Probability of World Dominated by Sub-Saharan Africans

With a prehistoric PoD, what is the probability of a world dominated by sub-Saharan Africans?

  • < 1%

    Votes: 35 38.0%
  • 1% to < 5%

    Votes: 19 20.7%
  • 5% to < 10%

    Votes: 5 5.4%
  • 10% to < 20%

    Votes: 12 13.0%
  • > 20%

    Votes: 21 22.8%

  • Total voters
    92

aenigma

Banned
I would think a good path to take would be for the med sea to dry up somehow or never exist, that would reduce the maritime aspect of euro civilization by a great deal, make the climate worse and all sorts of things as a result from that

I wonder where the nile would end in that case
 
I would think a good path to take would be for the med sea to dry up somehow or never exist, that would reduce the maritime aspect of euro civilization by a great deal, make the climate worse and all sorts of things as a result from that

I wonder where the nile would end in that case

Thats way outside the bounds of this subforum’s parameters.
 
Why? It didn’t among the hellenistic and roman civilizations.

Unlike the Romans and Greeks, the Garamantes had a real and urgent need for something like that. They lived in the middle of the Sahara with contacts both north and south of it, in a massive urban civilization. A civilization entirely dependent on slave labour pumping up groundwater to maintain their artificial oasis in the desert. And towards the end of their reign, it would have been very obvious that they could not keep up with the receding groundwater. Which reduced their ability to take slaves, leading to less groundwater, etc.

They would still collapse at some point due to exhausting the groundwater supply, but stem-driven extraction would buy them a couple of centuries at least, maybe more. And as the groundwater gets harder to extract, they'd have a clear and present motivation for improving the steam engine.
 

Toraach

Banned
Unlike the Romans and Greeks, the Garamantes had a real and urgent need for something like that. They lived in the middle of the Sahara with contacts both north and south of it, in a massive urban civilization. A civilization entirely dependent on slave labour pumping up groundwater to maintain their artificial oasis in the desert. And towards the end of their reign, it would have been very obvious that they could not keep up with the receding groundwater. Which reduced their ability to take slaves, leading to less groundwater, etc.

They would still collapse at some point due to exhausting the groundwater supply, but stem-driven extraction would buy them a couple of centuries at least, maybe more. And as the groundwater gets harder to extract, they'd have a clear and present motivation for improving the steam engine.
And did they have easy to extract sources of coal? They certainly did not have wood and wood is a resource which run off very quickly during intense using.
 
And did they have easy to extract sources of coal? They certainly did not have wood and wood is a resource which run off very quickly during intense using.

It so happens that the area is well supplied with a combustible. They called it naphta back then. (neft in Hebrew, naft in Arabic and Persian)
 
Unlike the Romans and Greeks, the Garamantes had a real and urgent need for something like that. They lived in the middle of the Sahara with contacts both north and south of it, in a massive urban civilization. A civilization entirely dependent on slave labour pumping up groundwater to maintain their artificial oasis in the desert. And towards the end of their reign, it would have been very obvious that they could not keep up with the receding groundwater. Which reduced their ability to take slaves, leading to less groundwater, etc.

They would still collapse at some point due to exhausting the groundwater supply, but stem-driven extraction would buy them a couple of centuries at least, maybe more. And as the groundwater gets harder to extract, they'd have a clear and present motivation for improving the steam engine.

I’m really not convinced. Heron’s engine was nowhere near capable of working as a water pump, and as a rotary engine, its not even conceptually useful. Unless you’re already building sophisticated set ups with mcrankshafts, orunless you’re using screw pumps, which would require so many engines...

It’d be easier to just use windmills.
 
Sub Saharan Africa has most of the disadvantages of the Americas, but does has metallurgy, and some isolated connections to the greater Eurasian conglomeration of societies. I could see Eastern Africa, states like Ethiopia, doing much much better than in our history, but to the point where they’re a dominant world power, as are their neighbors? I don’t see it.

One issue Ethiopia has is at its height of power, it proved itself unable to maintain its sphere of power across the Red Sea in Arabia. This failure was thus compounded with general famines abd degeberation of Imperial authority on the eve of Islam.
 
I’m really not convinced. Heron’s engine was nowhere near capable of working as a water pump, and as a rotary engine, its not even conceptually useful. Unless you’re already building sophisticated set ups with mcrankshafts, orunless you’re using screw pumps, which would require so many engines...

It’d be easier to just use windmills.

That could just as well be used as an argument against Beaumont, Papin or Savery ever doing anything useful with the concept. Yet they all did.

The fact is, steam engines were originally developed for pumping water out of mine, and with less of a desperate need behind the development.
 
