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There are many worlds, all of them different, whether obviously or not so much; some worlds have real-life superheroes; others are just like ours, save that their version of the Cold War had a different outcome; in the third, the buses are sen-tient in a manner you would expect from a robot; and so on.In some worlds, the change comes not from humans, but from the world itself; in one world, the landmass of Antarctic is located in the north, while the Arctic ocean is located in the south; in such dimensions, the planet Earth is very dif-ferent from what we have for a variety of reasons; but in this dimension the situation differs from ours in an alternate manner. -Here the change begins about 11-12 000 years ago, at the end of Ice Age. In one point – in what corresponds to our western U.S. – Smilodon – the sabre-toothed cats – were dying out as the Ice Age was ending, and the world they knew vanished with it. In our dimension they vanished with nary a trace, save for fossils (and the various cryptids, potentially – but that is another story). In this dimension, they did not.Oh, they almost did, when something else happened – contact with people. Contact, not conflict, though initially there was plenty of conflict too, as two predators do not get along… but humans, even at the end of the Ice Age, are more than predators. They are people. It is unknown as to how it happened, exactly, but this is what happened – at the end of an Ice Age the Smilodon were starving as their prey was dying-out or evolving in ways that the Smilodon couldn’t. And then somehow they found sustenance at the human camps.This is not too unique in the history of the multiverse; in our dimension something similar happened to the ancestors of the domestic dogs and cats, not to mention some other carnivores, (and all to a different extent), but the Smilodon were the biggest by far.It should be noted that the Smilodon in question corresponds to our world’s version of Smilodon gracilis – notably smaller than the South American popula-tor, which was one of the biggest sabre-toothed carnivores in Earth’s history, period. Even this species of Smilodon, however, was quite big, and even after it shrunk when the Ice Age ended, it remains quite large, built more like a bear than its’ wildcat cousins.…Why did the Smilodon shrink? Because the world of Megafauna in North America largely ended, leaving Smilodon, (and a few other remnants) behind. The surviving animals, such as the American bison, had shrunk already, and that was part of Smilodon’s problem – it had to shrink. In addition, under human selection/selective breeding – and its’ own genetic bottleneck issue – it did.Oh, there was cost, no doubt, as the Smilodon survivors and their descendants were never able to fully recover their ancestors’ glory, but – they lived. They lived and they relatively flourished, alongside with humans – the Native Ameri-cans, that is – and their canine cohorts.And then came the European colonization of the New World, and this is where the divergence began to be really noticeable. Oh, it was there already – hunting with both dogs and Smilodon was even more effective than with dogs alone, plus Smilodon companionship meant that the initial Native American dog breeds didn’t’ die out and continued to exist. Now, however, as the Western North America began to be colonized… it did not.In our timeline, the West was colonized, eventually, and most of its initial legacy was destroyed. Not just the cultures of Native American people who lived there, but also the animals, largely vanished under the eastern onslaught, barely surviving until modern times, (if they were lucky). In this universe, there were… complications.Smilodon survived, and continued to hunt bison, alongside humans and dogs. Bison may not be the smartest animals, but the dumbest did die first, and those who survived figured out that if they stampede at their adversaries they had the best chance of surviving, and this was what they did. In our universe, something similar happened with African animals, especially such large ones as the African buffalo, (no direct relation to the bison), the rhinos and the ele-phants. In this alternate North America, this instinct evolved in the American bison… and the pronghorn.The pronghorn on its’ own is a bizarre beast. It is the last of lineage most closely related to the African giraffes and okapi, neither deer nor antelope, and while smaller than the bison are, they are also faster. Bison do need to built-up momentum to stampede properly; the pronghorn are ready to run at a drop of a hat or at a note of a bird – and once they are off, they can run for a long time.Enter the European colonizers, who began to colonize and to destroy the original Wild West. Only this time, in this universe, they had a tougher time of it. Yes, they had superior technology, not to mention trained horses, (something that the West never had, at least not in this universe – there is a different one where it did, but that is another story), and trains and the like, but…But this time, they were facing animals who were really unfriendly towards people and knew what to expect. In our dimension, they were not exactly friendly towards them, but without firearms or horses, the Native Americans just were not as effective hunters as the Europeans were, and so the Native American animals of the West were caught flat-footed. Here, in this dimension… well, they also were, as firearms are good deal more efficient at killing than bows and arrows are, for example, but……But numbers tell, and the local animals already knew to expect nothing good from humans: as soon as the members of their herds began to fall, they would charge and do their best to overwhelm their foes through sheer number. (The bison can be naturally belligerent anyhow). With the modern firearms, they would not stand a real chance; with what the Europeans and their American cultural descendants had at that time, they did. Oh, the bison, the pronghorn, and the other animals of the Western North America still died, but so did the people who were killing them, and if you have a big enough bison herd to total several trains, for example, you suddenly began to have a war of attrition that goes both ways, not to mention that suddenly you need more organized federal support behind you to colonize the West – and this brings us back to Smilodon.In our dimension, the Wild West was named that because for a long time it was quite wild and lawless, especially by standards of the Eastern U.S. as the settlers there often disregarded the Federal government, a process that had left a longer and lasting mark on the American society in our dimension than you might think. In this dimension, the situation was different, because of Smilodon… and its’ relationship with horses.Post-Ice Age, North America never had any really big predators – the jaguars stuck to the south and never really made further north than the south-west; the puma was never truly comfortable hunting something really big, (including the elk and the moose), while the grizzly was, and is, more of an omnivore, and it quickly disappeared from the American East to begin with. Now, however, there were Smilodon, and while they had been domesticated, their human masters – the Native Americans – were not very friendly to the newcomers who tried to kill them off, plus…Big cats – such as lions and tigers – will kill and eat horses readily enough; Smilodon may be more distantly related to them than how it looks, but they did eat Ice Age horses all the same, and once the horses returned to the American West, the Smilodon began to eat them anew.The horses did not like it; as soon as they became aware of Smilodon, they would bolt and flee, or at least try to; an experienced rider could control a Smilodon-spooked horse, but it was hard, and with people trying to kill you – even harder.The same story, or nearly so, happened with the cattle that also came West: they aren’t closely related to the bison, but the Smilodon didn’t care, and were ready to eat them; the cattle didn’t care for that either, and soon began to evolve their own stampede response to the threat, caring little for humans, (who had cared little for them as well), and soon enough, a new approach slash strategy had to be developed for them as well…As the colonization of the West slowed down, a different divergence emerged: the accelerated end of the American slavery – with more resources tied into the colonization, and a stronger/more developed American government, (compared to what developed in our dimension), slavery had to go, as it was tying-up important human resources, and so it ended, with a bigger bang than in our dimension.It should be said that the termination of slavery did not make the upcoming U.S. a multicultural utopia; especially not at first – initially, people of color were considered either second-class citizens or cannon fodder, but a rawer, more violent and intense Civil War did began to change this approach, from sheer necessity if nothing else – but that is another story…
