How about medieval Russia not having been conquered by Mongols? Prior they had pretty tight contacts with Scandinavia, Poland and Germany, and the development gap between Western and Eastern Europe might not have happened.
I wonder how things would have turned out if horses had died out at the end of the Pleistocene in Eurasia instead of the Americas.
Didn't stop..well.. most of Europe, really. The presence of something resembling true democratic socialist movements, that is.
Although I'll grant that the use of the "s word" to describe Obama is... amusing, even while I'll quibble that he's "almost as far to the right" as Romney.
Not sure the Native Americans tribes would have been "more environmentally conscious", that tends to be a stereotype that is, when examine closely, not all that accurate. Of course, ti would *still* have been better, as the Americas were very much a training ground for European colonialism.
This just made me think, however, of something that would have made a difference: a group of settlers arriving in the Americas sometime during the stone age or early bronze age who carry small pox and thereby make the populations there less susceptible to the disease. This alone would save millions of lives and might ahve made the diffrence bewteen the Americas lookins more like Asia vs what actually occurred, if nothing else.
To a certain extent, the view of Native Americans being closer to nature can be seen as a stereotype, but I believe we can agree that they were (are? Almost all of the "natives" I've seen in Oklahoma are whiter than me) more in tune to nature, whereas European Americans destroyed trees, polluted and dammed rivers, and called it "progress." However, I'm willing to admit that my knowledge of Native American customs is rather lacking, and so I won't get into a debate about it; I hate to show my ass by arguing about something I'm not really an expert on.
And yet still managed to wipe out several hundred Buffalo whenever they felt like a new pair of slippers.
They were just too primitive and lacked the means needed to mess their environment up.
And yet still managed to wipe out several hundred Buffalo whenever they felt like a new pair of slippers.
Not to mention causing the extinction of american megafauna.
Re: Native American, environmentalism, and empire, google "Comancheria"
I doubt the killed hundreds of bisons whenever they needed a pair of slippers.
And the bison population remained large until the 19th century when white hunters almost exterminated the American bison.
Hyperbole.
Actually, native hunting techniques were more wasteful than that of the colonial hunters. The colonial method of killing a bison resulted in 1 death when 1 death was needed (Except when they shot them for sport). The Indian method, conversely, was to push the herd towards the edge of a cliff, sending a lot of them over and therefore killing many more than they actually needed to.
The reason the bison population declined was because of an increase in need, not because the colonials hunted more wastefully than the Indians.
Again, the Native method often left hundreds of bison dead. Far more than any hunting party could ever process and transport. Lots more waste.OK then.
But one also has to take into account that colonial hunters generally only took the hide and let all the meat rot. So the may have used something of every animal that they killed, but they only used a little part of the animal.
Self-defense, just like Hat and those toddlers.
Again, the Native method often left hundreds of bison dead. Far more than any hunting party could ever process and transport. Lots more waste.
how about if Alexander the Great lived longer? conquered the west? establishing his dream of integrated culture.