AHC: Other ethnicities "survive" like the Jewish people

The religion was the key really. Most other ethnicities didn't have true religions in the modern sense of the word. The gods were just entities that they believed were there.
To the Jews however their religion was everything. It was central to their being who they are.
Leave things without religion and people will be inclined to think logically- why should I stick to my ancestral beliefs and all that silly stuff when I can just move to the city, learn that other language and have a nice life? With a religion they're given a reason to stick to things.

The Roma as an interesting and notable exception.
 
Communities in India and Central Asia claiming direct heritage from Alexander's empire would be interesting to see,
We already have that OTL (though their claims have been recently refuted by DNA testing).
The religion was the key really. Most other ethnicities didn't have true religions in the modern sense of the word. The gods were just entities that they believed were there.
To the Jews however their religion was everything. It was central to their being who they are.
Leave things without religion and people will be inclined to think logically- why should I stick to my ancestral beliefs and all that silly stuff when I can just move to the city, learn that other language and have a nice life? With a religion they're given a reason to stick to things.
The previously-mentioned Circassians used to have their own ethnic religion. But any POD whereby they get to keep their own religion likely generates too many butterflies to discuss the effects on the diaspora (Circassian religion started being erroded in 6th century according to wiki while the conquest & expulsion of Circassians occured in 19th century).
 
Other examples in ATLs might be the Basques and Pictish (both have non-Indoeuropean languages)

The Picts more than likely spoke a Brythonic language. So aside from some more loan words and matriarchal descent from their Pre-Indo European speaking days, what largely made them appear to be different than other Celts was they weren't conquered by Rome.

various nomad groups from central Asia,and Native American nations.

These groups are still around.


Also, what anout the Republic of Lakotah for the Sioux? Except, that is based in South Dakota and not the Sioux homeland of Minnesota...

The Sioux aren't one tribe, but several alliances of tribes that are comprised of several dialects. The speakers of the Lakota and Nakota dialects had moved into the plains during the 18th century, which has become their effective homeland; while the Dakota speakers were the ones living in southern Minnesota. Only the western portion of Minnesota is plains; it's largely a forested state not too different than Wisconsin.

These tribes are part of a greater language family that once inhabited much of the east coast, and were probably part of the Mississipian cultures. They had been moving west since its collapse.
 
The Jewish population has managed to survive and even prosper after the destruction of its culture and nation by the Roman Empire,
Jewish culture was never completely destroyed. The State and territory was lost, but the nation (in the vague "Red Sox Nation" sense) survived.
leading to them to reclaim the area of Jordan-Palestine where Israel is now. Is such a scenario possible for other ethnicities, where they are sent to exile and are scattered far and wide but successfully survive the tides of time to prosper? POD is 0AD.

There were certainly groups that have lost their original territory... there were the Celts, the Hungarians, the Phoenicians...
The Romans did something similar in their move to Byzantium, but they essentially skipped the 'widespread diaspora' phase.

The people who seem like the best fit for the premise are those displaced by the African Diaspora. Liberia and most of the Caribbean would both fit the title, then. What's missing from the story is an overwhelming population hole being filled by a significantly different culture-- the toll from the slave trade was spread too thin across the Subsaharan coast. (It also needs a bigger success story.)
I suppose if the source of the Atlantic and Arab slave trades had been localized or targeted at a single population, it could have been much more like the Israel case. Perhaps a stronger Kingdom of Kongo opposing the Portuguese, and either winning the struggle so they the Portuguese had to resort to just picking off slaves from the Ivory Coast, or more accurately, the Portuguese invading Kongo and specifically deporting its population as slaves in petty retaliation. American/Brazillian/Caribbean slaves would have been mostly Kongolese in ancestry, so an alternate version of Liberia being created in the Congo would have been more like the Israel story.
 
Another OTL group that could serve as diaspora people without a country would be the Garifuna. They are an Afro-Native group that speak a language close to one of the Taino ones. The British forced them from the islands and into Central America. They can be found in Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras (maybe Nicaragua too, but I'm not sure). Of course there's Garifuna that have immigrated to other countries to, like Mexico, the States, and Canada.
 
The Romans did something similar in their move to Byzantium, but they essentially skipped the 'widespread diaspora' phase.

They sort-of had the diaspora. One of the autonyms that Greek-speakers in the Balkans used for themselves in pre-modern times related to the Romans, I believe, and there were communities of Latin-speaking descendants concentrated (Wallachians/Romanians/Moldavians) and scattered (Vlachs/Aromanians) throughout Eastern Europe.
 
