Alternate Ethnic/Linguistic Groups

Khoi-Sard: I once read on an old National Geographic map about the Sards. It said that sardonic laughter came from the way that they shot you with their poisoned arrows. The Khoi use poisoned arrows, and their speech would sound like laughter to other Europeans. As the Khoi are short pepole, the Sardinians are the shortest and darkest native Europeans. and some of their place names sound like they could be derived from clicks. You would need to have Carthage control the island for a longer time.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
In an ATL where the Bantu migration/expansion goes another other way than it did in OTL, other ethnic groups could well remain numerically dominant in larger parts of eastern Africa.

The exact way in which things would be different is hard to say, however. The subject is a bit controversial, even, because it is very uncertain which ethnic groups actually lived there in the pre-Bantu period. Ethnic and linguastic divisions do not match up, so - in any case depending on the region - would these be people related to the Afroasiatic speakers, or to the Nilo-Saharan peoples, or to both...? It remains a point of discussion among experts. (I mean, southern Mozambique and areas west of there were pretty much certainly inhabited by peoples related to the Khoi and the San, but north of there, it gets more uncertain. Who were the inhabitants of "Azania" - which seems to have meant the shores of OTL Kenya and Tanzania - that ancient Greeks traded with?)

But this scenario certainly would mean a different ethnic composition for pretty much all OTL Bantu-inhabited areas of Africa east of the Great Rift Valley.
 
What is the potential of alternate colonisations of America? Could the Asian or Muslim worlds split up America with he Europeans, or even beat Europe there entirely?
 
What is the potential of alternate colonisations of America? Could the Asian or Muslim worlds split up America with he Europeans, or even beat Europe there entirely?

Asians colonising from the West Coast could create a ton of new ethnic groups amongst the indigenous people, much the same way colonisation OTL created tribal groups that certainly did not exist before Europeans showed up.

Ploynesian America maybe?

Only if they got to California, since Mesoamerica and the Andes are too populated for the Polynesians to settle effectively and create a new ethnic group. California is still difficult to do (for reasons other than the colossal distance), but still much more plausible than the other places they could get to.
 
What about the Balearic Islands? Without Islam, they might not have been conquered and probably continued to speak a Romance language which I suspect would have been akin to Sardinian, helping to establish a Balearic ethnic group in whatever comes after.

I thought about the pre-Arab population.

Which were probably Punic speakers, or if not, then people who would've spoke a language comparable to Late Antiquity Sicilian Latin. I'm leaning in favour of Punic speakers, considering how the Punic language expanded under Roman rule. The island at one point probably had non-Punic speakers, who might've either spoken an Indo-European language or might not have (akin to Sicily), but by the time the Romans took control, that language was dead, or if wasn't dead by then, it was dead within a century or two in favour of Punic.

Especially the way they dress: a variant of Hanfu with some minor modifications.
(and they could be the best possible alternative to JPop and KPop in Europe and the Americas. ;) )

Tocharians seem to me more like Indian or Persians, which they'd probably resemble appearance-wise until Turkic and Chinese influences dominated them. Not quite like actual (East) Asians, and it would take the influx of Asian genes which occured around the time they were assimilated by the Uyghurs to even make them look Asian. But I'd love to hear Tocharian-language music, especially if it's as catchy and energetic as J-pop. I kinda wish someone would record that now, now that I think of it. Evidently the Chinese did find Tocharian women beautiful, IIRC, so...well...
 
I think you're confusing ethnicity and race. Bosniaks and Serbians are pretty much the same people genetically speaking, but they are certainly not the same ethnic group.
Oh my no! Bosnia KS, Serbian, and Croats are all one ethnicity. A different religion does not make a different ethnic group. You are confusing nationality with ethnicity.
 
