What if Carthage won the Punic Wars?

[Forsher]

It's a misunderstanding of what the rune system was... it's about lettering. The argument, however, is unaffected as it is now rendered as, "with a Carthaginian victory English may have never left runes."

I don't think it's worth speculating about writing systems for a language that likely wouldn't even have developed the same way without a Roman Empire.

Not the answer you were looking for, I know, but there you go.

Well, it's at the heart of the argument. I mean, to my knowledge, it was as a result of the Romans that the switch happened in the first place and the Carthaginians are probably less interested in the general area so...

[Tsaraine]

It's highly likely that Carthage was not sown with salt at any time - salt was expensive. We have the saying "worth his/her salt" because Roman legionnaires were paid in salt! It'd be like the Americans covering Baghdad in burnt $1 notes.

As for the OP itself ... Rome was an engine driven by slaves and war. The expansion of slave-run agricultural plantations demanded a continual influx of slaves, and made landless a lot of Roman peasants; these peasants then joined the army, and (as veterans of the Legions) were paid out with plots of land on the newly-conquered frontier (this is where we get the saying "buy the farm"). The people who had previously inhabited that frontier were enslaved and set to work on the plantations ... which then gobbled up the new farms on the frontier, and the cycle repeats itself. When the Imperial border got too far from Rome to effectively administer the colonies or to defend the borders, the empire collapsed (Constantine attempted to avert this by setting up Constantinople as a second administrative hub, and thus only one half of the Empire fell apart during the migration period).

I don't know if a Carthaginian victory would have been any better; but I cannot bring myself to mourn Rome's passing. Roma delenda est!

[L Ron Cupboard]

It'd be like the Americans covering Baghdad in burnt $1 notes.

It would have been cheaper than all those 'smart' bombs.

[The Archregimancy]

I don't think it's worth speculating about writing systems for a language that likely wouldn't even have developed the same way without a Roman Empire.

Not the answer you were looking for, I know, but there you go.

Well, it's at the heart of the argument. I mean, to my knowledge, it was as a result of the Romans that the switch happened in the first place and the Carthaginians are probably less interested in the general area so...

The problem lies in the assumption that there would have been an 'English' language in 'England' to begin with if Classical history had followed the drastically different course outlined in the RP.

[L Ron Cupboard]

The problem lies in the assumption that there would have been an 'English' language in 'England' to begin with if Classical history had followed the drastically different course outlined in the RP.

Is there an academic view on how different the world would be given any small change? I have aboslutely no idea whether to expect things to be more or less the same, or to be massively and unrecognisably different?

[The Archregimancy]

The problem lies in the assumption that there would have been an 'English' language in 'England' to begin with if Classical history had followed the drastically different course outlined in the RP.

Is there an academic view on how different the world would be given any small change? I have aboslutely no idea whether to expect things to be more or less the same, or to be massively and unrecognisably different?

Not a single standardised view.

Historians tend to be fairly sniffy about alternative history anyway; it's fun, but the larger the change and the further back in time the change is supposed to have occurred, the harder it is to make a rational judgement.

An example: We can likely have an informed discussion over what would have happened if Chris Christie hadn't been so overt in his support for Obama in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, and the immediate implications, even if we disagree over the consequences. Discussing what would have happened to Western Europe if, say, Hannibal had pressed his advantage after Cannae, requires us to make an impossible series of assumptions past the immediate consequences. We can make an informed judgement of sorts as to what might have happened in the immediate aftermath of a Barcid sack of Rome (Carthage would have taken back Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica; Carthage would have consolidated control of Spain; Carthage likely would have 'freed' the city states allied to Rome in southern Italy, and/or established its own hegemony over some of those allies; Carthage would have ended Roman control of Cisalpine Gaul), but that's as far as I'd be willing to go. Anything beyond that lies outside the realm of history and archaeology, and lies inside the realm of fantasy.

[L Ron Cupboard]

Not a single standardised view.

Historians tend to be fairly sniffy about alternative history anyway; it's fun, but the larger the change and the further back in time the change is supposed to have occurred, the harder it is to make a rational judgement.

