An alternate reality

[PROMETHEUS ts]

So I was reading recently guns , germs and steel books afterI got the idea of understanding what drifted the evolution of most of the ancient civilizations , and if some cultures were just lucky to live in a certain area opposed to others.

As we all know the first. Hominids were born in Africa , from there they moved into the rest of the world...

Out of all this brainstorming I decided to create an alternative world , and possibly imagine evolutive cultures and models based on that new geography .
I have modeled it after the real world , but changed the geographic features , keeping a vague resemblance ....

Here is the result of Thersis :






My idea was to first of all scatter cultures around and simulate a possible colonization by humans and then locate the first rising colonies and civilizations ...

You can help me with your inputs if you like and sugest locations , types of cultures , eventually even real life ancient ones .

You can take this as a game or a simple experiment .

Any Comment even only on just how the map looks is very welcome .



Btw the most smart ones will surely guess from what is the name "Thersis" derived ...


Notes:
The climatic zones range from north to south from tundra down to sandy deserts, from west to east the distance is comparable to the one from spain to hindukush.
The different biomes portrayed include:
Tundra, taiga, steppes, continental, mediterranean, dry mountains,frozen mountains,sandy deserts, rocky deserts, fertile subtropical, grasslands and savannhas.

[BosnianKnight]

Damn, IDK what to say because it looks wierd.

[Tiberios]

Moved to Thema Devia.

[Tankfriend]

One thing that jumps to my eyes immediately is that large island or peninsula south of the "Black Sea" directly in the middle of the "Mediterranean". There's one channel north and south of it, each, that seem to be the only direct waterways to traverse from the east of the "Mediterranean" to the west and vice versa. I'd expect that island - or at least the areas around the channels - to be enormously contested territory, because there's a huge strategic and commercial value in those. As a result of that, expect some major fortified port cities to turn up at those channels. I'd say there's also a pretty good chance that the culture to develop in that area and take control of those channels first would be a candidate to develop into a large empire. Culturally, I guess they might turn out somewhat "Greek", maybe? The terrain and climate zone seem to be relatively similar to Greece, at least.

Another thing that's immediately apparent: Apart from that island in the middle of the "Mediterranean", there is nothing physically impeding effective cultural and commercial exchange between east (and the far east not visible on the map) and west via water. No excessively long overland routes through hostile terrain (think the Silk Road) or very long naval routes around "Africa" are necessary, because you have a direct access via the sea. While there might just turn up a major state taking over the straits leading east and developing a serious naval power to dominate that area, there's only so much you can do before you can't effectively control the shipping in that area, anymore.
There's a lot of things this can result in: A much larger and more prevalent distribution of cultural and commercial elements throughout the known world than in real life (though still long and perilous, someone from "Europe" could quite easily go to "India" or "China" and settle down and trade there, and vice versa) - people might look at "multiculturalism" much more differently than we do, for example - is one. A more even spread of technological knowledge might be another. Yet another one might be that the whole idea of colonialism in the far east might never come to be, because there might be neither reason nor incentive to do so. Exploring "Africa" and "America" might also very well turn up much later, because there would be less incentive to do that, too.

All in all, I'm pretty sure the world would be very different from our own, because many major influencing elements of our historical development would be completely different, or absent alltogether.