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Out your fantasies: Carthage prevails | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6522 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 15 28 December 2011 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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If Hannibal had destroyed Rome and killed off its inhabitants the Italian Peninsula would certainly have become part of the punic empire, but probably not its center - more like a province somewhere across the sea. I doubt that all the Italic languages (and Etruscan) would have survived even in a 'Carthiginian' world, and if it survived at all, Latin would just have been the language of some underdeveloped jerks somewhere in a minor province, at the level of Oskian and Umbrian or below.
The big question is whether the Carthaginians would have been as effective as the Romans in making their language prevail. Under Hasdrubal they had already started the 'punification' of the Iberian peninsula, and with time this would have been a center of Punic influence - maybe as strongly as Carthage itself, and I don't see why Basque should have an easier time with the Carthaginians than with the Romans - but who knows? It is likely that someone would have had the idea of adding Gallia/France to the territory, and then Northern Africa and Western Europe including the Italian Peninsula would have constituted one big geographically 'logical' unit centered around the Western Mediterranean. Then what about about the Eastern Mediterranean? My guess is that the nations with hellenistic rulers would have stayed independent, but formed someting like a loose alliance. Whether SuperCarthago would have conquered these nations one by one at a later stage is an open question, but the Parthians and the Neobabylonian kingdom would have formed behind their back so they would have been squeezed between SuperCarthago and a number of more Easterly powers. The Carthaginians may have chosen to take the power over them before somebody else did, but probably later than it happened with the Romans. Enter Atilla and his Huns - who didn't come because of factors in Europe. With a weak coalition in the Eastern Mediterranean the Huns would meet relatively little resistance, but it is hard to see them staying for a long time - they would smash Eastern and Cdentral Europa and maybe Greece, but then melt away as the Mongols did later. However in the following period of turmoil the Germanians would have played more or less the same role as they did in the 'Roman' version of the history, except that they might have settled more permanently in Eastern Europa and on Balkan. I don't see any reason why the Anglosaxons shouldn't invade the British Isles, and if they did they would smash the Celtic society as effectively as they did in 'our' history (one fact: the administrative division of England down into the division into individual fields was totally changed when the Anglosaxons came, which proves how harshly the Celts were treated). Actually I doubt that the Celts would have had a better future with the Cartaginians than with the Romans around. And America would have been discovered. After all the Canary Islands were known in the Antic world, and the Phenicians (who founded Carthago) had explored the coast of Africa so it is hard to imagine that the rulers of the whole area from present-day Morocco to the Low Countries wouldn't have tried to sail Westwards ... just to see what was there. The Vikings would also have taken the trip from Scandinavia to Icelandic to Greenland to New Foundland, but probably with as little impact as in 'our' history. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5081 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 10 of 15 28 December 2011 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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One of my favorite books from author Poul Andersen's "Time Patrol" series is "Delenda Est" which deals with precisely this scenario whereby Rome is defeated by Carthage. I recently reread the book in Spanish and it is a very good read in any language.
Plot summary via Wikipedia: "Renegade time travelers meddle in the outcome of the Second Punic War, bringing about the premature deaths of Publius Cornelius Scipio and Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Ticinus in 218 BC, and thus creating a new timeline in which Hannibal destroys Rome in 210 BC. This meant that western European civilization came to be based on a Celtic-Carthaginian cultural synthesis (rather than Greco-Roman, as in actual history). This civilization discovered the western hemisphere, and created certain inventions (such as the steam engine) long before the corresponding events happened in actual history (partly since there was nothing corresponding to the fall of the Roman Empire), but overall technological progress has been slow, since most developments are arrived at through ad hoc tinkering (there is no scientific methodology of empirically testing rigorous theories). The modern day alternate timeline world of 'Delenda Est': ....Britain (Brittys), Ireland, France (Gallia) and Spain (Celtan) are under Celtic control, and the Celts also colonised North America, known as Affalon in this timeline. Italy (Cimmeria) is under Germanic domination, Switzerland and Austria exist within Helvetia, Lithuania (Littorn) controls Scandinavia, northern Germany and much of Eastern Europe, while a Carthaginian successor empire (Carthagalann) dominates much of Northern Africa. The Han (Chinese) Empire controls China and Taiwan, as well as encompassing Korea, Japan and western Siberia. Punjab comprises western India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The major global powers are Hinduraj, centered on India but also encompassing Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Australasia, and Huy Braseal, which controls much of South America. Technology is at roughly a nineteenth century level, and transport is reliant on the steam engine. Christianity, Judaism and Islam do not exist in this polytheistic world." Source: Delenda Est- Wikipedia Edited by iguanamon on 28 December 2011 at 3:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6768 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 11 of 15 29 December 2011 at 6:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I often long for a world in which the European colonial powers did not expand outside of
Europe and had just lived and let live. I would have been interested to see what kind of civilizations would have risen in the Americas and Africa, how prosperous they would have been had they not been ravaged by the effects of imperialism, and how diverse the cultures and languages of the world would have evolved had there not been any particular chic factor attached to languages like French and English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6522 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 15 29 December 2011 at 11:30am | IP Logged | ||
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History is mixture of tendencies and unpredictable occurrences, and the big problem in contrafactual guesswork as we do it here is that you can't be sure whether the same chain of unpredictable occurences would occur. In this case we assume that the Romans were eliminated as a factor in the antique world, but this would have been brought about mainly by one single Carthaginian family. And it is worth noting that this family had some trouble with the bussiness milieu in Carthage. Would Carthago have developed into a trade union rather than an empire? That's the question. And even if the merchants had prevailed after the glory of Hannibal had gone, could a parallel to Julius Cesar have turned SuperCarthage into a more centralized and more imperialistic state? If the Egyptian/Hellenistic civilization and the Seleucid Kingdom in the Near Orient had not been disrupted by Roman politics, could the Moslem expansion have been blocked?
