raharris1973
Well-known member
A suggestible, pro-Roman, yet not bloody-minded ASB happens to tune in to the Roman Senate in the 150s BC and often hears from Cato that Carthage must be destroyed. She figures its time to separate the Romans and Carthaginians.
Working in very broad strokes, the ASB transplants Rome's Mediterranean rival, Carthage and the entire continent it sits on, Africa, to basically opposite side of the world longitudinally, which is the middle of the Pacific ocean, while keeping it at constant latitude.
Meanwhile, an Africa shaped patch of Pacific Ocean, and all the islands within it (comprising nearly all of Polynesia except for New Zealand and Easter Island, plus some of Melanesia) are transplanted to where Africa used to be.
This happens around midnight, Carthage and Rome time, so sleeping Africans in Carthage are roused mid-slumber by the instant appearance of the noon day sun. Although it may not be noon in other parts of the continent like Egypt and rainforests of the west coast, alot of sleeping people are woken up.
Pacific islanders in those islands that were inhabited by this time like Fiji, New Caledonia, Samoa, Tonga, and Tahiti are plunged into instant darkness from their mid-day activities.
Meanwhile, most Eurasians have much less drama at first. Some bedouins in the Sinai begin hearing ocean waves crash in the middle of their local path of desert.
Unbeknownst to any humans of the time, the map of the world now looks like this:
The ASB puts a climate preservation bubble over the planet that prevents drastic climate alterations or weather disasters beyond the range or suddenness of any experienced between 151 BC and now.
So, very soon first Levantines and then Sicilian traders are disturbed to find their African destinations aren't there, and the water just goes on forever.
Meanwhile, Egyptians and Carthaginians find their the Levantine, Sicilian and European neighbors aren't there either.
....so, now we move on to matters of religion, politics, society and economy.
Romans thank Neptune for smiting Carthage (and offer him great propitiations, in awe of his great power and demonstrated wrath), and the Carthaginians thank and seek to satisfy their god of the sea, Yum, their patron God, also associated with the sea, Melqart, to whom Hannibal swore he would destroy Rome, and their patroness goddess Tanith, who also had sea associations, thanking the pantheon for making the Romans vanish beneath the waves as they so richly deserved.
Greeks wherever they are from Greece to Asia Minor to Egypt pray to Poseidon to recognize his awesomeness and beg his mercy, Egyptian pagans pray to their sea god Nun. Jews pray to their God Yahweh, and are present both in relocated Africa at Alexandria, and in Western Asia at a minimum.
At this time, the main north African polities are Ptolemaic Egypt, Carthage and Numidia. They are food surplus countries. Africa has historic, pre- destruction Carthage's urban infrastructure and Alexandria along with its library and metropolitan Hellenistic culture.
The North African states lack all their Asian and European trading partners of course. The Carthaginians can no longer send tithes to the ancestral Phoenician city of Tyre for example. The sea in front of them is unending. Carthage is able to fend off and gradually push back Numidia, which is now bereft of Roman support. Carthage can reestablish its navy and trading links with other parts of Africa, at least if they can find and gather sufficient timber locally or within reach of land trade routes (I don't know, but suspect, the Carthaginians relied on European and Levantine timber imports). To some extent the search for more timber will probably motivate some voyages further southwest along the African coast to the rainforest zone where tropical hardwoods can be found.
Donkeys and horses are the main modes of land transportation. But, in Somalia and the Egyptian deserts east of the Nile some Bedouins probably have enough dromedary camels for a breeding population. Over the centuries as their utility is more widely recognized, the range of camels and camel-using culture is likely to spread.
In the meantime, in Eurasia, while Romans need fear Carthage no more than legendary Atlantis, they are confronted with an economic crunch. They cannot loot North Africa, taking its good croplands and people as slaves to sustain the higher standard of living they became accustomed to while they were enjoying the Punic indemnity for the previous fifty years. Likewise the disappearance of Egypt increases food insecurity throughout the shores of the European and Asian Mediterranean Sea (now actually an extension of the Atlantic-Indian combined ocean).
However, Rome and Italy have not become so, so import dependent that this is not the catastrophe it would have been in later centuries. They've still got Sicily as a surplus producing breadbasket.
While suffering pains, internal convulsions, and many changes, the Romans keep their control of the southern shores of Europe (they already have eastern and southern Spain, the Balearics, Corsica, Sardinia, Epirus, and Macedonia under their direct rule, and much of Greece as protectorates) and remain capable of projecting their power into Asia.
