Can the Roman Empire defend the conquests of Justinian (mainly Italy) against the Lombards if there is no plague of Justinian/if the plague mostly hits Persian territory and barbarian populations (Arabs, Visigoths, Lombards)?
WI No plague of Justinian
- Thread starter Alcsentre Calanice
- Start date
Well, a Roman-screw, where Egypt is ravaged and lost for Romania may change the epidemic causes, maybe delaying it.
But, of course, it would butterfly away Justinian conquest and probably much of Eastern Roman history (if Egypt is lost and ravaged, it's likely that Syria would be as well, meaning possibly no ERE).
As for no plague as the PoD, I'm not too sure it could be plausible : while it's partially depending on historical events, it's too much of a natural event to be held without supernatural intervention.
But, of course, it would butterfly away Justinian conquest and probably much of Eastern Roman history (if Egypt is lost and ravaged, it's likely that Syria would be as well, meaning possibly no ERE).
As for no plague as the PoD, I'm not too sure it could be plausible : while it's partially depending on historical events, it's too much of a natural event to be held without supernatural intervention.
Saphroneth
Banned
Not having the mutation that made it as fatal as it was should be entirely possible. That is, it still sweeps through Rome but it only causes a small number of deaths.
The plague of Justinian is way overrated, there are signs of urban expansion in the middle East during the supposed peak of the epidemic.
What weakened the ERE was the persian occupation the Levant, which re oriented the economic networks of Syria and Egypt.
For a POD to make the ERE stronger against the VII century odds, i suggest a different treatment of Slavs and Avars in the Balkans.
Caesar Biden
Banned
The Plauge is NOT overrated in the slightest. While the later occupation was a blow, it was this plague that screwed the Empire, making them unable to make enough in tax income to defend their borders. It also gave the Arabs an opportunity to expand, seeing as their neighbors didn't outnumber them so much.
Not much on the mutation itself, I'm afraid, unless you can argue of an eventual (as in datable and direct) human intervention into bacterial evolution; as it happened with, say, bovines, dogs, etc.
AH deals with historical, human events. It's why evolutionary/geological PoDs are sent to ASB instead of Pre or Post 1900.
While how the epidemic happened may be changed trough an historical PoD (as proposed above), its appearance itself of the plague escape a direct intervention (it doesn't help that Egypt was likely a secondary epidemic focal point : even butterflying Egypt as the Late Antiquity granary may not be decisive, in spite of the historical implications).
Which is definitely not a proof : we have signs of huge urban expansion during the late Medieval plague as well, without anyone saying its death tool was overrated.
Basing on the historical and archeological sources, a comparable death tool in Late Antiquity seems more and more plausible.
Saphroneth
Banned
That's an incredibly strict reading, though. I mean, I'm pretty sure that it's okay to have someone suddenly suffer a brain aneurysm as a PoD. Heck, it's okay for a PoD to be an entirely new fictional person or a shell to explode instead of not explode or - to cite one of the most well read TLs on the site - for the PoD to involve the presence of an easily domesticable yam.
A PoD of a particular bacterial mutation not taking place is only "evolutionary" in the same sense that a shell detonating instead of not detonating is "different laws of physics".
Oh, it's more or less arbitrary, I give you that.
Still, on one part you have geological/evolutionnary PoDs being considered supernatural; and one the other part you have everything caused trough human intervention.
It's kinda a grey area, but more or less counts AFAIK. Mostly because it's a PoD directly involving an human being. Not rocks or bacterias.
(It's still particularily lazy as a PoD tough).
And even there, I think it would be discussed why someone would suffer that : as in "Why, when there's nothing pointing it was on the verge of happening IOTL".
But there you're mixing different stuff.
The first is about a change that doesn't depend of human intervention, and is obviously not the logical outcome (as the change didn't happened). Letting only a supernatural intervention (contrary to human intervention) to deal with.
As for shell not detonating, you can argue of human intervention : say the factory worker was too careless on his job, or that a default due to someone (poor maintain, artillery issue, etc.).
Of course, if you could argue that yestina pestis was bioengineered, it might be different
Saphroneth
Banned
Would it be kosher if the guy who originally caught the disease from the chipmunk or whatever it was just plain died in infancy, then?Oh, it's more or less arbitrary, I give you that.
Still, on one part you have geological/evolutionnary PoDs being considered supernatural; and one the other part you have everything caused trough human intervention.
It's kinda a grey area, but more or less counts AFAIK. Mostly because it's a PoD directly involving an human being. Not rocks or bacterias.
(It's still particularily lazy as a PoD tough).
And even there, I think it would be discussed why someone would suffer that : as in "Why, when there's nothing pointing it was on the verge of happening IOTL".
But there you're mixing different stuff.
