria in large numbers. Kašuni will be used as a placeholder name for them (after the possibly related Kassite people).

Time (when it happens):
Around 1500 BCE


Historical summary & major effects on history:

The Kašuni enter the northern Levant, and push out the weakened kings of Yamhad after the Hittite invasion. The Kašuni pillage the region, killing or driving out a large portion of the local semitic population. Indo-Europeans settle the region en-masse, forming a kingdom in the area.

The Mitanni become dominant in the area. Due to similarities between them and the Kašuni people, they are seen as more favourable rulers than the egyptians, and have greater local support.

Bronze age collapse affects the Kašuni

The Jews might have more competition in the region due to the migrants from Syria, thus the jews may not become the dominant power in the southern levant. This video covers this immense change quite nicely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk-_YgmIqsk

In summary:
The Philistines become dominant in the southern levant, and trade with the greeks extensively, helping the greeks beat the Phoenicians.
Philistine mercenaries and increased wealth help Syracuse and Massillia (Marseille) become the major powers in the western mediterannean, making sure rome never rises to prominence.

Like OTL, the region is incorporated into the neo-Assyrian empire, bringing some elements of their culture to the Kašuni.
The Persians conquer Kašun, however, they have little cultural influence.
Kašun becomes part of Alexander’s empire.

The Kašuni come under greek cultural influence.

Kašun becomes Zoroastrian, while western europe develops a reformed greek religion, similar to hinduism.

Yeah... This ain’t going further. Jesus. That got out of had.

Likely cultural development:
The Kašuni start off strongly influenced by the old Mesopotamian civilizations like the Mitanni. They become fairly hellenized over time, but break away from greek rule, but keep a lot of greek ideas. Zoroastrianism spread to Kašun due to the proximity of persia, bringing in a lot of persian culture as well.

Good OTL analogue (part of cultural development, very optional):
Too diverged for one of these. The Kurds if they were hellenized rather than arabized is the best description I can give.



Indo-European peoples of the near east

Indo-European syria.jpg

Blue - Hellenic
Light blue - Inner Anatolian (Anatolic, Hitto-Lydian)
Light green - Mitannic (Kurds)
Green - Kashunic (Syrian)
Dark Green - Persian (Iranian)
Red - Armenian
 
Oooooh do I have a lot to add to this thread, when I get home from vacation. I’m not sure if I should though, cuz I don’t want to spoil my timeline...
 
Oooooh do I have a lot to add to this thread, when I get home from vacation. I’m not sure if I should though, cuz I don’t want to spoil my timeline...

I'm glad someone's interested. I guess you could put it all in a spoiler, so people don't see it unless they want to, but it's up to you.

There really isn't enough migration TLs, I'd love to read yours. Have you started? What's it called?
 
I'm glad someone's interested. I guess you could put it all in a spoiler, so people don't see it unless they want to, but it's up to you.

There really isn't enough migration TLs, I'd love to read yours. Have you started? What's it called?

It's a pretty sweet TL called Not My Heifer. It's about a more concentrated migration of the Indo-Europeans from the Yamna culture into the remnants of the Maykop and the rising Kura-Araxes culture and the ensuing changes in the world.
 
I'm glad someone's interested. I guess you could put it all in a spoiler, so people don't see it unless they want to, but it's up to you.

There really isn't enough migration TLs, I'd love to read yours. Have you started? What's it called?

I could do that. I have a lot of ideas to deposit in here , I won’t be able to start for a few days though, cuz I’m on vacation.
 
I'm interested in this thread too, and will be getting a book out on Romans soon anyway when I get the chance to visit my local library!

Back on topic...

Would it be too implausible for Asiatic peoples to migrate to what's now Italy? (or is that the realms of soft alternate history?)

What about Africans (if we're talking Igbo, Hausa peoples etc.) although I know that African slaves were not uncommon in Roman era, even if there wasn't such thing as a Black community (to quote from Wikipedia).