An example: We can likely have an informed discussion over what would have happened if Chris Christie hadn't been so overt in his support for Obama in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, and the immediate implications, even if we disagree over the consequences. Discussing what would have happened to Western Europe if, say, Hannibal had pressed his advantage after Cannae, requires us to make an impossible series of assumptions past the immediate consequences. We can make an informed judgement of sorts as to what might have happened in the immediate aftermath of a Barcid sack of Rome (Carthage would have taken back Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica; Carthage would have consolidated control of Spain; Carthage likely would have 'freed' the city states allied to Rome in southern Italy, and/or established its own hegemony over some of those allies; Carthage would have ended Roman control of Cisalpine Gaul), but that's as far as I'd be willing to go. Anything beyond that lies outside the realm of history and archaeology, and lies inside the realm of fantasy.

Interesting, thank you.

[Nazis in Space]

What if the last universal common ancestor had taken a turn to the left rather than the right?

[Franklin Delano Bluth]

Is there an academic view on how different the world would be given any small change? I have aboslutely no idea whether to expect things to be more or less the same, or to be massively and unrecognisably different?

Not a single standardised view.

Historians tend to be fairly sniffy about alternative history anyway; it's fun, but the larger the change and the further back in time the change is supposed to have occurred, the harder it is to make a rational judgement.

I'm not sure this fairly reflects the intentions of those historians who do engage in counterfactual history as a serious pursuit. They would argue that their intent is not to say what would have happened, but rather to show how different the subsequent world might have been so as to better assess the importance of the event under consideration in the world as it happened.

[Ostroeuropa]

Carthaginians are semetic.
Basically arabs without arabic script or culture.

This is your most bizarre statement in this thread yet.

Carthaginian Punic as a language was dialect of Phoenecian, itself a member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. However, its closest living relatives are Hebrew and Aramaic, not Arabic - though all four languages are reasonably closely related. On linguistic relationships, you'd be better off calling them 'basically Jews without Hebrew script or the Jewish religion'; still misguided, but considerably more accurate on the basis of both linguistic and geographical proximity. It would be most accurate to describe them as the descendents of Phoenicians who established trading colonies along the North African coast.

To automatically call speakers of a Semitic language 'basically Arabs without Arabic script or culture' is anachronistic and historically and archaeologically ill-informed. Egyptians, Assyrians, the Jews of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Babylonians, and Akkadians all spoke Semitic languages - and had far more reason to be considered monoethnic 'Semites' than the Carthaginians, but I don't think anyone would rationally call any of them 'basically Arabs without Arabic script or culture'. There were no Arabs in North Africa for more than 800 years after the Second Punic War, so it's a highly misleading and anachronistic comparison, even to make a humorous rhetorical point about dark-skinned people and science. It's also an incorrect rhetorical point given the relationship to Hebrews, who - in common modern stereotypes - aren't usually considered averse to the glories of Western science.

The ethnicity of Carthaginians - as opposed to their language, and the two are not identical - is in any case a hotly disputed topic that's often oddly appropriated by white supremacists (I stress I'm not accusing anyone in this thread of the latter, merely noting a point of fact). However, it's a topic I've written on previously in NSG, so I'll save time and just quote myself (using the box function rather than the quote function to preserve some earlier quote pyramids).

Answering this question is particularly tricky given the almost total absence of primary documentation written by the Carthaginians themselves. Almost all of the relevant surviving historical documentation was written by Carthage's enemies.

Traditionally, Carthage was founded around 650 BC by Phoenician settlers from the Middle East. However, very few of the Phoenician colonies grew into large cities; Carthage was the exception here rather than the rule. We'll never know for certain why Carthage grew into a large city. However, it's worth noting that Carthage's period of territorial expansion seems to coincide with attacks on the original Punic cities on the Levantine coast by the Babylonian and Persian Empires. It seems possible that Carthage's growth came about through a combination of its strategic position along Mediterranean trade routes (though this position was not unique) and the arrival of Phoenician refugees from the original homeland (with which Carthage had maintained links).

From what we can parse from the historical record, Carthaginian citizenship followed a model closer to Greek exclusivity rather than Roman inclusiveness. They seem to have formed a self-perpetuating tax-exempt elite, with the local North African population subject to a significant tax tribute and forced conscription into the Carthaginian Army. It's notable on the latter point that, even at Zama, when Carthage's back was pressed to the proverbial wall, only a minority of Hannibal's army consisted of Punic Carthaginians; even at that desperate moment, a significant part of the army was comprised of Libyan levies, which much of the rest drawn from mercenaries.

