I’m looking for specific and non obvious answers. Give me something visceral, rid the world of a figure or nation you hate. Preserve a culture you adore. It doesn’t have to make sense either, you are basically god here.

What I mean is don’t just say you’d get rid of imperialism or colonialism bc no shit

Personally I would make it so that the Americas are never discovered by the old world and every “would be” conquistador (especially cortez and pizarro) explodes.

  • HarryLime [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    27·
    2 months ago

    Like 1000-ish years before Columbus, I’d give the native Americans all the Eurasian/African domestic animals and knowledge of metallurgy. When sustained contact happens, it will be on a more equal footing, stopping European colonialism before it can really start.

    • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      2 months ago

      I’d give the native Americans all the Eurasian/African domestic animals

      If we had that happen… then we shall confirm this:

      1. If they don’t die in a droves due to transported Old World disease, due to previous exposure to animals and to an extent, the Old World, they will make their bones as a majority-indigenous continent akin to the former, and at worst, end up more like the historically western-imperialized people of Asia and Africa that later fights back in large numbers rather than the near-genocided condition they are in, today, that make them a minority in most of the Americas.

      2. If despite the previous disease exposure and skills given, they die in similar amounts during the European conquest, we can more certainly conclude it was European imperialists and settlers, such as by their hunger-causing scorched earth tactics, and forced labor plantation overwork, whose policies more purposely seeked to eliminate them in the early 1500s-1600s, and indirectly caused the conditions for viruses and bacteria to kill them

      Personally, as much as I want it to be the former, I feel its the latter…

      Edited

      • HarryLime [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        10·
        2 months ago

        If they don’t die in a droves, supposedly due to transported disease from the Old World, they will make their bones as a majority-indigenous continent akin to the former, and at worst, end up more like the western-imperialized people of Asia and Africa that later fights back rather than the near-genocided state they are known as, today…

        That’s why I’d do it about 1000 years before, to give the American population time to bounce back.

        If despite the previous disease exposure and skills given, they die in similar amounts during the European conquest, we can more certainly conclude it was European imperialists and settlers, such as by their scorched earth tactics, and forced labor plantations, whose policies more purposely seeked to eliminate them in the early 1500s-1600s

        I figure if they have iron or steel weapons, along with cavalry and other various animals to serve as beasts of burden and food sources, they’d be able to defend themselves from the Europeans pretty adequately no matter what.

        • Bobson_Dugnutt [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          9·
          2 months ago

          That’s why I’d do it about 1000 years before, to give the American population time to bounce back.

          If we’re dreaming let’s give all the Native Americans vaccines and more diverse immune system genes. Or maybe teach the Europeans germ theory and basic hygiene before 1492.

          • Hexboare [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            5·
            2 months ago

            Or maybe teach the Europeans germ theory and basic hygiene before 1492.

            The British were giving out smallpox blankets well before germ theory. I don’t think a more precise understanding of the mechanism of contagious disease transmission would have helped.

            “Out of our regard to them … we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.” —An eyewitness, quoted in Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–81, 2001

          • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
            4·
            2 months ago

            Unfortunately they would probably just use that knowledge to better exterminate people. Idk if we are ready for the consequences of knowledgeable biological warfare in the 1500s

        • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          5·
          2 months ago

          That’s why I’d do it about 1000 years before, to give the American population time to bounce back.

          I don’t argue against that, I kinda agree with yer point; with such exposure, they should be able to be like Asia, Africa, and Europe, in that their populations are majority native to the region and acclimated to global zoonotic and human-spread diseases.

          I figure if they have iron or steel weapons, along with cavalry and other various animals to serve as beasts of burden and food sources, they’d be able to defend themselves from the Europeans pretty adequately no matter what.

          Good!

    • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      7·
      2 months ago

      I was thinking more along the lines of two giant walls splitting the pacific and atlantic down the middle. The walls reach the stratosphere and if european touches them they explode.

      Your solution is good too but my goal is to see how they would develop in isolation. Its also worth mentioning that the new worlders had a severe disadvantage not just in knowledge but in resources. They did not have large pack animals so much of their labor power was tied up in manual tasks. They also had significantly less time to domesticate their plants making them more nutrient rich. Peas were already domesticated by the time they had even began farming iirc. Although the Inca’s and pre Incan societies were very proficient at selective plant breeding. So while a thousand years of metallurgy would help I’m not sure it would be enough

          • HarryLime [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
            13·
            2 months ago

            Preventing contact between Eurasia and the Americas would significantly hamper human development, leading to a world without socialism or communism. Also, assuming that you’d do the wall to prevent the genocide of native Americans, there’s the underlying assumption that any kind of contact would necessarily lead to genocide, which is an inherently right wing assumption (genocide and conquest = human nature).

            I know I’m overthinking a joke answer, but it’s what it is.

            • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
              4·
              2 months ago

              I know I’m overthinking a joke answer, but it’s what it is.

              This is fair lol, I do it all the time no worries. Obviously I wouldn’t actually do this if I had the power to but I am really mad about the spanish rn. Regardless, while I don’t believe conquest is inherent to human nature, I find it hard to believe any other outcome was likely given the difference in power and systems in place. However despite that my biggest issue is disease. I don’t want them meeting because it would be devastating for one group or the other no matter what. I am also very curious to see how society would have developed in the isolated Americas. I wonder how different and how similar they would have been to us.

              Also I am not sure how this would prevent communism long term. Sure it would slow things down but its shouldn’t be impossible no?

              • HarryLime [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
                3·
                2 months ago

                Fair enough I guesss

                Also I am not sure how this would prevent communism long term. Sure it would slow things down but its shouldn’t be impossible no?

                You need a global economy, interconnected with lots of people spreading technology and ways of organizing and capital, et cetera.

                In fact, at a bare minimum, you probably need the potato to spread throughout the world. I don’t think the economic and technological development for capitalism, and later to socialism, is possible without potatoes.

  • darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    23·
    2 months ago

    I’d ensure Spartacus’s slave revolt succeeded, resulting in Rome falling to a grand slave revolt, smothering in the cradle the pro-debtor/creditor government and empire. Probably just delay it emerging later down the line but who knows. But best part is this stops a lot of follow-on bad happenings such as Christianity being proclaimed the official religion of Rome, certain unifications don’t occur under wartime conditions against Rome. Maybe they even implement a kind of early universal suffrage and it ends up failing but it means that 17th century enlightenment thinkers have more to chew on which means they and the French revolution see certain flaws in liberal thinking and advocate a more radical course of action leading to the US founding fathers being a bunch of, republican, class traitors and hardcore abolitionists which leads to a crumbling of the capitalist world order over time that means the German revolution succeeds and European capital is murdered off in a bloody series of revolutions ending by the year 1980. While simultaneously anti-colonial sentiment creates uprisings across the globe that further weaken capital. Thus global communism by 2040.

    (Yes I know there are problems with this but let me dream)

    • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      5·
      2 months ago

      Ok yes but I was more creative about it. I was curious to hear about how y’all would change things more than about what y’all would change.

  • possibly a cat@lemmy.mlEnglish
    17·
    2 months ago

    At the advent of agriculture and the transition away from pastoralism and nomadism, I wish that all tribes had enforced a collectivist mentality regarding possessions instead of allowing chains of inequality that have lashed out for millennia.

    I think inequality is one of those things that is really difficult to erase once it has already been normalized. It allows for accumulation of power, and then uses that power to fight against the fragmented opposition to itself. I think there would have been so much less suffering if that issue had been nipped in the bud back at the start of “civilization.”

    • HumanAnarchist@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      2 months ago

      I highly recommend The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It presents a new anthropological survey of humanity starting at the question “What is the origin of inequality.”

      • possibly a cat@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        I think I hold the same position as Graeber, I was just keeping it simple.

        For example that’s partially why I said “all” tribes. I agree that it didn’t happen linearly, and agriculture wasn’t adopted by all groups at the same time. As Marx pointed out late in his life, many tribes had instead adopted a proto-communism that didn’t derive from a local implosion of the capitalist order. However the exploitative form of material relations has nonetheless become dominant over the course of millennia. It is obsessed with subjugation and highly normalized. Therefore I think preventing its instances of origination would have led to the development of very different civilizations.

  • context [fae/faer, fae/faer]@hexbear.netEnglish
    16·
    2 months ago

    if we’re dreaming, how about preserve and spread the apparently egalitarian urban culture of the bronze age indus valley civilization or any similar culture as a hopefully proto-socialist mode of production that dominates until industrialization allows for proper communism, perhaps largely bypassing slave-based, feudal and capitalist stages if a ruling class based on ownership of people and private property fails to really take hold.

  • HelltakerHomosexual [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    12·
    2 months ago

    give the native americans horses far earlier by way of the viking settlements in canada

    Having access to horse domestication would have done a lot to advance the development and size of native american civilizations. Beasts of burden in particular to help with nomadic migration and agricultural exploitation.

    they also did so well as horse riders in our timeline they made rifles obsolete and made the empires invent the revolver just to combat them. and thats with only a century of horse domestication. Give it to them far before european settlement and theyll be able to put up even more of a fight.

  • gramxi [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    12·
    2 months ago

    I think it would be a funny prank to destroy a merchant’s reputation by swapping his ingot inventory with shitty low-grade copper

  • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    11·
    2 months ago

    I’d want to see how radically different history would be if Constantin 1, the Christian one, was assassinated before he could proclaim Christianity as the religion of the empire.

    Alternatively I’d want to see how wild shit would get if Qin Shi Huang didn’t poison himself to death via alchemy bullshit.

    Third one: horses in the Americas for as long as they’ve been in the old world.