TBC
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-The second divergence point also occurred at the end of the Ice Age, but not in the Western U.S., but further south, in what in our world corresponds to Mexico. There, some of the world’s last mammoths were making a last stand.It should be noted that the term ‘mammoth’ actually covered quite a lot of the furry hairy elephants; the mammoths in this dimension, however, weren’t the woolly mammoths, but rather the Columbian mammoth, (Mammuthus columbi), which were bigger than the woolly mammoths were, but also less woolly, and lived in more southern climes than the woolly mammoths did, i.e. Mexico and further on. In our dimension, they died out with the rest of the Ice Age fauna; here, they were also headed towards extinction, when something else happened: humans – and their canine friends - have befriended the last of the Smilodon. (Smilodon gracilis).Overall, this sounds like a bad thing, and it was, as the mammoths had extra motivation, (not that they needed it), to stay away from humans and Smilodon. However, there was another factor at work – diseases. Dogs have come with humans to the Ice Age/post-Ice Age North America, bringing their own diseases, and they might have been another cause for the American megafauna to start dying out even faster for they had no immunity to the dogs’ disease, (such as the canine distemper and etc.). In this dimension, however, there were Smilodon.As the Native Americans domesticated and bred Smilodon, the sabre-toothed cats were exposed to the canine sicknesses. Some died; others survived and became resistant or immune to them. Animal sicknesses – and parasites – can jump species, and so the Columbian mammoths did became exposed to the new diseases, but unlike our dimension, where it was straightforward, a one-two link chain, here it was more complex: the mammoths and sabre-toothed cats co-existed for much longer than either did with dogs and/or people, and so, the disease strains that came from Smilodon to the mammoths were more familiar to the mammoths’ immune systems, which were able to handle them, thus further strengthening the mammoths’ immune systems in a cycle.…However, as Smilodon became more domesticated, (inasmuch as this term can be applied to any sort of cat), the mammoths kept their distance from humans and their cohorts. Something similar takes place in our dimension’s Afri-ca: the African elephants were never domesticated on a scale as their Asian cousins were, and the situation persists to our times – most of the domesticated elephants are Asian elephants… and their domestication is more ambiguous than the Westerners care to admit.Finally, we come to the colonization of both the Western U.S. and of Mexico by the Europeans. In the Western U.S., the mammoths were actually less belligerent than their bison neighbours were, as they were some of the few American mammals that would rather flee from humans than charge them.…It should also be noted that just as the Smilodon did, the descendants of the Columbian mammoths have shrunk compared to their Ice Age ancestors, becoming smaller, leaner, and tougher, just as the other animals of the post-Ice Age Americas did. However, they were still elephant cousins, and thusly were smarter than the other American animals were, one of the few animals to actually match humans and great apes in wits. Thus, they were almost able to achieve ‘bigfoot status’ in the American East, of animals that neither fully myth nor real, until they were proven to be real. All of a sudden, the New World had its’ own elephant to match the African and Asian species, a source of pride for the New World, and a case of dramatic irony that happened.One of the reasons as to why in our dimension the European colonists were able to colonize and displace the American natives was the disease factors: the latter just no immunity to the Old World diseases and suffered greatly from them, simply perishing and leaving unclaimed territories – the same fate that they’d brought upon the mammoths, just without the intent, unlike the Europeans’ case. Here, the mammoths had survived the diseases…and became something of a hub for them for a while, passing them onto their animal neighbours, and receiving them back. More precisely, as years and centuries went by, the American West, (and also what would one day become Mexico), became a natural lab where new diseases evolved, well, naturally, diseases unknown to the Europeans because their mammoths and sabre-toothed cats did die-out at the end of the Ice Age, as had the diseases associated with them.No, they were different species from the American mammoths and sabre-toothed cats, but they were still more closely related to them than the biologically modern species did, and the same goes for their sicknesses: once the ‘true’ Ice Age animals died out, so did their diseases, leaving the Old World humans without any immunities to the descendants of the Ice Age diseases of the New World, and as they came into the west, they were exposed to the diseases as well.It was not as grim as it sounds, actually. Diseases do not believe in borders, and the descendants of the Ice Age sicknesses were reaching the American east, for example. As such, the American colonists were being exposed to them, and developing natural immunities to them, before they came into the West, but when they did, the exposure increased by a factor or several, affecting both the colonists and their animal companions. Therefore, all of a sudden, the ‘Euro-Americans’ were suffering attrition losses of their own, not just because an extra-large herd of bison had smashed a train or two, but because the force that’d been delivered by that train came down with some new disease, as did the train crew, so suddenly new solutions have to be found as well. Abruptly, the medical profession – and the other live sciences – begin to be quite important in the American society as solutions to the disease problems have to be found. And……Unlike the sabre-toothed cats, which, post-Ice Age stuck to the future U.S. West, the mammoths would roam what would become Mexico, encountering European humans before the sabre-toothed cats did – the Spanish conquistadores. There, the disease interactions were similar to what would to occur in the American West, only not entirely.First, whereas in the American West the humans were a part of the initial hu-man/dog/sabre-toothed cat/mammoth disease interaction, in the future Mexico they weren’t, and so, when the disease-resistant mammoths came there, as they would seeking new pastures, the human populations there were the dev-astated ones – and the process spread down south, into South America.Enter the conquistadors, who would find a New World filled with wonders and riches, but also with perils, including the new diseases that they had no immunity from. Some would die, but others did survive and develop immunities to. Complicating the scenario were the South American natives, who already went through that – and keep in mind that the diseases were evolving on their own – the post-Ice Age mammoths never reached South America unlike their predecessors – but viruses and microbes are living organisms in their own right, they can find new hosts on their own, and so they did in form of Spanish people and horses, some of who died, but some who came back to the Old Country, and started an epidemic there.However, history has its’ own jokes – in this particular case it was karma. Just as the mammoths were able to handle the new disease strains passed through the sabre-toothed cats’ immune systems first, so did the Europeans were able to handle the new disease strains that’d passed through the immune systems of Native Americans and their own fellows first. Consequently, the new sicknesses did not manifest a new Black Plague, fortunately, and gave the Europeans some new immunities…, which did not matter as much when they came to the American West and had to deal with an entire new set of diseases – they might have come from the same initial stock, but by the time that Spanish conquistadores came to the New World they had diversified a lot.