A technical note on the alternate history of Earth.

The alternate history of Earth diverges from (fictional) reality near the end of the Pleistocene era, circa CE-10,000. Auei was a coastal, seafaring civilization relatively advanced for its time and (fictionally) ancestral to a variety of Pacific Islands cultures, residing on what is now the submerged landmass we call Zealandia. In this alternate history, Aueian civilization survives the drastic rise of sea levels during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition flood much more completely than it (fictionally) did in reality. As a result, the Oceanic ("Aueian") peoples were comparatively more advanced than they were historically, particularly in civilizations along the coasts of the Aueian mainlands (what we would call Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, etc).

The Aueian diaspora after the flood also made much greater impacts, not only on the Pacific Islands, but on what we would call South America, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. The latter, comparably advanced in its own right by circa CE-3000, had significant cross-cultural communication with the Aueian mainland. As a result, what we call Oceania eventually became dominated by a variety what we would consider fusions of Indian and Polynesian cultures, of comparable developmental timelines to historical Europe.

The next major change occurred in Geptia (which we call Egypt) circa CE-1500. Rather than lead the Hebrew people in rebellion against the Pharaoh of Geptia and eventually into exodus, Moses maintained his cover as a Geptian prince and eventually became Pharaoh himself. Pharaoh Moses, following the trend set by Pharaoh Akhenaten before him, instituted henotheistic religious reforms in the Geptian culture. He posited the god of Abraham as an altogether different sort of being, above and beyond the so-called gods of the Geptian pantheon, but without denying the existence of, or forbidding the instrumental worship of, the latter, which he regarded as angelic powers and servants of the one true god. With the might of Geptia at his disposal, Moses conquered the land of Canaan and granted it to the Hebrews, God's chosen people, as an independent protectorate of Geptia. The cultural unity of henotheism strengthened the Geptian empire, forestalling its fall and spreading Geptian rule both southward around the Red Sea westward along the south shores of the Mediterranean.

As the start of the Common Era approached, the prophet Jesus arose in Canaan and began preaching reforms of the Hebrew religion, striving to return it to its core values and shed the centuries of accumulated cruft. Unlike in reality, he was not worshipped as God incarnate himself, but his teachings nevertheless gained much ground, not so much in Canaan, but in Persia to the north and from there the rest of the Roman empire, which at that time reached from the Iberian penninsula in the west to the Iranian plateau in the east. Under the Roman emperor Constantine, a 'Jesaic' flavor of Hebrew religion became the official religion of the Roman empire, mirroring the 'Mosaic' flavor of the Geptian empire, which at that time spanned the entire northern African coast and the Arabian penninsula, sans Canaan itself.

United then by common religion, and sharing many other cultural ties already, the Roman and Geptian empires soon joined into a single empire known as Mediterranea. Canaan remained a largely independant capital territory, the mediator between the European and African powers to the north and south, and the seat of the empire was the temple at Jerusalem. The year of the empire's founding later became recognized as the start of the Common Era. Roman script gradually became the common form of writing even in Africa, whereas Geptian ideograms spread throughout even Europe as the script of the educated elite. (Centuries later the Roman script would evolve into a truly phonetic alphabet, differing with the spoken dialects of each region, whereas the Geptian script would combine with symbolic logic into a purely written language of abstract thought). The combined might of the Mediterranean powers proceeded to conquer the western world, spreading through all but the northernmost reaches of Europe and the southernmost reaches of Africa.

Meanwhile in the east, the Mauryan "Golden Age" of India had outlasted its real-world counterpart by centuries, due in part to ties with the Aueian cultures of Indonesia. By the start of the Common Era it had spread its reach from Malaysia and Vietnam in the southeast to the foot of the Iranian plateu in the northwest. As it grew in power over the ensuing centuries, it pressed futilely against the might of Mediterranea at the borders of Persia, and against the Han dynasty of China to the northeast. But the Indian empire spilled successfully over the Himilayas, through what would become Tibet, stopping only as the mountains gave way to the lands of the faltering Xiongnu Khanate of the Mongolian Steppe. This threat from the south in turn spurred Mongolian civilization into defensive action, sustaining the Xiongnu empire for centuries longer than they would survive in real-world history.

