Would a more powerful, industrialized China work, given they originated rocketry.
Sure. Achaemenid Persia could not expand into Egypt or Lydia, and rather it goes maritime. Egypt seeks access to that trade by expanding southward into modern Djibouti. The competition for trade, and access to different geographical centers of learning could facilitate the development of higher technology.Egypt, anyone?
I set the POD in pre-history to provide for the earliest development of agriculture.
I was well aware of that hence my question wasn't what civs would develop but how fast could they develop to reach the objective I set in the original post.You could have a terrestrial civilisation or civilisations with a POD which as no resemblance whatsoever to anything in the modern era. Pretty much every single extant culture or language will have been utterly butterflied. Hell, the cultures and languages, the civilizations of as far back as 3000 to 5000 years ago will be potentially thoroughly butterflied to the point that nothing is recognisable. At best, you'd have loose analogues of extant civilisations emerging in places like New Guineau, the Yellow River, the Indus, Guatemala, the Andes, the Mississippi, the Niger, the Congo, Mespotamia, the Nilel, the Abyssinian Highlands, the Amazon, or completely new civilisations without analogues.
I was well aware of that hence my question wasn't what civs would develop but how fast could they develop to reach the objective I set in the original post.
After the flood, God commands Noah to build a ship to reach the heavens, even if it takes a thousand generations to do so.
After the flood, God commands Noah to build a ship to reach the heavens, even if it takes a thousand generations to do so.