WI: More cradles of civilization survive to the present day as distinct cultures, kind of like China.

Neoteros

Neoteros

Of all the ancient cradles of civilization, China is the only one that can claim a more or less uninterrupted cultural continuity from its Blue/Yellow River origin to its current form, with foreign dynasties and invaders largely assimilating into Han Chinese society rather than forcing their culture on the rest of the county - successfully, at least, it's not like the Manchu did not try to do so.

Would've any other ancient civilization been able to survive in such a way? If Egypt hadn't been Arabized, the Copts could've been able to claim a similar history - even though they'd been subject to massive Christian and Hellenic influences, the same can be said about China's adoption of Buddhism. The survival of Indus River Valley and Mesopotamian civilization is harder, since you might have to butterfly the Indo-European expansion away.
 

Lalli

Only markable river vally culture beside China Egypt is only one what i can imaginate to surviving to modern time. Indus Valley was doomed due climate change. Altough some might argue that Indian culture is continuum of Indus Culture. Mesopotamia ws such place that bigger neighbors were going to conquer that eventually or some other people overrunning that.
 
Neoteros

Neoteros

WilliamOfOckham said:
Do you mean linguistic continuity, or just general cultural continuity? The easiest for the latter would be the Andes.
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Preferably both, as in China - even though Chinese culture and language evolved and incorporated disparate influences, there never was any clean break. Again, Egypt might count, especially if they find a way to overthrow their Hellenistic/Roman/Byzantine/Muslim overlords, or to assimilate them instead of the other way around - a surviving Cleopatra might've been a good start, since it looked like she was making moves towards abolishing the Ptolemaic apartheid regime.

Similarly, there were plans to establish a post-colonial monarchy in the Andes headed by a Spanish-speaking descendant of the last Sapa Inca; it wouldn't take long for this monarchy to end up like Paraguay, with Quechua and Spanish co-official, and the former being the language of most people.
 
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Orko

Neoteros said:
Similarly, there were plans to establish a post-colonial monarchy in the Andes headed by a Spanish-speaking descendant of the last Sapa Inca; it wouldn't take long for this monarchy to end up like Paraguay, with Quechua and Spanish co-official, and the former being the language of most people.
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I just read about it, pretty fascinating. I thought at first it was probably some fringe thing that nobody took seriously, but no, it was very serious and supported by such people as Belgrano and San Martin. However I do doubt whether that could have been considered as continuity from the Inca empire as this plan seemed to have been thought up by the same Criollos that ended up leading South America IOTL. Maybe a better chance is to just have a surviving Inca empire by defeating the conquistadores.
 

LampLighters

Banned
Neoteros said:
Similarly, there were plans to establish a post-colonial monarchy in the Andes headed by a Spanish-speaking descendant of the last Sapa Inca; it wouldn't take long for this monarchy to end up like Paraguay, with Quechua and Spanish co-official, and the former being the language of most people.
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We don't know whether the earliest cities in the Andes spoke a language related to Quechua, so speaking Quechua would not necessarily mean linguistic continuity back to the first Andean civilization.
 
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