What if the Mediterranean Never Existed?
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Given 3 or 5 centuries later could a more prepared/advanced native American civilization set out to explore the world, possibly looking for trade or exploration considering their native population was never plagued by European diseases and could of had some enlightened figures coming to prominence? Maybe these Native Americans would become the next major colonial powers of this alternate Earth without the interference of Europeans. Or maybe their exploration would insist China or Japan to end their isolationism early on their own seeing these foreign empires being so active. Maybe the Aztecs start invading other continents to continue their human sacrifices or the Iroquois and the Celts form a similar belief based on the ancestors and spiritualism? I'd like to know how not having the Mediterranean would affect All of the world, not just the old world.
Date: 2022-07-15
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Comments and reviews: 9
wailinburnin
Nubia, in Sudan, was super vital to civilization. It's so difficult to imagine the Sahara as the most important grasslands on earth as we are coming out of the Ice Age that these Euro-centric first dismissals of African culture remain with us. How the Sahara dried is the story of the rise of culture along the Nile. The Romans (and that's late antiquity) were still trying to figure out how to conquer Lake Chad and led an expedition way out into the desert to attempt to follow routes down once fertile valleys that thousands of years before them, led deep into the continent (the legends were still alive. These types of what ifs don't consider the impacts of geography on the climate or all the unique events that have brought us to today. It would be very easy for us to be eating each other.
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Nubia, in Sudan, was super vital to civilization. It's so difficult to imagine the Sahara as the most important grasslands on earth as we are coming out of the Ice Age that these Euro-centric first dismissals of African culture remain with us. How the Sahara dried is the story of the rise of culture along the Nile. The Romans (and that's late antiquity) were still trying to figure out how to conquer Lake Chad and led an expedition way out into the desert to attempt to follow routes down once fertile valleys that thousands of years before them, led deep into the continent (the legends were still alive. These types of what ifs don't consider the impacts of geography on the climate or all the unique events that have brought us to today. It would be very easy for us to be eating each other.
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Upcycle
Africa? India? The Americas? This was quite white washed IMO. Without European exploitation the opportunities would have been available to others. The major driving force in the world is population, specialization, and the suppression of emotionally centric people/culture/ideas, not white expansionism. No one is as important as they think they are. 90+% of success is simply showing up. Most of the rest is simply looking the part.
The most important inventions for the advancement of humanity are those that support an exponentially larger population. Once humanity can isolate nitrogen, you will get to our current era. The first culture to do this well will inevitably dominate the rest.
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Africa? India? The Americas? This was quite white washed IMO. Without European exploitation the opportunities would have been available to others. The major driving force in the world is population, specialization, and the suppression of emotionally centric people/culture/ideas, not white expansionism. No one is as important as they think they are. 90+% of success is simply showing up. Most of the rest is simply looking the part.
The most important inventions for the advancement of humanity are those that support an exponentially larger population. Once humanity can isolate nitrogen, you will get to our current era. The first culture to do this well will inevitably dominate the rest.
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Jake
In response to you subtitles at 0: 18 I have to argue that people dont say Mediterranean Food out of fear or racism, but out of actual geography and fact. Mediterranean can refer to Italian, Greek, the East coast of Spain, and several other European countries that connect with the Mediterranean. In no circumstances would I say that Italy or Spain are/ are in The Middle East. Jut pointing out it is simply called Mediterranean food because thats what it is, food from the Mediterranean, while certain middle eastern countries are a part of that, they are not all of that.
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In response to you subtitles at 0: 18 I have to argue that people dont say Mediterranean Food out of fear or racism, but out of actual geography and fact. Mediterranean can refer to Italian, Greek, the East coast of Spain, and several other European countries that connect with the Mediterranean. In no circumstances would I say that Italy or Spain are/ are in The Middle East. Jut pointing out it is simply called Mediterranean food because thats what it is, food from the Mediterranean, while certain middle eastern countries are a part of that, they are not all of that.
