Jared, do you think Dasyurus maculatus landbreeds with stripes, only a few large white spots or no spots or stripes at all are possible ?
Certainly; if not ones even more diverse than that.
How are the two books different
Oora Gulalu (The Endless Road) is a compilation of individual stories, histories, sayings, particularly about the life of the Good Man himself, and of the history of the (now-vanished) nation of Lopitja. It has a mostly-historical feel, being partly a history
of the Plirite faith, and partly about the lessons learned by its believers.
The Great Dreaming is a book of mythologies, of creation, destruction, and rebirth. It's a story about the gods which the Plirites don't really believe that they have. It is much more general in its setting, and also includes a number of alternative - even contradictory - stories which describe the origins of the same event. For instance, there's three mutually exclusive versions of the nature and creation of the Nyalananga (*River Murray).
The Dutch could always try and settle some Aururians there, as they did in South Africa.
Yes, Aururians would be even worse off in Brazil than in South Africa. At least the Aururian crops grew around the Cape. In Brazil, they don't even have that much, just a greater vulnerability to disease, though not so much to the general heat and climate.
Of course, I don't think Aururians would be much better than Europeans in the climate (no parts of Australia were malarial before contact, IIRC), so it would help them much. Really, nothing but more Black Africans would.
The Dutch are getting a few more European settlers than they got in OTL - various refugees from the *Thirty Years War, and Anabaptists who are even worse off than in OTL. I'm not sure how many of those will end up in Brazil. More Africans are their best bet - but even then, those may not be very loyal to the Dutch rulers of Brazil.
And, as an odd tangent, malaria was established in Australia pre-European contact, presumably through the Bugis or some earlier group who were in contact with Australia. While it caused casualties, though, it wasn't prevalent enough to produce any significant natural resistance to malaria amongst the indigenous population. Partly because the local mosquito species aren't as effective at transmitting malaria as some others, and partly because the low population density made it harder for epidemics spread.
That sounds considerably more widespread than I thought. I was assuming it wouldn't reach West Africa in time to beat out Islam and Christianity.
I'm open to correction on the likely spread. My working assumption was that it would start to spread to the Xhosa around 1650 or thereabouts, and then proceed gradually along the interior of Africa, and if it wasn't blocked geographically, then it would spread over time to most areas that don't have an Abrahamic faith.
As to how long that would take, though, I'm not sure. The conversion is a gradual progression, not an instantaneous spread of missionaries throughout Africa. It may reach an end somewhere around, say, Nigeria or Cameroon, and have trouble going any further thanks to Islamicisation or Christianisation of the inhabitants of those regions.
East Africa is a different case though, as outside of some offshore islands like Zanzibar, and a few coastal trading towns, there was next to no Muslim penetration until the 19th century. So relatively few areas in northern Mozambique, Tanzania, and coastal Kenya will be Muslim.
Hmm. The Ottomans may be more active than OTL, depending on how quickly they take up Aururian crops, so that's one factor. On the other hand, there's a possibility that the Nuttana will visit long enough to establish missions. (Of course, the Nuttana won't stay long; the disease problem there is even worse for them than in Indonesia.)
I wonder if this will change the balance of power in the Horn to a large extent. If the Highlands have greater population, they will be able to fend off incursions of lowlanders better. I believe the Oromo migration happened during this period, for example, and it's plausible that the plauges and higher carrying capacity of the highlands will butterfly it away. This probably means much less Islamic presence in the Ethiopian highlands, although the lowlands will probably still remain Muslim.
I'm not sure yet exactly when the Aururian crops will be introduced into the Ethiopian highlands. Those crops
won't be spread by northward transmission along the African interior, though; they will come by sea. Either the Ottomans or a Christian naval power with some contact will spread them, or (outside chance) the Nuttana.
I presume the script will be based upon an Aururian one? It will probably be like a mega-Swahili ITTL, as even if something like Swahili is spoken, it will be restricted to a very small area in East Africa.
