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  1. With no (or limited) Islam how far west could Buddhism spread?

    IOTL Buddhism's western spread was ended through the rise of Islam. Pre-Islamic Afghanistan seems to have been majority Buddhist. Bactria and Margiana, and Central Asia more broadly appear to be areas of religious flux, where Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Manichaeists, and Nestorian Christians were...

  2. AH Challenge: U.S. institutes mestizaje and/or racial whitening

    IOTL, many countries in Latin America sought to eliminate the issues of division between the races by actively promoting miscegenation following independence. There were two different strands of this. One was the integration of groups of blacks/Indians into the Mestizo whole, which over the...

  3. WI: African settlement in England in early modern era?

    I've been reading 1493 recently, and one interesting thing I discovered, which I didn't know before, is much of Southeast England was malarial between the 16th and 19th centuries. Basically when they drained the tidal regions of England at the beginning of this period, they left behind...

  4. An Indo-European China?

    I've been mulling for the last month or so an uncommonly used scenario - what if the "Aryan Invasion" which seems to have sparked the end of the Indus Valley Civilization instead pointed northward, invading China via the Gansu Corridor? This isn't as bizarre as it sounds. At that time (1,700...

  5. With No Bantu Migration - A Malagasy Southern Africa?

    The Bantu Migrations are some of the most well-known demographic shifts in late prehistory. Prior to around 1000 BC, all of Africa roughly south of the Camaroon seems to have been occupied only by hunter-gatherer peoples. The Bantu expanded rapidly to fill this void, bringing along goats...

  6. Best way to wank the Church of the East (Nestorians)?

    One thing I haven't seen very often is TL's where Christianity is much more powerful in Asia. What would be the best scenario to get us there - say where 30% of the population of Asia at least was Christian, along with at least one major state? As I see it there were three chances the the...

  7. Without Islam, what religion would win in Central Asia.

    IOTL, the area roughly analogous to the "stans" was highly religiously fractious prior to the rise of Islam. The region had populations which were Buddhist (especially in Afghanistan), Zoroastrian, Manichaeist, and Nestorian Christian, with a smattering of Hindus and shamanistic religions like...

  8. WI: David Lynch directs Return of the Jedi...

    I've always loved this quote from Wiki... "Following on from the success of The Elephant Man, the film maker George Lucas, himself a fan of Eraserhead, offered Lynch the opportunity to direct the third film in his Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi. Lynch however refused, arguing that...

  9. Could the Phonecians have beat the Bantu to settle Southern Africa?

    IOTL, the Bantu began migrating out of the Congo rain forests and into the southern savannas of Africa around 500 BC. This was basically concurrent with Hanno the Navigator exploring West Africa. Within roughly 1,000 years they settled roughly the limit their agricultural package would allow...

  10. Stephen Baxter - Stone Spring

    Has anyone picked this up yet? I'm not sure if it quite qualifies as AH, only because the novel takes place entirely within the Mesolithic, thus is before recorded history. But this is the first book in a new trilogy, with the final book taking us forward to 1500 AD where butterflies have...

  11. Was the development of left-right politics in a developed world inevitable?

    IOTL, the norm in all western-derived* nations is broadly speaking left-right politics. There are, of course, exceptions, but these are usually ether in nations where nationalism/minority parties play a strong role, or places where democratic republicanism is weaker, and clientelism and/or...

  12. AH Challenge: English mother-tongue of continental European population.

    The recent posting of a map of the Netherlands with anglified names had me thinking... Is there any non ASB way you could have ended up with a continental European nation becoming English-speaking? We're talking about something substantial here - not just Calais, and not just the upper...

  13. Developed nations which almost were, or almost weren't?

    This should be a fun topic for discussion... Looking back to any time after 1900, what countries looked as though they could have become advanced, developed economies but ended up missing the boat? Or, in reverse, which countries which became developed IOTL seem the most unlikely to have...

  14. AH Challenge: U.S. Proportional Representation.

    What would it take for Proportional Representation to become the predominant method of selecting legislative seats in the United States? I'm throwing it out there because while it's interesting to theorize a PR-style government in the U.S., given how unlikely it seems either major party would...

  15. A recent WI: A few more Democrats in the Senate.

    Let's say, upon Obama's election, there were a few more Democratic Senators. Most likely because one of the following races went differently: Kentucky - 2008: Mitch McConnell came within 6% of losing. Tennessee - 2006: Bob Corker almost won this race against Harold Ford Jr. The final...

  16. Effects of larger Jersey City.

    IOTL, Jersey City was incorporated in 1820. In 1869, an attempt was made to merge all towns in Hudson County east of the Hackensack river into it. Hudson City and Bergen City voted in support and were amalgamated into the now larger city in 1870. Greenville joined up three years later, and...

  17. Is there *any* S.M. Stirling series without cannibalism?

    I just re-read The Sky People recently, so this was on my mind, as I know he has a hard on for cannibals, either making them into sadistic villains or human vermin. But I didn't realize until I stepped back he uses it as a trope in almost every single series. Off the top of my head...

  18. How far south could Scotland conceivably go?

    Let's say that at some point after the Norman invasion, England just totally goes balls up, and Scotland takes advantage by moving its boundary to the South. The Borders were always a hazy concept, and North England, especially prior to standardization of English, was pretty much part of a...

  19. Challenge: Majority Black United States.

    I've often thought about if there's any way to make the premise of the movie White Man's Burden, which has a majority black U.S. with a white underclass, plausible. I think it could just barely happen, but I'd be interested to hear the ideas of others. Here's the limitations. 1. The POD...

  20. WI: No Aristotle...

    Let's say that Aristotle either doesn't survive to adulthood or dies before he leaves Plato's academy, and thus doesn't contribute much to the development of western thought. What would be the implications? I have my own ideas of course, but I'm not an expert on the man or his works, so...
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