Circa CE+600, the prophet Muhammed began the Islamic religious reform movement in Makka, Arabia. By circla CE+700, Islamic religion had become extremely popular throughout Arabia, and extremely critical of Mosaic religion and the Geptian empire. The Geptians thus moved to stamp out the Islamic movement, but succeeded only in driving it south out of Arabia, into Ethiopia and other parts of eastern and southern Africa, where it flourished well outside the Geptians' reach. The borders of the Geptian empire in central Africa remained an area of contention for centuries to follow, and as the East African Caliphate solidified, Arabia itself once more became a battleground for the war between Islamism and Mosaism until, with covert support from the Indian empire (seeking allies against the Romans in Persia to the northwest), it established its independance as a secular monarchy.

Circa CE+1200, the Mongolian empire invaded Russia. When Roman forces moved to stave off that invasion, the Indian empire made its long-awaited move into Persia. Unable to hold off two invasions spanning its entire eastern front, and with the Geptians busy holding north Africa against the incursion of Islam, the Romans focused their efforts on defending Persia, it being the buffer safeguarding the holy land of Canaan from the "heathens" of India. Lacking support from the Roman empire, Russia fell to the Mongols, who began moving through Lithuania toward Germany.

Exasperated at the lack of defense by the empire, a pan-German coalition defected from Mediterranea and united to fend off the Mongol invasion. Thus divided and weakened, and distracted by internal turmoil, the Romans were unable to defend Persia from the Indians. The Mongol invasion's energy eventually petered out as their forces ran up against the Germans' defenses, and the Germans turned to securing their new southern border with the Romans. As the Romans moved to cope with that border conflict, India pushed even further west and captured Hellenia, but were unable to move further into the heart of Roman territory.

Both the Indian and Mongolian empires were uninterested in cultural imposition on their newly conquered territories, thus the ways of Russia, Lithuania, Hellenia, and Persia remained largely unchanged. Their versions of Jesaism later referred to themselves as "Orthodox", in contrast to changes that gradually occured within both the German and Roman "Catholic" churches.

In the ensuing border wars between Germania and Romania, Gallia became the main battleground, but eventually established its own independence as a secular republic, which in turn isolated Britannia and Iberia from Germania and Romania, though the former still held sympathies for the latter, respectively. German and Roman power crumbled, taking what remained of Mediterranea down with them.

With the collapse of the Mediterranean empire, West Africa split from the Geptian Empire, who were too busy fending off the East African Caliphate to care. A South African Islamic coalition began to coalesce.

Circa CE+1400, west and south Africa discovered and began exploring South America, but were eventually halted at the Andes by the Incan empire. Iberia and Brittania in turn began settling North America. Circa CE+1700, the eastern American colonies rebelled, with help from Gallia (to spite the Germanic Britons and the Romanic Iberians, against both of whom the Gallians still held grudges). The newly independent colonies joined together to form the United States of America; a secular, liberal-democratic confederation of republics, using Gallian as their official diplimatic language, together with Iberian and Britanian locally.

With its neighbors' power in the New World stymied and its own powerful allies secured, Gallia then moved to conquer first Iberia and Brittania, then Germania and Romania; then, with the power of a reunited Europe, reconquered Lithuania and Hellenia from the Asian empires, though they were halted at the borders of Russia and Persia. A federal form of government was imposed across Europe, modelled after that which they constructed for the United States. Only one holdout remained, a splinter of Gallia itself which rejected the imperialism of mainstream Gallia: the Alpine country of Helvetia.

Meanwhile, as the U.S. continued to grow in power and expand westward, Gallia aided an Amerindian coalition circa CE+1800 in halting the U.S. westward expansion. Canada and Mexico, independent of Brittania and Iberia since their conquest by the Gallians, continued their conquest of Amerindian territory westward, already too powerful to be stopped by the exhausted Gallian forces.

Soon thereafter, a civil war broke out in the United States along Britanian-Iberian lines, chiefly over the subject of Amerind slavery, which the northern, Britanian states wished to abolish to facilitate a union with the Amerind coalition. With the latter's aid, the northern states prevailed. The U.S. constitution was refactored, and the Amerind states joined the union. The western Oregon and California territories were later annexed from Canada and Mexico, completing the United States' "manifest destiny" of expansion to the western shores.

