this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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I'm looking for specific and non obvious answers. Give me something visceral, rid the world of a figure or nation you hate. Preserve a culture you adore. It doesn't have to make sense either, you are basically god here.

What I mean is don't just say you'd get rid of imperialism or colonialism bc no shit

Personally I would make it so that the Americas are never discovered by the old world and every "would be" conquistador (especially cortez and pizarro) explodes.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Like 1000-ish years before Columbus, I'd give the native Americans all the Eurasian/African domestic animals and knowledge of metallurgy. When sustained contact happens, it will be on a more equal footing, stopping European colonialism before it can really start.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I'd give the native Americans all the Eurasian/African domestic animals

If we had that happen... then we shall confirm this:

  1. If they don't die in a droves due to transported Old World disease, due to previous exposure to animals and to an extent, the Old World, they will make their bones as a majority-indigenous continent akin to the former, and at worst, end up more like the historically western-imperialized people of Asia and Africa that later fights back in large numbers rather than the near-genocided condition they are in, today, that make them a minority in most of the Americas.

  2. If despite the previous disease exposure and skills given, they die in similar amounts during the European conquest, we can more certainly conclude it was European imperialists and settlers, such as by their hunger-causing scorched earth tactics, and forced labor plantation overwork, whose policies more purposely seeked to eliminate them in the early 1500s-1600s, and indirectly caused the conditions for viruses and bacteria to kill them

Personally, as much as I want it to be the former, I feel its the latter...

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

If they don't die in a droves, supposedly due to transported disease from the Old World, they will make their bones as a majority-indigenous continent akin to the former, and at worst, end up more like the western-imperialized people of Asia and Africa that later fights back rather than the near-genocided state they are known as, today...

That's why I'd do it about 1000 years before, to give the American population time to bounce back.

If despite the previous disease exposure and skills given, they die in similar amounts during the European conquest, we can more certainly conclude it was European imperialists and settlers, such as by their scorched earth tactics, and forced labor plantations, whose policies more purposely seeked to eliminate them in the early 1500s-1600s

I figure if they have iron or steel weapons, along with cavalry and other various animals to serve as beasts of burden and food sources, they'd be able to defend themselves from the Europeans pretty adequately no matter what.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (4 children)

That's why I'd do it about 1000 years before, to give the American population time to bounce back.

If we're dreaming let's give all the Native Americans vaccines and more diverse immune system genes. Or maybe teach the Europeans germ theory and basic hygiene before 1492.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I was thinking more along the lines of two giant walls splitting the pacific and atlantic down the middle. The walls reach the stratosphere and if european touches them they explode.

Your solution is good too but my goal is to see how they would develop in isolation. Its also worth mentioning that the new worlders had a severe disadvantage not just in knowledge but in resources. They did not have large pack animals so much of their labor power was tied up in manual tasks. They also had significantly less time to domesticate their plants making them more nutrient rich. Peas were already domesticated by the time they had even began farming iirc. Although the Inca's and pre Incan societies were very proficient at selective plant breeding. So while a thousand years of metallurgy would help I'm not sure it would be enough

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

I mean, I don't want to take your joke too seriously or anything, but that's kind of anti-Marxist...

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'd ensure Spartacus's slave revolt succeeded, resulting in Rome falling to a grand slave revolt, smothering in the cradle the pro-debtor/creditor government and empire. ~~Probably just delay it emerging later down the line but who knows.~~ But best part is this stops a lot of follow-on bad happenings such as Christianity being proclaimed the official religion of Rome, certain unifications don't occur under wartime conditions against Rome. Maybe they even implement a kind of early universal suffrage and it ends up failing but it means that 17th century enlightenment thinkers have more to chew on which means they and the French revolution see certain flaws in liberal thinking and advocate a more radical course of action leading to the US founding fathers being a bunch of, republican, class traitors and hardcore abolitionists which leads to a crumbling of the capitalist world order over time that means the German revolution succeeds and European capital is murdered off in a bloody series of revolutions ending by the year 1980. While simultaneously anti-colonial sentiment creates uprisings across the globe that further weaken capital. Thus global communism by 2040.

(Yes I know there are problems with this but let me dream)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

Spartacus's Slave revolt succeeding leading to the Spartacus uprising in Germany succeeding?