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blkgardner
The Celts would be cut off from civilization in that timeline. In fact, the Celtic heartland would be one of the most isolated areas on earth. To reach modern-day France from the cradles of civilization, one would have to cross the land route through Eastern Europe and Central Europe. Civilization wouldn't spread up the Atlantic coast and then west, but East from Anatolia to the Balkans, through the Carpathian Basin, across southern Germany, and then into Gaul. The Celts would be among the last people to be civilized.
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The Celts would be cut off from civilization in that timeline. In fact, the Celtic heartland would be one of the most isolated areas on earth. To reach modern-day France from the cradles of civilization, one would have to cross the land route through Eastern Europe and Central Europe. Civilization wouldn't spread up the Atlantic coast and then west, but East from Anatolia to the Balkans, through the Carpathian Basin, across southern Germany, and then into Gaul. The Celts would be among the last people to be civilized.
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Anthony
Egypt would not be a fertile strip. but a canyon getting deeper to the north, e. g. 8000 feet deep at Cairo. To alter Coleridge. where Nile the sacred river ran / through canyon measureless to man / down to a hot dry sink. Imagine building a railway from Germany south across the Mediterranean Sink to Africa: : bottom 2 or 3 miles deep but dry, hundreds of miles of track across hot dry glaring white salt abyssal plain, air temperature 70 degC or so.
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Egypt would not be a fertile strip. but a canyon getting deeper to the north, e. g. 8000 feet deep at Cairo. To alter Coleridge. where Nile the sacred river ran / through canyon measureless to man / down to a hot dry sink. Imagine building a railway from Germany south across the Mediterranean Sink to Africa: : bottom 2 or 3 miles deep but dry, hundreds of miles of track across hot dry glaring white salt abyssal plain, air temperature 70 degC or so.
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Joshua
I think some sort of monotheism would develop. Abraham was from Ur (or uruk) and could of had a vision taking him somewhere completely else, but who knows. Also, Zoroastrianism adopted several Jewish traditions (such as heaven and hell) meaning it would be much different as well. Would it have been possible for China to colonize the new world or advance like the western powers in this scenario?
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I think some sort of monotheism would develop. Abraham was from Ur (or uruk) and could of had a vision taking him somewhere completely else, but who knows. Also, Zoroastrianism adopted several Jewish traditions (such as heaven and hell) meaning it would be much different as well. Would it have been possible for China to colonize the new world or advance like the western powers in this scenario?
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Snoopy
Sub Saharan Africa in this timeline would have propably been waay more cut off from the rest of the world like maybe it would be first discovered in an attempt to sail around Sahara from Europe to Persia I wonder if they would be an equally developed civilisation at that point as (if technology was a thousand years behind) maybe they would find Africa in the 2000's
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Sub Saharan Africa in this timeline would have propably been waay more cut off from the rest of the world like maybe it would be first discovered in an attempt to sail around Sahara from Europe to Persia I wonder if they would be an equally developed civilisation at that point as (if technology was a thousand years behind) maybe they would find Africa in the 2000's
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Daniel
How is Mediterranean food middle eastern food? Italian and French and Spanish food are quite different rom Saudi Arabia, Syrian, Egyptian, and Iran food. Like the heck man, its like saying Japan is China 2. 0, or England is all German Bc of the saxons, they can share some similarities but be different enough to make them their own thing
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How is Mediterranean food middle eastern food? Italian and French and Spanish food are quite different rom Saudi Arabia, Syrian, Egyptian, and Iran food. Like the heck man, its like saying Japan is China 2. 0, or England is all German Bc of the saxons, they can share some similarities but be different enough to make them their own thing
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pahtar
A couple things you left out of this video are the Mongols and the Western Hemisphere. The Mongols would still ravage the known world, but might be more successful as they would have fewer significant opponents. The people of the Americas would be about as developed as the rest of the world, so may have met them on equal terms.
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A couple things you left out of this video are the Mongols and the Western Hemisphere. The Mongols would still ravage the known world, but might be more successful as they would have fewer significant opponents. The people of the Americas would be about as developed as the rest of the world, so may have met them on equal terms.
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