In the Shade of the Baobabs
- Thread starter leopard9
- Start date
The state in the boot of Italy is a collection of southern Italian city-states that mostly allied with Carthage during the Second Punic War. After Rome surrendered to Carthage, they formally seceded from the Roman Republic and are closer to Carthage than Rome but in truth not really that loyal to either now.
As for Roman expansion...the legacy of Romulus is a strong one. I don't see Rome really fighting Carthage again any time soon. Carthage is richer than it was during the Second Punic War and a bit more militarily inclined. But Carthage has largely failed/not even tried to integrate other people into their empire so it derives its loyalty of the people from its wealth, not its values. So if a nation can find a way to reduce Carthage's wealth, especially the gold supply, Carthage could find itself surrounded by enemies in short order.
Good I guess? You just don't tend to see Egypt expand East-West very often.
It's not so much that Egypt has expanded East-West, it's more that Egypt even after the Great Egyptian Revolt kept the boundaries of Ptolemaic Egypt. It tried to invade Meroe around 100 AD under the pharaoh Nekure but failed due to the prowess of the Nubian archers. It stopped trying to invade after that due to trouble with the Seleucids and Parthians and internal disruptions. But taking the long view, the Egyptians aren't done with the south. The ruling dynasty has its roots in Upper Egypt and Nubia after all. They've never forgotten that.
I'm wondering about that Lake Chad kingdom and the five red spots by the Niger Delta. Also, based on the last update, I'd have expected proto-states in the Congo and along the Great Lakes by 200 AD.
The Lake Chad kingdom is Mao, a small Kanembu (they wouldn't be called that at this point but it's hard as hell to find information about the ethnogenesis about certain people groups) state that's sprung up because of the trade among the Western Road. The red spots are the fractured Nok kingdoms that sprung up after the fall of Nok civilization. I...might have fucked up the dating of the map. Don't be surprised if it changes which I know is bad form to do. The Bantus get tamed giant eland around 380 AD so as of the date of the map everything for the Bantus is pretty much still as OTL.
twovultures
Donor
It's considered bad form to edit your work and correct mistakes here? If that's true then this website really needs to get over itself
Like the map. Really like the TL too; don't see too many african-based ones.
Just wanted to know if the Abbu ballas trail would be the Western Road?
I don't think the Abbu ballas trail is the Western Road. Based on what I read, the Abu ballas trail went through Libya whereas the Western Road doesn't. There are two branches to the Western Road. One branch is pretty much a straight shot from Ansongo to Aksum horizontally across the Sahel. The other branch diverges before reaching the White Nile and travels north to Meroe and Egypt.
Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
What are your thoughts on the importance of the kingdom of Yam and their descendents to Ancient Egypt as a trade partner ( heard some scholars place in Chad and others near Nubia) and would the current people in that location figure into the this Dynasty as a good source of foreign trade links from the south or would they be negligible with the two routes of Western Road coming into play?
Last edited:
The Kingdom of Yam appears to have been around in the Old Kingdom and we know little about it. It's unlikely that the Yam kingdom would still be around in the same form millennia later. I think that it's likely that the trade links that Yam provided would probably be negligible compared to the trade from the south. Egypt has Aksum providing goods from the Horn and from India and now has Ansongo starting to provide wares from Western Africa and its savanna and forest kingdoms.
Deleted member 67076
I'm loving the developments of this timeline. Have the Somali regions been impacted so far?
Not yet. Soon, but at the moment things are pretty much OTL for the Somali. In fact, for Africa outside of West Africa and south of Mao, things are pretty still much OTL. I wanted to be realistic (ish) about when butterflies would start bothering regions. But within the next couple centuries or so, things should start to really kick off. Kingdoms becoming literate, religious conversions, centralization of power and the spread of giant eland agriculture and cavalry.
I'm glad you're enjoying the timeline!
Sweet map!
I'd like to see a legend, though, so I can know which countries are which
I'd like to see a legend, though, so I can know which countries are which
![CENTER]](/forum/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FyqlDLh1.png%5B%2FCENTER%5D&hash=c9e4ccb63dbbb1d897dd88cc0e9dfe3f)