Yes yes, we've been cognizant of pre-Columbian contact with the New World since we were knee high to a grasshopper. It's just that Columbus and later I wouldn't want to risk getting all those European diseases spreading to the New World. Europeans of the middle ages through to including the Victorian and Edwardian eras were filthy, unwashed savages. Europeans of earlier eras were much cleaner and more civilized. Yes, even the Celts and the Norse were far superior.
Also, Columbus himself was a rapist and a human trafficker.
Possibility: spread the black death around Europe a bit more, make enough people die that the Moors come in and totally take over. Watch science take off earlier, with fewer stumbling blocks. Maybe then in an Islam-dominated Old World they might be able to play nicely with the New World.
That's actually an idea I had the other day when we were doing worldbuilding stuff. We briefly entertained the idea of the Ravenstones at some point being taken by their friend Yanus into an alternate universe where the black death killed a lot more people in Europe, and Christianity pretty much died out as a religion. In that world, Islam took its place and science came to the world sooner and with less resistance. By the time the Old World rediscovered the New World, they were civilized enough to trade peacefully with the First Nations and learn from them about how to turn the wilderness into a food garden.
We decided against it because for the purposes of the scenes in question we needed a world with roads similar to our own world, and instead decided to use an alternate universe where Bernie Sanders was elected President because Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both died before they could join the race. But wouldn't that alternate history world (the Islam dominating one) be fun to play with? I can already hear the screaming of the Islamophobes.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2020-10-02 02:21 am (UTC)Also, Columbus himself was a rapist and a human trafficker.
Possibility: spread the black death around Europe a bit more, make enough people die that the Moors come in and totally take over. Watch science take off earlier, with fewer stumbling blocks. Maybe then in an Islam-dominated Old World they might be able to play nicely with the New World.
That's actually an idea I had the other day when we were doing worldbuilding stuff. We briefly entertained the idea of the Ravenstones at some point being taken by their friend Yanus into an alternate universe where the black death killed a lot more people in Europe, and Christianity pretty much died out as a religion. In that world, Islam took its place and science came to the world sooner and with less resistance. By the time the Old World rediscovered the New World, they were civilized enough to trade peacefully with the First Nations and learn from them about how to turn the wilderness into a food garden.
We decided against it because for the purposes of the scenes in question we needed a world with roads similar to our own world, and instead decided to use an alternate universe where Bernie Sanders was elected President because Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both died before they could join the race. But wouldn't that alternate history world (the Islam dominating one) be fun to play with? I can already hear the screaming of the Islamophobes.