How about an Afrikaner disapora? One could easily imagine an altenate history in which the overthrow of apartheid did not occur peacefully, leading to the Afrikaners fleeing the nation. Afrikaners have a distinctive language, a very distinctive culture, and strong conservative religious identity, and perhaps have the economic wherewithal to maintain a distinct identity wherever they go.
 

jahenders

Banned
I agree. There aren't many peoples that have retained a significant portion of their original identity to really reconstitute. For example, there are certainly descendents of the picts, but most of them are also descendents of celts, brits, etc., weren't raised as Picts, wouldn't necessarily ID themselves as Picts, they don't speak Pictish, follow Pictish religions, etc.

Really, the most likely today would be groups that were much more recently absorbed/displaced such as some of the Native American nations or African tribes. For instance, some (very few) Hawaiian natives talk about becoming a separate nation.

Well, they're descended from ancient Assyrians, but since they don't worship the Anunnaki, don't speak Akkadian, and don't have awesome, overly long and vaguely evil-sounding names, I don't think they can qualify as "one of the best examples". :p
 
I'd like to see the Gothic people survive until the modern day. It's interesting how many things in pop culture, fashion, and architecture are named after them.
 
Slightly off topic, but living in Houston, where each one of my colleagues has at less one grandparent from Louisiana (Even before Katrina), I would like to explore an alternative USA where the Louisiana French spread out as a minority all over the states, but kept their language and culture, may be even their mix of Catholicism and voodoo religion. I think it would be cool for every city to have its own French quarter and its own French-language newspaper/news channel.

So as a thought experiment, what should have happened before and after the Louisiana Purchase to have a diaspora of French speaking orthodox Cayuns all over the US, possibly all over the Americas or all over the world?

Question II: Could something likewise happen to the German, Scandinavian or Chinese immigrants.

Question III: What about the African American communities? Or the native American Lacota or Iroquois?
 
oops, and with that I forgot the prime candidate for a diaspora ethniticy: The Mormons. What would need to happen -or should have happened- for the Mormons to become a diaspora culture like the Jews?
 
For an ethinic diaspora to prosper and survive, it needs an advantage. Ancient Greek civilization survived because it invented the scientific method and had writing skills. Ancient Romans routinely hired Greek scholars and doctors.Jews has a similar academic tradition and since their tradition was based on a book, better-educated Jews could read and write. This is in a world where most people were illiterate before Guttenberg.
Greek and Jewish doctors were well-respected during the Dark Ages and were trusted to treat royal households in a variety of countries.
Greeks and Jews also developed mathematical skills many centuries before other cultures, which made them valuable as accountants.
 
Slightly off topic, but living in Houston, where each one of my colleagues has at less one grandparent from Louisiana (Even before Katrina), I would like to explore an alternative USA where the Louisiana French spread out as a minority all over the states, but kept their language and culture, may be even their mix of Catholicism and voodoo religion. I think it would be cool for every city to have its own French quarter and its own French-language newspaper/news channel.

So as a thought experiment, what should have happened before and after the Louisiana Purchase to have a diaspora of French speaking orthodox Cayuns all over the US, possibly all over the Americas or all over the world?

The problem there is that the Cajuns aren't numerous enough. They survived in Louisiana because they were so concentrated there.

Actually, there were in fact small pockets of French settlers all over North America since the time of the French colonial empire, and many surnames of local people and placenames in the Midwest stand testament to this French ancestry (Terre Haute, Indiana, for example). There was even a local Midwestern dialect of French, Missouri French, spoken until recently, but most French descendants assimilated fairly quickly. In Canad, they intermarried with indigenous people and Scots to bring about the Metis culture.
 

jahenders

Banned
In a way they did -- they fled mob attacks in several states and government-sanctioned murder in another and fled across the desolate West before forming their own territorial government and eventually a (somewhat religiously neutered) state.

To make it more parallel to the Jews, they might have faced more severe persecution, lost more of their leadership, and scattered in smaller groups after the mob violence in Illinois. Then, years later some key leaders emerge and work to re-assemble them and form a place where they could be safe. Depending on timing, that might put them in Utah or thereabouts or they could form a single colony in California, Mexico, or Canada.

oops, and with that I forgot the prime candidate for a diaspora ethniticy: The Mormons. What would need to happen -or should have happened- for the Mormons to become a diaspora culture like the Jews?
 
too many schools of Gnosticism, along with a tendency towards the esoteric and personal as opposed to the community.

on the other hand, what about the Manichaeans?

On the contrary, Gnosticism has survived in the Mandaean faith, now largely in the West and Australia due to them fleeing Saddam. The esoteric aspects are considered a matter for the priests by the laity, which is probably how all the gnostic communities were before being butchered by Christians.
 
Top