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Quoting myself from a related ASB thread:

The Atlantic has been crossed by replicas of 3500 year old Egyptian reed boats. But that's been done by people who know where they're going. Roman ships should be capable of making the voyage where winds and currents are favorable, for example Western Africa to Brazil.

The SU had quite the population increase after the war, until 1990 it nearly doubled. Japan, China and the USA experienced the same increase, most other countries that were at war did not. 100 % bigger would be what, 580 million people in 1990? That's a bit much, i'd expect that if there was no...

Recording of sound requires quite a number of science and engineering to be known already. I figured it happened OTL about as soon as it could. I thought about magnetic tape and microphones/speakers. No part of it is really hard, if you know what you're doing this should be possible in the...

Modern white paper needs chemical and heat treatments, but if you finely grind the wood-pulp with, say, a grinding stone, you can make something that looks like old newspaper paper but with poor stability. "Paper" until about the mid 1800s or so was actually mostly made out of old rags that were...

Depends on whether or not ROC enters the American camp, and what being in the American camp means for ROC. The Chinese were a bit weary about foreign influence in the country, it's ultimately the cause of all the misfortune the country experienced before everyone agreed to redress the issue by...

By the time of the Chinese-Soviet border skirmishes China too had the atom bomb, so that may have somewhat inhibited the Soviets and kept them from solving the issue with a full blown invasion. Would KTM-China have it though? PRC China got it due to generous Soviet tech support during the 50s...

I'm getting grey hair already, so not that young any more. I know the meaning of it, but i prefer more literal solutions to problems, less symbolism and old one liners. The people on the ground don't need to be tought that many new things, they've absorbed knowledge of many generations of people...

You'll just cause overfishing. Instead teach him better farming techniques, give him access to cheap credit to buy farm tools and machines and make him aware of crops better suited to the climate he lives in. And the most important part: Stop subsidizing American and European farms to the...

Phoenician script is often said to be the origin of the modern alphabet. Most other ancient Mesopotamian and related civilizations adopted and modified Sumerian cuneiform, which is kinda like Egyptian hieroglyphs, each sign representing an object or action, but a lot more abstracted than the...

To build up on this a bit: 1 kg of wheat has about 3400 calories Source German grain output per square kilometer stands at 720 tons or so. Source A person needs about 2.200 calories per day, or 800.000 per year. Source So the new 25.000 km² which are used for energy production right now could...

Germany too could support a lot more. It's a question of investment, usage of technology and of which crops you chose to plant. For example rapeseed for bio fuels isn't actually feeding anyone, but Germany is producing it (and related plants) on nearly 2,5 million hectares, that's 25.000 square...

Most likely not. It just happened OTL because most countries were broke and the winners wanted to dial down tensions and mistrust that was building up among them. The reality of the Mediterranean harboring 4 big navies (France, UK, Italy, A-H), 2 aspiring navies (Greece, Turkey) and 1 large...

As far as i remember we don't actually know all that much about what happened during the Achaemenid period in the Eastern parts. It's not even fully known how far into India they got, where the Empire began or ended. Maybe there were attempts to conquer it and the Greeks just didn't write about...

It doesn't matter who's on the throne, the monarch makes no battlefield decisions. WW1 a few years later than OTL means A-H gets to finish its military modernization, which they were the last of the large states to initiate, and by mid 1910s the army will be equipped with now modern rifles...

That saves quite a lot of weight that otherwise would have been used for life support, heat shielding and fuel to return back to earth. A Soyuz could do that. And it wouldn't surprise me if there was a long line of terminal cancer patients queuing up for a one way trip to the moon and the...

The OTL N1 rocket was rushed, and because of that suffered from quality issues that resulted in 4 explosions until it was abandoned. So you still want to the moon? Hard is a relative term, they had all the things needed for it. Expensive, that's the problem, it's an expensive photo OP with...

Russia got support through the French and British who in turn got their stuff from the Americans. If no new supplies can be bought on credit they will throw Russia (and Italy) under the bus without a second thought. Russia would have to sue for peace, which is for them a rather good thing, it's...

Is that without Japan joining in on the World Wars? Or no World Wars at all? The economy before WW1 was already heavily globalized, only returned to that level in 1990 or so. And Europe retaining the colonies will have the effect that basic resources like ores and oils will be a lot cheaper due...

Immediately? No effect. Until mid 1917 or so Entente buy form the US with money while CP are unable to due to the blockade which the US can not do anything against. But then past 1917, when the Entente cash and collateral runs out and they need massive unsecured loans that the US government has...