Lands of Red and Gold Interlude #13: Echo of a Memory
Lands of Red and Gold Interlude #13: Echo of a Memory
In the tradition of Lands of Red and Gold Christmas specials, this is a glimpse of how the world might have turned out if it was even more changed than it was in the main LoRaG timeline.
* * *
Taken from a discussion thread posted on the allohistory.com message board.
*
From: Shaved Ape
For Want of a Yam #100: Fifteen Hundred Years After
It’s hard to believe that I’ve made it to a century of posts in this timeline, not counting sideposts and apocrypha and the like. It’s been a long road, and I can’t even say the tale is yet nearer the end than the beginning. (Or even big inning).
For all the folks that have missed this timeline to date, or who found the sheer length of this timeline too much to keep track of, this post serves as a recap of what has happened to date. It does not contain much that’s fundamentally new – though there’s a couple of Easter Eggs in there – but it puts all of the fundamental information in one instalment rather than needing to digest all 99 previous posts to understand what’s happening in the timeline.
A reminder also that this is a butterfly-killer timeline. This means a timeline which ignores random butterflies. Any changes which happen in the timeline are ones which I’ve been able to calculate as logically flowing from the point of divergence. There are no such things as changes because of random butterflies or something being butterflied away just for the sake of it.
I’ve adopted this position because I’ve come to the conclusion that obsession with butterflies can be taken too far. Timelines are as much literary creations as they are allohistorical explorations, and as a writer I think it’s easy to over-use them. Rather than Random Butterfly X producing Random New Ruler Y, I have gone with what can be determined as a logical consequence of the divergence.
Anyone who complains that this has led to an absence of butterflies will be fed to the Blobfish.
-
The basic premise of For Want of a Yam is that the lesser yam (Dioscorea angustus) evolved 1600 years earlier than it did historically; that is, in 200 BC rather than AD 1400. This allowed the northern expansion of Aururian agriculture to happen much earlier than it did historically, with changes that in time will resonate around the world.
Historically, indigenous Aururian agriculture was limited to south of the Tropic of Capricorn. This was because the two staple root crops, red yam (Dioscorea chelidonius) and murnong (Microseris lanceolata) could not grow north of that latitude, and thus full agriculture was impossible there. The emergence of the lesser yam, and spread of the imported kumara (aka sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas) allowed agriculture to spread into the tropics, as the Kiyungu and Butjupa began to advance northward.
However, the spread of agriculture happened too late for Aururians to make direct contact with the Old World. Instead, the Old World came to them, with Frederik de Houtman leading the first of the vanguard of Europeans descending on the Third World, with consequences which we all know too well.
Allohistorically, in For Want of a Yam, the lesser yam emerges much earlier, in 200 BC, in the late stages of the Great Migrations. This means that the forefathers and foremothers of the Kiyungu and Butjupa can begin their northward advance much earlier. In time, it will be Aururians who go to contact the Old World, not the reverse.
-
The development of the lesser yam means that the Great Migrations become the Greater Migrations, lasting about three hundred years longer than they did historically and stretching as far as Cape Kumgatu [Cape York] and the Costa dos Crocodilos [Arnhem Land]. This process is caused by a gradual expansion of the Kiyungu and Butjupa alone; the migrations in southern Aururia end at the same time which they did historically, while these two northern peoples spread further.
The spread of agriculture to the northern coast of Aururia does not produce immediate dramatic changes in the rest of Aururia, or indeed in the world. These are still relatively marginal farmers. The lesser yam allows them to farm in the area, but their other main staples, cornnarts [wattles] are more temperate species which do not grow as well in the northern reaches. The soils in the north are also less fertile.
What is produced in the north is a series of thinly-spread but thriving farming peoples. Their agriculture gradually improves, with the domestication of new northern crops, particularly cornnarts and a variety of new fruits. They receive a substantial boost when the spread of the noroon [emu] allows them to provide better fertiliser for the soils. Still, for several centuries they remain relatively thinly spread and with no societies organised above the chiefdom level.
Along the Tohu Coast [NE Qld coast], the Kiyungu gradually develop better shipping, with their search for coral, long distances to sail between their compatriots, and sheltered waters which allows them scope to slowly improve their shipbuilding and navigational techniques without being swept out into the open ocean. They come into contact with Austronesians and Torres Strait Islanders which allows them to learn some critical navigational improvements, particularly lateen sails, which in time will lead to the capacity for long-distance sailing.
