Yes, it's been said... over and over... and over...

[mmoa_writes]

You know what would make a truly 'divergent' history of the Americas?

An America that no Europeans managed to find.



Is it because History seems to have done alright for them, that so many white speculative fiction writers cannot think the unthinkable (and, considering the plethora of alternate histories there are, and then the amount in which the Europeans are not natural world leaders, pointing one or two out to me is rather the exception that proves the rule)? Is there actually, as deeply ingrained as white privilege, the feeling that this world dominance was truly the white man's Destiny^TM?

Talk about the bloody anthropic principle.

Mammoth/Racefail is sad anyway, but - to me anyway - so much worse because it's within the speculative fiction genre. Speculative. SPECULATIVE.



You know that speculating thing? You fail at it.

Link for the day:
Cry for the Forgotten Continent

Comments

[halialkers]

Actually, what would make an even more divergent history of America is one where the Indians leave the American camel and horse around. When Columbus comes calling, the Indians of such a world (who would be linguistically poorer, but much more formidable) would give right back to Eurasia the present Eurasia gave them.

For a time the big centers of human population would be Sub-Saharan Africa and Australia. O.o Eventually Eurasia and America would bounce back, but the potential impact of devastating such small areas as Britain or Iceland that way and what that could mean for the future would be very interesting. In one possibility, Irish could settle Britain or Britain might become a spread zone of Manx....hmm...Manx-speaking British Isles? Sounds wacky....

[mmoa_writes]

I knew I should have made this post on LJ!

That sounds genuinely awesome. Otoh, it just shows how much fail speculative fiction (or at leats the writer's research) is that this hasn't been explored. I mean, a Manx speaking Britain would just be... wow. And with a coalition of Indian nations, I'm seeing an interesting version of this world's trade/piracy/etc.

In the actual book, the idea is that magic prevented crossing via the land bridge, but I was thinking that if that were true, there should be 'magic spots' all over the world (for some reason I saw most of the Middle East cut off - not much room for oil speculating) that would prevent human movement, thus ensuring that humans stick to sea/sky travel to get anywhere efficiently.

[halialkers]

Well....keep in mind that the American continent would be entirely unrecognizable in some ways. America's very linguistic diversity was due to the relatively poor technology levels of Indigenous societies. You might see analogous linguistic growth akin to the rise of the Indo-Europeans in Eurasia, or the Bantu, spread by draft animals and farming.

In another sense, this'd mean a much poorer human record in terms of political organization, too. And once the epidemics scythe through Eurasia and America both, the peoples in an advantageous position to push through after all that settles will have the ability to rebuild society and create spread zones. In a sense, that's what happened in America, as Indians died in carload lots, the Indo-European languages filled the void. But this kind of contact would create a post-apocalypse in both worlds, and would radically alter the linguistic map of things.

An intriguing question about such a world is when and if society gets to the point of a second such contact, what the outcome of such an event would be, and whether or not disease resistance wouldn't lead to a much more violent contact, as both parties are hardened to each other's diseases. In that sense, whoever wins that conflict will have a much more powerful record of genocide.

Also, the results of a Years of Rice and Salt in two continents will have enormous butterflies in places like Africa and after 1788 (because there's no way the two continents are going to recover from that degree of loss by that time) in Australia and the greater Oceania region.

And yes...this would be a great setting for a novel or a series.