We do know that Carthage's language, Punic, was a Semitic language. Punic is known to have survived as late as the 5th century AD; St. Augustine of Hippo, who was in a better position than most to know - wrote about it in the earliest years of that century. The Vandal and Islamic conquests seem to have finished it off, however. We also know that Punic's closest relative - Phoenician - was itself a close relative of Hebrew. Some Punic loan words do survive in modern Berber.

From the above, it seems reasonable to assume that the small ruling hierarchy in Carthage remained a fairly exclusive self-perpetuating elite with strong ethno-linguistic ties to what's now Lebanon (Tyre and Sidon both now being located in the latter country), but that the population of the city of the whole, and the armies of the Carthaginian Empire, were far more cosmopolitan and ethnically complex, nonetheless drawing strongly on the local North African population.

In terms of the native North African population, I discussed the origin of the Berbers in an earlier thread. Extensive modern DNA analysis has been undertaken on modern Berbers.

Yes, but that in turn is a misleading point when used to counter Rambhutan's point about everyone having African ancestry to note that our ancestors almost certainly had lovely dark skins.

Modern DNA analysis strongly suggests that the Berbers arrived in North Africa fairly recently as far as the grand scheme of things is concerned. While they've undoubtedly picked up some sub-Saharan DNA along the way, one of their closest mitochondrial links is with, believe it or not, the Saami of northern Scandinavia.

While up to a third of their DNA is from groups that probably reached North Africa c.50,000 years ago (which is still a good 10,000 years after Australian Aborigines reached Australia), the majority of their mitochondrial DNA - some 50-90% - is cognate with European DNA, suggesting (particularly with the Saami connection) a relatively recent late glacial expansion from a common Western European core.

So yes, even if we take the Herodotus references as undisputed - which it isn't - the majority of Berber ancestors were a relatively recent arrival in North Africa when we take the totality of homo sapiens migratory patterns out of Africa into account.

Honestly, don't they teach anyone palaeoanthropology anymore

Anyway, as to that whole Berber / Saami thing:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1199377/?tool=pmcentrez

Abstract:



It looks like slightly faulty memory may have led me to overemphasise the closeness of the Berber-Saami genetic link, but my basic point remains sound.

So there you go - the majority of the population and army of the Carthaginian Republic (though not the oligarchical elite) were post-glacial settlers of North Africa with a shared DNA relationship to Scandinavians.

I concede your first point. I should have said closer related to jews and arabs rather than basically arabs.
As to your second I was unaware of this, I was going by (Admittedly this was a stupid idea) the roman historians depictions of the carthaginians and describing stereotypically semetic characteristics in a negative way. (Which I only took to mean they were semites, not that the traits were negative.)
And to be honest, race wise i'm fairly certain they wouldn't be classed as white regardless of their shared DNA with scandinavians.
Race is a fairly arbitrary construct, and given their location, they would probably end up darker skinned along the lines of Iberians even if they were ethnically caucasian. So they'd be tanned, and semetic in culture (Or possibly north african.) Hardly the kind of people we typically think of as white.
There are a few articles of anti-semitism which trace the root of it back to greece and rome hating the traits of the various neighbouring semetic tribes, among which is carthage.

[Anitgrum]

Carthage is irrelevant in history

The only nation that ever stood a chance against Rome before the Goths, Franks, Vandals & Huns began their conquest is irrelevant in history?

I think not, sir.

That's like saying North Korea is irrelevant in history.

The Parthians proved otherwise they were able to go toe to toe with the late republic and the empire. Unlike the Carthaginians the Roman never were able conquered them.

[SaintB]

Utopia.

[Forsher]

Well, it's at the heart of the argument. I mean, to my knowledge, it was as a result of the Romans that the switch happened in the first place and the Carthaginians are probably less interested in the general area so...

The problem lies in the assumption that there would have been an 'English' language in 'England' to begin with if Classical history had followed the drastically different course outlined in the RP.

Which is why I chose general area (as in both sides of the Channel and up to Denmark) as opposed to England.