On the northern coast of the continent, the migrating Butjupa merge with several groups of hunter-gathers around the coast of the Groot Golf [Gulf of Carpentaria]. These hunter-gatherers, collectively named the Wuri, speak related languages and are quick to adopt agriculture. The result is a composite people, the Wutjupa, who adapt the southern Aururian crop package into one better-suited to the monsoonal climate of the northern fringe.
These northern Aururian peoples have several encounters with the cultures of Torres Strait and Papua [New Guinea], but for several centuries this contact remains limited. With the social organisation of both peoples, only a few trade goods are worth exchanging, in small quantities, and none of these cultures are arranged in a form for naval warfare. With this low-level contact, there are for the moment no meaningful disease exchanges. Sugar gradually spreads south and the Kiyungu take up its cultivation; the soils and rainfall of Wutjupa country are not suitable for significant sugar production.
-
In the southern half of Aururia, the changes to history are too minor to make much difference for several centuries. The peoples of the Five Rivers regarded the northern fringes as meaningless backwaters, much as they viewed the eastern coast, but without even the benefits of spices to be worth trading for. The gems of the interior were not yet discovered, since none of the migrants have a history of mining. So the Watjubagan Empire emerges and falls as it did historically, with the same borders as it did. (Butterfly-killer timeline, remember. The Blobfish awaits those who forget.)
Events in southern Aururia begin to diverge in the aftermath of the Empire’s collapse. The wetter climate of the late Imperial period develops as it did historically – the forces of climate are not yet significantly affected by human activity – and the kingdom of Lopitja emerges and dies as it did in the history that we know. The Good Man is still born around the time that Lopitja seizes independence, and promotes his understanding of the Seven-fold Path.
The changes begin during the Good Man’s lifetime. As he did historically, he attracts students from around most of the known world, including Butjupa and Yalatji from the Neeburra, though not the Kiyungu who never cared much for what happened west of the continental divide. Unlike what he did historically, he attracts students from some of the more northern Butjupa, and even one from the far Wutjupa.
The Good Man’s disciples divide into competing schools after his death, as they did historically. The orthodox school of Plirism, the Warrgowee, converts the king and becomes the state religion in 1214, as happened historically. Unlike what happened historically, where the disciple Tjarrling went north alone, in this changed history two other disciples of the orthodox school go north with him. They compete over the conversion of the Butjupa and Yalatji. Their religious disputes are still continuing when Lopitja collapses, and some religious refugees from the Warrgowee school head north to join their co-religionists. There, they are ultimately victorious in converting the peoples of the Neeburra.
This means that the Warrgowee school survives allohistorically, where in real history it and many of the early schools of Plirism were lost with the collapse of Lopitja. The Nangu, Yadilli and some Tjibarri and Gutjualanese schools still survive in the south, but the Tjarrlinghi branch of Plirism is lost to allohistory as the Warrgowee replace it. The process of conversion is even more vigorous in the changed history, where the population density is higher thanks to earlier lesser yams, and the religion spreads through northern Aururia over the next six decades.
-
The conversion of the Wutjupa to Warrgowee is one of those fortunate confluences of timing and circumstance which will lead later scholars to argue that Warrgowee drove state formation. In fact, what has happened is that through a coincidence of history – the same kind which led Islam to spread right at the time when the two superpowers of the region had exhausted themselves in warfare – the growing population of northern Aururia was ripe for unification. Their agriculture has adapted to the conditions of the northern half of the continent, and the increasing population density favours the formation of states, as it has done so many other places in the world. So too, less obviously, does their genetic fusion with the local hunter-gatherer peoples and their centuries of genetic adaption to malaria. Malaria has been present in northern Aururia for an unknown length of time, perhaps since the last ice age, and living there over enough generations lets natural resistance evolve. The farming peoples of northern Aururia are not completely immune to malaria, but have enough resistance to make it safer to visit Papua and the Spice Islands.
Two states emerge, Gindabee along the Costa dos Crocodilos, and Wattamatta on the Neeburra. Warrgowee spreads to the coast too, leading to the gradual unification of the Kiyungu, first as a defensive alliance against the threat from the interior, then as a confederation, and ultimately as one state unified by naval trade.
