AHC: Make the Bronze Age Collapse even worse

No. Copper was locally plentiful for many human population centers, and suffices to maintain metalworking.
What about the possibility of a worse Collapse leading to the first contact between the Americas and Eurasia being less lopsided in favor of the Eurasian civilization making first contact?
 
What about the possibility of a worse Collapse leading to the first contact between the Americas and Eurasia being less lopsided in favor of the Eurasian civilization making first contact?
Not horribly likely. A natural disaster on a scale to truly destroy set eurasian civilization back a thousand years is going to affect the americas too. The empires that were being formed in the americas by the time of the columbian exchange still had expansion potential throughout the americas and very little internal pressure to find and settle new worlds. It's not obvious how that would be butterflied in a positive direction - eurasian populations being subsequently lower for instance would probably make global temperatures cooler with attendant crop yield issues.
 
Not horribly likely. A natural disaster on a scale to truly destroy set eurasian civilization back a thousand years is going to affect the americas too. The empires that were being formed in the americas by the time of the columbian exchange still had expansion potential throughout the americas and very little internal pressure to find and settle new worlds. It's not obvious how that would be butterflied in a positive direction - eurasian populations being subsequently lower for instance would probably make global temperatures cooler with attendant crop yield issues.
Well, what I was thinking with that was that conquering them would be less of a curbstomp for the Eurasians making first contact and colonizing the place
 
Epidemic disease in the old world is almost assuredly going to develop at a faster clip than in the new world. That's the deciding factor really.
 
Have the Scythians or Cimmerians invent the stirrup and composite bows simultaneously, adding a nomadic invasion to the mix. By coincidence they have an "ideology" more like the Dorians than to the Hyksos, Kassites or similar.

Invading the Hittites, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, the Scythians kill off the priests and literate classes in those civilizations and terminate contemporary literacy. Egyptian hieroglyphic script, and Mesopotamian cuneiform, are both forgotten. A new script is invented and the old scripts are indecipherable until linguistics or cryptography are invented. When the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Anatolians take control again over time, a lot of specialized knowledge that would have been carried into the Iron Age is, for at least a few centuries, lost.
 
Last edited:
Have the Scythians or Cimmerians invent the stirrup and composite bows simultaneously, adding a nomadic invasion to the mix. By coincidence they have an "ideology" more like the Dorians than to the Hyksos, Kassites or similar.

Invading the Hittites, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, the Scythians kill off the priests and literate classes in those civilizations and terminate contemporary literacy. Egyptian hieroglyphic script, and Mesopotamian cuneiform, are both forgotten. A new script is invented and the old scripts are indecipherable until linguistics or cryptography are invented. When the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Anatolians take control again over time, a lot of specialized knowledge that would have been carried into the Iron Age is, for at least a few centuries, lost.
For good measure, maybe have the Scythian and Cimmerian languages displace the pre-Invasion languages as well?
 
For good measure, maybe have the Scythian and Cimmerian languages displace the pre-Invasion languages as well?
Probably not possible since Mesopotamia and Egypt had large populations (for that time period), but that would be one more thing to sever the Iron Age civilizations from their predecessors in the Bronze Age.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Wasn't the Collapse already worst case possible. It seems to have been loads of really bad things just happening at the same time such as earthquakes, drought, diseases, starvation, as well as invading peoples arriving and rebellions breaking out, and yes, of course some of this is dependent on the other. But as I said, the Bronze Age collpase to me just already seem like the worst possibly case when everything just start to wrong at once.
 
We're also finding it was more widespread than we though. Remains of a Homeric size battle where the Danish-German border is today. Professional warriors from all over southern Europe, thousands of skeletons.

I'm curious about this, where can I find more about it?
 
Top