AHC: Keep Europe 'barbarian' for the longest time.

Keep Europe 'barbarian' from the Mediterranean/Eastern perspective for the longest time possible.
 
What do you mean by that? Because this is either very easy/otl or incredibly hard.
Halfway in between.

They could be merely as barbarian as pre-Roman Gaul's later years, so somewhat civilized and actually perceived as barbarian only because of the Mediterranean states' biases. But they can't be much more civilized than that.
 
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Meerkat92

Banned
Halfway in between.

They can be only as barbarian as the last years of pre-Roman Gaul, and be perceived as barbarian only because of the Mediterranean states' bias. But they can't be any more civilized than late Gaul.

Exactly what criteria are you using for "civilization"?
 
Technology, urbanization, and lifestyle more advanced than Gaul prior to its conquest by Romans.

Thats ASB. No questions asked impossible. Overtime those states are going to modernise and become more "civilized" by your definition. It was already happening when Rome conquered Gaul and the process of state development won't just go away.
 
Thats ASB. No questions asked impossible. Overtime those states are going to modernise and become more "civilized" by your definition. It was already happening when Rome conquered Gaul and the process of state development won't just go away.
What about a plague that spreads into Gaul and southern Germania before those areas become part of Rome?
 

PhilippeO

Banned
Non invention of heavy plough ?

failed domestication of rye and other winter wheat ?

little ice age start from 500 AD ?
 
Thats ASB. No questions asked impossible. Overtime those states are going to modernise and become more "civilized" by your definition. It was already happening when Rome conquered Gaul and the process of state development won't just go away.

Even with something like the Dark Ages, which was . . . disruptive, things were rebuilt to and then past the point late Gaul - heck, Italy in the same period - could dream of.

And "the Dark Ages last longer" would require northerners (from the Mediterranean perspective) being frickin' idiots or savages of the deliberately eschewing "civilization" sort - and you only find those in some fantasy settings.

I'm not saying you couldn't have individual areas be more disrupted, but the forces pushing for rebuilding and improving from "level with" are immensely strong.

Defining, for those concerned, the Dark Ages as 500-8/900 AD - the period before the High Middle Ages and overlapping with Late Antiquity.

"The period the 'barbarian' kingdoms were being built and tested by the forces at work." We can argue all day on how dark it was, but the point is that only if you continue that period of 'state' building resting on such precarious foundations as an individual king's charisma - not even tradition, just his personal presence - are you anywhere near shaken up enough to not move on.
 
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Keep Europe 'barbarian' from the Mediterranean/Eastern perspective for the longest time possible.

State-building in any culture is an inevitability. Gaul was in the process of urbanization long before Rome came a knocking. In fact, some of Rome's technologies (such as metallurgical techniques and manufacture) were borrowed from the Celts. However "tribal" the Celts were, they were not lacking in civilization and had ample contact with Mediterranean cultures who we're often conditioned to regard as more advanced. The Celtic regions of pre-Roman Europe had an established network of roads, like you do when you have wheeled transports, which facilitated trade. Regardless if Europe is controlled by military means by a single centralized state, or through the softer hand of a certain material culture, the "Barbarian" perspective is never going to stick around forever.
 
Maybe a better tack would be to keep Europe predominantly non-Classical culturally-reduced use of latinate languages, Greco-Roman literature being heavily intermixed with local literature or usually read as a translation into the local non-Romance dialect, less artistic and architectural reliance on classical forms(albeit at fifth remove), fewer efforts to claim political authority as stemming from the Roman Empire in one form or another, and so on and so forth. They could still develop, but would still be seen as "outsiders" from a classical perspective.
 
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