The butterfly effect and human culture

Just think about the names.

The cigarette (the name says little/lady cigar) is more of modern a variant of the cigar, which is simply tobacco leaves rolled up and wrapped over each other for easy smoking.

JC
Early cigars do actually look somewhat similar to modern cigarettes actually. I've also heard that the word cigar is derived from Yucatec Mayan "sicar" though I'm somewhat dubious of that, because as far as I'm aware there's no 'r' sound in Yucatec. Still though, "sic" at least is Yucatec for tobacco.
 
I like to imagine that had Tolkien fallen down a well on his way to write LotR then we might have a more diverse and imaginative fantasy landscape today -- one less dominated by the works of a single man and the endless horde of lesser writers lining up to fondle him. I'm hardly an expert on the history of the genre, though, so this is probably more informed by my anti-high-fantasy bias than anything else. Maybe without Tolkien the whole genre would have sunk into obscurity forevermore.
 
I like to imagine that had Tolkien fallen down a well on his way to write LotR then we might have a more diverse and imaginative fantasy landscape today -- one less dominated by the works of a single man and the endless horde of lesser writers lining up to fondle him. I'm hardly an expert on the history of the genre, though, so this is probably more informed by my anti-high-fantasy bias than anything else. Maybe without Tolkien the whole genre would have sunk into obscurity forevermore.

Nah, it'd be just as unimaginative but you'd have Howard and company be the founding writers instead of Tolkien. You'd have mostly fantasies set in the distant past or more modern, urban fantasy.
 
She. ::smile::

Damn. I thought it sounded like a girl's name, but I figured it was Hindi or something, and most Hindi names sound like girl names to me ("Shiva," "Arjuna," etc).

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Here are a couple other cultural items:

the high-five
the autograph
the mohawk
 
the mohawk
The mohawk was a very common Native-American hairstyle that like cigars goes back much further than most PoD's could possibly change. Granted, a PoD might change it's likelihood of being adopted by western culture, but not nearly as likely to avert its existence entirely.
 
I know it was used by several North American tribes. Wikipedia also says they found an ancient Irish bog body with a mohawk.

Was it also used in ancient Mesoamerica or South America?
As far as I can tell it was used by only one warrior society in the Aztec Triple Alliance, not by anyone else in Mesoamerica and I doubt it existed in South America.
 
Damn. I thought it sounded like a girl's name, but I figured it was Hindi or something, and most Hindi names sound like girl names to me ("Shiva," "Arjuna," etc).

It's actually a feminization of the Hebrew word from the Old Testament that can be translated as "happy" or "blessed." I feminized it like Cinderella is a feminization of cinder.

I like it because it has this exotic, witchy, vampirish sound to it but it's actually a name based on the Bible.
 
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