….And when they came to the Old World they continued to diversify. Humans, however, are not like the other animals on planet Earth, for they began to invent ways to battle the diseases, and not just through faith, but through science as well. In our dimension, Spain remained largely a secondary country, once England defeated it abroad, (post 17th-18th centuries); in there, it began to quietly recover from the obscurant breed of faith it found itself in by then, and so it – and the rest of the Catholic world – began to modernize, maybe even before the Protestant world did – but that is another story.In this one, the Catholic church did dominate the Central and South Americas, in no small part because it banned human sacrifices that the native faiths were so infamous for, and once the European medicines began to arrive, (alongside with the diseases, but still), the tide began to turn – on that stage, the Europeans were more advanced than the Natives, and it mattered. …North American colonists and natives would arrive at this stage only in the 18th-19th centuries, quite a bit later than when the Spaniards did, and by then the latter had a firmer grip on the Caribbean and what in our world is Florida than how they did in our world – and so the fledgling U.S. states had to deal with that – but this is another story.(All of the American cultures, it should be noted, would shun Mexico, – it is believed, not entirely correctly, to be the source of all of the American diseases, and is considered unclean practically by everyone. As such, that stretch of land is largely uninhabited by humans, leaving nature free to do whatever it wants – but that is another story as well).One final issue – humans’ aside, there was another group of mammals that got a nasty sickness surprise from the New World – the elephants. Viruses and microbes don’t often jump from species to species, what happened in North Amer-ica at the end of the Ice Age was more of an exception, but since this branch of the single-celled family tree was initially aimed at the mammoths, (in a manner of speaking), when it arrived in the Old World, their elephant cousins got hit as well.Mammoths and elephants were not brought to Earth by aliens, nor did they exist/evolve in a vacuum – they are a part of the Afrothere group of mammals, a small but diverse one. As such, while the other Afrothere mammals were able to handle the new arrivals, the elephants, both African and Asian, had their own epidemic, and while they did recover from it – eventually, it’d actually cost them, as on average those giants of land shrunk, becoming smaller, leaner and hardier than they are in our dimension.This was a mixed bag – not only did the ivory fad/craze never become as bad as it did in our world, it also fueled the rise of veterinary medicine, (among other changes), as various Asian cultures would begin to invite European doctors so that they would treat their beloved elephants – but it also started a chain reaction in the natural world, as the elephants’ diminishment allowed their closest rivals the rhinos to rise to power – but that is also another story.
TBC
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The next divergence that we shall focus about will be in the mid-19th century, and it will be a much less notable one than the first two, for not all changes are great and important, not unless they affect you directly. Let's talk about someone rather less important in the world of natural history - the great auk of the Atlantic.In our world, the great auk was an aberration, a perfect counterpart to the penguins of the Southern Hemisphere, a flightless sea bird. Yet, whereas penguins had plenty of places to live without being bothered by land mammals – for a while, at least – the great auk was less lucky, and it was already on its’ last legs when the Europeans arrived in the New World and finished it off in a matter of centuries, if not decades – a sad end for a truly unique seabird. Here, in this universe, things went down a bit different.The Europeans have arrived in the New World all the same, but as we have discussed before, the things were not too different from what has happened in our dimension: the East coast was just too far away from the epicenter, with its’ sabre-toothed cats and mammoths. As such, for a while the colonization of North America proceeded mostly as it had in our timeline, just at a slower rate, as the various diseases began to make themselves felt straightaway – but they made themselves felt in our timeline too – the colonization of the North (America) was never a straightforward process, especially at first. No, what matters here is the attrition – already the colonization was tougher, the Europeans had to concentrate and to focus on their beachheads, and so the great auks remained unnoticed by them in the New World for a while longer. They were still a small population, relatively speaking, as being flightless in the Northern Hemisphere is never a good idea – there are polar bears and Arctic foxes, for example. The flightless auk had plenty of cousins that survive – in our dimension – into the modern times, and they all look much like it did, but they can fly. Some even nest in trees rather than on cliffs, and the sight is about as bizarre as that of the African penguins nesting in the sands of South Africa, (which they did in this timeline as well).Now, last time, we talked a lot about the little guy – the microbe and its’ neighbour the virus, and of the big impact they had in this dimension. That is just enough, but it must be pointed out that they weren’t exactly a McGuffin either – there were plenty of animals who adapted to them quickly enough, or just were different enough not to be affected by them, such as birds – it were the mammals who got the short end of the stick in this scenario. The birds, they went on pretty much as they did in our timeline, including the great auk, who did reasonably well in the New World and the rest of the Atlantic, until the Europeans arrived. Here, in this dimension, they had also arrived, and began to reshape North America… but at a slower, smaller scale than they had in our dimension.However, where was the great auk in all of this? “Safely” off coast, away from all the excitement, flourishing quietly, more or less. And indeed, this is how you could describe this bird – for all of its’ supposed greatness, it was more of a side note in Earth’s natural history, which is why in our timeline it vanished with a whimper rather than a bang. Conversely, here, it had not. It actually presevered.Oh, the times were tough for the great auk, a flightless bird – even a flightless seabird in the Northern Hemisphere never has a fun time existing – the conditions are never entirely right for it, but because of the lessened human pressure on it, it didn’t die out. It survived. It survived long enough for the humans to realize that the flightless seabird is more than just a supply of meat and fat, and a limited one at that, and so they began to protect it. Moreover, they began to manage and to domesticate it, not unlike how they did it with other types of waterfowl, such as ducks and geese.Now, the latter are less monolithic themselves than you might think – there are fresh-water and seawater species of them, and the sea ducks, such as eiders and scoters actually do not domesticate very well – but they can fly. The great auk could not, and as far as avian dinosaurs go, it was not as intelligent as the aforementioned water birds. And so, domesticated – well, semi-domesticated – it became. And so, it had survived and remained a part of the existing life on Earth, rather than a part of its’ fossil collection. And that is actually a very good achievement, when you think about it.(Also as in case of many other domesticated animals and birds, its' range had actually spread out, compared to its' wild times - but that, in itself, is another story).
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-The next divergence that we are discussing has happened actually before all of the previous ones: way back when, when Earth was just making itself, a portion of it, the one responsible for what in our dimension is Great Britain, and Ireland, and to a lesser extent – the northwestern France – was formed higher than how it formed in our dimension. As a result, when 11 000 years ago and onwards, when the last prehistoric Ice Age was ending, and the last of the wild Smilodon were becoming domesticated, (however tentatively) in the New World, at the other end, in the Old World, something happened: the islands of Great Britain and Ireland as we know them didn’t form. Instead, in their place, remained, well, a part of the Eurasian mainland, mayhap its’ Western-most part, but still a part of the mainland.…For a while, the actual fallout of this development wasn’t felt, for as we have discussed earlier, unlike the New World, where a local species of Smilodon, as well as the Columbian mammoth, have survived, the Old World lost its’ mega-fauna… or not. There were one or two survivors; the giant, or the Irish elk, Megaloceros, was one of them.By the modern standards, Megaloceros was not unlike the sabre-toothed cats: a cousin of modern mammals, it was just too big and too specialized to survive when the climate and the world around it changed. In this world, however, its’ surroundings changed just slowly enough to adapt, and not unlike its’ New World analogues, the sabre-toothed cat and the mammoth, the ‘giant elk’ began to shrink, until it was closer to the size of the modern moose, (aka Alces alces, not the elk), i.e. big with oversized horns, but not as huge as its’ predecessors had been, nor equally powerful. In the New World, the Megaloceros would have died out regardless, (not that it had ever lived there, but still), but in the Old World, where its’ old foes such as the European lion and the cave bear did die out, it survived.Mind you, it survived on a very limited space, from a certain point of view – the European northwest. The land elsewhere was too mountainous and too forested for it to survive, contrary to most other deer. Ironically, among the ‘other deer’, the Megaloceros’ closest (proportionally) cousins were the fallow deer, a couple of deer species native to Middle East rather than to Europe, but we digress.The fact was that the Megaloceros’ relationship with humans was ambiguous to say the least; for a while the local people hunted the giant elk and almost drove it to extinction, until they began to protect it, and the land, similarly to how they’ve done it in England (and the rest of Great Britain, eventually), from the Middle Ages to our times. This ‘rescue’, again, had plenty of caveats, and people did hunt Megaloceros, as well as the other local big game, (bears, boars, wolves, other deer), almost to extinction. ‘Almost’ is the key word here – in our world, there are no big mammals’ native to Great Britain or to Ireland anymore because of the obvious… and in that one……There the things took a different turn, both because of the Megaloceros’ natural charisma, and because the local rulers now ruled over a more sizeable piece of land than just two islands, (eventually; the commonwealth of U.K. is something else), so there was less anthropogenic pressure on the local wildlife in general as well – at least for a while. As human population rose, this meant bad news for the rest of the natural world – and then America was discovered overseas, and people of Europe went there just as they did in our dimension, and as we have discussed previously, things took a different turn there for them than for our ancestors here. One of those differences were the microbes, which we have also discussed, but here it must be noted that due to the Megaloceros sur-viving past their own Ice Age extinction, the humans of the northwestern Europe had had some past experiences with post-Ice Age microbes and so they were able to handle the newcomers… not very well, as the microscopic newcomers had evolved into new species themselves, remember? The survival of Megaloceros had helped to soften the blow, nothing more, but it did mean that the humans of northwestern Europe survived the new plague with relatively fewer losses than the rest of the world – but ‘relatively fewer losses’ isn’t much of consolation for humans; for the natural world it meant a slackened anthro-pogenic pressure instead, and so they began to recover again, once more moving away from the abyss of extinction.Humans, however, are good at recovering themselves, and so they did, but the spectre of extinction had faded even more at that time. In part because quite a few of people were still immigrating overseas in search of better future and better living, and in part because due to the rise of innovations in medicine and related sciences, people actually began to start to take care of nature, however slightly, before they began to do so in our time.Again, this wasn’t some sort of an utopian breakthrough, and people continued to hunt the surviving/established post-Ice Age Megaloceros, but they did so at a lesser rate than before, and moreover, the Megaloceros became not so much domesticated as adapted to people – akin to the moose and elk, reindeer and roe deer of our timeline – and so they were able not to die out after all, a rather crowning success for the monarch of deer.…There is one other thing, which is a whole another story, but deserves a mention here regardless, since it is a part of this world just as the European post-Ice Age Megaloceros are. Just as the land that could’ve been Great Britain and Ireland remained a part of European mainland, (and is quite bigger in size than those two islands are) because it was too high for the post-Ice Age sea levels to take down and overwhelm – literally – so it was the other way around in Egypt, where a big chunk of it got drowned by the rising water levels from the Nile (and some other rivers). Instead of a ‘solid’ country centered around one river, and the rest being desert, by the time of the Bronze Age, Egypt became much more swampy, separating Africa from the rest of the world… at least in that part of the world.From a cultural point of view (and from many others) this was a disaster, (insert your own adjective), as the Egyptians would eventually abandon their country and go wherever the wind would take them; some went to what would eventually become ancient Greece and Rome and would eventually be assimilated by the locals; others went eastward, and helped their former slaves actually establish Israel, until other empires overwhelmed it, culminating with Rome destroying it; and the third would eventually end up in the northwest Europe, where they would help make the local version of the European culture and civilization unique – and that would also be a factor as to why the Megaloceros didn’t die out in the post-Ice Age world – but now that is clearly a different story.
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Among the differences that affect this world one of them is the canine family – not just the domestic dog, but its’ wild relatives as well.The grey wolf quickly lost most of its’ range as compared to our timeline – in the New World it died out altogether in the blink of the evolutionary eye, and its’ econiche as the American pack predator would be taken over by large cats, though not the ‘roaring’ cats such as the jaguar and the leopard. Rather, they belonged to the same lineage as the cheetah of the Old World, the jaguarundi of the American tropics, (despite similar-sounding names it has nothing in common with the jaguar), and most importantly the puma or the cougar, to whom it was most closely related out of its’ relatives. This species of semi-social puma would form a social organization not unlike that of the lions of the ‘roaring’ cats, or even its’… jaguarundi cousins, and would become one of the more successful predators of North America, able to endure the pressures even of their sabre-toothed cousins, of humans, and of domestic dogs, when the latter did arrive in the New World. In the Old World, the grey wolf would endure for a while longer, but eventually it faded away into extinction, just as the sabre-toothed Smilodon and the Columbian mammoth of our world did.The dingo lasted for a while longer, but the ripple effect, described in chapter 2 of this story, would come to Australia as well. The wild dogs of New Guinea would survive well enough, (their relationship to dingo and the rest of the dogs is in flux), but the dingo itself would follow the way of its’ grey wolf cousin, which would be the good news for the Thylacine or the marsupial wolf – this animal would actually survive (unlike our timeline), and eventually win over the hearts of men, becoming something of a surrogate dog of Australians, both aboriginals and colonists.The domestic dog itself would actually survive, and in some countries, especially of the West, it would remain, well, a dog, as the people there would still consider them a perfect companion and best friend. Elsewhere, it would be different – in Australia, as it was written above, it would be ‘replaced’ by the Thylacine, (the relationship between the domestic dog and dingo has not been hammered out completely yet). In other countries, such as China and India, the dog would become a food animal instead, (and surprisingly enough, quite popular – but that is a different discussion). In yet others, such as Nepal, the dog would become quite unpopular and a victim of superstations – but overall, in this timeline, a sight of a person and their dog is just as common as it is in ours.South American canines, such as the culpeo have fared largely the same, and some, like the Fuegian dog that died out in our timeline, have outright thrived and remained popular canine pets, both among the natives of the South American continent and in other countries. Despite their more fox-like physical appearances, they are more closely related to the wolf, dog and jackal branch of the dog family, and thus became domesticated readily enough, and filled-in the void caused by a temporary population crash of the domestic dog, (see chapter 2 of the story).And the foxes of the Northern Hemisphere had faced similar to their South American counterparts: some, like the red fox of North America and Eurasia has evolved into forms/subspecies largely like those of our timeline, and some even became fully domesticated by people, (especially the most exotic-looking silver and cross varieties). Though they are inferior to the ‘proper’ domestic dogs due to differences in personality, (they are more like cats instead), the diminished numbers of the domestic dogs in this timeline allowed them to carve a niche in the pet society, (something that’d never happened in our timeline). The same goes for the abovementioned wild foxes – the eventual disappearance of the grey wolf meant that other, less efficient pack hunters took over – cats in the New World, and other predators in the Old. As such, the foxes had an easier time of surviving and flourishing than they had in our timeline, and that was what they did.
TBC
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South America is always one of the stranger continents, in all of the worlds, but in this timeline, it is perhaps even more unusual – and all because of pack hunting. Well, microbes and diseases, true, but also pack hunting and social skills.As it was discussed earlier, the survival of the Columbian mammoths, (and the microbes that they lived in tandem with), has caused a very widespread ripple effect throughout the entire planet with all sorts of consequences; in North America, among others, it caused an eventual extinct of the grey wolf species, and a rise of a sociable species of puma-like feline. (I.e., it looks mostly like the puma of our timeline, but it acts more socially, as the lions or the cheetahs do). Eventually, this social feline came into the South America, and while one on one, the jaguar was the more formidable feline, a pack of those social pumas was more than a match for the solitary king of the jungle, and its’ populations’ there began to collapse, until it vanishes from South America, its’ last strong-hold – in the Central America, but more on that later.With the jaguar gone, and with the social puma as the top cat in its’ place, the rest of South American fauna had to adapt. Some, like the spectacled bear and the maned wolf, (only a distant relative of the ‘true’ wolves of the genus Canis), became mostly herbivorous and thus avoiding competition, while the others…became efficient, or - more efficient, pack hunters themselves.Aside from the social puma, there is its’ close cousin, the jaguarundi, which is much more social than it is in our timeline; this smallish feline hunts cooperatively, and has a complex social structure, (though it is also able to consume some plant matter). Living alongside is the tayra, South American cousin to the fisher and the wolverine, also exhibiting the same level of sociability as the jaguarundi does.The dogs, of course, dominate the social hunter skill set, with the bush dog – another native South American canine. Unlike the jaguarundi and the tayra, which are relatively omnivorous, the bush dog is an obligate carnivore, and eats only meat; it uses its’ pack numbers to overwhelm either its’ prey, or to chase away other carnivores from their kills.In the water, there is the giant river otter, the world’s longest otter, which hunts in family groups, and the South American river dolphin, which does so as well. In our timeline, both mammals suffered from human pressure; in this timeline, there are fewer humans in South America, and so the giant otters and the river dolphins are able to exist, if not exactly to flourish.In the air, meanwhile, there is the common vampire bat. All bats are semi-social, but the common vampire bat – in this timeline – has moved into true sociability, hunting and feeding together in a manner not unlike that of lions or hyenas. That is because this timeline’s South America is also home to a giant vampire bat, a holdover from the Ice Age. In our timeline, it died out with the megafauna; in this timeline, it survived, just as the sabre-toothed cats and mammoths have, and even diminished, it still dominates the night. Other nocturnal fliers had to adapt or die out; the common vampire bat adapted, and uses greater numbers to counteract its’ cousin’s greater size.Down on the ground, there are also the herbivores; some of them, like the deer and the tapirs remained unchanged, and paid for it, as their populations collapsed, leaving the econiches open for new animals, who formerly lived in their shadows, but now got their place in the sun.