Diversity Maximized World Map | Atlas Altera

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Explanation
  • Index
    • Telamon Tabulicus

    Telamon Tabulicus

    Hi all,

    I've been lurking around in this forum for years but I never felt like I fit in. Though I'm quite interested in history, my other interests are a little different. Over the years, I've been quietly working away at my own alternate history project, which I call Atlas Altera. Now that I'm putting my hobby out into the open, I thought I might see if there are people here who would appreciate what I've been doing.
    *Balkanization Trigger Warning*​

    Main_Framed_xsml.jpg
    www.atlasaltera.com

    As you would call it on this forum, my world is full of ASBs. In my project, I have tried to respect the general historical trends and the logic in the motions of history, and I do stop to ponder butterflies, but all of those considerations are of less importance to me when using alternate history as a creative device to maximize linguistic and cultural diversity represented through political territories. What I'm after is overlaying the diversity of OTL nations, languages, and peoples that have survived to the present day with the status quo of privileging the nation-state in international relations beginning in the early modern period. The point is to see in every major turning point in history, if there was a way to minimize the ramifications and to make the losers lose less so that more make into onto the world map...

    In a way, this is a different kind of story. The project has been a way for me to chart my own journey in learning about the world. It's my take on that cliche push pin world map. My method is not meant to be methodically pure, and the way I see it, the main point of alternate history is to create and inspire. I'm not interested in empire building or satisfying any one group's irredentist fantasy.

    mapplate_example.jpg


    I have amassed a huge manuscript (330 pages, which I first started to keep track of my decisions and historical deviations), and multiple excel files for tracking languages, cultural inputs, religion, food staples, and some stats, and I also have printed out my own wall-mountable world map, as well as made a series of other map graphics. My thinking is that I should now produce all of this stuff for people to look through, which is why I started the website. There, I'll be posting map plates (blog posts) every month, I'm also working on discussion videos to accompany each map plate one. If there's enough interest here, I'll also continue posting in the forum as well.

    I'm starting out small. I've got a patreon set up, and I'm working on YouTube. You can view high resolution images on https://telamontabulicus.imgbb.com/albums. I've left plenty of Easter eggs and references, some to things I've come across on this forum.

    If you have any ideas for helping me bring this project to its true potential, let's talk.
     
    Last edited:
  • Index
    • skozik

    skozik

    I've not yet really begun to dive into everything about this world, but my two first impressions are that 1) this is exceptionally well-done and 2) I'm very fond of the big clump of countries whose names end in -guay and whose capitals' names end in -ion.
     
    Telamon Tabulicus

    Telamon Tabulicus

    deleonism said:
    I'm very fond of the big clump of countries whose names end in -guay and whose capitals' names end in -ion.
    Click to expand...
    Yeah, I get really obsessed with etymologies and locative suffixes... I hope to discuss and explain my decisions on the map in future videos, but for now, I'll just say that those toponyms are indicative of a combination of factors: 1) reductions are insulated from grander colonial machinations much longer; 2) a Welser scheme that was redirected from OTL Venezuela to supporting the viability of vicuna and guanaco ranching in the Pampas, as well as creating tobacco and mate plantations adjacent to existing reduction sites; 3) the prestige languages of each of the major reduction sites contributes to being a creolized lingua franca adopted by the peoples brought over by the Welsers, who would have been primarily non-Spanish Catholics coming from the territories of the Holy Roman Empire.
     
    Miranda Brawner

    Miranda Brawner

    The maps look beautiful! I can tell a lot of effort went in to laying out plausible nations, not to mention the outstanding aesthetics. Great work.
     
    Nizam

    Nizam

    Telamon Tabulicus said:
    Hi all,

    I've been lurking around in this forum for years but I never felt like I fit in. Though I'm quite interested in history, my other interests are a little different. Over the years, I've been quietly working away at my own alternate history project, which I call Atlas Altera. Now that I'm putting my hobby out into the open, I thought I might see if there are people here who would appreciate what I've been doing.

    As you would call it on this forum, my world is full of ASBs. In my project, I have tried to respect the general historical trends and the logic in the motions of history, and I do stop to ponder butterflies, but all of those considerations are of less importance to me when using alternate history as a creative device. What I'm after is overlaying the diversity of OTL nations, languages, and peoples that have survived to the present day with the status quo of privileging the nation-state in international relations beginning in the early modern period. The point is to see in every major turning point in history, if there was a way to minimize the ramifications and to make the losers lose less so that more make into onto the world map...

    In a way, this is a different kind of story. The project has been a way for me to chart my own journey in learning about the world. It's my take on that cliche push pin world map. My method is not meant to be methodically pure, and the way I see it, the main point of alternate history is to create and inspire. I'm not interested in empire building or satisfying any one group's irredentist fantasy.