Let me just mention a few other cases where world history easily could have taken another path: 1) Shi Huang Di (China's "first emperor") could have been killed before he unified CHina, OR he could have survived much longer than he did if he hadn't tried out poisonous medicine in his frantic attempts to become immortal 2) The arrow that cost Alexander's father Philip his life could have penetrated just 5 cm further into his brain, and there would have been no Macedonia and no Alexander and no Hellenistic heritage 3) Alexander himself could have died in a battle - he had a tendency to place himself in the most dangerous places and was wounded several times 4) Without Marius the marauding Teutonic and Cimbrian armies could have destroyed Rome, and Central Europe would have remained divided between Celts and Germanic tribes 5) Cesar could have been hit and killed by a stray arrow during the conquest of Gallia, and Vercingetorix might then have been able to keep the Romans away (although the Celts were notoriously prone to internal fightning) 6) Paulus might have taken another route to Damascus, or he might not have had epilepsy or whatever ailment he had - then Christianity would have remained a small heretic Jewish sect 7) Attila might have been killed by his brother, and not the inverse 8) Muhammed could have been a peaceful merchant in Medina with no burning wish to write books or dictate them to others 9) If Harold Godwinson hadn't had to fight first the Norwegian king Harald Hårderåde and then a few days later Guillaume le Bâtard ('Conqueror') the Norman invasion of England might have failed, and there would be a couple of letters more on my keyboard 10) The 97 years old Doge Dandolo of Venice would normally have died long before he organized the conquest of Constantinople by the 4. Crusaders - and with an intact Eastern Roman empire the Turks might have been blocked at Bosporus and everything on Balkan would have looked different now 10) Timujin (Ghengis Khan) might not have had a troubled childhood, and then he might not have been as strongwilled, and then he might not have formed the army that just grew and grew until nothing could stop it 11) Kublai Khan could have taken the science of boat building seriously, and with slightly better weather and better boats he might have conquered Japan, and then the Mongol dynasty in China might have survived and formed the nucleus of a more stable Mongol empire 12) If count Heinrich of Schwerin hadn't captured king Valdemar Sejr ('Victory') of Denmark the whole stretch of land from the Baltic countries through Scandinavia could have been one country 12) The Spanish Armada could have had better weather (or Bloody Mary could have survived twenty years longer, which essentially would have had the same effect) 13) The Aztecs and/or the Incas could have killed off the Spanish conquerors - they had several opportunities to do so 14) The battle at Lepanto could have ended differently, and then I might have had to write this in Arabic or Turkish 15) Napoleon (and later Hitler) might have dropped the idea of invading Russia if they had thought a little more about the harsh winters there 16) Blücher could have arrived at Waterloo half a day later (and Napoleon could have been less plagued by his hemorroids) 17) Lenin could have sent Stalin to Siberia in time .. i.e. before the stroke that paralysed him. OK, Lenin was not a nice person, but USSR/Russia would have been different without the terror unleashed by the psychopath Stalin 18) Hitler could have been a talented painter and stayed in Vienna 19) Mao could have killed Deng Xiao Ping (after all he caused the death of millions of people so the death of one little grey cat more wouldn't have bothered him) 20) François X might not have established HTLAL, and I would only be able to speak Danish, English, German and a little bit of French and Spanish. Edited by Iversen on 29 December 2011 at 12:59pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5139 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 13 of 15 29 December 2011 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually, Muhammad had no writing ambitions and didn't write a single book. The final version of the Qur'ān was compiled long after his death, and muslims claim that he was illiterate (ummi), which makes his revelation of the Qur'ān even more miraculous to them. However, some scholars contend that he must have known at least enough to keep commercial records. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| a3 Triglot Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5075 days ago 273 posts - 370 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English, Russian Studies: Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish | Message 14 of 15 29 December 2011 at 12:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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You forgot the civil war in USA.
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| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6522 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 15 29 December 2011 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have corrected the line about Muhammed - if he didn't write the Quran himself then he must have had a burning desire to tell others about his visions, and they must have had a burning desire to write everything he said down.
And yes, I forgot to mention the Civil War in the USA, but I had to skip several noteworthy episodes in the world history. For instance I didn't mention the 100 years war, which ultimately was caused by the French king Louis VII being unable to conceive sons with his consort, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Their marriage was annulled, and then she married Henry II, Duke of the Normans, who shortly after became the king of England. I also forgot to mention the treaty of Tordesillas which - probably against the intention of the pope - left a piece of South America to the Portuguese. That piece of land developed into Brazil. Or speaking about Portugal: without the dukes of Bragança Portugal might have remained within the Spanish Kingdom of Felipe II and his successors, and nobody would have spoken Portuguese in South America today. Or Ivan the Terrible of Russian might not have killed his son in a rage, and then the Romanovs might never have become Zars, and without Pjotr Pjervyj (Peter the Great) all male Russians might still carry long beards and there would be no German loanwords in the Russian language. Or Mumtaz Mahal might not have died (or been as beloved by her husband), and then Shah Jahan would not have build Taj Mahal and Aurangzeb might not have imprisoned his father, and if that wizened old fanatic also hadn't lived so long the rule of the Great Moguls might not have ended at his death, and then the English might not have been able to take over India, and we would have had to learn Hindi in school to communicate with that country. And the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs might have passed by the Earth by just a few kilometers, and we would still be small ratlike creatures living underground like hobbits. Edited by Iversen on 29 December 2011 at 6:52pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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