Climate of Europe Without the Alps?

MNP

Assume the Alps are defined as in the wiki-article.

So I was reading something the other day that said that the Alps contributed in the long run to Italian identity because of the barrier they presented to other powers successfully controlling the peninsula. So I wondered what if there were no Alps? Now obviously this probably butterflies away the evolution of humans but what would the climate be like without them? Drier north Italian plains? Warmer somewhat wetter southern Germany?
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Do we have FAQs on this board somewhere we can point newbies to?


from a different thread said:
In particular, the chances of any particular sperm hitting an egg is miniscule, and pretty darn random.

Just 'replaying' the universe with NO changes will start getting different people pretty soon. After a PoD, you will very quickly get 'new' people. Cultural changes (absent a Great Man), are not going to happen much on the far side of the world until people/ideas start moving around, but immediately after the PoD, different sperm start hitting eggs, and your people are different. If your PoD is in Australia (pre-contact), Europeans will start being conceived with different genders, e.g., within seconds. If 'Charlemagne' is born as Charlotte, she won't be great, and history will be hugely different - even if there's no chance of cultural diffusion from Australia at that point (which there wouldn't be).

So, ya. Within months or years, you pretty much have to assume that EVERY person conceived is a different person in the ATL than they would have been in OTL.

With significant national changes, you're going to get people moving around in different ways, and that will make other changes.



So, ya, ANY change in the 1300s is going to mean no Nazi party and no Hitler.
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General Greene

Look, I don't know very much about ancient human evolution, but as a long time lurker I am quite familiar with the butterfly effect. The problem is I don't think that it is all powerful. Butterflies have to make sense, while I'm aware of how random fertilization is, It is ridiculous to assume that a POD in a place with no contact with another is going to create such massive change. There is nothing to bases to that assumption, and so you have to assume (only in general, small deviances are to be expected, and the more chaotic the environment around the POD the less this is true), that unaffected areas seeing no change remain how they were OTL until the butterflies catch up with them when ripples of indirect influence finally reach them. If Europe is destroyed by the Mongols, there are no connections to assume that that the history of South America will be any different up to 1492, unless a wandering band of refugees wind up in the Americas. Since the Alps has no influence on the biological development of Central and Eastern Africa, while it could lead to an absence of humans due to factors not perceived, it is highly improbable. Humans would still adapt to the environment in Africa, but I asked in case MNP was basing it off of some knowledge of environmental or biological history that I was ignorant of.
 

The Doctor

@ General Greene: The change to Europe will have weather changes....No Alps=different World Weather!=Differences in Africa....
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Moreover, no Alps means that Africa isn't moving into Europe, and hasn't been for 10s of millions of years. E.g. no Mediterranean Sea.

That's going to be HUGE.
 

stevep

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
Moreover, no Alps means that Africa isn't moving into Europe, and hasn't been for 10s of millions of years. E.g. no Mediterranean Sea.

That's going to be HUGE.
Click to expand...

Dathi

I was thinking along similar lines. Why the Alps aren't forming is going to be very important. If Africa isn't moving north, or possibly Europe is moving north too fast for them to be formed, that will have dramatic effects. Although surely if Africa isn't crashing into Europe that will mean the Med is larger - albeit as an arm of the Atlantic, or possibly a link between it and the Indian Ocean?

Steve
 

MNP

stevep said:
Dathi

I was thinking along similar lines. Why the Alps aren't forming is going to be very important. If Africa isn't moving north, or possibly Europe is moving north too fast for them to be formed, that will have dramatic effects. Although surely if Africa isn't crashing into Europe that will mean the Med is larger - albeit as an arm of the Atlantic, or possibly a link between it and the Indian Ocean?

Steve
Click to expand...
Hmm, a combination. Europe moving north faster, Africa moving north slower, and you can still have a "rough" country there, hilly with some elevation but nothing you can call a mountain.
 

General Greene

See this is what I was asking for, instead of looking at it from the point of view of the alps just aren't there like I was, and saying what would have to happen to prevent them from being created, leads you to thinking about changes in plate tectonics. I can now easily see how that could lead to all sorts of geologic, and as a result biological, changes. I should have thought about that, but my knowledge of pre-human history being where it is, I took the easy way out and asked others to provide answers for me.

I can understand your frustration when you think you are dealing with ignorant noobs Dathi THorfinnsson, but there is no reason to make needlessly condescending side comments. If I had been genuinely ignorant of the butterfly effect the explanation in the rest of the post, perhaps with an actual mention of the phrase would have been enough.
 

MNP

General Greene said:
See this is what I was asking for, instead of looking at it from the point of view of the alps just aren't there like I was, and saying what would have to happen to prevent them from being created, leads you to thinking about changes in plate tectonics. I can now easily see how that could lead to all sorts of geologic, and as a result biological, changes. I should have thought about that, but my knowledge of pre-human history being where it is, I took the easy way out and asked others to provide answers for me.

I can understand your frustration when you think you are dealing with ignorant noobs Dathi THorfinnsson, but there is no reason to make needlessly condescending side comments. If I had been genuinely ignorant of the butterfly effect the explanation in the rest of the post, perhaps with an actual mention of the phrase would have been enough.
Click to expand...
I should have made myself more clear that I meant Alps never formed and all the attendant results and causes. Removing the Alps and leaving everything else the exact same should properly go in ASB but I think that would also be an interesting question!
 
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