    View attachment 618625

    I have amassed a huge manuscript (330 pages, which I first started to keep track of my decisions and historical deviations), and multiple excel files for tracking languages, cultural inputs, religion, food staples, and some stats, and I also have printed out my own wall-mountable world map, as well as made a series of other map graphics. My thinking is that I should now produce all of this stuff for people to look through, which is why I started the website. There, I'll be posting map plates (blog posts) every month, I'm also working on discussion videos to accompany each map plate one. If there's enough interest here, I'll also continue posting in the forum as well.

    I'm starting out small. I've got a patreon set up, and I'm working on YouTube. You can view high resolution images on https://telamontabulicus.imgbb.com/albums. I've left plenty of Easter eggs and references, some to things I've come across on this forum.

    If you have any ideas for helping me bring this project to its true potential, let's talk.

    View attachment 618628
    Click to expand...

    Incredible!
     
    Further explanation
  • Index
    • Telamon Tabulicus

    Telamon Tabulicus

    To further explain, I basically made it my goal to represent at least one language from every language family currently in existence, or which is being revitalized.

    So on Papua, you'll notice, there's a ton of stuff. It's dense in there, but that's because there are like 800 languages from around 60 or so language families. In contrast, all of Eurasia has probably a score, and adding Africa to that, you'll probably only match that amount on Papua.

    The other point was to try to balance out religious, world-view, and cultural spheres so that there would be a more culturally multipolar world. Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism, for example, find their way as majority religions in many of the cultures of these states (many of which are also secular), but so does Zarathustrianism (OTL Parsis) and indigenous religions.

    Over the years (some ten years I think), this exercise has had a profound impact on me. It's really helped me with understanding what decolonization really means and to discover where my biases lie and how to let them go. It was also heartbreaking to watch, as my project progressed, languages go extinct (i.e. western America, South America, and southern Australia). It also, however, exciting to watch for new knowledges being produced by linguists and anthropologists, with cutting edge papers linking certain languages with others across the globe, as well as re-evaluating established family groupings, or to see new content on Wikipedia or stub articles to be expanded (presumably by academics making available their own work and studies...)
     
  • Index
    • Nizam

    Nizam

    After taking a view of your map and some of your lore, I have a bunch of questions and some criticisms.
    • What are the main POD's (points of divergence) from our world in this map? I can tell that it has a similar overall history but with a bunch of changes.
    • How has the religious distribution of the world changed? What is the state of Christianity and Islam, did they increase or decrease in numbers of adherence. Are there any new religions not present in our world, or perhaps old religions that were revived?
    • How do the smaller countries located in remote areas (mainly the West American native states and the bunch in Indonesia) hold themselves together?
    • Are there any big changes to flora and fauna (judging by the increased amount of islands and lakes)?
    • More of a nitpick, but Urdu (the country with Delhi) is a very strange name for a country.
    • How did the Middle East become the absolute mess that it was in your world?
     
    Telamon Tabulicus

    Telamon Tabulicus

    Nizam said:
    After taking a view of your map and some of your lore, I have a bunch of questions and some criticisms.
    • What are the main POD's (points of divergence) from our world in this map? I can tell that it has a similar overall history but with a bunch of changes.
    • How has the religious distribution of the world changed? What is the state of Christianity and Islam, did they increase or decrease in numbers of adherence. Are there any new religions not present in our world, or perhaps old religions that were revived?
    • How do the smaller countries located in remote areas (mainly the West American native states and the bunch in Indonesia) hold themselves together?
    • Are there any big changes to flora and fauna (judging by the increased amount of islands and lakes)?
    • More of a nitpick, but Urdu (the country with Delhi) is a very strange name for a country.
    • How did the Middle East become the absolute mess that it was in your world?
    Click to expand...
    I have reasons for everything you've asked about. Those will be put out in time with my project's progress. I can just answer generally for now.
    1. There is no POD. In my explanation, what I was trying to say is that I'm not coming at this project like most of the people on this forum. I'm using alternate history as a creative (literary, if you will) device. It is not methodically pure, but to elucidate a bigger understanding that I'm after, which is a maximalist approach to ethno-linguistic diversity. I come from a liberal, pluralist country, which I truly appreciate and defend, but from a separate standpoint, I find it sad to see the way globalization as an economic paradigm has become a cultural mindset. My goal is to inspire the little guys, that is to say, I want to give that little umph that nationalists feel to marginalized peoples. Give it to the Germans and everyone will freak out, but give it to some Aramaic communities living on the margins of the Levant and I think people might have the chance to understand.

    2. This is not a utopic vision. Bad things occurred. It's an exercise to try to get as many differences onto a political world map, since this is a geographic cliche and knowledge-creation device that smothers, marginalizes, and erases. Obviously, maps are beautiful, but most people engage with political maps, so I just kind of turned it upside down.