In OTL, there were few sub-Saharan Africans in Roman society (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_in_Ancient_Roman_history) but what about here in this ATL?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_Sub-Saharan_Africa was used as a source / an inspiration for this.
 
I'm interested in this thread too, and will be getting a book out on Romans soon anyway when I get the chance to visit my local library!

Back on topic...

Would it be too implausible for Asiatic peoples to migrate to what's now Italy? (or is that the realms of soft alternate history?)

What about Africans (if we're talking Igbo, Hausa peoples etc.) although I know that African slaves were not uncommon in Roman era, even if there wasn't such thing as a Black community (to quote from Wikipedia).

In OTL, there were few sub-Saharan Africans in Roman society (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_in_Ancient_Roman_history) but what about here in this ATL?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_Sub-Saharan_Africa was used as a source / an inspiration for this.

Yes and yes. It’s a lot easier to get Whites into China because the European phenotype used to be considerably wider spread and denser than it is today, with populations in Central Asia and the Tarim Basin. East Asians, despite always having made up an enormous slice of the world’s population, have always been relatively consentrated on the east side of the Urals and especially the east side of the Altai mountains. This is probably cuz their phenotype likely evolved somewhere in East Asia, as opposed to the European phenotype having actually evolved on the more central location of the Pontic Steppe. Even getting East Asians on the West Coast of the Caspian IOTL (Kalmyks) was something of a stretch, I think.

Now, Sub-Saharan Africans as a large group in the Mediterranean is also ASB because the Sub-Saharan Africans that we’re present (much rarer than that Wikipedia article suggests) would have been traded that far north through multiple intermediaries before they ever even reached North Africa, and the Romans only sent a couple of expeditions into the Sahara, neither of which made it all the way past it. Contact between Sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean was incredibly minimal until the Early Medieval Period, and when it did happen, it was usually initiated by North Africans traveling to West Africa in search of gold which West Africans trades for things like salt. Sub-Saharan Africans had no indigenous draft animals (the kind you ride) of their own, and breeds of camels and horses that could handle the tropics only came into existence in the last 500 or so years. You would need the zebra to have been domesticated, which is hypothetically doable, but you need an incentive for humans to domesticate it and also for it to be comfortable around humans first. IOTL, horses seem to have originally been domesticated for their meat, and this was after many of the big game animals that roamed the shrinking Eurasian Steppes in herds had disappeared, either due to climate change or human predation or both. The disappearance of big game animals would have forced Eurasians of the steppe to specialize, and they did.

The Quarternary Extinction didn’t hit Africa as hard, and it remains today considerably more diverse in terms of big game animals as a source of protein than the Eurasian Steppe. Thus, the same incentives don’t exist for Africans to start penning up zebras/quaggas for meat and later using them for draft. A Green Sahara scenario might make it possible to get Sub-Saharans up to the Mediterranean Coast, but that would raise the question of what happens to all the North Africans who, by such a time that Sub-Saharans are migrating north are probably pastoralists or agriculturalists? Of course, evolutionary/geological/climatological PODs considered to be ASB (for some reason). Remember also that the Sub-Saharan phenotype used to be limited to West and Central Africa, from the Sudan over to Senegal, and the populations of people with this phenotype much smaller due to lack of urbanization, lack of draft animals to facilitate the same kind of pastoral nomadism that was seen IOTL in Eurasia, etc.
 
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I'm interested in this thread too, and will be getting a book out on Romans soon anyway when I get the chance to visit my local library!

Back on topic...

Would it be too implausible for Asiatic peoples to migrate to what's now Italy? (or is that the realms of soft alternate history?)

The Huns, and other Turco-Mongolic steppe nomads migrated into Europe after the fall of Rome, hell, the Hungarians looked pretty Asian when they got to Europe. The problem is you would need to bring in an immense population, much larger than even most steppe empires could, into Europe, since the East Asian phenotype is VERY recessive. Linguistically, though, this is completely doable, just, they wouldn't look "Asian".