Meanwhile, in Asia, the Seleucid realm is fragmenting. The Maccabees have established a de facto independence in Judea.
Europe and Asia too have their Hellenistic cities, philosophy and science. The parchment library of Pergamum may have been built by Attalus and it was a rival to the library of Alexandria.
Do Tahitian Polynesians discover the uninhabited Hawaiian islands before Phoenician-Lebanese traders or Greek traders find Hawaii?
How are Eurasia and Africa going to develop in isolation from each other over the ensuing centuries. Will Greece and Rome get to know India any better than OTL during the classical era than they did in OTL, because of the availability of an all-water, coastal route?
Going down the ensuing centuries when are various continents going to be starting regular travel and trade with each other?
Since the Pacific is so big, even at Africa's wider points like its highly developed north, the distance from Morocco-Mauritania to Japan is nearly as wide as the Atlantic, as is the distance from Egypt and Ethiopia to California and Mexico.
Are the Carthaginians and Egyptians arch-rivals in Africa-world?
Meanwhile, when do Eurasians come into regular contact with the Americas and Africa?
What of Roman imperial growth in this OTL without the rich pickings of Africa. Perhaps the Romans get much more interested in direct control of the the Bosporan kingdom and southern Ukraine, and seek to conquer Dacia and Gaul earlier?
Or, might Rome run into its expansionary limits earlier, without being able to fuel itself with African food surpluses, perhaps it can never pay or feed, and thus field, such large armies, that OTL allowed it conquer so far into Asia Minor, the Levant, even temporarily Mesopotamia and Armenia and Dacia and Britain?
I would say that when Africa and Eurasia meet again, Eurasia is the odds on favorite to be technologically ahead, but the gap won't be a 1492 size gap.
Presuming the meeting is like OTL, not for about a millennia and a half, there could be some noticeable phenotypic divergence from OTL, with greater intermixing of whites/caucasians in transplanted North Africa with sub-Saharan phenotypes through voluntary and/or forced migrations for various purposes, and no intermixing with west Asia and Europe in that time.
Given the literary evidence, will it be widely believed that a continent moved to the other side of the planet, or will the predominant theory be that the ancients had alot of unreliable legends but perhaps there was a lost art of long distance travel accounting for parallel cultural references and symbols that become apparent when the continents meet again.
Working in very broad strokes, the ASB transplants Rome's Mediterranean rival, Carthage and the entire continent it sits on, Africa, to basically opposite side of the world longitudinally, which is the middle of the Pacific ocean, while keeping it at constant latitude.
Meanwhile, an Africa shaped patch of Pacific Ocean, and all the islands within it (comprising nearly all of Polynesia except for New Zealand and Easter Island, plus some of Melanesia) are transplanted to where Africa used to be.
This happens around midnight, Carthage and Rome time, so sleeping Africans in Carthage are roused mid-slumber by the instant appearance of the noon day sun. Although it may not be noon in other parts of the continent like Egypt and rainforests of the west coast, alot of sleeping people are woken up.
Pacific islanders in those islands that were inhabited by this time like Fiji, New Caledonia, Samoa, Tonga, and Tahiti are plunged into instant darkness from their mid-day activities.
Meanwhile, most Eurasians have much less drama at first. Some bedouins in the Sinai begin hearing ocean waves crash in the middle of their local path of desert.
Unbeknownst to any humans of the time, the map of the world now looks like this:
The ASB puts a climate preservation bubble over the planet that prevents drastic climate alterations or weather disasters beyond the range or suddenness of any experienced between 151 BC and now.
So, very soon first Levantines and then Sicilian traders are disturbed to find their African destinations aren't there, and the water just goes on forever.
Meanwhile, Egyptians and Carthaginians find their the Levantine, Sicilian and European neighbors aren't there either.
....so, now we move on to matters of religion, politics, society and economy.
Romans thank Neptune for smiting Carthage (and offer him great propitiations, in awe of his great power and demonstrated wrath), and the Carthaginians thank and seek to satisfy their god of the sea, Yum, their patron God, also associated with the sea, Melqart, to whom Hannibal swore he would destroy Rome, and their patroness goddess Tanith, who also had sea associations, thanking the pantheon for making the Romans vanish beneath the waves as they so richly deserved.