The first is about a change that doesn't depend of human intervention, and is obviously not the logical outcome (as the change didn't happened). Letting only a supernatural intervention (contrary to human intervention) to deal with.
As for shell not detonating, you can argue of human intervention : say the factory worker was too careless on his job, or that a default due to someone (poor maintain, artillery issue, etc.).
Of course, if you could argue that yestina pestis was bioengineered, it might be different
I think if Lands of Red and Gold is even remotely fine then this is okay.
Does anyone know if any of the primitive antibiotics have any effectiviness against Y. Pestis?
Egypt was probably not the main epidemic source, but how it entered Mediterranean basin (a bit like Crimea for late Middle Ages) historically.
I don't think bacterias are going to call it a day because the poor **** that catched it first IOTL (assuming there was only one individual, I'm not epidemologist, but I think it tends to imply more persons).
Even assuming that what made it possible to appear in Egypt is butterflied because of one individual (I don't really think it would be the case, virtually everything contextual would be unchanged), a different course would appear. (Arguably, we could kill enough people to prevent that, but it would be hardly distinguishable from the IOTL death tool. That's a good time travelling novella's idea, tough)
I'd point that I never said it couldn't be delayed (or advanced) or changed when it comes to historical events. But without an important* and earlier PoD in China (or say, at best, in the Middle-East) to deal with it, you won't get rid of *Justinian plague.
*Like a chaotic geopolitical situation, making trade roads virtually unusable (Of course, it would have really, really important historical consequences on Late Antiquity)
At best, you'd need to sever the links between Constantinople and Romania as a whole and Egypt to have significant changes, but with the aformentioned implications IMO.
It's not just about the mutation, in LoRaG but about it and human intervention together.
Granted, it's a gray area, but the TL itself compensate by being really well written and with a real good inner coherency.
Eventually, giving we're not on a TL thread (I likely wouldn't have intervened if it was the case) but on a discussion thread, I'm not sure it's a fitting comparison.
I don't think it was the case for Late Antiquity Mediterranean basin (or Medieval Europe for what it's worth), but maybe in contemporary China?
Saphroneth
Banned
Clearly there was a patient zero for the Yersina infection, and it's also clearly not a high probability effect given it took about seven hundred years to reoccur.
I'm talking about no plague at all here, it just doesn't happen.
I'm talking about no plague at all here, it just doesn't happen.
Mutation doesn't need to happen trough species-crossing though, even killing an hypothetic patient zero doesn't mean the epidemic would have just gave up giving the really good context for it to flourish. Through sheer ammount of population (human and rodent) in Eastern Asia, it was more or less bound to happen.
Giving it lasted for centuries, with much possible outerbacks in Central Asia (because it's not a pandemic doesn't mean it's not existing) after it ended in Mediterranean Basin, I'd say it had a very much important probability effect.
Heck, because it happened historically, it's by definition the most plausible event.
And for no plague at all, you need a much, much earlier PoD in China to somehow prevent it to appears. If there's a "patient zero", it's there you'd find him.
Saphroneth
Banned
Well, yes.
I'm sorry I can't provide citations as to the exact person who would need to trip over and drown to avoid the disease originally transferring in the virulent form it originally did to humans.
(Since the second 1300s Black Death was not the same genetically or characteristically as the original Justinian plague, it was a separate strain.)
It's less a question of the exact person, than the unlikelyness of killing off the first person who catched it (and that's assuming it was not part of a "group zero") would mean that, in spite of an obviously favourable context, it would never appear at all at this point.
Not that, again, it couldn't have historical changes (it would) but such a far PoD would certainly have so much important consequences that would depend on the strain's origin : more or less directly from China, or issued from the strain that already was present in the Ist Century.
The former would be less of a butterfly invasion, but giving it would certainly imply a much more powerful Persia, Justinian era may be at the very least significantly modified, if not butterflied away.
Simply saying, if you don't touch to the context that made it possible to became a pandemic, you won't butterfly it because you get rid of first infected populations, others would replace them.
Separate strain doesn't mean unrelated, tough. It almost necessarily evolved from the same original epidemic focal point in China.
As for characteristcs, Justinian plague is more and more considered as a bubonic plague, so I'm not really sure what you mean there. Not the same strain (medieval y.p is more probably coming from China directly), but sharing most of characteristics nevertheless.
Saphroneth
Banned
I guess my position is...
I agree epidemics are going to happen.
But I don't think it is inevitable that one of the worst two epidemics in Eurasian history is definitely going to happen inside this thirty-year stretch of time.
And the sense I get is that you do think that's inevitable. You don't think it could be a less lethal epidemic, you don't think it could happen later, you don't think it possible this particular epidemic could not reach Byzantium...
