AH challenge: no China
- Thread starter reformer
- Start date
Glen
Moderator
I also thought of plague, though natural not artificial.
Sometime shortly after the Yuan Dynasty, a particularly virulent influenza breaks out in China. The death rates are staggering. It spreads rapidly through the Empire and Southeast Asia, but stalls on the long route of the Silk Road and the barrier of the Himalayas.
The death toll in China is astounding, however, with around 90% of the population dead from plague or secondary effects. Society is shattered. Not even provincial level governance has survived. The cities were particularly hard hit and are ghost towns.
Most of the survivors are illiterate peasants in the rural areas. A new Dark Ages descends on China. Ideograms are forgotten. The stories of an Emperor are the stuff of legend, then myth.
Over the centuries new peoples move into the lands from the West. The remnant Han, scattered and isolated, no longer think of themselves as one people but many. They tend to be absorbed by the newcomers.
By the 19th Century, China is though of as a myth.
But by the early 21st Century, archeology is beginning to suggest that there was more to the myth, though there is a great deal of disagreement as to how much was true.
Sometime shortly after the Yuan Dynasty, a particularly virulent influenza breaks out in China. The death rates are staggering. It spreads rapidly through the Empire and Southeast Asia, but stalls on the long route of the Silk Road and the barrier of the Himalayas.
The death toll in China is astounding, however, with around 90% of the population dead from plague or secondary effects. Society is shattered. Not even provincial level governance has survived. The cities were particularly hard hit and are ghost towns.
Most of the survivors are illiterate peasants in the rural areas. A new Dark Ages descends on China. Ideograms are forgotten. The stories of an Emperor are the stuff of legend, then myth.
Over the centuries new peoples move into the lands from the West. The remnant Han, scattered and isolated, no longer think of themselves as one people but many. They tend to be absorbed by the newcomers.
By the 19th Century, China is though of as a myth.
But by the early 21st Century, archeology is beginning to suggest that there was more to the myth, though there is a great deal of disagreement as to how much was true.