Indeed? Well, a few questions then, in hopes they motivate an eventual finished map.
So, when was the POD? What's the "current" year? What's the level of development? (Pre-industrial and pre-scientific, I guess?)
The PoD, to be exact, is in 973 BCE. Rehoboam, son of Solomon of Israel, dies during birth. Solomon is forced to have a different heir, and decides to have a kid from one of his wives from Tyre. Butterflies ensue, Israel is larger, and things diverge from there. As for development, things are actually the quite opposite, believe it or not.
The year in the map would be 2017 AD, or "3064 After Saul". It's hard for me to condense everything, because this is a project I've been working on silently, on and off since February of last year, where I took everything I liked about alternate history and created a TL using those things while still trying to be plausible. Really early on, a Celtic philosopher believes the world is round (he underestimates the SIZE, however), and tries to sail around to China in around 250 BC. They come across America, and over the course of a few hundred years they set up some small trading colonies then leave. This gives the natives a major advantage. Colonization and imperialism, or the equivalents of them, happened in this TL at around 800 or 900 AD, and when the revitalized Empire of Hevrivim (a version of Israel) comes to America to colonize and plunder, their rule over what becomes "Abhoye-Qodeyah" is more of an India situation than an OTL North America one. After that, there's actually a nuclear war sometime around the year 2250 AS (which would be like 1300 AD), and the natives overthrow the colonizing government, become powerful on their own, then come back to colonize
Europe. This is the world in the present day, after the North Americans release their European colonies, and Israel becomes a power again.
Don’t quite get that. So Moireirrgh and Maravia are both names for Europe, while Ciwelitaw is the name of the green Celtic blob? And North Africa, Southern Africa, central Asia, the Middle East, and East Asia all count as continents? And the blue Germanic blob and the Congolese blob do not have given names yet, since Kuwesh and Dibwetimba, Alemayim and Parariyarmna are respectively the names of the southern African/central Asian “continents?” Which are the two different languages being used for “continent” names.
In this timeline, continents are divided more among very broad ethnic or linguistic lines. The top line, i.e. Kuwesh, Alemayim, and Maravia, are the names to refer to the continents in Hevrit (Hebrew). The bottom lines are what the majority of the natives call the continent. So, for example, Herathernim refers to the Hebrew name for the early Celtic colony in North America (Cwrtherni), while the native name comes from a Natchez word that I can't remember the definition to.
East Asia is even more confusing, since we have what is presumably the names of the region, Tsinesh and Qindi, we have in big (but neither bolded nor italicized) letter Tsin/Huacsia. There is a state of Huacsia, but no state of Tsin, so what area presumably larger than Huacsia (small letters) does Tsin/Huacsia (big letters) refer to? (Tocharian Tibet? Fun.)
Yeah, sorry about that. The map originally started off as a map for me to gauge the sizes of the continents, and I wasn't planning on adding any more labels until I did. One of the problems I have when describing the countries in the passages I've written is determining whether or not to use the Hebrew name for these countries, since it is told from the "perspective" of Yisrael. Tsin would be the Hebrew name for the entirety of China. In this TL, states are much less unified, so China is almost like a federalized version of the EU. Huacsia would be the leading state in this union (although I might change the name of BIG China since it almost seems unfair to the other states). Sorry if this isn't making any sense, I'm tired and it's hard to explain the small intricacies of the stupid ideas that seem to make sense in my head.
OK. Going on from there...
If the Huaxia spring from the same cultural/historical roots as the OTL Chinese (that such a state might exist seems likely: after all, the Zhou predate King Solomon by over a century), what is the relation to them of the Daibadi and Chidi?
The Daibadi and Chidi were both tribes that existed in OTL. Under the Zhou dynasty, they referred to the surrounding tribes as the "four barbarians", meaning that those tribes had slightly different cultures and languages than central China, which the Zhou referred to as Huaxia. In this timeline, China just doesn't become as ethnically unified as in ours, so those barbarian states develop their own identities. They still share a lot of customs with the Huacsia, but it's kind of like the difference between the Nordic states in our timeline; although their languages are similar and they have a very similar cultural background, they're just separate countries.