The script may well be based on a modified Latin alphabet. The relevant Aururian script is a syllabary that may not transliterate Bantu languages all that well. The Aururian immigrants in South Africa may pick up the Latin alphabet and adapt it to their own use, in which case it will be transmitted along with the Plirite faith.
If it is a modified Latin alphabet, then it will probably be with the addition of different letters to represent consonants in Aururian languages (originally) and Bantu languages (subsequently) which don't have equivalents in the Dutch version of the Latin alphabet - for example, a new letter to refer to
ng, which to both Aururians and Bantu speakers is a separate consonant.
And yes, this will effectively be an analogue to Swahili which is spoken from Natal to Mount Kenya.
Will the Piliri also try to convert Khoisan and Pygmy peoples? I could see, ITTL, a much more total obliteration of these groups than happened IOTL, as they'll be surrounded by much more homogenous, missionary cultures.
Yes, the Plirites will try to convert both of those groups. The first conversion efforts amongst the Khoikhoi may even be earlier than those aimed at the Xhosa. In the short term, though, this won't be a threat to the Khoikhoi, since the process will probably involve translation of the Pliri scriptures into Khoikhoi languages.
In the long run, though, yes, the Khoisan will be under more pressure, caught between European pressure on the one hand, and rather determined missionary cultures on the other hand.
Would any Aururian crops grow well in the New Guinea Highlands? It's cool enough up there I could see some of the package working well. Wattles in particular would be great, and deal with the rampant lack of protein in Highlander diets.
They would grow there, but getting them there until the technological equivalent of the twentieth century is a problem. Aururian crops won't grow in the New Guinea lowlands, so they can't be transmitted gradually. And unlike, say, the Ethiopian highlands, there aren't enough trade links to get the crops there directly from areas where they can grow.
That will collapse all the pre-Contact societies.
It will also open gaps for European settlers and filibusters.
For one thing, the die-off will cause endless succession crises in the native Aururian states.
Aururian societies depend on irrigation systems and other complex systems, which are going to be neglected for want of labor.
Europeans with gunpowder and horses are going to feed on this trouble.
Certainly many Aururian societies will collapse, great public works like irrigation will largely be abandoned, and the chaos left behind will be an open invitation for European marauders. This process has already started; the Atjuntja in *Western Australia have seen their first massive revolt caused by the death of a sovereign and the first wave of European diseases, while the largest state, the Yadji, faced its own succession crisis and European attempted filibustering.
What I'm still trying to do, though, is work out where in the spectrum the Aururian peoples fall in terms of vulnerability to colonialism. On one end of the spectrum is pre-Columbian American societies, which were ravaged by near-simultaneous epidemics and lost (depending on which source you believe) somewhere between 80-95% of their population within a short span of time. And who had a massive technological disadvantage to boot.
On the other end of the spectrum is places like India, where diseases worked if anything to the advantage of the local societies, and the technological gap was not always large.
Placing the Aururian societies on this spectrum isn't straightforward. They are hideously vulnerable to disease, but less so than pre-Columbian America. They already have some diseases of their own which will afflict European colonialists. More significantly, though, the long travel distances mean that the epidemics will arrive mostly one at a time, allowing a little time to recover between epidemics. A 70% population decline over 140 years is very, very bad, but it's not as bad as an 80% population decline within a handful of years.
The worst single disease the Aururians will face - smallpox - will kill around a third of their population. But that's about what it did to Rome during the Antonine plague. Bad though that was, it doesn't compare to what happened in the Americas.
The technological gap between Aururia and Europe, while massive, is also smaller than that between Europe and the Americas. The slower progression of disease also means that Aururians will have more opportunity to acquire European technology. Some Aururians at least know what iron is and how to work it. They are starting to acquire horses and firearms (though they will probably rely on imports of powder for the latter).
None of this makes them immune to European colonialism or filibustering, but it does at least give them a better chance to resist.
