Natural Suez canal

On September 30 608 AD, For some reason that is not fully understood, a butterfly flaps it's wings in the oposite direction as OTL, and this causes an earthquake that splits the continent of africa from the continent of eurasia along the same path as the Suez canal will one day be in OTL. Those in the imedate area are screwed, but this means that the people europe now have a quick, cheap, sea route to Asia. Now what?
 
Well, I can think of one major unintended consequence, just due to the date. If it's an earthquake big enough to cause a natural strait to occur, then I bet it causes some environmental damage to the Red Sea and to the Med. What I'm particularly thinking of is this: 608 AD is less than 20 years before Mohammed is said to have his first revelation and then led the Hijra. A tsunami in the right place could well do a lot to stop that. There will no doubt be other similar effects of the initial POD that will momentarily overshadow the strategic ramifications.

Putting those aside, there is likely to be big change in the ease of transport to Asia. However, it will take some time to come to prominence. For one, naval technology is still based either around galleys or limited ocean-going navigation. Even Phoenician ships seem to stuck fairly close to land and certainly common practice did. It was the harsher climate of the North Sea and Atlantic that encouraged the development of the forerunners of galleons and caracks, that enabled truly transoceanic navigation. Nonethless, there's a lot of land to stop near on this new route; the obstacle is that not only would you need navigable access, you'd also need friendly ports along the way. It's a big distance to cover. Plus, the Red Sea is fraught with navigational hazarads (reefs and the like). This may provide a different incentive to build more sturdy, long range craft, which will definitely shift the nature of TTL's naval tech. To take full advantage of the sea route to India and East Asia, naval tech would need to be advanced enough to take advantage of the monsoon winds. Very probably OTL tech could handle this: if anything it may ease the transistion, since the reliable winds will make it eaiser to a craft to stop for shelter and supplies more regularly. The difference in technological development may also shift the nature of the decline in learning that was already going on in the West: math is all of sudden more important to master for reliable navigation as is map-making and the like.

Geo-politically, it will be harder for a conqueror to surmount this breach, so Egypt may find itself a new power center. Perhaps as part of the Eastern Roman Empire, perhaps as an empire all its own. A new city along the new Suez Straights may develop as a rival to Constantinople.

On the flip side, though, what's the incentive to trade? It's so early in history that there might not be enough of a market at home to incentive a trader. There probably is enough of one, though, in the Eastern Empire. Certainly, Mohammed was a trader before he turned to religion. Perhaps the upsurge in trade changes the nature of Arab culture. Since this change will empower Red Sea traders to expand into the Mediterranean, this change could well be credited with transforming Arab culture. What religion would they adopt? Some form of Christianity? Would a new faith emerge in an even more afluent society, with a better escape valve for the less previliged (assuming less powerful traders could risk the new passage to new trade routes and hence new wealth).
 
This is a Little ASB, as the red sea tri-node is the Red Sea/Dead Sea-Gulf Aqaba/Great Rift Valley

Whe are talking 608, ERE is still going Strong and controls Egypt and the Nile Canal.
I see them Moving some troops East and building Fortifications at each end.

This is to ensure that everyone continues to pay the tolls.

Axum[Ethiopia], India and Rome all have fleets engaged in the India, Africa, Europe trade routes.
This will mean that the larger Indian ships that didn't fit thru the canal will be able to reach the Med.
Within a couple decades whe will see Indian Merchants from Londonium to Kiev.
[OTL India did send ships to England before the Nile canal was closed by the Muslims]

Whe will also see some Indian monks around Europe/NAfrica, and more European Monks in India.

This will butterfly Romes relation with Ethiopia and Yemen, and change the Islam explosion from Arabia.
 
well, my english is not the best of the world so first of all, sorry .
Second: I don´t know if terrestial silk road were cheaper than terrestrial but do you really need natural Suez Canal to intensify or to get more important this route. Were maritime route so small?.
 
well, my english is not the best of the world so first of all, sorry .
Second: I don´t know if terrestial silk road were cheaper than terrestrial but do you really need natural Suez Canal to intensify or to get more important this route. Were maritime route so small?.

To answer what I believe was your question. Yes a sea route between the mediterranean and the Indian and China seas would be much cheaper than overland caravans. one smallish ship with a crew of ten to twenty men could carry two or three times as much cargo as a mule or camel caravan with a staff of 100 teamsters and gaurds. Also if you are carrying light high value cargos such as spices or silk or cotton fabrics tha leaves a lot of room for low value cargo to fill up space and provide needed ballast. there are buildings all over the west coast and Hawaii built out of bricks manufactured in New Engand because they travelled as ballast in sailing ships and could be sold at a profit at the other end of the trade route, the same bricks were too expensive to compete with local production if shipped inland by wagon for a couple of hundred miles.
 
So the basic question - does this intensify naval research with all the extra shipping commerce, or simplify it so that the trade routes don't seem as flawed?

Who could reasonably dominate the Suez straits well enough to get Europeans to look for another route?

Or moreover, who cares about the Europeans in 608? Would you have Anatolia and Egypt rise as major regional powers just because they're not affiliated with an increasingly dominant Middle Asian region?
 
On September 30 608 AD, For some reason that is not fully understood, a butterfly flaps it's wings in the oposite direction as OTL, and this causes an earthquake that splits the continent of africa from the continent of eurasia along the same path as the Suez canal will one day be in OTL. Those in the imedate area are screwed, but this means that the people europe now have a quick, cheap, sea route to Asia. Now what?

The immediate area is likely to involve the almost total destruction of every coastal city in the eastern med and red sea at a minimum. it is likely that tidal waves will destroy most of the coastal areas in the western med and Indian oceans. However humans are quite resilient and a generation or two will probably see almost total recovery of populations in the areas, though not necessarily the original populations. I can see merchants and settlers from India and SE Asia filtering into the red sea coasts and northern Egypt Huns and Khazars drifting south into Greece and the inhabitants of central Anatolia and Mesopotamia repopulating the coasts of the middle east.

the new civilizations will restart trade east and west but will have a broader knowledge of geography than their predecessors because while caravan merchants, with few exceptions, only travel a few hundred miles before exchanging goods and returning home sailors who travel from London to Bombay or shanghai in a single voyage will be relatively common.

the easier trade will foster the spread of knowledge between east and west. Paper, printing, barrel making, the heavy plow etc. will become part of a common E-W knowledge base as well as marine engineering tech, sails hulls etc.

One butterfly might be the discovery of the new world by merchants looking for trade routes down the coast of west Africa or north from china.

Some sort of eastern roman empire might recover but I think that we can assume that Islam will be butterflied away. Persia will get a big boost given the devastation of Byzantiums territory.
 
To make it even cooler (and maybe more ASBish), maybe the same earthquake splits the rift valley, seperating east africa as an island and allowing easier access to the interior of the continent.
 
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