Even before unification, some Kiyungu have turned into trading and semi-colonial powers, cultivating sugar at home, and trading southward for jeeree and Aururian spices. In time, they expand their interests out of Aururia, sailing northward initially for slaves, and then further for pursuit of the foreign spices which they had heard about: nutmeg, mace and cloves. In 1267, the first Kiyungu traders arrive directly at the Banda Islands, marking the beginning of major commercial contact with the Old World. While operating for religious rather than commercial regions, the Wutjupa of Gindabee also become active in the northern islands around the same time, founding Plirite (Warrgowee) missions, the first in Timor, then in surrounding islands.
Contact is quick and lucrative, with Aururian spices popular amongst the local peoples and in turn Spice Island produce is popular back in Aururia. The interaction with the Spice Islands also brings the Kiyungu into contact with a greater variety of peoples from the Old World, including Arabs, Indians and Cathayans. The diffusion of some technology is quick, particularly firearms, as the Kiyungu have a great interest in them and sufficient wealth to purchase both supplies and manufacturers.
By 1300, fifteen hundred years after, the Kiyungu and Wutjupa are both active in the Spice Islands, and some of them have even reached mainland Asia. The Kiyungu are also starting to develop a colonial empire further south on mainland eastern Aururia.
-
No history of contact between Old World and Third World would be complete without recognising the history of disease. Aururia has the same three significant diseases which they had historically: swamp-rash, Marnitja and blue-sleep. The Old World has the same cocktail of deadly diseases which would be so devastating to the Third World in real history.
The pace of transmission of Old World diseases to Aururia is both faster and slower than in real history. Some diseases arrive faster, such as influenza, because with farming societies in northern Aururia there is an easier chain of transmission to the larger states of the continent than in real history. Some diseases arrive slower, because the Kiyungu do not have the faster ships that Nuttana and Europeans did historically, and so those epidemics burn out on board ship before they can reach the Third World. Nonetheless, by 1300 Aururia has been struck by several deadly Old World diseases, including influenza, mumps, chickenpox, and tuberculosis. The population of the continent has been reduced by between 15-20%.
Fortunately for the Old World, blue-sleep and swamp rash remain confined to the Third World for the time being.
Unfortunately, Marnitja does not. A disease which produces so many asymptomatic carriers cannot be confined. The Waiting Death reaches the Banda Islands in 1269, and is spread by Cathayan and Malay traders into the Old World. It burns a steady path across India, Cathay and into Europe and Africa. One significant short-term effect in Cathay is that the death toll from the disease forces the Yuan to lift the siege of Xiangyang in 1271, and provokes a fresh succession crisis amongst the Mongols. For the time being, the Southern Song survive.
One tendril of Marnitja reaches from Europe to Iceland and to Greenland. There, as they had been doing for centuries, the Greenlanders visited parts of North America to collect timber. One carrier of the Waiting Death encounters the local Innu, and passes on the disease to them. From there, Marnitja slowly burns its way across most of the New World.
The strike of Marnitja is initially horrific for the New Worlders, causing at least 15% of their population to perish. However, in the longer term it has some small benefits. The presence of an epidemic disease means that many of their cultures have more conception of dealing with epidemics, and will thus be better placed to respond once regular contact with the Old World is established by Columbus or his allohistorical equivalent. It also means that exposure to epidemics strengthens the immune system of the population, allowing slightly greater resistance to Old World diseases when they arrive.
So, in 1300, the world is much changed, and is only going to diverge further.
-
Thoughts?
*
From: Great King
Intriguing as ever.
I’m curious how the Orthodox school of Plirism (aka Warrgowee) changes the development of societies here. What are the practical differences from historical orthodox Plirism, and their consequences?
*
From: The Profound Wanderer
Very useful summary.
Do you have any more details about how the rest of the disease contact between Aururia and the Old World will turn out? And Aotearoa too, I guess, whenever that contact happens.
*
From: Alloanthro
I thought it was a superb update.
*
From: Never Know Jim
I’d like to know how industrialisation is going to happen in Aururia. Especially early industrialisation.
*
From: Shaved Ape
@Great King
The Warrgowee school – I prefer using that name to Orthodox, even though that’s the correct translation, because otherwise it creates too much confusion between Orthodox Plirism, ie the early state-sponsored school, and orthodox Plirism, ie the collective name for the various orthodox surviving schools of historical Plirism – has a different form of socio-religious organisation to either of the main surviving branches of Plirism.
