History Buffs: What if?

[Corey]

What of the Nordic lands? Do Viking raiders appear earlier?

And no Jesus, what about Islam?, Does the loss of the other monothesistic religions affect the panthesitic Arabs?

Thanks to all those who pointed out the Mithraic Mysteries. I had not thought of that.

I am indecisive about Scandanavia. I was toying with the idea of removing the humans and making it an Alfar (Scandanavian Elves) stronghold, but everything I find under that name reads alot like Tolkien. I love Tolkien, but I do not want to make a Middle-Earth carbon-copy.

Having the Babylonians wipe out Judah is my- cheap, cowardly- way of not having to deal with the three Abrahamic faiths.

On the other hand, leaving Carthage around allows me to play with their nasty habit of sacrificing people (children) to Baal-Hammon and Astarte. I'm personally too squeamish (and just plain not interested) to turn child sacrifice into a game, but with adjustments for the passage of time something interestingly creepy can remain.

Corey

 

[Corey]

Re: Re: History Buffs: What if?

If you'd like, I can continue with some suppositions about Britain, the Anglo-Saxon invasion, Celts, etc - but for now this is getting too long. Hope it helps!

Please do.

After reading all these very helpful posts I'm thinking Rome losing Greece makes things way too different. That will probably be dropped.

Corey

 

[Number47]

With Babylonia growing and expanding in power, the spaceships finally deem it safe enough to openly land...

 

[green slime]

A weak Rome would have been absorbed by another power on the Italian Peninsula, or by a Greek state.

The Norse haven't even started raiding yet. They are still impoverished farmers stuck up in the empty forest. They didn't start raiding until around 800 CE.

Islam wouldn't be at all, as it was an attempt by a man to reconcile the Jews, Christians, and pagan beliefs in the area, to unite them, IIRC. It only started around 580 CE anyway.

Egypt could have rekindled, or just kept on sputtering.

What some of the African Empires (Ghana, for instance) or Near Asians (Persians) would do I have no idea.

Just some ideas.

 

[Desdichado]

It's not a Rome that's that weak -- after all, Rome already dominated Italy and Cisalpine Gaul at the very least before the Punic War.

 

[Enkhidu]

OK, let's look at Britain!

Believe it or not, even with the Isles being so far away from Rome, IRL the Roman empire had a huge impact on British culture during the dark ages. In fact, some argue that certain parts of the Isles didn't have a Dark Age due to certain things being brought from the hub of civilization (I'm thinking of Ireland here, which by the 600s IRL were becoming heavily Christian due to St Patrick - plus the Irish were able to maintain many of their egalitarian ideals while still benefitting from Roman trade in southern Britain).

But, in this alternate future, where Rome is simply a city state and not an Empire, there is no such thing as the Romanized Briton. That means several things - for one, no King Arthur. For another, no infrastructure (roads, the baths at Bath, Hadrian's wall, etc). It also means that - with no unified resistance to the Angles and the Saxons that migrate over (I think this is independent from goings on further South, as it happened several times over the course of history, ending with the Vikings) - that Britain more quickly become subsumed by the Saxon culture. What I would do to simlulate this would be to take a look at a few writings about life in Saxon Britain circa 900 or 1000. That should give you a good idea.

By the way, it's also likely that Northern England would be more Scot than Saxon, and that the Irish would still be ruled by Druids and Bards (in fact, the Bards would be possibly the most powerful individuals in Ireland - their curses carried weight).

Give me a topic, I'll run with it...

 

[Desdichado]

It also means that - with no unified resistance to the Angles and the Saxons that migrate over (I think this is independent from goings on further South, as it happened several times over the course of history, ending with the Vikings) - that Britain more quickly become subsumed by the Saxon culture. What I would do to simlulate this would be to take a look at a few writings about life in Saxon Britain circa 900 or 1000. That should give you a good idea.

It also means that the Saxons would never have been invitied to Britain in the first place to settle by Romano-british landholders who wanted them as mercenaries.

In this scenario, the Saxons may well have played the role of vikings, but they'd probably be raiders (like the vikings) not settlers (like the historical saxons.)

I also wouldn't necessarily expect Albion to be scottish -- the scots were essentialy Goiddelic irishmen who settled the area and replaced (linguistically, at least) the native Brythonic. However, there were other instances of irish settlements on the british "mainland", notably the Black Shield irish of northern Wales.

 

[Enkhidu]

It also means that the Saxons would never have been invitied to Britain in the first place to settle by Romano-british landholders who wanted them as mercenaries.

I hadn't thought of that!

I this scenario, the Saxons may well have played the role of vikings, but they'd probably be raiders (like the vikings) not settlers (like the historical saxons.)

But the vikings eventually did become settlers, eventually taking large tracts of land in what became known as the Danelaw, and demanding heavy tributes from the Mercia...

I also wouldn't necessarily expect Albion to be scottish -- the scots were essentialy Goiddelic irishmen who settled the area and replaced (linguistically, at least) the native Brythonic. However, there were other instances of irish settlements on the british "mainland", notably the Black Shield irish of northern Wales.

Good point - though I think that migration happened independently of the Roman incursions...

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, the great Germanic migrations were surely based on more than just the percieved weakness of Rome, and likely something would have happened anyway.

It's ironic, though, that the organized resistence by a putative Arthur may have been the thing that led to the more thorough "Saxonization" of England that later did happen a few generations later. Gallia, for example, became France, but didn't pick up a Germanic language, and didn't pick up a really noticable Germanic culture, just a "glaze" of Germanization. This might well have happened in this scenario in Gallia and Britannia, but instead of a Romance language and pseudo-Romanized culture-base underneath the Germanic ruling class, there'd be a Celtic language and culture.

 

[Fenris]

So if the Babylonians are still around, they assume the power vacuum left by not having a Persian Empire, what about he Guptas? How would they influence the eastern Babylonian front?