Greeks wherever they are from Greece to Asia Minor to Egypt pray to Poseidon to recognize his awesomeness and beg his mercy, Egyptian pagans pray to their sea god Nun. Jews pray to their God Yahweh, and are present both in relocated Africa at Alexandria, and in Western Asia at a minimum.
At this time, the main north African polities are Ptolemaic Egypt, Carthage and Numidia. They are food surplus countries. Africa has historic, pre- destruction Carthage's urban infrastructure and Alexandria along with its library and metropolitan Hellenistic culture.
The North African states lack all their Asian and European trading partners of course. The Carthaginians can no longer send tithes to the ancestral Phoenician city of Tyre for example. The sea in front of them is unending. Carthage is able to fend off and gradually push back Numidia, which is now bereft of Roman support. Carthage can reestablish its navy and trading links with other parts of Africa, at least if they can find and gather sufficient timber locally or within reach of land trade routes (I don't know, but suspect, the Carthaginians relied on European and Levantine timber imports). To some extent the search for more timber will probably motivate some voyages further southwest along the African coast to the rainforest zone where tropical hardwoods can be found.
Donkeys and horses are the main modes of land transportation. But, in Somalia and the Egyptian deserts east of the Nile some Bedouins probably have enough dromedary camels for a breeding population. Over the centuries as their utility is more widely recognized, the range of camels and camel-using culture is likely to spread.
In the meantime, in Eurasia, while Romans need fear Carthage no more than legendary Atlantis, they are confronted with an economic crunch. They cannot loot North Africa, taking its good croplands and people as slaves to sustain the higher standard of living they became accustomed to while they were enjoying the Punic indemnity for the previous fifty years. Likewise the disappearance of Egypt increases food insecurity throughout the shores of the European and Asian Mediterranean Sea (now actually an extension of the Atlantic-Indian combined ocean).
However, Rome and Italy have not become so, so import dependent that this is not the catastrophe it would have been in later centuries. They've still got Sicily as a surplus producing breadbasket.
While suffering pains, internal convulsions, and many changes, the Romans keep their control of the southern shores of Europe (they already have eastern and southern Spain, the Balearics, Corsica, Sardinia, Epirus, and Macedonia under their direct rule, and much of Greece as protectorates) and remain capable of projecting their power into Asia.
Meanwhile, in Asia, the Seleucid realm is fragmenting. The Maccabees have established a de facto independence in Judea.
Europe and Asia too have their Hellenistic cities, philosophy and science. The parchment library of Pergamum may have been built by Attalus and it was a rival to the library of Alexandria.
Do Tahitian Polynesians discover the uninhabited Hawaiian islands before Phoenician-Lebanese traders or Greek traders find Hawaii?
How are Eurasia and Africa going to develop in isolation from each other over the ensuing centuries. Will Greece and Rome get to know India any better than OTL during the classical era than they did in OTL, because of the availability of an all-water, coastal route?
Going down the ensuing centuries when are various continents going to be starting regular travel and trade with each other?
Since the Pacific is so big, even at Africa's wider points like its highly developed north, the distance from Morocco-Mauritania to Japan is nearly as wide as the Atlantic, as is the distance from Egypt and Ethiopia to California and Mexico.
Are the Carthaginians and Egyptians arch-rivals in Africa-world?
Meanwhile, when do Eurasians come into regular contact with the Americas and Africa?
What of Roman imperial growth in this OTL without the rich pickings of Africa. Perhaps the Romans get much more interested in direct control of the the Bosporan kingdom and southern Ukraine, and seek to conquer Dacia and Gaul earlier?
Or, might Rome run into its expansionary limits earlier, without being able to fuel itself with African food surpluses, perhaps it can never pay or feed, and thus field, such large armies, that OTL allowed it conquer so far into Asia Minor, the Levant, even temporarily Mesopotamia and Armenia and Dacia and Britain?
I would say that when Africa and Eurasia meet again, Eurasia is the odds on favorite to be technologically ahead, but the gap won't be a 1492 size gap.
Presuming the meeting is like OTL, not for about a millennia and a half, there could be some noticeable phenotypic divergence from OTL, with greater intermixing of whites/caucasians in transplanted North Africa with sub-Saharan phenotypes through voluntary and/or forced migrations for various purposes, and no intermixing with west Asia and Europe in that time.
Given the literary evidence, will it be widely believed that a continent moved to the other side of the planet, or will the predominant theory be that the ancients had alot of unreliable legends but perhaps there was a lost art of long distance travel accounting for parallel cultural references and symbols that become apparent when the continents meet again.
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