The Golden Continent

After feedback on my original POD, here is a more specific and (hopefully) plausible POD.

Egypt allies with Hannibal shortly before the Battle of Capua (211 BC) under the agreement that should Carthage be victorious, Egypt gains Sicily, several other islands, and parts of southern Italy. They aren't ideal terms but lifting the siege on Capua is crucial to Hannibal's war effort. Egypt reinforces Hannibal's forces with both cavalry and infantry, allowing Hannibal to truly march on Rome with heavy siege equipment. This draws Roman forces around Capua to Rome's defense, allowing a combined army of Egyptian and Punic forces to liberate Capua.

The first Battle for Rome ends in a stalemate. However, Punic and Egyptian reinforcements arriving from Capua eventually allows Hannibal to decisively defeat several Roman reinforcements and break Rome's will. Rome sues for peace and is required to pay an exorbitant war fine to Carthage and loses its territory south of Cannae.

Are there any thoughts on the plausibility of these events?
 
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Additionally, teff may also spread to North Africa and could cause a large population boost in the next few centuries in Egypt and the Atlas mountains. This may in turn enable North African civilizations to further conquer parts of southern Europe and larger areas of either Africa or the Near East.

The only problem is that teff thrives only in elevations of 1800-2500 meters and Egypt is pretty much at sea level.

Carthage will probably solidify its hold on the Iberian Peninsula and may try to spread westward through the Atlas mountains and Egypt may attempt to conquer Meroe. It may even try to conquer Axum once it discovers that the source of the Blue Nile and thus the fate of Egypt is within the territory of a powerful rival.
 
This map shows eland distribution across Africa. The social effects of eland domestication would be pretty interesting. If there's a shift to plow agriculture, then men in African society would become more important as food producers, which traditionally was the domain of women. However, hoe agriculture would still be viable in a tropical climate. Since hoe agriculture appears to be positively correlated to polygyny, the increased food production ability of men might lead to increased monogamy within traditional West African societies since a single man and woman would be capable of producing the amount of food that previously, several women and a man would be needed to produce. The most prominent individuals would still probably have multiple wives, but the economic incentive to practice polygyny would be diminished. Mulching using manure would now probably be possible for wide portions of the continent, eventually leading to greater soil fertility.

And warfare for the best land and valuable eland herds would certainly become more prevalent. New endemic diseases might spread to populations that start to herd elands, which would be pretty bad given the disease load that people in sub-Saharan Africa are already under. However, community size and health would probably markedly improve with new access to the labor, meat, and milk of giant elands. Given several centuries, African populations might become unusual as tropical people with unusually high rates of lactose tolerance.

ElandMaps1A.jpg
 
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This map shows tsetse fly distribution across Africa. Given that distribution, the domestication of giant eland would probably occur in the savanna region of west Africa. People with regular contact with others that herd cattle and own horses but are unable to keep their own due to the fly would be the first to try to herd giant elands. Given that the savanna is decent agriculture land and the elands have a competitive advantage over cattle, there might be an expansion of a particular people group throughout West Africa. Or the tame elands might become widespread throughout the region before a particular group of people is able to press their advantage.

If elands are rideable (I haven't found any sources that confirm or deny this) then a secondary effect of their domestication might be a smaller slave trade. Slaves were often traded for horses but elands are quite strong enough to bear the weight of a human and their speed is comparable to that of horses. Their ability to move throughout all the climates of Africa might lead eventually to the near-complete replacement of cattle in the continent. And since some parts of Africa were introduced to cows from 600-1400 AD, some ethnic groups may not ever have experience tending cattle.

And once people realize how important the eland is to their way of life, the antelope will probably occupy a prominent place in art, literature, and folktales.

tsetse_map500x448.jpg
 
I wonder which region of Africa would ultimately become the wealthiest, most technologically developed, and most populous. Would it be West Africa with its historically dense population and the site of many indigenous polities or would it be East Africa with Ethiopia and the Great Lakes region with its extremely fertile soil and its access to the Indian Ocean trade? Or would it be another region I haven't thought of?
 
Wasn't the population density of West Africa significantly caused by the introduction of New World crops?

I'd consider Great Zimbabwe. They had access to the Indian Ocean trade, and there were gold fields near by that weren't exploited until their decline. With access to gold they could import an agricultural package and build up a large population.
 
The problem with Egypt allying with Carthage (or Rome) is that both Rome and Carthage were lucrative trade partners-allying with one or the other isn't going to help them, while remaining on the sidelines and raking in the profits will. Sicily (even if they could get it in a deal to support Carthage, which is doubtful), isn't really that beneficial to them either-its main attraction is its grain exports, and that really isn't that beneficial to Egypt, which was already raking in as much as they realistically could from grain exporting-especially when taking Sicily results in losing a lucrative trade partner.
 
Wasn't the population density of West Africa significantly caused by the introduction of New World crops?

I'd consider Great Zimbabwe. They had access to the Indian Ocean trade, and there were gold fields near by that weren't exploited until their decline. With access to gold they could import an agricultural package and build up a large population.

I think West Africa has always had dense population due to all the different crops that take advantage of the varied environments of the region. Though I don't really know much about the historical population density of West Africa.

I did think of Great Zimbabwe but they were at the tail end of the Indian Ocean trade whereas the Horn of Africa and the Swahili states were the primary destination for the trade. And the African Great Lakes area has been historically the densest populated portion of sub-Saharan Africa. Adding domesticated giant elands to the scene along with the POD that indirectly causes centuries of development that didn't take place IOTL would lead to more developed states in the region. So they'd probably get the benefits of the Indian Ocean trade before any other portion of Africa.

West Africa would have the trans-Saharan trade, the Sahel and forest kingdoms and would be connected to Carthage and the Mediterranean through trade.

Great Zimbabwe and the Congo seem to be relatively isolated compared to other African states, though it certainly isn't isolated from other African civilizations, which would certainly be more powerful and centralized than IOTL. What crop package would Zimbabwe need? They'd already have bananas, sorghum, teff, and millet along with either cattle or eland (ITTL).
 
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A quick look at modern Zimbabwe agriculture reveals their staple food crop is maize, along with barley, millet, sorghum, wheat and soybean. Cotton, tobacco and sugarcane are the major cash crops. Excluding the new world crops, they should be able to get wheat, sugarcane and cotton from India and soybean from China.

Sheep, goats and chicken do pretty well there right now. One domesticate we can add is the guineafowl, a turkey like bird native to Africa and apparently domesticated by the ancient Greeks. Look at them, you can't herd chickens like that.



Guinea_Fowl_Herder.jpg
 
I think the guineafowl was domesticated by West Africans but I had no idea their range was so large. For some reason, I thought they only were used in West Africa. There are already native varieties of cotton in Africa. I hadn't thought of soybeans though. It's interesting that wheat is grown in Zimbabwe. I thought temperate crops didn't do well in tropical climates and vice-versa due to the difference in rainfall patterns and dry season stress.
 
I think the guineafowl was domesticated by West Africans but I had no idea their range was so large. For some reason, I thought they only were used in West Africa. There are already native varieties of cotton in Africa. I hadn't thought of soybeans though. It's interesting that wheat is grown in Zimbabwe. I thought temperate crops didn't do well in tropical climates and vice-versa due to the difference in rainfall patterns and dry season stress.
The High Veldt is not really tropical. It's too cool for malaria, for instance.

As for Great Zimbabwe, what it essentially was was a toll station. People driving cattle from the highlands down to the lowlands had few places to do it, and that was one. Think of the toll-extracting castles on the Rhein, for a European equivalent.
 
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