What would the world be like if..

Adiboo

What would the world be like if Europeans had never colonized the Americas, if countries didn't conquer others. If continents remained isolated from each other. What do you think the world would have turned out like?

tony1kenobi

Planet of the Apes.

ejmaztec

Adiboo wrote: »

What would the world be like if Europeans had never colonized the Americas, if countries didn't conquer others. If continents remained isolated from each other. What do you think the world would have turned out like?

We could all fight amongst ourselves.

The_B_Man

the aztecs woulds till exist, with their advanced building techniques, and they would have built a spaceship by now so we would all be living on Mars, eating space mars bars in the shape of pyramids.

murfie

we would be far less advanced in every aspect of human knowledge and creativity. Conflict if you only take WW2 as an example advanced science and engineering at such an accelerated pace that there is no way that could have been completed without war.

marzic

we'd be pretty sick of pork...:(

Thirdfox

More interestingly - what would have happened if the continents never split up? Would we still be deeply connected to our African heritage as opposed to the wide diversity we find today?

brianthebard

The_B_Man wrote: »

the aztecs woulds till exist, with their advanced building techniques, and they would have built a spaceship by now so we would all be living on Mars, eating space mars bars in the shape of pyramids.

No they wouldn't they'd have stripped the land of any resource or value and died out...Imo.

ejmaztec

marzic wrote: »

we'd be pretty sick of pork...:(

And no feckin shpuds!

starn

and no smokes:(

Zynks

This island would have no Spanish, British nor Scandinavian DNA - I wonder what a "pure" Irish person would look like

Melange

Adiboo wrote: »

What would the world be like if Europeans had never colonized the Americas, if countries didn't conquer others. If continents remained isolated from each other. What do you think the world would have turned out like?

Conquest and colonisation have been such integral parts of human history - indeed, some would argue that they are the driving force behind large-scale human interaction - that I couldn't even begin to imagine what the world would look like without them.

Some kind of anarchist order would probably have resulted, as the desire for the expansion of one's own personal power over others was the primary motivation behind the establishment of the first unified states/kingdoms/despotisms: the desire of the ruler to rule over others. Without the human propensity towards conquest and self aggrandisement, it's unlikely that we would have seen the creation of countries in the first place.

marco_polo

Thirdfox wrote: »

More interestingly - what would have happened if the continents never split up? Would we still be deeply connected to our African heritage as opposed to the wide diversity we find today?

I don't think it was much of a factor. Humans are in fact not a very genetically diverse species on with only about 0.01 -0.02% genetic varience, In fact Africans arethe most genetically diverse of all of us, as the smaller subset of humans who migrated out of Africa took a smaller gene pool with them.

And the continents were well split up by the time we came along, perhaps if they hadn't we wouldn't even be here

Zaph

Zynks wrote: »

This island would have no Spanish, British nor Scandinavian DNA - I wonder what a "pure" Irish person would look like

This?

Diggabot

tony1kenobi wrote: »

Planet of the Apes.

Oh my God. I'm back. I'm home. All the time, it was... We finally really did it. You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell :):)

ejmaztec

After several thousand years of in-breeding we'd all have the brain capacity of a pea, much like the politicians of today.

EamonnKeane

The_B_Man wrote: »

the aztecs woulds till exist, with their advanced building techniques, and they would have built a spaceship by now so we would all be living on Mars, eating space mars bars in the shape of pyramids.

They didn't have iron or horses, so they would hardly have advanced at all.

Thirdfox wrote: »

More interestingly - what would have happened if the continents never split up? Would we still be deeply connected to our African heritage as opposed to the wide diversity we find today?

What makes you think "African" heritage is closest to the original human culture?

And Europeans didn't really colonise South America, most of the Amerindians survived. And a lot of Africans came over too, whether they wanted to or not.

Thirdfox

EamonnKeane wrote: »

What makes you think "African" heritage is closest to the original human culture?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_single-origin_hypothesis

That's why.

Zynks

Zaph wrote: »

This?

Yeah, happy drunk leprechauns... but is the red hair an original Irish feature? I heard it had Nordic origins (?)

phenomenon

White people would definitely be in the minority. We are only native to this little peninsula off the Eurasian landmass we call "Europe". But there are white majorities in North America, parts of South America (eg Argentina), Australia, New Zealand and parts of Africa.

....all at measly the expense of annihilating the native populations.

This is changing however. Within 20 years Latinos will overtake whites as the majority race in the USA.

I, for one, welcome our new spanish speaking overlords.

BroomBurner

White people wouldn't necessarily be in the minority. If noone colonised anywhere, then in each part of the world, people would have the correct skin colour for their environment, so minority and majority would only come in to it in terms of which society was best placed to have more children and keep them alive.

Thirdfox

phenomenon wrote: »

White people would definitely be in the minority. We are only native to this little peninsula off the Eurasian landmass we call "Europe". But there are white majorities in North America, parts of South America (eg Argentina), Australia, New Zealand and parts of Africa.

....all at measly the expense of annihilating the native populations.

This is changing however. Within 20 years Latinos will overtake whites as the majority race in the USA.

I, for one, welcome our new spanish speaking overlords.

I though Caucasians were already a "minority" technically? - Asians (just India and China) make up almost 1/2 of the world's population...

Aodan83

Zynks wrote: »

This island would have no Spanish, British nor Scandinavian DNA - I wonder what a "pure" Irish person would look like

Apparently, before the famine, the Irish were one of the tallest nationlities in europe. Not sure how accurate that is though, I heard it off RTE!!

Fud Duddy

marzic wrote: »

we'd be pretty sick of pork...:(

I'm still laughing at this,
though I shouldn't be.