I agree epidemics are going to happen.
But I don't think it is inevitable that one of the worst two epidemics in Eurasian history is definitely going to happen inside this thirty-year stretch of time.
And the sense I get is that you do think that's inevitable. You don't think it could be a less lethal epidemic, you don't think it could happen later, you don't think it possible this particular epidemic could not reach Byzantium...
Did a little casual research. Tetracycline (common antibiotic; grew up using it all the time on my father's livestock) is supposedly effective against Y. Pestis. Nubian mummies have been found with large amounts of tetracycline in their systems. Apparently, the beer they drank was absolutely loaded with it, due to the lack of pasteurization or any similar modern hygenic measures.
http://news.discovery.com/history/ancient-egypt/antibiotic-beer-nubia.htm
Now, I don't see anything specific about Nubian beer that makes it so special to the region, so this style of brewing could be exported across the grain-producing regions of the Empire. You "just" need someone to be able to make the connection between local beer consumption (if they even were still drinking beer like that, its not supposed to be the best tasting, for obvious reasons) and resistence to the plague, and spread that knowledge to other areas nearby. Or, if the Nubians knew thheir beer helped ward off disease somehow, have someone believe them.
Hell, even if this just became popular in Egypt (the only part of the Roman Empire Iever really associate with beer drinking), staving off high death rates there alone would be quite the boon.
EDIT: I just reread the article, and the time period in question is acutally exactly this period. Almos too perfect...
http://news.discovery.com/history/ancient-egypt/antibiotic-beer-nubia.htm
Now, I don't see anything specific about Nubian beer that makes it so special to the region, so this style of brewing could be exported across the grain-producing regions of the Empire. You "just" need someone to be able to make the connection between local beer consumption (if they even were still drinking beer like that, its not supposed to be the best tasting, for obvious reasons) and resistence to the plague, and spread that knowledge to other areas nearby. Or, if the Nubians knew thheir beer helped ward off disease somehow, have someone believe them.
Hell, even if this just became popular in Egypt (the only part of the Roman Empire Iever really associate with beer drinking), staving off high death rates there alone would be quite the boon.
EDIT: I just reread the article, and the time period in question is acutally exactly this period. Almos too perfect...
Last edited:
This is a stretch of Justinian's personality but what if he invested more in public healthand sanitation, than the churches he had built.
ManintheField
Banned
If you kill patient zero in circumstances where the bacteria does not spread to someone else, you kill that strain of the plague, period. The bacteria that causes plague has existed in Egypt for thousands of years prior to the Justinian Plague, so some specific mutation needs to have happened to make it as virulent as that which occurred in the 6th century. If you have a servant drive the rat bearing the flea where the mutation probably occurred into the desert, where the rat and the flea die, that strain of plague is GONE.
That doesn't mean new mutations won't happen that cause similar virulence, but it does mean that there is a level of authorial fiat as to when that gets to happen. Since I'm pretty sure AH.com is lacking in experts on the genome of Yersinia pestis, someone able to explain in detail how it might change to allow for a new, pandemic capable strain to evolve isn't present, so someone who wants to stop the Justinian Plague at its source is perfectly able to do that and use whatever the hell clever device they want to make it happen, if you really insist that preventing a particular mutation period is 'ASB' (which is ridiculous in itself, but not a discussion worth having).
Then you're either pulling the worst strawman ever, or you didn't read my posts.
Either way, it's simple enough to check them to see that I think it's modifiable, but would be so on PoDs that simply may make Justinian era at least hugely modified.
Interesting (but I'm a bit suspicious at the sensationalist, almost Cracked-like, nature of the website).
That said, I'm not sure the grual-like beer was unknown in Egypt : I remember NikoZate mentioning it being a very popular "beverage".
Why would have it worked for Nubians, and not for their immediate neighbours with which they may have shared that among other features?
How explain, while M. Armelagos point that it's found as far as Jordania, the plague outerback in the Ist century eastern Mediterranean basin?
How explain that the plague apparently touched as well Egypt than Ethiopia (meaning Africa below Egypt) up to Great Lakes, maybe having an origin in this region?
It may be an interesting clue there, no question, but I'm not too sure how much : after all, this kind of beer was unknown to the European parts, and even with a fewer death tool in Egypt and Syria, it would still likely strike hard northern regions.
Aren't we making from this, in spite of its qualities, some sort of "magic potion"?
I'll temper that a bit : the study was about 350-550 bones. I wonder if it's more or less arbitrary, as in searching in a "middle period" that would have been present before and after.
Frankly, giving that it seems (but I've only small points there, NikoZate's interventions would be really helpful there) that method of brewing didn't that changed historically, I'd think it continued during and after the plague epidemic.
Posing again this question : how much was it useful historically?