Surviving orthodox Plirism is mostly organised along a community-temple model, with priests involved with the local community and providing spiritual and practical advice, but with a clear distinction between secular power and religious guidance. There is no central authority to make decisions for Plirism; anyone who can persuade enough people to follow them has the potential to start their own new temple, or indeed school.
The Tjarrlinghi are organised along a warrior-ruler system, where the priests either rule directly or expect to have very strong influence over those who do rule. They also have a strong tradition of spiritual succession, where priests are expected to trace either their actual descent, or spiritual influence, through an unbroken chain of successors back to Tjarrling and through him to the Good Man.
In contrast, the Warrgowee school had what could more accurately be called a strong monastic tradition. Many of their priests – or monks, they could also be called – were expected to withdraw from the world and follow their own personal road to harmony and insight. Except for the head of a monastery, who would give guidance to the local ruler - or governor who ruled in the name of the monarch – the priest-monks of the Warrgowee school were expected to have little contact with the outside world. They would benefit the world through prayer and as an example, not through providing direct guidance.
Snippets of these traditions survived in orthodox Plirism, too, but in a much more marginal way. Monasticism is known in a couple of smaller surviving schools in orthodox Plirism, but it is far from the dominant form. Mystics arise in later orthodox Plirism, sometimes attached to existing community-temples and occasionally forming their own schools, but despite some popularity at various points in history, they were also not the dominant religious model.
So a surviving Warrgowee school will have a lot of monasteries around, often in out-of-the-way regions. Both the Dead Heart and the more rugged parts of the highlands would probably prove popular. They will have a significant class of learned scholars who have access both to wealth and to time to study the world, in greater pursuit of harmony. This may well have some spin-offs in terms of proto-scientific thought.
@The Profound Wanderer
Very little to add to what I’ve already written, I’m afraid. I haven’t mapped out the precise path of how diseases will spread, and even if I had, I wouldn’t want to spoil the story. In very broad terms, the peoples of the Third World will be better off because they will have more time to recover before Europeans could arrive.
@Never Know Jim
Very hard to guess where and when industrialisation will happen, this far ahead of where allohistory is up to. I can point out that the silver at Gwee Langta [Broken Hill, NSW] is still exactly where it is. The magnificent iron ore of Worrumbin [*Iron Knob, SA] has not moved from its historical location. Kunduri is still an extremely valuable crop. Past that, it’s too early to speculate.
* * *
Thoughts?
In the tradition of Lands of Red and Gold Christmas specials, this is a glimpse of how the world might have turned out if it was even more changed than it was in the main LoRaG timeline.
* * *
Taken from a discussion thread posted on the allohistory.com message board.
*
From: Shaved Ape
For Want of a Yam #100: Fifteen Hundred Years After
It’s hard to believe that I’ve made it to a century of posts in this timeline, not counting sideposts and apocrypha and the like. It’s been a long road, and I can’t even say the tale is yet nearer the end than the beginning. (Or even big inning).
For all the folks that have missed this timeline to date, or who found the sheer length of this timeline too much to keep track of, this post serves as a recap of what has happened to date. It does not contain much that’s fundamentally new – though there’s a couple of Easter Eggs in there – but it puts all of the fundamental information in one instalment rather than needing to digest all 99 previous posts to understand what’s happening in the timeline.
A reminder also that this is a butterfly-killer timeline. This means a timeline which ignores random butterflies. Any changes which happen in the timeline are ones which I’ve been able to calculate as logically flowing from the point of divergence. There are no such things as changes because of random butterflies or something being butterflied away just for the sake of it.
I’ve adopted this position because I’ve come to the conclusion that obsession with butterflies can be taken too far. Timelines are as much literary creations as they are allohistorical explorations, and as a writer I think it’s easy to over-use them. Rather than Random Butterfly X producing Random New Ruler Y, I have gone with what can be determined as a logical consequence of the divergence.
Anyone who complains that this has led to an absence of butterflies will be fed to the Blobfish.
-
The basic premise of For Want of a Yam is that the lesser yam (Dioscorea angustus) evolved 1600 years earlier than it did historically; that is, in 200 BC rather than AD 1400. This allowed the northern expansion of Aururian agriculture to happen much earlier than it did historically, with changes that in time will resonate around the world.
Historically, indigenous Aururian agriculture was limited to south of the Tropic of Capricorn. This was because the two staple root crops, red yam (Dioscorea chelidonius) and murnong (Microseris lanceolata) could not grow north of that latitude, and thus full agriculture was impossible there. The emergence of the lesser yam, and spread of the imported kumara (aka sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas) allowed agriculture to spread into the tropics, as the Kiyungu and Butjupa began to advance northward.