The Hatiykhon League is presumably all those green bits in the eastern Med plus the bit of Iberia and *Morocco in the same color: how united is it, and what is the political significance of the divisions (Yawanim, Yisrael, Mizrayim)? From the names Yawanim and Mizrayim - Yawhna or something like it IIRC was a name for the Greeks by Persians I think? And Misr/Mizrayim seems clear – there may not have been total Israeli cultural replacement, but to what extent are there still clear “Greek” and Egyptian cultures?
I'd say as unified as India is IOTL, or maybe it's more like the USSR. There are a lot of different cultures, and a lot of different political beliefs. You got the name for Greece correct, they're actually a little bit Persia-fied early on in the TL, so the Jews adopted the Persian name for them instead of the native one. The names for each little region is probably more ceremonial or ecclesiastical than practical, as there's probably a much more comprehensive way of dividing up the country. The Greeks have a distinct culture (although completely different from Greek culture IOTL), and the Egypts are still very traditional.
Madhai/Medwa medes, so presumably we still got a “Persia” of sorts, with some non-Jewish religion.
Yep! I was thinking about having Persia as almost something of a China analogue. A bunch of dynasties over time, expansion and decline, but it's still kind of the same Media it was two thousand years ago, in some weird foreign way. Persian culture would have spread throughout the entirety of Alemayim, and that light blue state is a former colony.
Presumably the green and blue blobs don’t respectively contain _all_ Celts and Germans: where’s the cultural dividing line?
Here's a better map to show what Europe looks like, at least loosely based on my original ideas (I've since fleshed things out a bit more, but not by much
):
What does the east Asian light green indicate? Common culture? Common religious tradition?
A union, basically. I'd agree that they have a similar religious tradition as well. Religion is a lot different in this timeline, obviously, but what China looks like religiously I have yet to know.
The western hemisphere: there has been successful missionary activity in North America but no colonization? (Aside from what looks like East Asian colonization in the NW?) How come?
There was a lot of missionary activity in the first wave a colonization, and even more in the second. The tribes adopted Hebrew as a lingua franca when kicking the Israelis out. Religion isn't a big unifying force between Jewish countries, since there are many different branches, all with different cultures who believe in them. Therefore, the natives didn't see any reason to reject the Jewish religion, they just saw a reason to eject the Israelis. The Chinese blob in North America is probably more of a commonwealth-type nation than anything else. They were a colony of China all the way back in the 1800's (900's AD), and they didn't rebel to the same degree as the tribes in the east; China only released them when the Native American superpowers pressured them to.
Is that meant to be a particularly pale shade of Green in *France and *West Sahara/*South Morocco, or are my eyes fooling me and the “yellow” north American culture establishing European colonies?
You are correct in that guess.
I tried to explain it earlier, but I'm not sure if I did it well, so feel free to ask me way more questions! I'm happy to answer them.
What does that light purple line in *North America indicate? (The one that runs along the OTL Tex-Mex border and then goes east and then north to *Minnesota?)
That would be something like the NAU or NATO; they agree on protecting each other from foreign powers.
Do those dotted lines indicate something, or are they just placeholders? What do the dark grey regions indicate?
They were originally alternate ways people might divide up the continents. The dotted line through North America would be based off the original trade regions set by Israel/Celts and China. The dotted line in Europe would represent Greek-ish culture vs. Germanic and Celtic culture. The one in India represents Chinese culture and how far it has spread. Here's a better map of just the continents:
Hope that's enough to get you going with.
I really like answering these questions, feel free to send me more if you have any! It helps me really get into the lore of the world.
Anyway, I updated the main map a little bit since I last shared it, so here you go: