Some ideas for timelines...

Ok so it's been awhile since I wrote any kind of alternate history, but here are some ideas I had for some POD's for timelines:


1. Persia Conquers Greece: I've read a lot of speculation on this site and others that the Persians would never have been able to hold down the Greeks, but... I thought it would be interesting.


2. Jesus Christ is Stillborn: This one I thought would be particularly interesting. I've seen a lot of material on the internet about alternate lives for Jesus, but nothing about him actually not having been there at all.


3. Alexander the Great is Born a Woman: What would the world be like if Alexander the Great wasn't... Alexander the Great? Would she still have been able to influence the world, or would she have disappeared into the pages of history?


4. Modern Humans Evolve in Asia: I've read that there is some conjecture over where Homo erectus evolved. So, how different would the world be if we came from Asia, and not Africa?


5. Messinian Salinity Crisis Never Ends: I don't know if you guys are familiar with it but... basically Africa merged with Iberia for almost a million years, and nobody is exactly sure how they became separated again. So, what if they had stayed connected? I imagine the world would be pretty different.
 

Dirk

Banned
You might as well post them here, as well. No offense to you, of course, but having the wherewithal to have all those TL's going at once is impossible for pretty much anybody.

Now, to answer your questions:

1. Most of the time the Persians were more of the "give us money and soldiers and respect, and you can stay ruling there". A map of any pre-Seleucid empire in Persia probably has half of the land under vassal kings who the emperor's viceroys oversee and maintain relations with. Since Greece is farther away from Persia than any other territory in the empires, it's most likely that Greece will continue to be ruled by Greeks who adopt minor elements of Persian culture and send money and troops to Persia when required. Then again, the Greeks were so hardheaded and independent that it would require a smashing victory by the Persians in war (not unlikely) for them to submit.

2. If you're a Christian, then the world probably continues as it was until he IS born. If you're not, then realize that the political, cultural, and economic conditions in Judea at that time were ripe for a Messiah to arise and save his people; if it's not OTL Jesus, it'll be some other man.

3. Alexander's father Philip's main goal in life was to free the Ionian cities from Persian rule and to have a strong heir to continue his work. Macedonia before Philip was a failed state on the verge of collapse, invaded seasonally by Thracians, Epirotes, and Paeonians. If Philip is assassinated as IOTL (VERY unlikely due to butterflies), then he leaves only a mentally challenged teenage son (Philip Arrhidaeus) and a baby (Eurydice's son Caranus) as male heirs. If either becomes king I see Polyperchon and Parmenion becoming regent-generals of a sort, though I doubt their reign will be so effective. Macedonia probably fails as a state with no Alexander. OR Philip lives long enough that Caranus grows up and takes the reins. Either way, this butterflies Alexander's conquests, the Diadochi, the Hellenistic Era, and more.

4. Uh...I dunno.

5. Yes, very sure. Nothing would be the same, or even similar. Mediterranean currents, trade, winds, movement of peoples, etc. would all be different.
 
2. If you're a Christian, then the world probably continues as it was until he IS born. If you're not, then realize that the political, cultural, and economic conditions in Judea at that time were ripe for a Messiah to arise and save his people; if it's not OTL Jesus, it'll be some other man.

Though they would need to be quick, as Judea would be cleared out in another century when Jewish factions tried becoming independent of the Romans while fighting each other more than the Romans. That and I doubt there would be messiahs with the same moral system as Jesus.
 
Though they would need to be quick, as Judea would be cleared out in another century when Jewish factions tried becoming independent of the Romans while fighting each other more than the Romans. That and I doubt there would be messiahs with the same moral system as Jesus.

You wouldn't even need to wait, records from that time indicate that Apocalyptic preachers/would-be-Messiah's were a dime a dozen back then. Just shuffle the deck a little bit and you'd have another "Son of God".
 
"1. Most of the time the Persians were more of the "give us money and soldiers and respect, and you can stay ruling there". A map of any pre-Seleucid empire in Persia probably has half of the land under vassal kings who the emperor's viceroys oversee and maintain relations with. Since Greece is farther away from Persia than any other territory in the empires, it's most likely that Greece will continue to be ruled by Greeks who adopt minor elements of Persian culture and send money and troops to Persia when required. Then again, the Greeks were so hardheaded and independent that it would require a smashing victory by the Persians in war (not unlikely) for them to submit."


That's kind of what I thought would happen. I'm certainly very interested in the consequences that this would have later in history though. Do we even get a Roman Republic without Classical Greece? If there is no Rome, then who replaces them?

"2. If you're a Christian, then the world probably continues as it was until he IS born. If you're not, then realize that the political, cultural, and economic conditions in Judea at that time were ripe for a Messiah to arise and save his people; if it's not OTL Jesus, it'll be some other man."