However, the spread of agriculture happened too late for Aururians to make direct contact with the Old World. Instead, the Old World came to them, with Frederik de Houtman leading the first of the vanguard of Europeans descending on the Third World, with consequences which we all know too well.
Allohistorically, in For Want of a Yam, the lesser yam emerges much earlier, in 200 BC, in the late stages of the Great Migrations. This means that the forefathers and foremothers of the Kiyungu and Butjupa can begin their northward advance much earlier. In time, it will be Aururians who go to contact the Old World, not the reverse.
-
The development of the lesser yam means that the Great Migrations become the Greater Migrations, lasting about three hundred years longer than they did historically and stretching as far as Cape Kumgatu [Cape York] and the Costa dos Crocodilos [Arnhem Land]. This process is caused by a gradual expansion of the Kiyungu and Butjupa alone; the migrations in southern Aururia end at the same time which they did historically, while these two northern peoples spread further.
The spread of agriculture to the northern coast of Aururia does not produce immediate dramatic changes in the rest of Aururia, or indeed in the world. These are still relatively marginal farmers. The lesser yam allows them to farm in the area, but their other main staples, cornnarts [wattles] are more temperate species which do not grow as well in the northern reaches. The soils in the north are also less fertile.
What is produced in the north is a series of thinly-spread but thriving farming peoples. Their agriculture gradually improves, with the domestication of new northern crops, particularly cornnarts and a variety of new fruits. They receive a substantial boost when the spread of the noroon [emu] allows them to provide better fertiliser for the soils. Still, for several centuries they remain relatively thinly spread and with no societies organised above the chiefdom level.
Along the Tohu Coast [NE Qld coast], the Kiyungu gradually develop better shipping, with their search for coral, long distances to sail between their compatriots, and sheltered waters which allows them scope to slowly improve their shipbuilding and navigational techniques without being swept out into the open ocean. They come into contact with Austronesians and Torres Strait Islanders which allows them to learn some critical navigational improvements, particularly lateen sails, which in time will lead to the capacity for long-distance sailing.
On the northern coast of the continent, the migrating Butjupa merge with several groups of hunter-gathers around the coast of the Groot Golf [Gulf of Carpentaria]. These hunter-gatherers, collectively named the Wuri, speak related languages and are quick to adopt agriculture. The result is a composite people, the Wutjupa, who adapt the southern Aururian crop package into one better-suited to the monsoonal climate of the northern fringe.
These northern Aururian peoples have several encounters with the cultures of Torres Strait and Papua [New Guinea], but for several centuries this contact remains limited. With the social organisation of both peoples, only a few trade goods are worth exchanging, in small quantities, and none of these cultures are arranged in a form for naval warfare. With this low-level contact, there are for the moment no meaningful disease exchanges. Sugar gradually spreads south and the Kiyungu take up its cultivation; the soils and rainfall of Wutjupa country are not suitable for significant sugar production.
-
In the southern half of Aururia, the changes to history are too minor to make much difference for several centuries. The peoples of the Five Rivers regarded the northern fringes as meaningless backwaters, much as they viewed the eastern coast, but without even the benefits of spices to be worth trading for. The gems of the interior were not yet discovered, since none of the migrants have a history of mining. So the Watjubagan Empire emerges and falls as it did historically, with the same borders as it did. (Butterfly-killer timeline, remember. The Blobfish awaits those who forget.)
Events in southern Aururia begin to diverge in the aftermath of the Empire’s collapse. The wetter climate of the late Imperial period develops as it did historically – the forces of climate are not yet significantly affected by human activity – and the kingdom of Lopitja emerges and dies as it did in the history that we know. The Good Man is still born around the time that Lopitja seizes independence, and promotes his understanding of the Seven-fold Path.
The changes begin during the Good Man’s lifetime. As he did historically, he attracts students from around most of the known world, including Butjupa and Yalatji from the Neeburra, though not the Kiyungu who never cared much for what happened west of the continental divide. Unlike what he did historically, he attracts students from some of the more northern Butjupa, and even one from the far Wutjupa.
