Asian Tsetse Fly

WI the tsetse fly was present in tropical regions of Asia, with a similar effect of spreading sleeping sickness among human and animal populations? More than any other single factor, IMO, tsetse and sleeping sickness are to blame for the lack of large urbanised civilizations in subSaharan Africa. With comparatively low populations ravaged by the sickness, and the disease ravaging livestock, many of Africa's most promising and fertile regions were never able to be properly utilised for most of human history.

What happens if we extend those same effects to Asia? A deep time PoD where the tsetse was present in Asia from prehistory would change everything to such an extent as it would be difficult to say what would happen. Perhaps human penetration of southern India and southeast Asia would be slower, with no humans reaching Australia and the Pacific? Too broad, I think.

How about, somehow or other, the tsetse spreads throughout southeast Asia within human history? I'm not sure how to bring this about, but how about the Malays? Could they somehow introduce the fly and the host of African trypanosomiases to Asia between 200 and 500 AD? That leaves enough of real history for us to play around with.
 
I found the writeup I did for this idea, I might as well post it since there's been some tsetse-related discussion recently.

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This world has a prehistoric PoD that cannot be precisely determined, as it likely precedes the rise of humanity. In this world, a species very similar to the African tsetse fly is endemic to tropical Asia, particularly the East Indies and parts of southern India. This has had a retardant effect on the development of human civilization in those regions, and has had the larger effect of retarding global human development in general across the entire world.

Names of regions and countries are given for description only, they do not reflect the terminology of the world itself. Most everything is highly divergent from OTL, though there were a number of historical parallels. Languages are completely different from those of OTL, though there have been some developmental parallels (something similar to the Indo-European language group exists, for example, and East Asian languages use a character system unlike the alphabetic west). There was no Dharmic tradition on this world, Abrahamic-style monotheisms hold sway from Iberia to Burma, though East Asia has its own tradition that can be perhaps compared with a highly legalistic Taoism. Holy War is a constant distraction from trade and economic activity in the Middle East and southeastern Europe.

The inhabited parts of Southeast Asia are animist, of primarily Negrito descent, and most people live in small groups. The disease-ridden islands and peninsulas are avoided by the settled peoples of China and northern India. Humanity never reached Australia in this timeline, and there are no equivalents to the Polynesian or Melanesian maritime explorers. Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands are devoid of human life (though marsupial megafauna still thrives in Australia, as do giant eagles and moa in New Zealand). Madagascar was colonised exclusively by the expanding Bantu peoples, there are no Malagasy.

The Indian Ocean trade system does exist in a sense, but it was much less developed than in OTL, and largely consists of trade between Egypt and northern India, facilitated by middlemen in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula. The overland trade routes are also much more important in this world, Europe trading with China via through Central Asia. Europeans did circumnavigate Africa on this world, but much reduced profit margins that could be made by trading with India made the Middle Eastern and Red Sea routes far more profitable. Western European outposts on the coast of India are either disease-ridden or under the auspices of local rulers, and they face attack from trading rivals with less logistical problems. Trading with East Asia is difficult, as it requires navigation through the pestilent South East Asian islands, or a long voyage across the Pacific. And here too, local rivals exist.

Unlike OTL, classical slavery is practiced in India, for similar reasons for it's existence in OTL Africa. Something akin to modern racism based on skin colour developed much earlier in this world, as sub-Saharan Africans, southern Indian Dravidians and Southeast Asian Negritos are all trapped by the effects of endemic disease in small, relative primitive communities, and are largely a source of slaves for paler northern peoples. Japanese and Korean slave traders are active in what we would call the Philippines, which form a trade vector for Negrito slaves to be exported to northern Asia.

What we would call southern China is occupied by vassal states: though a centralised Han empire arose as OTL, there was a higher population of non-Han peoples to the south. From the establishing dynasty onwards, these states were made into vassals in lieu of assimilating them. China, though historically even more isolated than in our timeline, currently resembles the OTL Tang dynasty, with a greater interest and power reach overland into Central Asia, though this threatened by a rising Slavic threat in Siberia (who unlike most of the Central Asians, are armed with firearms as the Chinese are). The Chinese have an even greater distaste for oceanic travel and strange foreigners in boats than in OTL, and most trade with the West is done through vassal states. The states of southern China are somewhat more navally oriented, and have been trading with India for millennia, so they are little impressed by European or Middle Eastern interlopers.

