raharris1973
Well-known member
What if Africa teleported 100 miles west and south in 262 AD, opening up the Mediterranean to the oceans?
262 is the second year of the reign of Julian, aka Julian the Apostate, and the year he announced the end of official favor for Christianity, and began renewed imperial patronage of a new pagan priesthood and pagan temples.
The significant widening of the strait of Gibraltar should allow greater scale interactions of Atlantic and Mediterranean marine organizations, and more significantly, unimpeded interactions of sea currents and storm systems that I would imagine would intensify storms, waves, and tidal effects in the Mediterranean. The biological and climatological changes should be even more severe on the eastern end of the Mediterranean, where, formerly separated from the Red Sea and Indian Ocean by land, the Mediterranean is now connected to the Red Sea by a wide 100 mile strait between mainland Egypt just east of the Nile delta, to the Sinai peninsula, Palestine, and Arabia. This allows the marine ecosystems of the Mediterranean and Red Sea/Indian Ocean for the first time in millions of years and for invasive species to spread, and for ocean currents to mix with each other or collide later with fewer obstacles. The Red Sea is widened as Africa's southward, and especially westward movement from Arabia makes the Bab al Mandeb strait substantially wider.
Changes to the landscape will be regarded as awesome, not in the positive, California surfer sense, but in the - this is a big deal sense, at least as frightening as amazing. And since it will ruin plans for provisioning fishing trips and and to unexpected and rough storms, and cause be to be lost at sea or lost to storm surges, the change will be associated with disasters. Nevertheless, the distances Africa is displaced are certainly not so great and the seamanship skills and technology of these 4th century Romans are not so poor that the African coast would lose contact with the European and Asian coasts and trade would be seriously depleted for any length of time.
Additionally, diversion, dilution, and alternation of ocean currents should not drastic change temperature scales such as to drain all the warming water from the North Atlantic, to end up freezing down Northern European shores. The role of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic drift as a super novel, fragile, delicate almost accidental thing whose absence means northern latitudes default to ice is probably overrated anyway. Especially if we compare to matching latitudes off the western coast of, say, British Columbia and southern Alaska.
Anyhow. How does world civilizational development proceed with a very wide, natural Suez Canal in place from 362 AD onward. Populations in the Roman Empire had already been declining, forcing a reduction in economic specialization, and plagues were going to spread, but would greater ease of trade connections with India and East Africa by sea, help reinvigorate trade and economic activity, even while contributing to the common disease pool? What about changes for greater cultural interchange and religious proselytizing between the Roman world, India, and China?
262 is the second year of the reign of Julian, aka Julian the Apostate, and the year he announced the end of official favor for Christianity, and began renewed imperial patronage of a new pagan priesthood and pagan temples.
The significant widening of the strait of Gibraltar should allow greater scale interactions of Atlantic and Mediterranean marine organizations, and more significantly, unimpeded interactions of sea currents and storm systems that I would imagine would intensify storms, waves, and tidal effects in the Mediterranean. The biological and climatological changes should be even more severe on the eastern end of the Mediterranean, where, formerly separated from the Red Sea and Indian Ocean by land, the Mediterranean is now connected to the Red Sea by a wide 100 mile strait between mainland Egypt just east of the Nile delta, to the Sinai peninsula, Palestine, and Arabia. This allows the marine ecosystems of the Mediterranean and Red Sea/Indian Ocean for the first time in millions of years and for invasive species to spread, and for ocean currents to mix with each other or collide later with fewer obstacles. The Red Sea is widened as Africa's southward, and especially westward movement from Arabia makes the Bab al Mandeb strait substantially wider.
Changes to the landscape will be regarded as awesome, not in the positive, California surfer sense, but in the - this is a big deal sense, at least as frightening as amazing. And since it will ruin plans for provisioning fishing trips and and to unexpected and rough storms, and cause be to be lost at sea or lost to storm surges, the change will be associated with disasters. Nevertheless, the distances Africa is displaced are certainly not so great and the seamanship skills and technology of these 4th century Romans are not so poor that the African coast would lose contact with the European and Asian coasts and trade would be seriously depleted for any length of time.
Additionally, diversion, dilution, and alternation of ocean currents should not drastic change temperature scales such as to drain all the warming water from the North Atlantic, to end up freezing down Northern European shores. The role of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic drift as a super novel, fragile, delicate almost accidental thing whose absence means northern latitudes default to ice is probably overrated anyway. Especially if we compare to matching latitudes off the western coast of, say, British Columbia and southern Alaska.
Anyhow. How does world civilizational development proceed with a very wide, natural Suez Canal in place from 362 AD onward. Populations in the Roman Empire had already been declining, forcing a reduction in economic specialization, and plagues were going to spread, but would greater ease of trade connections with India and East Africa by sea, help reinvigorate trade and economic activity, even while contributing to the common disease pool? What about changes for greater cultural interchange and religious proselytizing between the Roman world, India, and China?