The Good Man’s disciples divide into competing schools after his death, as they did historically. The orthodox school of Plirism, the Warrgowee, converts the king and becomes the state religion in 1214, as happened historically. Unlike what happened historically, where the disciple Tjarrling went north alone, in this changed history two other disciples of the orthodox school go north with him. They compete over the conversion of the Butjupa and Yalatji. Their religious disputes are still continuing when Lopitja collapses, and some religious refugees from the Warrgowee school head north to join their co-religionists. There, they are ultimately victorious in converting the peoples of the Neeburra.
This means that the Warrgowee school survives allohistorically, where in real history it and many of the early schools of Plirism were lost with the collapse of Lopitja. The Nangu, Yadilli and some Tjibarri and Gutjualanese schools still survive in the south, but the Tjarrlinghi branch of Plirism is lost to allohistory as the Warrgowee replace it. The process of conversion is even more vigorous in the changed history, where the population density is higher thanks to earlier lesser yams, and the religion spreads through northern Aururia over the next six decades.
-
The conversion of the Wutjupa to Warrgowee is one of those fortunate confluences of timing and circumstance which will lead later scholars to argue that Warrgowee drove state formation. In fact, what has happened is that through a coincidence of history – the same kind which led Islam to spread right at the time when the two superpowers of the region had exhausted themselves in warfare – the growing population of northern Aururia was ripe for unification. Their agriculture has adapted to the conditions of the northern half of the continent, and the increasing population density favours the formation of states, as it has done so many other places in the world. So too, less obviously, does their genetic fusion with the local hunter-gatherer peoples and their centuries of genetic adaption to malaria. Malaria has been present in northern Aururia for an unknown length of time, perhaps since the last ice age, and living there over enough generations lets natural resistance evolve. The farming peoples of northern Aururia are not completely immune to malaria, but have enough resistance to make it safer to visit Papua and the Spice Islands.
Two states emerge, Gindabee along the Costa dos Crocodilos, and Wattamatta on the Neeburra. Warrgowee spreads to the coast too, leading to the gradual unification of the Kiyungu, first as a defensive alliance against the threat from the interior, then as a confederation, and ultimately as one state unified by naval trade.
Even before unification, some Kiyungu have turned into trading and semi-colonial powers, cultivating sugar at home, and trading southward for jeeree and Aururian spices. In time, they expand their interests out of Aururia, sailing northward initially for slaves, and then further for pursuit of the foreign spices which they had heard about: nutmeg, mace and cloves. In 1267, the first Kiyungu traders arrive directly at the Banda Islands, marking the beginning of major commercial contact with the Old World. While operating for religious rather than commercial regions, the Wutjupa of Gindabee also become active in the northern islands around the same time, founding Plirite (Warrgowee) missions, the first in Timor, then in surrounding islands.
Contact is quick and lucrative, with Aururian spices popular amongst the local peoples and in turn Spice Island produce is popular back in Aururia. The interaction with the Spice Islands also brings the Kiyungu into contact with a greater variety of peoples from the Old World, including Arabs, Indians and Cathayans. The diffusion of some technology is quick, particularly firearms, as the Kiyungu have a great interest in them and sufficient wealth to purchase both supplies and manufacturers.
By 1300, fifteen hundred years after, the Kiyungu and Wutjupa are both active in the Spice Islands, and some of them have even reached mainland Asia. The Kiyungu are also starting to develop a colonial empire further south on mainland eastern Aururia.
-
No history of contact between Old World and Third World would be complete without recognising the history of disease. Aururia has the same three significant diseases which they had historically: swamp-rash, Marnitja and blue-sleep. The Old World has the same cocktail of deadly diseases which would be so devastating to the Third World in real history.
The pace of transmission of Old World diseases to Aururia is both faster and slower than in real history. Some diseases arrive faster, such as influenza, because with farming societies in northern Aururia there is an easier chain of transmission to the larger states of the continent than in real history. Some diseases arrive slower, because the Kiyungu do not have the faster ships that Nuttana and Europeans did historically, and so those epidemics burn out on board ship before they can reach the Third World. Nonetheless, by 1300 Aururia has been struck by several deadly Old World diseases, including influenza, mumps, chickenpox, and tuberculosis. The population of the continent has been reduced by between 15-20%.
Fortunately for the Old World, blue-sleep and swamp rash remain confined to the Third World for the time being.
Unfortunately, Marnitja does not. A disease which produces so many asymptomatic carriers cannot be confined. The Waiting Death reaches the Banda Islands in 1269, and is spread by Cathayan and Malay traders into the Old World. It burns a steady path across India, Cathay and into Europe and Africa. One significant short-term effect in Cathay is that the death toll from the disease forces the Yuan to lift the siege of Xiangyang in 1271, and provokes a fresh succession crisis amongst the Mongols. For the time being, the Southern Song survive.