    3. Geopolitical divergences: I use alternate history as a device to ask, in every pivotal moment in history, what plausible things can happen (what adjacent possibilities are there?) to minimize the impact, to limit the ramifications, so that the winner doesn't take all. The goal is simply to have as many peoples survive as ethno-linguistic territories, or limp on even, into the modern nation-state mass releases of first national-awakenings and later decolonization.
      So, in western America, the British adopt a slightly different policy on the continent after the Revolution and try to do a containment strategy via Indigenous polities there, kind of how the US acted in Asia and Latin America during the Cold War.|
      In the entire rim of the OTL Indian Ocean, I envision a stronger East India Company and a weaker British colonial appetite, which culminates in the absorption of other East Indies territories claimed by rival powers. Think of the salute states under the Company Raj system. These are semi-autonomous statelets captured by a foreign monopoloy-driven company with the backing of a colonial state. The decolonization that occurs, well, that just has to be a change in the mindset of colonial authorities and Indigenous elites. Instead of a pan-Indian or pan-regional identity formed under the British Raj, there is more fragmentation and thus less interest in federalism. So to hell with it, just leave the local semi-autonomous rulers. Obviously, the OTL princely states do not map on conterminously here, but again, this is fiction...

    4. For climate and biomes, check out my alternate geography post, which so far has been ignored :frown: or just look at my website, under World Maps.

    5. Thanks for this point about the country Urdu. I think you'll find that a lot of toponym etymologies are weird if you look into them. Also, think of Danelaw, Golden Horde... I think Urdu works here just as well as it does for a language's name. It literally means "camp, army encampment."

    6. Finally, please have patience on the Middle East question! I would caution against people trying to project real world political lessons onto this world without thinking how everything works. Think about the ultimate goal of my project. If this were a map to represent the cultural and ethno-linguistic majorities of our world, then it would be that and not a map for surfacing cultural diversity. Also, I know that the Levant looks like the ultimate balkanization idea of the French, but it's not meant to say this is to just or best way for political stability in the region. I'm not trying to "solve the Middle East."

    7. Special note on Israel-Palestine. The cities of the Vatican, Mecca, and Jerusalem are actually sovereign micro-states like the OTL Vatican. In Jerusalem, or the Illiya, the Ottoman Status Quo holds. Again, not trying to tell people how to reach a peace deal or look at the ongoing structural violence going on in Palestine. This is not a utopic vision. I am trying to balance having a relatively relatable or recognizable world with a hyper diverse world (I trust many might scoff at this thought, but there might be some special meaning here for others). So major political and geopolitical issues still run through my world, just in different flavours.
     
    Telamon Tabulicus

    Telamon Tabulicus

    Analytical Engine said:
    That world map is sooooooo huge. My poor computer is chugging.
    Click to expand...
    That's just a medium resolution JPEG. I found only one printer in my city who could handle the original high-res file. But printed out, it looks marvelous as a wall mounted piece, framed and everything. You can walk your face right into the surface and see the smallest exts, trace the rivers tracing the valleys in the relief layer...
     

    Brady Kj

    Telamon Tabulicus said:
    Do you mean to zoom further in beyond the scale of the file, or did you only see the image slice? You can go to www.atlasaltera.com and download regional maps or the whole map there. Even at the smallest and lowest quality, my files are too large to upload here.
    Click to expand...
    Oh, I see. I just needed to click where it says Load Full Resolution. I don't know if those words were on there when I tried yesterday. Now I can read it plain as day.

    The town you labeled Eauclaire. Is that where Pembina is?
     
    Telamon Tabulicus

    Telamon Tabulicus

    Brady Kj said:
    Oh, I see. I just needed to click where it says Load Full Resolution. I don't know if those words were on there when I tried yesterday. Now I can read it plain as day.

    The town you labeled Eauclaire. Is that where Pembina is?
    Click to expand...
    Could be, should be. Sorry, I was not as creative or investigative as I should've been for Minnesota and Manitoba, other than the decision to contrast the spellings from the conventional use of the hyphen in French Canada and France. If you haven't guessed it already, Michif is the language of Manitoba.

    I'm guessing that this is your neck of the woods, or maybe even that your heart lies close to Pembina?
     

    Brady Kj

    Telamon Tabulicus said:
    Could be, should be. Sorry, I was not as creative or investigative as I should've been for Minnesota and Manitoba, other than the decision to contrast the spellings from the conventional use of the hyphen in French Canada and France. If you haven't guessed it already, Michif is the language of Manitoba.

    I'm guessing that this is your neck of the woods, or maybe even that your heart lies close to Pembina?
    Click to expand...
    Michif. Lucky Metis people. I grew up near there, and my heart lies elsewhere near there. You couldn't research everyplace for a map like this, but you did it really cleverly. What part of the map are you most proud of, and how did you research it?
     

    theflyingmongoose

    $77 a month is certainly a good start, especially for a digital project. Then again, from what I saw in the images you are one of the greatest map makers I have ever seen.

    If I was allowed to use my money on "internet sites" then I would donate to your Patreon. My parents do think of books as "appropriate expenditures" so I will certainly buy it if you come out with a physical atlas or publish the manuscript.

    If you are looking for a place to publish the manuscript, I would suggest getting into contact with the (only) true AH publisher, Sea Lion Press (https://www.sealionpress.co.uk). It was founded by several AH.com users and accepts submissions.
     
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