[IW] Seeds for high divergence high tech worlds

[samd6]

Or a world where science and Christianity never had the falling out that started in the late renaissance, leading to I don't know what. It would certainly be very different.

"It is a holy duty to learn as much as we may about God's creation. What steward would not know his house and all the things in it?"

[Astromancer]

So, any world ideas?

Toynbee once proposed a world were Southern France is conquered by Islam and the Gealic Church is dominant in Europe. Allow as Toynbee did that the Irish monks were very open to Greek learning and bring Aristotle to the West early and start a renaisance in Ireland in the 7th century. Throw in a monk reading and obscure Greek mechanical text (lost early in our world) and realising that he could print copies of bibles.

By the time the Vikings come around, books are common. Semaphores and telescopes allow the Irish and Brits to fight back. The Vikings switch to a trade option and start diseminating the Irish achievements. This world Brendan-3 is about a tech level ahead of Homeline.

Another possiblity is to give Babage and Lovelace a pal who was both well conected to swiss artificers and skilled a technical writting. Computors get invented in the 1820's. Babage-1 is about a tech-level ahead of Homeline.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by samd6

Or a world where science and Christianity never had the falling out that started in the late renaissance, leading to I don't know what. It would certainly be very different.

"It is a holy duty to learn as much as we may about God's creation. What steward would not know his house and all the things in it?"

Unimpeachable dogma is antithetical to science. The fact that religions have at times funded and helped research into accepted fields as long as the outcome agrees with accepted dogma does not make for good science in the long run.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Unimpeachable dogma is antithetical to science. The fact that religions have at times funded and helped research into accepted fields as long as the outcome agrees with accepted dogma does not make for good science in the long run.

Okay, a bit of a brainscrew idea:
Religious dogma is the fanatical adherence to the scientific principle; the rest is impermanent - more so than in Buddhism. :)

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by martinl

Carthage Wins the Punic Wars - swap "Carthage" and "Rome" in all following OTL history" (divergence results in mostly stylistic changes)
or
Carthage Wins the Punic Wars - In 2012 the Carthaginian Mediterranean Empire achieves TL8 (divergence results in stasis.)

Also or:

Carthage soundly defeats, but cannot conquer, Rome. Rome is stalled on the path to domination, but remains strong enough and at the right place to prevent anyone else from completely dominating the Mediterranean. Rome may eventually be attacked from multiple sides (either by an alliance, or by barbarians and opportunistic rivals). It sounds interesting, but I'm not really up to the task of tracing it out.

[Astromancer]

On the Quaantum 5 world known as Suez-1, Nero gets obcessed with digging a cannal from one of the eastern most branches of the Nile to the Red Sea. He lives mainly in southeastern quadrant of the Nile Delta but heavily patronises the Library of Alexandria. Scholars he has sent on to India bring back the Hindu number system. Nero becomes madly fond of it and gets the Alexandrians to embrace it. They resist at first, but then the Merchants realise how good it is and spread it through the Mediterranian.

Nero dies durring one of his many naval campaigns to conquer India. His lover at the time ( a former prostitute) takes over power and he becomes a solid administraitor. The new sea route to India is a vast boon to Rome, Alexandria replaces Rome as the center of the Empire, the Library of Alexandria is encouraged to apply it's knowledge to practical problems. It is now 640AD. The Empire is mainly a Buddhist-NeoPlatonist syncretic faith (Christianity is tolerated), the society is TL4 and raising quickly since the Printing press was developed. Rome has the Persians boxed in on two sides and is exploring Terra Australius.

[tantric]

* Vimana - In real life, there is evidence that advanced civilization arose in India even earlier than in the fertile crescent, and that the technology level was relatively high compared to the rest of the world for thousands of years. Get into myth and pseudohistory, and you've supposedly got religious scriptures about flying machines and laser guns. Make it real history and a world where this hypothetical ancient Indian civilization never fell, and you get Vimana, a world that hit 20th-century-equivalent technology at several-thousand BC, and is today an exceptionally advanced civilization based on Indian culture, colonizing the solar system in super-advanced flying saucer-esque spaceships. (If you really want to mess with your players, these guys have parachronic travel, and are the origin of the flying saucer myth on Homeline.)