One tendril of Marnitja reaches from Europe to Iceland and to Greenland. There, as they had been doing for centuries, the Greenlanders visited parts of North America to collect timber. One carrier of the Waiting Death encounters the local Innu, and passes on the disease to them. From there, Marnitja slowly burns its way across most of the New World.
The strike of Marnitja is initially horrific for the New Worlders, causing at least 15% of their population to perish. However, in the longer term it has some small benefits. The presence of an epidemic disease means that many of their cultures have more conception of dealing with epidemics, and will thus be better placed to respond once regular contact with the Old World is established by Columbus or his allohistorical equivalent. It also means that exposure to epidemics strengthens the immune system of the population, allowing slightly greater resistance to Old World diseases when they arrive.
So, in 1300, the world is much changed, and is only going to diverge further.
-
Thoughts?
*
From: Great King
Intriguing as ever.
I’m curious how the Orthodox school of Plirism (aka Warrgowee) changes the development of societies here. What are the practical differences from historical orthodox Plirism, and their consequences?
*
From: The Profound Wanderer
Very useful summary.
Do you have any more details about how the rest of the disease contact between Aururia and the Old World will turn out? And Aotearoa too, I guess, whenever that contact happens.
*
From: Alloanthro
I thought it was a superb update.
*
From: Never Know Jim
I’d like to know how industrialisation is going to happen in Aururia. Especially early industrialisation.
*
From: Shaved Ape
@Great King
The Warrgowee school – I prefer using that name to Orthodox, even though that’s the correct translation, because otherwise it creates too much confusion between Orthodox Plirism, ie the early state-sponsored school, and orthodox Plirism, ie the collective name for the various orthodox surviving schools of historical Plirism – has a different form of socio-religious organisation to either of the main surviving branches of Plirism.
Surviving orthodox Plirism is mostly organised along a community-temple model, with priests involved with the local community and providing spiritual and practical advice, but with a clear distinction between secular power and religious guidance. There is no central authority to make decisions for Plirism; anyone who can persuade enough people to follow them has the potential to start their own new temple, or indeed school.
The Tjarrlinghi are organised along a warrior-ruler system, where the priests either rule directly or expect to have very strong influence over those who do rule. They also have a strong tradition of spiritual succession, where priests are expected to trace either their actual descent, or spiritual influence, through an unbroken chain of successors back to Tjarrling and through him to the Good Man.
In contrast, the Warrgowee school had what could more accurately be called a strong monastic tradition. Many of their priests – or monks, they could also be called – were expected to withdraw from the world and follow their own personal road to harmony and insight. Except for the head of a monastery, who would give guidance to the local ruler - or governor who ruled in the name of the monarch – the priest-monks of the Warrgowee school were expected to have little contact with the outside world. They would benefit the world through prayer and as an example, not through providing direct guidance.
Snippets of these traditions survived in orthodox Plirism, too, but in a much more marginal way. Monasticism is known in a couple of smaller surviving schools in orthodox Plirism, but it is far from the dominant form. Mystics arise in later orthodox Plirism, sometimes attached to existing community-temples and occasionally forming their own schools, but despite some popularity at various points in history, they were also not the dominant religious model.
So a surviving Warrgowee school will have a lot of monasteries around, often in out-of-the-way regions. Both the Dead Heart and the more rugged parts of the highlands would probably prove popular. They will have a significant class of learned scholars who have access both to wealth and to time to study the world, in greater pursuit of harmony. This may well have some spin-offs in terms of proto-scientific thought.
@The Profound Wanderer
Very little to add to what I’ve already written, I’m afraid. I haven’t mapped out the precise path of how diseases will spread, and even if I had, I wouldn’t want to spoil the story. In very broad terms, the peoples of the Third World will be better off because they will have more time to recover before Europeans could arrive.
@Never Know Jim
Very hard to guess where and when industrialisation will happen, this far ahead of where allohistory is up to. I can point out that the silver at Gwee Langta [Broken Hill, NSW] is still exactly where it is. The magnificent iron ore of Worrumbin [*Iron Knob, SA] has not moved from its historical location. Kunduri is still an extremely valuable crop. Past that, it’s too early to speculate.
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Thoughts?