Please understand the difference between ethnicity and nationality. Many of the examples here (Bowers for example) are examples of nationality groups and not ethnic. Ethnogenesis requires distinct geneticly determined differences (skin color, facial features, body structure), not cultural/linguistic/religious. Metis and Hispanics are two good examples of ethnogenesis, intermarriage between two racial groups. Boers are just white people. Mormons possibly long shot due to inbreeding and lack out outsiders coming in, similar to Jews becoming an ethnic group of the Semetic race. Stereotype of blonde hair shows a start in that direction. But they became highly proselytizing and have "fresh blood" coming in constantly.
Boers/ Afrikaners have their own language, Afrikaans, that is distinct from its Dutch ancestor to the point that Afrikaans speakers can't understand Dutch speakers. They aren't just "white people". Genetics don't decide ethnicity, culture and language does. Hispanics are a big pan-ethnicity that isn't based on "race" or phenotypes as being Hispanic just means Spanish speaking , which is why pale Spaniards and Argentines are considered Hispanic just like dark skinned Guatemalans and Afro Cubans. Basically, ethnicity is what cultural/linguistic group one comes from, while nationality is what nation- state one comes from. Nothing to do with "race" or phenotypes.
Oh my no! Bosnia KS, Serbian, and Croats are all one ethnicity. A different religion does not make a different ethnic group. You are confusing nationality with ethnicity.
No they're not.
 
What about the Balearic Islands? Without Islam, they might not have been conquered and probably continued to speak a Romance language which I suspect would have been akin to Sardinian, helping to establish a Balearic ethnic group in whatever comes after.

Alternatively, they could have been snatched by one of the Italian maritime republics just before the Aragonese did, and dealt with differently.

Madagascar could have been colonized from Southern India instead of Borneo (which despite being the OTL event is the more unlikely one and runs against dominant winds and currents in the Indian Ocean).

Melanesians could have expanded over Polynesia before Polynesians did.

Before the expulsion of the Moriscos, there were suggestions to send them to "Guinea" and "Cod Island" (Newfoundland).
 
Madagascar could have been colonized from Southern India instead of Borneo (which despite being the OTL event is the more unlikely one and runs against dominant winds and currents in the Indian Ocean).

Yeah, couldn't the Malagasy been spawned from a different Indonesian group, or as you said, the Indians. Which that might be interesting in the long run, since if it were settled around the same time as OTL, that would be after Buddhism and Hinduism influenced South India. Tamil nationalists would probably love it and promote crank theories about it.

Also, don't forget the islands surrounding Madagascar. The Seychelles, Reunion, Mauritius, etc. all could've been settled by various groups that would've created a unique ethnic group. Really, OTL, they could've had been settled by the Malagasy and produced a separate yet related group (more separate than the Malagasy subgroups). Though if they didn't have much contact with the outside world, epidemics would decimate them and they'd end up merged into the mixed population imported by European colonialists. Also, the Arabs might raid the islands for slaves, since the Arabs did know about those islands. Incidentally, an Arab group living on those islands would be another example of a potential ethnic group.

I've been a huge fan of more Polynesian groups--the Juan Fernandez Islands, Galapagos, and Cocos Island (in Costa Rica) all could've have unique Polynesian groups, likely most closely related to the Rapa Nui linguistically. The sheer size of Galapagos could make it like a second Hawaii, albeit heavily dependent on rainwater from the rainier parts of the islands which would keep the population down (and influence culture/political development in very interesting ways, no doubt).

I could go on with this--if you have an uninhabited remote land, once you get far enough back in history, any human settlement of that land will create a separate and unique ethnic group. There's so many islands which were uninhabited until Europeans colonised them which could fit this role.
 
A couple of ideas:

A "Cisalpine" language and nation encompassing OTL's Gallo-Italic region (Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia and Romagna); a surviving Lombard kingdom or a more successful Milanese conquest of northern Italy could've led to such a thing, even though the region as a whole would've almost certainly been called Lombardy.

Fully Romance-speaking Alps, due to the Germanic conquerors assimilating into the Latin population; bigger Franco-Provençal language area and Rhaeto-Romance dialects from central Switzerland to central Slovenia and from central Austria to Tyrol.
 
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