[Edit:] Settling a sparsely populated region (Not Italy) would help keep the phenotype alive longer.
[Edit 2:] Poland and the Pannonian Steppe (Hungary, Slovakia, Slavonia, and Vojvodina) are two good options. Both were not too populated (from what I know; anyone can correct me on this). The Magyars came too late, by then the Slavic migrations had significantly boosted the (phenotypically European) population of the Pannonian region.
 
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The Huns, and other Turco-Mongolic steppe nomads migrated into Europe after the fall of Rome, hell, the Hungarians looked pretty Asian when they got to Europe. The problem is you would need to bring in an immense population, much larger than even most steppe empires could, into Europe, since the East Asian phenotype is VERY recessive. Linguistically, though, this is completely doable, just, they wouldn't look "Asian".

[Edit:] Settling a sparsely populated region (Not Italy) would help keep the phenotype alive longer.
[Edit 2:] Poland and the Pannonian Steppe (Hungary, Slovakia, Slavonia, and Vojvodina) are two good options. Both were not too populated (from what I know; anyone can correct me on this). The Magyars came too late, by then the Slavic migrations had significantly boosted the (phenotypically European) population of the Pannonian region.

SOME of the Magyars did. If the majority of them did. If all of them had looked that East Asian, then more Magyars today probably would as well, unless the Magyar takeover of Pannonia was an example of a language and culture being successfully imposed from the top down by a foreign ruling elite.
 
SOME of the Magyars did. If the majority of them did. If all of them had looked that East Asian, then more Magyars today probably would as well, unless the Magyar takeover of Pannonia was an example of a language and culture being successfully imposed from the top down by a foreign ruling elite.

Im not sure. I don't think it was...

I guess @saltburn861 should look that up for his Asians deep inside Europe thing, to see if this sort of thing is plausible. I'd definitely be interested in seeing how that scenario plays out.
 
Im not sure. I don't think it was...

I guess @saltburn861 should look that up for his Asians deep inside Europe thing, to see if this sort of thing is plausible. I'd definitely be interested in seeing how that scenario plays out.

I know that Magyars area an Asiatic race of people, but was also referring to Mongols or Finns, possibly (Finno-Ugralic), although that could be ASB territory.
 
Perhaps the Goths don't settle in Crimea and instead keep moving east and eventually reach central Asia.
A Gothic kingdom in Siberia? sign me up!
 
Perhaps the Goths don't settle in Crimea and instead keep moving east and eventually reach central Asia.
A Gothic kingdom in Siberia? sign me up!

Sounds interesting. How would it happen? What would it change? Write about it (or dont if you dont want to).
 
If those Goths are not numerous or succesfull enough it may be fortunate for them to move north toward the more forested area?

Well, Crimea has changed hands many times throughout history, and OTL they disappeared at the latest in the 1750s (though all that is mentioned is some very "different" people from the region's other inhabitants, so the goths may have disappeared even earlier). So moving to a less desirable/less volatile region would probably help the Goths survive longer.
 
Well, Crimea has changed hands many times throughout history, and OTL they disappeared at the latest in the 1750s (though all that is mentioned is some very "different" people from the region's other inhabitants, so the goths may have disappeared even earlier). So moving to a less desirable/less volatile region would probably help the Goths survive longer.
The story of Crimea is often that of losers from the Steppe moving there.

Maybe ATL Goths can move into the Siberian River Routes? From there they may expand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_River_Routes
600px-Siberiariverroutemap.png
 
Possibly. I can't wait for @Blorg to come back on and see that this thread has turned into a discussion about his one short post.
Anyway brainstorming ideas is fun!

Perhaps the Goths could become a mercantile society that dominates commerce in the region? Or would they form societies whose populations expand in different directions? Will the populations expand relativily peacefully or through war?

Where at the Siberian River Routes might the ATL group of Goths settle? What about OTL Kazan? Maybe somewhere along the OB or the Yenesei rivers?
 
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