Africa is largely similar to OTL, though the Bushmen people are now largely extinct and a number of Bantu Monomotapa-type kingdoms have risen to glory in South Africa, trading along the occasionally perilous coast with Egypt or Europe for exotic foreign goods and fighting amongst themselves. Too far south to be affected by African tsetse, they are developing a solid civilisation there. Europeans had a period of rule over some of this region, but that era has largely passed. The taxes enforced by the local rulers are part of the reason that the African route to the East has largely been abandoned by Europeans.

The New World is known about, vaguely, in Europe and North Africa but is mainly being exploited by fishermen and a few missionaries (more attention is being paid to conquering Iceland from it's Inuit inhabitants, though what profit the Scotland-based would-be conquerers expect to get from this venture is anyone's guess). There are several small colonies trading in wood and furs on the coast of what we would call Canada, but their influence is limited and they have yet to contact the settled cultures of North America, which are solidly in the bronze age and fully recovered from the Eurasian plagues that arrived several centuries earlier.

The most important and oldest colonies are in what we would call Argentina, built largely as an alternative route to the East once the Southern Africans started to regroup. This region was colonized by cautious Moroccans, and was slow enough to allow the local inhabitants to recover from Eurasian diseases and adapt to their style of warfare, which has made expansion into the interior somewhat more difficult (and largely not worth the cost as long as the savages don't attack the port settlements). There is some trade contact with the Andes, increasing of late, and the Andeans, having purchased compasses and navigational tips from the Western traders, are beginning to expand across the eastern Pacific. The Columbian exchange is as yet incomplete, through most Eurasian diseases are fully established in the New World and potatoes and tobacco are now available in the markets of North Africa and Iberia.

European ship-building is becoming reasonably advanced, and analogues to caravels are now allowing the Europeans to explore further and further afield, though they lack a sense of purpose in the absence of a Spice Trade. There was no Zheng He in this world, but there have been several Chinese (and one Japanese) equivalents of Marco Polo, and knowledge of the West is much greater than in OTL China of the same developmental period. Southern Chinese and Middle Eastern trade rivals field powerful navies, and Europe doesn't have much of a lead technically. As it is, Europe is dealing with a new wave of barbarian invaders, pushed out of Central Asia by the Chinese and migrating south of the powerful Slav state and through Ukraine into Europe. With the technical edge slightly on Europe's side (thanks to firearms), this would be fine if the Central Asians didn't adhere to the same monotheism as a number of western European states, who have intervened in opportunistic attacks against the eastern kingdoms.

Mathematics is highly retarded on this world, as the concept of the number zero was unknown until formulated by the Chinese in the 14th century, and has not been entirely accepted in the West (though interestingly, it is known among the Mesoamerican and Andean peoples of the Americas). Algebra has only recently been formulated by mathematicians in Syria. Science and technology for much of Eurasia are vaguely at the level of OTL in the 15th century, and the no one region of the world has much of a technical lead over any other.
 
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Heya thanks for posting that. I was wondering what year you were writing of until I realised... oh, it's a terrible present-day. I should have been more conscious knowing so much of the world had been ruined for habitation and industry but I suppose I didn't realise the kind of destructive butterflies that could spread from that!

It sounds like a good fantasy setting too with all those savage lands.
 
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Very interesting!

Africa is largely similar to OTL, though the Bushmen people are now largely extinct and a number of Bantu Monomotapa-type kingdoms have risen to glory in South Africa, trading along the occasionally perilous coast with Egypt or Europe for exotic foreign goods and fighting amongst themselves. Too far south to be affected by African tsetse, they are developing a solid civilisation there. Europeans had a period of rule over some of this region, but that era has largely passed. The taxes enforced by the local rulers are part of the reason that the African route to the East has largely been abandoned by Europeans.

If there's been an European presence, now gone, this may have given Southern Africans the knowledge of European crops, domesticable animals and argarians tecniques, which they might have employed extensively in their region
 
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