…The situation was slightly different in the Andes Mountains, where most of the new slash upgraded pack hunters found it to be too cold for them. There, things are less changed; there are still condors and spectacled bears, as well as the South American camelids, the vicuna and the guanaco. Their domesticated cousins, the alpaca and especially the llama, also flourish, protected from most of the carnivores by their human owners.With the peccaries, it was somewhat different onc emore. The collared peccary survives only in Central (and in parts of the North) America, while the white-lipped peccary survives in scattered populations across the American jungle, (and the same goes for the capybaras, world’s biggest rodents). The Chacoan peccary, however, thrives across the South America, as this continent’s biggest herbivore/omnivore, living in a manner reminiscent of the long-extinct North American entelodonts – but it eats more plant matter than meat. Still, its’ formidable jaws and tusks are quite capable of dealing with all of South America’s predators, pack hunting or not, except for humans, and the sabre-toothed cats and dogs domesticated by them. Working together, this trio can overwhelm even the large and powerful Chacoan peccary.There is one more twist to this social story, however – Central America, where the mammoths still dwell. Humans avoid this place because of the diseases, as do many other animals, and so some of the ‘original’ South American animals thrive here, including the last of this timeline’s jaguars and collared peccaries. This world is weird in such a manner…
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Unlike the canines, the perissodactyls or the odd-toed hooved mammals got affected in different ways by the survival of the mammoths and co., (see the second chapter for a greater discussion). The reason behind it was that the modern odd-toed mammals are quite a varied bunch for such a small group, so there was plenty of differences.The rhinos represent the robust branch of these mammals. As it was mentioned in the second chapter, the African and Asian elephants got affected quite intensely, when the mammoths’ germs arrived in the Old World, but there were differences too. In Africa, it meant a plummeting of the African elephant populations, (both species), which in turn meant the rise of the rhinos. The white or the square-lipped rhinoceros flourished, becoming not just the biggest land mammal in Africa, but also the biggest grass-eater or grazer there, effectively outcompeting the other herbivores in this econiche, including its’ cousins, zebras and wild asses of Africa. They were actually affected harder, for many antelopes would eat leaves, or browse, more readily than zebras and wild asses did, at least, so these days the only zebra species in Africa is the mountain zebra, which has evolved to live in the foothills of Africa’s mountains, and the populations of African wild ass that adapted to live in Africa’s deserts – i.e., both are specialists.The ‘other’ odd-toed herbivore of Africa is the black or the hook-lipped rhinoceros, which used the collapse of the elephant population to… also get bigger and more numerous, true, but also more specialized: unlike its’ square-lipped cousin, this mammal ate leaves rather than grass, and so, instead of competing with its’ cousin, it evolved to become a more specialized leaf-eater. It is still no match for the giraffe in size, but unlike the giraffe, the black rhinoceros is evolving into a more jungle-dwelling species, complete with smaller horns, (which gives it a further benefit of being less desirable as prey by the human hunters, cough). I.e., the black rhinoceros is beginning to slowly evolve into an African version of its’ Asian cousins – and what about them?The Asian odd-toed mammals were affected less extremely than their African cousins did… or at least the robust branch of the family had not. The population of Asian elephants actually fared better than their African cousins had, because of the care and healing that humans would deliver to them, eventually, for their own reasons, but while their wild herds did fall in number, the Asian rhinos, (especially the two smaller species), as well as the Asian tapir, were never numerous enough to take advantage of this fact, and so the three rhinos and one tapir species continue to thrive in the Asian jungles, preferably away from humans.The gracile odd-hooved mammals, the wild asses and horses of Asia, fared pretty much the same: whereas the African wild ass (and the last surviving zebra species) had to become more specialized than their immediate ancestors did, their Asian counterparts… not so much, as their new obstacles was primarily the evolution of new gracile carnivores – the descendants of the Asian cheetah and striped hyena… and also of the tiger, but that is another story.In South America… there only one tapir species remains – the mountain tapir, as the rest of the tapir species have mostly succumbed to the ‘new and upgraded’ South American predators. By contrast, this continent now boasts a healthy population of domestic donkeys turned feral, as these mammals formed a semi-symbiotic relationship with the descendants of the Chacoan peccaries: the peccaries got the brawn, while the donkeys a keen sense of hearing, and can often warn the less alert peccaries about the approaching danger. That said, those ‘pseudo-pigs’ channel quite a bit of the extinct entelodont in them, and so the donkeys keep a vary eye and ear on their allies as well, especially during the birthing season, lest the peccaries turn on them, (as they are known to do).The donkeys have a safer relationship with the rheas: those cousins of the Afri-can ostrich provide the sight to match the donkeys’ hearing, and so, the smaller mammals and South America’s biggest birds often graze together, keeping a mutual lookout against the local carnivores. (In Africa, the ostriches often do something similar with the white rhinos – the ostrich might be the biggest modern bird, but it is still no match for the white rhino’s mammal strength, and so the ostriches benefit from it). That said, the rest of the world in this timeline has no other real population of either feral donkeys or horses: they, and especially the horses, are just too valuable to lose, and since their populations are still recovering from all the epidemics, there are too few of them to be lost as well. (South America with its’ feral donkeys is an exception, because of course it is).This, then, are the odd-toed mammals of this timeline: some are flourishing in unexpected ways, others are struggling or have actually died out, and the third are largely unaffected.
