Imperialism, but I don’t know who to stop, make Europeans contract a virus from the Americas, and not the other way around maybe
that or everything relating to the second world war, which would maybe have been averted if there was no christian conquest
where do you even start?
The extinction of the Neanderthals, or any of the other extinct human-like species. It’d be so fascinating to live in a world where there was another species that was close to us in intelligence but also so different. We’d be awful to them though.
Development of highly centralized, aggressive, megalomaniac, evil religions (like Christianity). Imagine how different the world would be if people’s religios view could have been free. There wouldn’t have been dark ages, we could be exploring neighboring systems by now. At least live on the Moon, even this would be huge.
I don’t remember the details, but wasn’t there a massive genetic bottleneck event in early (modern?) human prehistory?
Could be fun if it didn’t happen and we were more genetically diverse!
Last time I heard about it, it was being reviewed cause the genetic diversity in Africa is too high to support that claim. The bottleneck may be related only to a part of the human population.
Last time I heard about it, it was being reviewed cause the genetic diversity in Africa is too high to support that claim. The bottleneck may be related only to a part of the human population.
well, theres also the argument that other species of genus homo gave us more genetic diversity after that event
Ah well, good to hear that at least, and never mind then.
Europe?
The expansion of Europe’s reach over the world in the 1500s and 1600s. Or at least the transatlantic slave trade. I would not exist, but a LOT of suffering would be prevented.
There’s a book called The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson that kind of explores this idea. It’s an alternate history book where the black death kills 99% of the European population instead of about a third, and the world progresses essentially without any European people. It’s really good!
Which I believe would then create a paradox, because who’s going to stop the transatlantic slave trade if you don’t exist?
That depends on the kind of time travel we are dealing with. And as no information about that was provided… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
David Bowie’s death.
I’d make sure Thomas Edison’s parents never met.
I do wonder what might have come of humanity’s endeavours in medicine and science generally sans the industrial revolution
Me going to band practice last week and getting sick.
Any further back and the unintended consequences would be too detrimental
Most sensible answer yet (maybe not the most exciting one though ;) )
Sorry you got sick!
9/11
I would’ve wanted to see what America today would become if that hadn’t happened. America had built up a lot of its reputation off the back of WW2 and was seen still as a good ally. George W Bush would not have become president for a second term because of how bad he was in office. American citizens would not be subjected to governmental survelliance to the extent it was after 9/11. And we wouldn’t have a recession that cratered the economy.
Would have been some other date, some other terrorists, some other victims.
US literally funded the terrorists and is surprised when they turn on them the moment the funding stops.
The US Empire grew to imperial dominance post-WWII. It was seen as a good ally only to the west. 9/11 was the excuse, not the cause of the empire’s genocide in Iraq and subsequent plunder, and the recession wasn’t caused by 9/11 either, but was a natural element of capitalism’s regular boom/bust cycle.
With or without 9/11, the US Empire would still be a gradually dying empire hated by the world.
America had already spent half a century brutalizing and terrorizing the global South exactly as it did to Iraq and Afghanistan. The idea that they were seen as good is pure revisionism
I’d erase the bronze age collapse, my imagination runs wild thinking about what could have been if the development of civilization had continued unbroken.
Same here the Bronze Age collapse feels like one of those massive reset points. It’s wild to imagine how far civilization might’ve advanced if that momentum hadn’t been lost.
Imagine, human civilization might have been a thousand years ahead in mathematics, who knows, the mind boggles.
Columbus’ return to Spain.
His failure to return discourages further attempts for a while; and when contact is eventually made, it isn’t Spain in the immediate aftermath of the Reconquista looking to continue its momentum.
Meanwhile, the New World is made aware of Europe and perhaps acquires some resistance to Old World diseases before any larger confrontations.
Interesting point! So basically, if Columbus hadn’t returned successfully, Spain’s push into the New World might’ve slowed down, giving the indigenous peoples more time to get used to European contact and maybe even build some resistance to diseases before major conflicts happened.
That, and Spain (or whoever else) wouldn’t be coming in fresh off the surrender of Granada, with the attitude that all non-Christian states must be conquered as a matter of principle.
Exactly without that post Granada mindset, expansion wouldn’t have been driven by the same “conquest by principle” attitude, which could’ve changed a lot of outcomes.
When that nun destroyed Archimedes’ math book that had a bunch of pre-calculus stuff in it that wouldn’t be discovered again for centuries.
Imagine if that book had led to the development of calculus, one of the most important tools in science for modeling the universe, much earlier than Newton and Leibniz.
That loss is mind-blowing to think about. If those ideas had survived and been built on, math and science could’ve jumped ahead centuries calculus arriving that early would’ve completely reshaped how we understand the universe.
Bill Clinton fully admits to smoking weed in college.
Yeah, the infamous “I didn’t inhale” era hard to imagine that even being controversial today.
Failure of the German revolution. Because that has fucked us for 100 years.
a germany under liebknecht and luxemburg… one can dream
Yeah, the German Revolution’s failure really set the stage for a century of chaos.
