Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Also very few African plants and animals are very domesticatable like cattle, pigs, chickens, wheat-like grasses, and rice.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Sleeping sickness is one of the diseases that got lauched by the events Keys talks about.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

If the Swahili coast culture had been able to spread inland, Africa would have had a much more important place in world history.

Still, think about the Gulf of Sidra. Change the geography of the gulf and stretch it south to the Sirir Tibasti area. Place a warm shallow arm of the sea deep into the Saharra. The trade links with Sub-Saharran Africa would be vastly better, and the cultural exchange far richer. Africa would be far more important in world history.

I still think high-yield crops getting to Africa earlier would be the easiest path to a powerful Africa in alternitive worlds.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Not an Alternative world, but a reason to go out and research. While reading The Arabian Nights: A Companion I found out two things that would make good adventure hooks.

First, the French translation of the Arabian Nights, which was the first into any european language, was a translation of a manuscript in four volumes, one of which is missing! Just think of the crosstime adventures looking for that missing volume or the older text from which it was copyed. And the Arabian Nights is hardly the only such text to look for.

Second, the Arabian Nights wasn't originally written either in Classical or Modern Arabic. It's from Middle Arabic. There is no diffinitive dictionary of Middle Arabic! Compiling such a dictionary could lead the PCs through many alternative Arabias. some wilder than any in Scheherazade told of.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Any crosstime travel throws these things up. The first trip to ancient Rome the characters in my Infinite Cabal campaign took threw up so much literature that was extant in 258CE but lost by 1720 that they didn't attempt to list it, but just weighed it.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Try this idea, an English minister sails with the East Indian Company in 1670, in most worlds his mother was killed by an emotionally distrubed Royalist as a small child. In this world he's a gifted linguist who writes a dictionary of Sanskrit by 1693. One of his proteges starts a translation project and translates the Ocean of Stories several years before Galland translates the Arabian Nights. Galland drops translating the Arabian Nights to translate the Indian work.

The Arabic stories never make an impression in the West. India becomes the place were Eastern fantasies are set. Djinni are totally obscure in the West, but Indian folklore is well known and commonplace in Childrens books. When Edward Said comes around, all he can complain about is Weatern ignorence of and inattention to the Arabs. No one cares about his books. T.E. Lawrence is obscure as well. The Near East means nothing to the West. Oil was bought and sold, but that's it.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Yeah, in terms of missing books, I would imagine somebody would pay good money for a copy of Confucius' On Music. Although actually I think that would have been among the first things people went looking for, I could be wrong, or they could have been unlucky. Or it could lead to the question "why does a book ostensibly about music get so quickly and thoroughly lost in every known timeline?"

So in a timeline where the near east isn't exoticized by Europe, doesn't that actually mean it's more commonplace? Proximity and oil and the Suez canal make it impossible to ignore, unlike India, so instead the idea that "The Turks and Arabs, they're just like us" arises?

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Er wouldn't the Near East still hold significance due to both oil and it being the area and where the great Abrahamic religions came from?

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

To some degree, but Orientalism which is an idea used by Edward Said to demonise that West is based on the long term cultural influence of the Arabian Nights. Said and his followers pretty much work to outlaw the imagination. Edward Said was vital to the continuing influence of Cultural Studies, in many ways Said grabbed a free ride on the glamour and prestige of Scheherazade's tales. However, unlike Shahriyar, Said makes sure to kill the woman quickly and brutally.

Basically, since Said wraped his whinny book in the wonder of the Arabian Nights all sorts of people, even me, read all or part of his tract. If Said had no pop culture connections to the Near East, except a few Victorian Novels set durring the Crusades, no one would have read his book. Heck without the Painting on the cover of the book Said wouldn't have sold copy one. Culture Studies would have faded away like the 1960's occult boom, sure some cranks would still embrace it, but some folks use too much patchouli.

A little Patchouli is nice, but no amount replaces bathing.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

I suspect you'd simply get a different book, written by someone "more Indian"
(just for fun, I'd pick a very alternate Farrokh Bulsara, even if he's about ten years younger
than Said).
Said wouldn't have much reason to write the book and I'm not sure I see the reason that
he instead would write one complaining about the lack of attention.

On the other hand, the issues don't go away just because the focus lies elsewhere.
(I also can't help noticing that the painting you linked to portrays something
more stereotyped as Indian than Middle Eastern.)