TBC…
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-When – in this timeline - it was Egypt that succumbed to wind and waves, rather than Doggerland, as it was in ours, the Egyptians’ fates were varied. Some went north, to Greece and Rome, where they were absorbed into those countries as second-rate citizens, though they did leave a mark on their cultures: when Rome, in particular, would lose the Punic wars to Carthage and be forced to move northwards, they would bring their Egypt’s last deities as their own, and so such deities as Seth and Isis would eventually become Roman deities, as did some of the northern ones. In time, Rome would move back south, as well as east, but that would take a while.Another group of Egyptians went directly east, alongside their former slaves and servitors, especially Hebrews. The relationship between the two ethnic groups was more than merely uneasy at first, especially while Moses, his family, and the Levite clan were in charge of the Hebrews, and so the post-Egyptians – and their cohorts – would separate quickly enough from the Hebrews and their people, and go on their separate way… into Canaan.It should be noted here that not all links became severed during their mutual/separate desert trek; the shared past was too intertwined, the cultural exchange – ditto. The two groups did not like each other too much, but they still knew each other better than they did anyone else, and so they kept in contact, mostly unofficially and discreetly, but they did.The situation changed some after Moses’ demise and Joshua assuming the role of a more secular leader: the two groups formed a tentative alliance as they took over Canaan, but after the takeover was complete, (to a point), the alliance fizzled out. The cultural exchange between the Hebrews and the post-Egyptians continued, more or less. In the north, the Hebrews built their country, as they did in our timeline, complete with a monotheistic faith. In the south, the post-Egyptians built a ‘post-Egypt’, complete with their own religion, this one centered on the goddess Hathor. Why a female deity? Because there already was a strong male deity in the north, so religious politics were in play…The Hebrews were not amused, or at least – their religious leaders were not; the secular leaders had a different opinion, and so the two nations existed alongside each other uneasily – and then a third party appeared on the scene: the natives of what in our timeline became Syria. For reasons of their own they be-came intermediaries between the two nations, sometimes playing them against each other, but just as often – against other forces in region. This smoothed some feathers of the two nations in question, and the not-quite-cohesive political alliance would eventually even add the nation of proto-Lebanon to their membership – and yet this uneasy alliance of four different nations was one of the reasons why they were able to repel the giant of Babylon when it expended into their zone, in the Mediterranean east.Another reason was that the climate there, in the Mediterranean east section of Near East became more fertile when Egypt gone, in this timeline. Better climate meant better harvest, which, in turn, meant more supplies, and people, in these four small countries/nations – i.e., greater resources meant greater military successes as well, plus……Plus, in the version of this timeline, the Mediterranean east section of Near East was really an obscure corner of the known world: the forces of Alexander of Macedon never came there, and in general, the contact between East and West in this timeline was much less developed than it was in ours. The four nations in question had much less contact with the ‘greater world’, and so they formed closer bonds with each other almost mechanically, as there were fewer alternatives – but even such mechanically forged bonds were enough to give the foursome some shared cultural values at least, and to keep the Babylonian giant, (whose culture was decisively alien to everyone else in this region), at bay.For decades the standoff continued, until the Parthians, (ancestors of Persians/Iranians), arrived at the scene. They smashed the Babylonians and established themselves as the dominant power in the locale. The Babylonians – who by now have established their own proto-identity, cultural, natural and otherwise – were able to survive as a rump, (for the lack of a better term), and would eventually ally with their former rivals to keep the Parthian at bay. On a secular level, the new alliance would become successful; on a religious, it would cause some of the more conservative Hebrews to split from their ‘straying’ brethren and go north, where they would create this timeline’s version of the Khazar khanate – but that is another story…
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As this world’s timeline continues to diverge from ours, other details are clearing up. Its’ wild and domestic sheep and goats, for example. Put succinctly, what happened to them was this: wild sheep and goats became domesticated, (again), while domestic sheep and goats got wild (maybe again).In a longer narrative, here is what happened: in the New World, the wild caprines had a problem even before humans got thrown into the mix, as the social and group-hunting pumas began to dominate them, in ways that the solitary North American big cats of our timeline never could. Between them, and the humans allied with the last sabre-toothed cats, the caprines of North America… survived, in the guise of bighorn sheep and their relatives, while some other bovids – such as the North American mountain goats, (not true goats, in fact), died-out, (alongside such as carnivores, as the North American wolves). It should also be noted, that the domestic sheep and goats never established a proper foothold in the New World and remain more of a side note in the human societies of the Western hemisphere, as opposed to such domestic animals as cattle and pigs – but that is another story.In the Old World, the situation was more complex, and went down as follows: first, the new sicknesses came from the New World, hitting both humans and other mammals, (and even other creatures) equally hard. Consequently, quite a few populations of domestic goats and sheep escaped, went feral, and began to endure, or even thrive and flourish, eventually outcompeting some of the wild bovids. Again, some of those old wild species died out, such as the chamois, the European cousin of the North American mountain goat, while others, like the bezoar ibex (a wild goat) and the mouflon (a wild sheep) had encounters with humans.This is actually the second stage: humans began to recover and to re-capture, or try to, their former domestic animals. This was a mixed bag – look at the chapters dealing with the canines and the odd-toed mammals – but in case of the caprines, both of the formerly domestic caprines, the sheep and the goats, became fully wild and unmanageable, while their cousins, such as the ibex goats and the mountain sheep were ‘more open’ to living with humans, giving their wool, milk and meat in exchange for food and protection. This was not an even process; in some parts of the world, such as the Middle East, enough of the initially domestic goats and sheep remained, well, domestic, for the people to circumvent the above process; the fact that the epidemics, introduced from the New World, ravaged them and their cultures less, helped. However, in other places, such as the Caucasus mountain regain or the Caspian region, or even European south, this exchange went full circle; these days, the descendants of the domestic goats are shy, but intelligent creatures, semi-intelligent even; some of them, such as the faun, even displaced such animals as the gerenuk antelope of Africa, driving the latter to extinction, while the descendants of the wild sheep form huge herds, and have replaced such animals as the wildebeest and zebras from the African savannas, (though other factors contributed, again).By contrast, the new descendants of the mouflon provide humans with wool, meat and fat, just as their first descendants had, while the descendants of the ibex goats provide humans… primarily with milk, and meat and wool second, as the latter two products are less good than they were in case of the initial domestic goats. Ah well, you win some, you lose some.This, then, is the situation of the caprine animals in this timeline; it is strange, but it works.
