You're missing the point entirely. That doesn't mean Hitler was less influential (so far), it just means he was born later. That's why saying "well such-and-such has been influential for longer" is not useful.
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You're missing the point entirely. That doesn't mean Hitler was less influential (so far), it just means he was born later. That's why saying "well such-and-such has been influential for longer" is not useful.
No, it does mean he was less influential. From AD 0 to 1933, Christ plus Mohammed were influencing millions of people in very profound ways whereas Hitler was nothing because for 99% of this time he wasn't even born.
From 1933 onwards you can argue about who was more influential but from 1945 onwards it's a bit of a toss-up.
It does technically mean he was less influential, but only* because of the amount of time that has lapsed between the two people's lifetimes. What I am saying is that I don't think saying "A was more influential, because he has been influencing people for much longer than B" is very helpful, because that relies entirely on time, no influence. It's also not useful to say "without A, B never could have been as influential, because then you get the Dragutin Dimitrijević I mention above.
Actually, I think the best way to compare any two people is to compare what they did within their lifetimes. One can argue that Christ hasn't really been influencing people for 2,000 years, his followers have. His acts had enormous implications, but only because his followers achieved things after he died. Adolf Hitler took many more momentous decisions during his lifetime which directly affected people than Jesus Christ did.
My mistake. I was confusing the fall of Roman Egypt with the 3rd Century Crisis.
Very good points. If the Asians were to become dominant colonizers, my money would be on Japan. They always had more interest in the outside world than the likes of China. The Incas on the other hand may very well have never been colonized in this timeline, which would be a very interesting possibility.
Nobody directly influences anyone when they are dead. After this it's solely down to your legacy.
Christ and Mohammed are responsible (indirectly) for the division of the world into Christian and Muslim zones. The conflict between the two zones may be centuries old but it hasn't ever stopped. Therefore their (almost certainly unintended) legacy lives with us today.
Hitler destroyed the Jewish population of Europe without which Israel would probably never have been created. He was also indirectly responsible for the USSR occupying half of Europe during the Cold War.
Yet I don't think we'd even think in terms of "Europe" without the Abrahamic religions. Christianity defined Europe by uniting it and Islam by cutting off North Africa and the Levant. So I don't think you can really say that Hitler was more influential. Jesus and Mohammed had already defined the parameters of the game; Hitler would probably have been a Wotan purist who had a "thing" about followers of Asiatic Gods like Mithras otherwise.
Remove Hitler and you change 124 years of history.
Remove Jesus and you change 2013 (give or take) years of history.
Of course removing Jesus will change more.
How bout NO religion of any sort is formed...i think that would be the most dramatic change other than "the dinos didn't die"
BUT the time frame is 1000 CE onward, so i would have to say Britain won the war of Independence.
2000 years ago china actually had plans to travel to Europe but some dude die and the abandoned the idea. they also traveled to Australia during that time... and when they ran out of food, they resorted to eating the natives. :rofl:
BUT the time frame is 1000 CE onward, so i would have to say Britain won the war of Independence.
2000 years ago china actually had plans to travel to Europe but some dude die and the abandoned the idea. they also traveled to Australia during that time... and when they ran out of food, they resorted to eating the natives. :rofl:
The thing is that the Christians were only one of several hundred Jewish cults in Judea at the time. So no Christ, possibly similar religion just called something different.
Actually, with your point on Asian colonizers, you could argue that the biggest decision/changes ever made in Chinese history occurred in 134 BC, when Emperor Wu of Han decided to adopt Confucianism as the state-sanctioned philosophy of the Han Empire. That, and the simultaneous refinement of the examination system, influenced the course of Chinese (and East Asian) culture for two millennia.
The only thing your post tells us is that Jesus was around before Hitler. By this logic any minor Irish king from the year 300 was more influential than Hitler.
Yes, a long time before Hitler, and hence removing him will by default change more.
Removing Jesus means removing 2013 years of history, including Hitler.
Precisely. So in order to gauge how influential one person is, I think only counting what they personally did in their lifetimes is the most useful method. Anything that happened after that was because of their 'followers', or whatever you call them, not the original person. So when comparing Hitler and Jesus (two random examples), one should compare their impacts in 0-33 and 1889-1945, not 0-2013 and 1889-2013.
Removing a caveman no one has ever heard of will change more too. Would you argue that some cave man from the year 10,000 BC was more influential than Jesus?
Except that removing Jesus doesn't just stop stuff that Jesus personally did. Without Jesus, stuff doesn't magically go back to OTL after he dies, it diverges.
It depends on how strictly you apply the butterfly effect. If you apply it strictly, then yes, as every single event between then and now has to be remade, so in the 10,000 years before Jesus, so many things will differ that the world will be much different. If applied less strictly, then probably still yes, given that whoever Jesus' parents might be eliminated, something else might happen, etc...
Influence is the wrong word to use really. It implies that we're talking about how much someone changed history through their actions, not what the biggest possible change could be. I.e, whilst Jesus may have been more influential than a small dinosaur 79,000,000 years ago, removing the Dinosaur will change much, much more.
No it won´t. Small changes are usually neutralized by other small changes, thus possibly not changing the system in a relevant way.
Ah ok. So apart from the time of Zheng He's fleet, China had less interest in the out side world than Japan ?
Of the native American nations I think the Inca have the greatest possibilities of retaining the independence in the event of a Eurasian invasion. Eurasian diseases had very destructive effects on the Americas, so it would be very hard for them to retain their independence with these diseases roaming across their lands. If advanced enough medicine to help them has been invented when the Americas are discovered, getting access to them might be hard, but if they do they have a much better chance of staying independent. Being conquered however might be the best to get them, and one would see strong native American independence movements later on.
Wait, they found Australia ? Something similar to the viking discovery of America ?
This documentary talks a bit about it:Civilization: Is the west History?
its a great film, you all should have a look at it
this is just getting petty, lets stay on track, Past 1000 years