Not a Christian, but definitely a Theist, so I think the world would be a very different place. I was thinking either John the Baptist fills the niche, albeit less influentially, or maybe a basket of different "messiahs" who are all condemned by the Jewish clergy. All the same, I really doubt that anyone would have been a direct analogue to Jesus, and that they would have been trying to spread the word of their messiah outside of Judaism, which means no gentile Abrahmic religion with its messiah from this era.

"3. Alexander's father Philip's main goal in life was to free the Ionian cities from Persian rule and to have a strong heir to continue his work. Macedonia before Philip was a failed state on the verge of collapse, invaded seasonally by Thracians, Epirotes, and Paeonians. If Philip is assassinated as IOTL (VERY unlikely due to butterflies), then he leaves only a mentally challenged teenage son (Philip Arrhidaeus) and a baby (Eurydice's son Caranus) as male heirs. If either becomes king I see Polyperchon and Parmenion becoming regent-generals of a sort, though I doubt their reign will be so effective. Macedonia probably fails as a state with no Alexander. OR Philip lives long enough that Caranus grows up and takes the reins. Either way, this butterflies Alexander's conquests, the Diadochi, the Hellenistic Era, and more."


Yeah I actually don't know that much about Alexander and his family, to be honest, so this one would require a LOT of pre-writing research, but I think it's doable. No Hellenistic Era you say? That would be very different indeed.

"4. Uh...I dunno."


I'm thinking this would drastically effect the faunal composition of Eurasia, and also the distribution of human phenotypes and such. I would LIKE to do a timeline on an alternate End-Pleistocene Extinction, but it looks like some other people are already working on some of those, so I'll have to wait.


"5. Yes, very sure. Nothing would be the same, or even similar. Mediterranean currents, trade, winds, movement of peoples, etc. would all be different."


The interesting thing about this one is that modern humans would be able to plausibly arise in Africa, Asia, or even Europe. Not only that, but we'd be looking at an ENTIRELY different makeup of everybody's fauna (with the exception of perhaps the Americas and Australia), which means very different set of domesticates and thus some very different civilizations.
 
Philip's nephew and predecessor Amyntas IV was still alive at the time of the assassination.

Philip had initially been Regent for him, but the Macedonians decided they didn't want an infant King, and raised Philip to the throne. Had Philip left only infants and idiots, Amyntas would seem the obvious choice.
 
Like I said, I'm not all that familiar with the life of Alexander the Great, so I'd have to be doing a lot of background research on that one. But what about the others?


Edit: I posted these and a couple other ideas in that topic that Dirk recommended.
 
Andrew the King said:
;8898514I would LIKE to do a timeline on an alternate End-Pleistocene Extinction, but it looks like some other people are already working on some of those, so I'll have to wait.

There's plenty of room for different treatments of this basic idea.

Not that your other ideas don't sound interesting, too.
 
In the other topic I posted an idea for a timeline based on the following link:

http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/research/what-if/whatif.htm


I think I'm going to role with it. I think that a less severe ice age would have put less pressure on the migrations of human species and subspecies and allowed for an earlier migration into the Americas (the article doesn't exactly agree, but that's my opinion) via the Bering Straight.


Even if migrations into the Americas don't happen any earlier, the environmental pressure might not be exactly the same and the humans migrating might not have made the same choices as those that did OTL in terms of their prey and how they were going to manage the populations.


I think a world where England is still connected to Europe, with no Great Lakes, no Ohio River, a smaller Adriatic Sea, probably a smaller Persian Gulf, quite possibly a larger Alaska (maybe even with a piece of Beringia left?) would be a very interesting place.


Besides, while I really like what I see on this forum and the idea of KNOWN history taking very different turns, I really think this forum needs some more completely constructed societies. I don't see a lot of people making entirely new religions, kinship systems, legal systems, etc.
 

Dirk

Banned
From Andrew's Link Above said:
Imagine European History With No English Channel

England might well have become a formidable naval power, but with a land frontier to defend, it could not have poured its military energy so intensively into its navy.

Even if it could successfully have defended its land frontier, the frontier would have been culturally far more porous. We can wonder whether England would have maintained its cultural identity as well as it did.

Would the Romans have occupied Britain during Caesar's campaign in Gaul instead of a century later?

Could England have stopped the Spanish in 1588?]

Could England have stopped Napoleon in 1805?

Could England have stopped Hitler in 1940?

How many other invasions would have been attempted if Britain had remained connected to the mainland?

Without its legendary navy, would England have been able to project power globally as effectively as it did?

Might the race for colonies have been slowed? Spain conquered the Americas while Britain was a minor power, and the French had a formidable navy. With France, in particular, in a better position to challenge Britain for naval supremacy, the global arrangement of colonies might have been quite different.

Heh, made me lol. I share for your enjoyment, AH.com.
 
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