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As the ‘story’ of this timeline progressed, other divergences became evident, such as the case of ducks and geese. Unlike mammals such as dogs and wolves, donkeys and horses, sheep and goats, their changes were less caused by the microbes, (discussed in the mammoth chapter), and more by the climate/ecological changes, (mentioned in the megaloceros and Middle East chapters). As Egypt sank beneath the waves, (poetically speaking), the world of Africa and Middle East became wetter and swampier, much better suited for various waterfowl, such as ducks and geese, and so they took to it.…And people took to them as well. In our timeline, ancient Egyptians both hunted and domesticated ducks and especially geese, and now their relocated cultural heirs continued this tradition, as these avians would become an important food source on their new homeland. As ducks and geese spread in the changing climates, people of other cultures joined in, because food – especially new and tasty food – is always good. As time went by, new breeds of duck and geese appeared, both domestic and wild, and people of Middle East – especially the Syrians and the Lebanese of this timeline – would begin to sell their waterfowl over the rest of the Mediterranean basin.However, waterfowl – especially their chronologically earlier species – tend to easily become wild/feral, moreso than their chicken and co. counterparts. Consequently, some of those birds would escape into the wild and interbreed with other duck/goose species/breeds, often giving rise to something new and unexpected…(Other times they would just ‘colonize’ new lands – by their standards – and eventually evolving into new breeds/species all by themselves).…It was the same thing with culture. Somehow, the Egyptian goddess Serquet, initially a goddess of scorpions and diseases, became the patron of waterfowl as well. One reason is that diseases, venomous ‘vermin’ and waterfowl often found in close proximity, (generally speaking), and so all three of these concepts ended-up in Serquet’s portfolio… eventually.Just as eventually, Serquet’s worship would spread over the Mediterranean basin, alongside the waterfowl and diseases – a disease-fighting deity is always a good entity to have on your side, (especially before antibiotics were discovered), In particular if you are a polytheist. If you are a monotheist, then it is trickier, as it was mentioned in the Middle East chapter, and Serquet’s popularity did create further ripples, and was a part of the reason as to why the Hebrews of this timeline would eventually split into two – but that is another story.…Both monotheists and polytheists enjoy their ducks and geese, however, ei-ther boiled or roasted; this is unimportant, but still true both in our timeline and in the alternate one.
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Getting back into the swing of things, let us talk about the big cats – the pantherine big cats, to be more precise. The sabre-toothed cats have survived, as we talked in the very first chapter, and the smaller-sized cat genera went relatively unaffected, the one who changed the most were the American pumas, (also discussed in a previous chapter), and their jaguarundi cousin as well. Their more distant cheetah kin is a different tale, but that is unimportant… onto the pantherine cats.Those felines are, in fact, more of a mixed bag than you would think, and it showed – both the clouded leopards of the South-East Asia, and the snow leopard of the Asian highlands, continue to exist relatively unchanged as compared to our timeline; the other big cats, however…In Africa, the African subspecies of the leopard collapsed and vanished, causing by the infectious cascade, mentioned in the second chapter of our story. Its’ lion cousin… well, actually, the lions of eastern and southern Africa also disappeared, and became replaced by their more resilient cousins from western and central Africa, (which are also related to the Asian lions), as well as some other animals, such as the African golden wolf (Canis lupaster), the African wild dog… and the primates, both monkeys (mostly baboons) and apes (the common chimpanzee). With the disappearance of the leopard, the simians flourished, their populations boomed, interspecies competition increased, and at least some jungle primates got pushed into the open country, such as the common chimpanzee. Others, like the colobus monkeys, went in a different direction, as their new competitors, including the gorillas, pushed them further upwards, but we are not talking about primates here.In Asia, the situation was different – it were the tigers who were hit hardest, and vanished, (alongside the grey wolf, remember?). Consequently, both the Asian leopards and lions profited the most in the south Asia, as their populations increased and they repeatedly clashed with the human populations, (and since the latter had their own problems, the outcome was more mixed than you might expect).In the north Asia, the dominant predators were the bears – brown bears, (but also Asian black bears), at least for a while. Then the hyenas arrived. …They are only cat cousins, but deserve a mention regardless. In Africa, the spotted hyenas managed to survive, but in much-diminished numbers, and their future is uncertain. The brown hyenas continue to exist largely unchanged in the African south. The aardwolf was one of the animals brought to Europe in attempt to replace the domestic dog, (remember?)… unlike some other animals, such as the red wolf of North America and the maned wolf of the South, this experiment was mostly a failure due to the aardwolf’s specific adaptations, but its’ striped hyena cousin, (the only hyena species to survive outside of Africa in our timeline too, incidentally), was more successful, and spread out, gradually reaching both northern Europe, and even Siberia, (though not Scandinavia, apparently). There, it gradually evolved into a more social hunter, more reminiscent of the spotted hyena and the grey wolf of our timeline.…The South American jaguar did not die out, but its’ range got restricted to parts of Central America too, as it was mentioned in a previous chapter. (In addition, the Asian primates did not change at all, as compared to their mainland African analogues – their leopards survived just fine, with the Amur leopards even reaching the north, but they just were not up to the tigrine standards, and the place of tigers was taken over by lions, so not much change there, but the primates are an another story altogether). Anything else?In fact – no. The South American and African big cats were hit the hardest, and the Asian – not as much, and in general got better off. They, of course, are just a part of a big cascade that went down in this timeline, but we will discuss it more in the future chapters.End