Over time, the Britanian, Iberian, and Gallian languages merged, with a healthy dollop of Amerind terms, into a new American language (which, unlike Britanian, resembled the English of our real world). Likewise, an amalgam of Protestant, Catholic, and indigenous Amerind religion became something like our Mormonism, and the predominant religion of the western United States, making inroads eastward and into Protestant Canada and Catholic Mexico as well.

Circa CE+1900, the "First World War" broke out. German and Roman nationalist movements rebelled against Gallian transnationalism; Paris was burned. Europe fragmented into nations once more. Iberia and Brittania held their own against reconquest by the old empires, but only barely. Lithuania and Hellenia were conquered by the Germans and Romans respectively. The Russians and Persians, still under distant Asian rule, stepped in to kick some ass from the east, as North American forces came to help from the west. Helvetia remained unbelligerant and unconquered meanwhile. The European theater ended with the conquering of Germania and Romania, and the establishment of the United Nations, based out of the city of Geneva in Helvetia. Britania and Iberia re-established their traditional monarchies as symbols of national pride, but in limited, constitutional form. Germania and Romania were forcibly remodelled into republics, but they retained fierce religious and national pride nevertheless. Lithuania and Hellenia became loose confederacies of smaller local states, greatly diminished in power compared to their western brethren.

Meanwhile, in the east, the joint naval empire of Japan and the Phillipines grew tired of the constant annexation attempts by the Mongolian and Indian empires, and in retaliation invaded Korea and Manchuria in the north, and Hainan and Vietnam in the south, and jointly seized Taiwan off the coast of China. Rather than fight over Taiwan, the Chinese took this opportunity to press into their neighbors to the north and south, who had long encroached on their lands. After some time, the Mongols and Indians convinced the United States, their allies in the European theater, to attempt to intervene. The initial U.S. effort in the Pacific was only halfhearted, but the U.S. colony on Hawaii was bombed in retaliation nevertheless. In turn, the U.S entered the Asian theater in force, dropping two of their newly-developed nuclear bombs on Japan and the Phillipines, respectively. The war ended, but not before the Mongolian and Indian empires, both fighting on all borders (in Asia and Europe), collapsed. China cleaned up in the east, claiming Mongolia and Tibetia. Russia and Persia asserted independence in the west. The remaining portions of the former empires fractured.

Following the war, a slower, more ideological "Cold War" developed between the United Nations and the newly-independent states of Russia and Persia. The latter adopted an internationalist flavor of communism in their new constitutions, joining together into an ideological empire of sorts which then spread south and east through Africa and Asia. The capitalist states of the United Nations in Europe and North America resisted the movement as subversive to national sovereignty, with Lithuania and Hellenia at the center of the conflict. Over the decades, the Aueian states joined the U.N., whereas South America joined with the communists. The two superpowers powers stood off against each other for nearly a century in a massive technological and economic race, the threat of global thermonuclear war palpably near, until the communists finally collapsed from economic exaustion circa CE+2000, and the U.N. emerged as the preeminant world power. During the war, each side undertook a major technological projects, both with the aim of surving the looming nuclear holocaust: the U.N. established an international Lunar colony, and the communist bloc build a giant semi-underground arcology in the Sahara desert.

After the collapse of the communist regimes, most of Africa, Asia, and South America degenerated slowly into poverty, save for China and the Incas who had maintained national sovereignty despite alliance with the communist bloc, and still maintained their ancient empires with an iron fist. The wealthy United Nations exploited the poorer former communist countries' crippled economies for their own profit for nearly another century, in what would later be called the "Silent War", meanwile growing progressively more corrupt, totalitarian, and otherwise against their own former ideals, and sewing the seeds of their own demise.

c. 2100: The Last World War: Robots take over Asia, zombies ravage South America. The Internation is founded near Hawaii by North American and Oceanic expatriots, saves Asia and South America from their respective problems, annexes them, and unites most of the world except Europe and Africa.

c. 2200: Internation incorporates Europe and Africa.

until c. 3000: Centuries of general peace on Earth and expansion into the solar system, while Earth grows overpopulated, decadent, and corrupt.