raharris1973
Well-known member
What if ASBs teleported Africa to the Pacific in 1115 AD, with some very important exceptions. These exceptions are the entire drainage basin of the Nile River down to Lake Victoria, the drainage basins of all minor rivers flowing into the Mediterranean and Red Seas, the Sahara generally north of the Tropic of Cancer, and the pointy corner of the Somali Horn of Africa.
The rest of Africa, the southern Sahara, and the river basins of Senegal, Gambia, Niger, Congo, Lake Chad basin, as well as systems of the south, and of the east as far north as Kenya and the Ethiopian interior do go along for the teleportation.
It looks like this:
This other map overlays the major river basins of the continent, so you can see why the continent is sliced up this odd way:
The missing portions of Africa exchange places with an equivalent area of the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Ocean floor and the archipelagos of eastern and central Polynesia.
With this sudden change during the medieval warm period, and ocean waters and currents flowing all around this new, thinner, rump African continent continent consisting mainly of the Maghreb, Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Eritrea, and half of Ethiopia and Somalia, how is the climate affected over the ensuing centuries?
Does the vast area of OTL's northern Sahara get consistently more rainfall, and begin to accumulate topsoil and vegetation over time, or not?
As maritime technology advances in the Mediterranean and Europe and China, does the smaller size of rump Africa hasten the discovery and routine operation of a direct Western Europe to Asia sea route around Africa decades or more in advance of Vasco Da Game's inauguration of the route in OTL 1497?
How does the remaining, majority portion of Africa develop in the eastern Pacific in the ensuing centuries, cut off from all further fresh contact with the Middle East and Mediterranean? Does anyone from Africa make contact with the Americas before someone from Europe does?
The rest of Africa, the southern Sahara, and the river basins of Senegal, Gambia, Niger, Congo, Lake Chad basin, as well as systems of the south, and of the east as far north as Kenya and the Ethiopian interior do go along for the teleportation.
It looks like this:
This other map overlays the major river basins of the continent, so you can see why the continent is sliced up this odd way:
The missing portions of Africa exchange places with an equivalent area of the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Ocean floor and the archipelagos of eastern and central Polynesia.
With this sudden change during the medieval warm period, and ocean waters and currents flowing all around this new, thinner, rump African continent continent consisting mainly of the Maghreb, Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Eritrea, and half of Ethiopia and Somalia, how is the climate affected over the ensuing centuries?
Does the vast area of OTL's northern Sahara get consistently more rainfall, and begin to accumulate topsoil and vegetation over time, or not?
As maritime technology advances in the Mediterranean and Europe and China, does the smaller size of rump Africa hasten the discovery and routine operation of a direct Western Europe to Asia sea route around Africa decades or more in advance of Vasco Da Game's inauguration of the route in OTL 1497?
How does the remaining, majority portion of Africa develop in the eastern Pacific in the ensuing centuries, cut off from all further fresh contact with the Middle East and Mediterranean? Does anyone from Africa make contact with the Americas before someone from Europe does?