That could just as well be used as an argument against Beaumont, Papin or Savery ever doing anything useful with the concept. Yet they all did.

The fact is, steam engines were originally developed for pumping water out of mine, and with less of a desperate need behind the development.

They most certainly did not use Heron’s engine. You posit him inventing a newcomen engine and we’ll talk.
 
They most certainly did not use Heron’s engine. You posit him inventing a newcomen engine and we’ll talk.

You do realize if it was invented ex nihilo it makes it rather easier ?

Anyway, Beaumont were probably inspired by della Porta, who made the crucial observation that when hot gas condense, it generates suction. Portas Apparatus was basically Herons engine with steam instead of air.

1*8awM3LyAxSupom5AMp8-wA.png


Beaumont was using the principle to pump water out of mines only six years later, so it is possible he came up with it independently, I suppose. Anyway, it is not like Heron did not know how to get work out of his engine:

1*60tS8ih2vmuA3TEo2GEJkg.png


But yes, the steam engine development absolutely traces its ancestry to Heron.

I got to ask, though... what is it that rubs you so wrong about this?
 
You do realize if it was invented ex nihilo it makes it rather easier ?

Anyway, Beaumont were probably inspired by della Porta, who made the crucial observation that when hot gas condense, it generates suction. Portas Apparatus was basically Herons engine with steam instead of air.

1*8awM3LyAxSupom5AMp8-wA.png


Beaumont was using the principle to pump water out of mines only six years later, so it is possible he came up with it independently, I suppose. Anyway, it is not like Heron did not know how to get work out of his engine:

1*60tS8ih2vmuA3TEo2GEJkg.png


But yes, the steam engine development absolutely traces its ancestry to Heron.

I got to ask, though... what is it that rubs you so wrong about this?

Because I actually did a college paper on the feasibility of Heron’s engine being used to productive ends about a decade ago. I was optimistic, but I assumed that every other problem was solved.

First, the engine has almost no power. Second, as an open system, it burns through its water supply at an amazing clip, which is a serious problem for using it to power a well. Third, if you’re hooking it up to a piston, you have to posit a sophisticated crank system, which, while attested to the height of the Roman Empirw, does not seem to be widespread. Fourth, you have to posit high quality pistons, particularly if you’re digging deeply.

Problem number 2 is the biggest for me. The aeliopile will exhaust water at a reasonable fraction of its ability to pump water. Newcomen had over a millennia of advancement in science and metallurgy behind him, and his pump still sucked (actually, it sucked poorly).
 
Beaumonts design had been sucking up water a hundred years before Newcomen.

Anyway, no-one is saying you are going to hook an aeliopile up to a sucktion system and expect it to work. That really underestimates ancient people, who were entirely capable of modifying or adapting a design.

Like Beaumont, della Porta etc did. They adapted the concept into something workable, if not what we would call efficient. The concept was not revolutionary.

This is akin to saying that if X people got a hold of toy boats with sails, it might give them an inking of the concept of sails. It would not mean that they would try to sail in the tiny toy boats.

They were just as intelligent as people today.
 
Beaumonts design had been sucking up water a hundred years before Newcomen.

Anyway, no-one is saying you are going to hook an aeliopile up to a sucktion system and expect it to work. That really underestimates ancient people, who were entirely capable of modifying or adapting a design.

Like Beaumont, della Porta etc did. They adapted the concept into something workable, if not what we would call efficient. The concept was not revolutionary.

This is akin to saying that if X people got a hold of toy boats with sails, it might give them an inking of the concept of sails. It would not mean that they would try to sail in the tiny toy boats.

They were just as intelligent as people today.

I’m not disputing their intelligence. I’m disputing that the tech was anywhere near close enough to inspire the developments needed for a useful steam engine.
 
I’m not disputing their intelligence. I’m disputing that the tech was anywhere near close enough to inspire the developments needed for a useful steam engine.

But it did inspire useful steam engines OTL. Not just one either, several of them seem to be independent leaps

I know about Ma'ruf, al-Dins jack etc, but it is all one step from the aeliophile. I am not aware of any difficult steps in between it and Beumonts successful steam-powered emptying of the Guadalcanal mines.
 
But it did inspire useful steam engines OTL. Not just one either, several of them seem to be independent leaps

I know about Ma'ruf, al-Dins jack etc, but it is all one step from the aeliophile. I am not aware of any difficult steps in between it and Beumonts successful steam-powered emptying of the Guadalcanal mines.

After a millennia of technological development.
 
Well, it's not like all of Europe dominated the world. Only specific parts did so, basically Western Europe.
 
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