I think it makes absolutely perfect sense.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Give Hannibal Barca a bunch of assault rifles and molotovs. Fuck Rome. I want to see a Carthaginian win to the Second Punic war

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Just give him the support of his own country's oligarchs and some siege equipment. He wouldn't have had to sit in Capua for more than a decade.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

yeah but a complete one sided stomp would be more fun to watch antelope-popcorn

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Stampy the Elephant, the last surviving Alps-marcher

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Fuck yeah that goes hard

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"Don't just say you'd get rid of imperialism or colonialism"

Proceeds to get rid of at least half of colonialism

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Ok yes but I was more creative about it. I was curious to hear about how y'all would change things more than about what y'all would change.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

At the advent of agriculture and the transition away from pastoralism and nomadism, I wish that all tribes had enforced a collectivist mentality regarding possessions instead of allowing chains of inequality that have lashed out for millennia.

I think inequality is one of those things that is really difficult to erase once it has already been normalized. It allows for accumulation of power, and then uses that power to fight against the fragmented opposition to itself. I think there would have been so much less suffering if that issue had been nipped in the bud back at the start of "civilization."

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I highly recommend The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It presents a new anthropological survey of humanity starting at the question “What is the origin of inequality.”

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

if we're dreaming, how about preserve and spread the apparently egalitarian urban culture of the bronze age indus valley civilization or any similar culture as a hopefully proto-socialist mode of production that dominates until industrialization allows for proper communism, perhaps largely bypassing slave-based, feudal and capitalist stages if a ruling class based on ownership of people and private property fails to really take hold.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Chinese not abandoning their large ships probably leads to their technology not stagnating and their trade with and/or settlement in Western North America. Really crazy change to history.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Explain the history here to me

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

There's a good We're Not So Different about it. The Chinese Emperor built giant ships to show off their wealth and got across to Ethiopia on Africa.

They almost certainly could have made to the West Coast of North America either open water or hugging coastlines.

They ended up scrapping them to focus internally.

Had they kept it up it could have spread their technology to Africa, Oceania and the America's. And in turn kept up with advances in the middle East and Europe.

Like it's really different timeline.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Interesting. Thanks.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

See below post

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

Marx gets a gundam

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

I would stop the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. Primates are locked since y'all couldn't behave.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Agüeybana gets a Dongfeng ICBM.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That's too quick a death for the spanish. Give the Taíno people assault rifles and napalm

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Flip those positive and negative charge symbols around, Benjamin Franklin.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think it would be a funny prank to destroy a merchant's reputation by swapping his ingot inventory with shitty low-grade copper

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Going back in time to PRANK Ea-nāṣir (GONE SEXUAL?)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

give the native americans horses far earlier by way of the viking settlements in canada

Having access to horse domestication would have done a lot to advance the development and size of native american civilizations. Beasts of burden in particular to help with nomadic migration and agricultural exploitation.

they also did so well as horse riders in our timeline they made rifles obsolete and made the empires invent the revolver just to combat them. and thats with only a century of horse domestication. Give it to them far before european settlement and theyll be able to put up even more of a fight.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I'd want to see how radically different history would be if Constantin 1, the Christian one, was assassinated before he could proclaim Christianity as the religion of the empire.

Alternatively I'd want to see how wild shit would get if Qin Shi Huang didn't poison himself to death via alchemy bullshit.

Third one: horses in the Americas for as long as they've been in the old world.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Third one: horses in the Americas for as long as they've been in the old world.

I think you'd see something like the Mongol Empire emerge in the Great Plains.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

See, very interesting possibilities

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Either China doesn't give up on exploration after Zheng He's voyages or England has a faction who isn't the absolute fucking worst be the ones to kill king Charles I.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Agree that Zheng He would be the biggest individual to cause a butterfly effect. I don't know how you get China to commit to that development since they seem to always be an internally focused culture.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I dunno how it happens but imagine the treasure fleet sailing the largest wooden ships of all time into European ports in the early 1400s

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Fossil fuels never existed

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Going back in time to prevent my ancestors from leaving Europe just so I can have affordable healthcare.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

OK we're keeping Paleolake Megachad and seeing what happens

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why this specifically? I don't know the historical context this lake other than it being big

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

If we're doing alt history why not change something big? The timeline of human civilization would probably be unrecognizable. Alt history is usually about small changes so let's try producing something very novel.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Every European has an ass where their face should be and vice versa.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Extend the life of Kublai Khan and expand the Mongol Empire into Western Europe

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Matriarchy from the dawn of civilization

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

I'm showing everyone how to make penicillin and publishing germ theory in the Torah. Kosher practices did wonders for public health, and including modern knowledge of public health will save billions of lives.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Vitruvius'/Hero of Alexandria's aeolipile gets recognized for its true potential. Steampunk antiquity time!!! isaac-pog

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