Some years ago I had a beginning with a time line for this, Daniken-1 through 5

Daniken-1: India Ascendant

The Vimanas legends in Vedic history (not mythology!) are true. Indian civilization has long hid these ruins from invaders. Following the 1947 Independence, Vedic scholars use ancient documents to construct pulse jets and ion thrusters, allowing them to join the space race. In 1968, the first Indian astronauts land on the moon. In 1971, an Indian lunar team finds the partially preserved ruins of a ancient moonbase, from which they retroengineer He3 fusion reactors and a workable laser antimissle defense system. India and the non-aligned nations win the Cold War, the US and USSR finlandize into Indian style democratic socialism.

The Raman civilization was destroyed in a nuclear war against "Atlanteans". Atlanteans build submarine cities on Earth starting in 20,000BCE. The Ramans had seven cities scattered around the planet, but centered in ancient India. The most significant ruins are in Mohenjodaro (OTL Pakistan). No bodies or images of these beings are ever found - they may be humans or aliens.

Quoting myself from this old thread

I thought it would make a great series of time-lines, keeping close to the theme of IW and adding in a few new bits. Basically, India and China ally in the '60's and use recovered alien tech to win the cold war. Mao would have to have a stroke or a brain transplant, but stranger things have happened. I did some more ground work over on the alt.history forum, but can't find it at the moment.

I seem to remember that the premise was that the Ramans arrived in an STL generation ship. It was crewed by AI's who downloaded themselves into human bodies and started to build a civilization. They were challenged by a Europan colony in the deep Pacific (mentors of the Easter Island civilization) and eventually destroyed each other.

[Flyndaran]

Semi-plausible Atlantis based on an advanced Crete/Thera civilization that conquers Greece instead of the other way around because of Thera erupting.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Semi-plausible Atlantis based on an advanced Crete/Thera civilization that conquers Greece instead of the other way around because of Thera erupting.

Ahh, but where does that end up going? Most worlds focus on a time when the divergence has had the perfect amount of time to ripen, and can use a world with just that difference and not too many butterfly effects.

I'm looking for what the end would look like.

I've been playing around with the "carthage wins, greeks go to india, The Orient runs things". Its a lot of work, and it will either be really cool or crash and burn.

Right now I've figured everything up until "recent" history, which is where the most care has to be taken.

I've got Zorastrianism and Buddhism all over the place (really, ALL over) with Japan as the birth place of both science and democracy (the democracy was a roll, but I decided I was going to do a British like development), a Corporate South East Asia (which includes Australia), strong states in India and China, and Europe as savage as the americas and africa (both well into the iron age by the time of the industrial revolution).

I'm trying to come up with "modern" developments. right now we have a set of dictatorships, a few oligarchies, plus Japan and "Jaya" (south east asia).

[Astromancer]

Tantrics Indian theme could work differently. Have the Indus Valley civilization be stable. The were more advanced in several ways than their neighbors let them stay advanced. You might want to place some improved fossil fuel reasources in the subcontinent and simply let India have a scientific revolution in the 14th century AD and an Industrial one in the 16th century AD. Have a Tech Level 8 India in an otherwise typical 1815.

The Brits still want to take over (they and the Russians remain the bad guys). The Indians are only slowly begining to wake up to the problem.

Tipu Sultan has vastly better tech than the English, but his ecconomy can't support his war effort and the society is streched to the limit maintaining traditional norms and structures with TL8 technology. He's still getting beaten.

Can the ICops save Indian civilization from the British barbarians? Or will Centrum simply sweep-up and easy victory?