Extinction of Malaria/Trypanosoma brucei in...

1> 10000 BC - 4000 BC
2> 1000 BC - 0 AD
3> 300 AD - 1200 AD

Inspired by "Empire of a Hundred Millennia" TL, I'd like to entertain with scenarios with later riddance of the main obstacle to the development of sub-Sahel civilizations where we can achieve a world more familiar to our own. Sub-Sahel independent cradle of civilization contemporarious with Sumerians and Harappans ? Or an African contender equal to both Roman and Persian Empires ? Or perhaps something like "Indonesian" Africans or African "Aztecs" ? I think this basic idea has an infinite number of branch varieties due to the random nature of the possible PoD (it can be anytime), much like, I believe, completion of domestication process is.

Thoughts ?
 
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1> 10000 BC - 4000 BC
2> 1000 BC - 0 AD
3> 300 AD - 1200 AD

Inspired by "Empire of a Hundred Millennia" TL, I'd like to experiment with scenarios with later riddance of the main obstacle to the development of sub-Sahel civilizations where we can achieve a world more familiar to our own. Sub-Sahel independent cradle of civilization contemporarious with Sumerians and Harappans ? Or an African contender equal to both Roman and Persian Empires ? Or perhaps something like "Indonesian" Africans or African "Aztecs" ? I think this basic idea has an infinite number of branch varieties due to the random nature of the possible PoD (it can be anytime), much like, I believe, completion of domestication process is.

Thoughts ?

IMHO the tsetse fly was as important to a lack of advanced African civilization. It made it almost impossible for the horse to be introduced to Sub-Saharan Africa, even though otherwise East Africa would have been an area revolutionized by the introduction the horse. Arguably it was more important, as although Malaria stopped non-Africans from moving into Africa, the mortality rates among Africans were not any higher than those caused by disease anywhere else in the world.
 
There's possibly a rise in Filariasis and other mosquito borne diseases that devestates livestock.
Perhaps tho this can serve as the advantage for some expanding society?
 
There's possibly a rise in Filariasis and other mosquito borne diseases that devestates livestock.
Perhaps tho this can serve as the advantage for some expanding society?

Not sure how this would lead to a rise in other diseases. Disease doesn't have some natural level it must always rise to. You didn't all of a sudden see American children getting sick with new diseases after smallpox, polio, mumps and measles were all eradicated or near-eradicated in the country. They just didn't get fatally sick any more.

As for giving an advantage to an explanding society, well, that's kinda the entire premise of my TL (the one referenced in the OP).
 
Wasn't there a timeline once about the absence of the Tsetse sickness from Africa?

Or about the introduction of the Tsetse to Southeast Asia? I think I've heard it referenced but I don't know much about it. If anyone has a link....
 
For some reason, I find that having some version of falciparum mutate to be less deadly is more believable than driving all forms of malaria extinct. Either way, it can be rendered much less of an obstacle to human civilization, but Africa is where humanity evolved and, as such, parasites on that continent will have had more opportunity to evolve to attack us there than in other places.

Trypanosoma brucei could perhaps be eliminated by a virus that infects tsetse flies and attacks it. Once its main vector becomes inimical to it, it will rapidly become extinct.


Now, as to the world that would build: Cattle would indeed be much more widespread. Cattle herding cultures would be even more widespread than they already are, with all areas that are not jungles or deserts taken up pastoralists (in the drier areas) and farmers (in the wetter areas).

Once *Ancient Egypt acquires horses in this scenario, they will spread quite rapidly down the Nile to the Sahel and the East African highlands. Africa's climate is not very good for horses, so don't expect any Mongol equivalents to form, though. At most you'd have societies where the elites keep horses as a mark of status and for use in warfare, and everyone else gets around by foot or oxcart.

African societies would become more populous, and with that would become more complex and hierarchical. City-states and small kingdoms (or republics) would develop in much of Africa

There could be some conflict between Eurasian and African Empires, but there's limits to where they can fight-there's not a lot of motive to march armies across the Sahara. I think we'd just see bigger versions of the pre-modern African v. Eurasian conflicts IOTL, i.e. Nubia's conquest of Egypt and Ethiopia's attempts to conquer Arabia. Perhaps the African side in these conflicts would get luckier, and we could see something like *Ethiopia controlling Arabia.

Ultimately, though, I think that the higher population of Africans and use of the horse for trade will ultimately result not in Africans and Eurasians trying to conquer each-other, but Africans and Eurasians trading with each other, stimulating the spread of ideas and the innovation of technologies. I expect that technology will develop faster ITTL due to that exchange.
 
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