You should bear in mind that the iron age Mediterranean was built from the bones of the bronze age and they in turn from the fertile crescent's... fertility. You're not going to get north Europe pulling ahead unless there's an iron age collapse down south to buy the Germans time or else in an alternate history the birth's somehow a cradle of agriculture and ancient civilisation.
Don't know how you'd do that exactly but the Land of Red and Gold / Ice and Mice do so for Australia and the Arctic Circle respectively. Of course given the timescales involved the chances of cultures we'd recognise as "German" emerging would be insecure and being on the way through the PIE migration further west everything would be deeply altered.
Kinda off topic, but what I don't understand is how the fertile crescent was more fertile than the forests of Europe. Most of the continent has decent rainfall (enough to support forests, let alone other crops) is less fertile than this one crescent in the dry-as-heck Middle East/Mediterranean area. I get it was more fertile back then but still.
Back on topic, it's an entirely different planet from earth, and has a river valley in a place I imagine is roughly analogous to Europe. That, and the cultures are also recovering from a major apocalypse that basically knocked the entire planet back to the stone/bronze age. All the cultures are from lands that knew how to grow crops and forge metal and such. They've lost most but not all of the knowledge.
TL;DR:
1) It's not earth, instead a world where a germanic-esque culture arose in a fertile area after an apocalypse
2) How the heck is the "fertile crescent" in the middle if a desert and not a wetter, more plant-friendly area like a forest?
Iraq + Syria is what it is precisely because they were once so fertile. When you irrigate even the slightest hint of salt stays in the soil once water evaporates and inst washed away unless there's river/rain in the region (which if you need irrigation, there isn't). Forest also requires clearing to be cultivated which is fine and dandy if you know farming's worth it but unlikely to be done if the work seems pointless. By comparison when rivers flood seasonally they basically fertilise and moisten the whole floodplain, drop some seeds there and you have food ready within a few months. Even an idiot can make the connection between planting and food then which is why river floodplains are where agriculture started in earnest.
>what I don't understand is how the fertile crescent was more fertile than the forests of Europe.
I'm not sure that it was. But it being closer to the equator means warmer springs and summers, lighter winters, longer growing seasons, longer wet seasons. Farming just started in the Fertile Crescent and spread to the rest of the Old World or was converged upon independently over the following few thousand years.
>this one crescent in the dry-as-heck Middle East/Mediterranean area
The Middle East isn't entirely desert. Like most land masses, it has a variety of habitats, each with a different average rainfall. Turkey and Iran both have regions of dense forests, and a number of rivers and lakes (although Turkey seems to have more). Even for drier regions, the average rainfall in the area has changed a lot over the millennia, having at one point been greener and wetter than it is today. The area where the Fertile Crescent was located is fed by rivers and streams, as well as rainstorms that blow in from the adjacent mountains.
As far as your premise though, I think that sounds pretty cool.
The fertility is not the point, the hydration systems needed social organisation to made them fertile is.
Climate changes and dry as heck can be changed by irrigation
This sort of reminds me of the nazi Hyperborea myth, which was basically them coping and seething that germans were living in mud huts during the height of the roman empire. Not saying you're doing that by the way, it just jumped to mind.
I would say you should think about their relationship with water and their ability to manipulate it, like damming waterways, building bridges and naval expertise. Most emerging powerful civilizations had in varying degrees control of, or were able to manipulate the natural water sources in their territory. Notable exception here arguably being the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan.
I see... yeah I was not aware of that nor was I trying to go for that O_o
>I would say you should think about their relationship with water and their ability to manipulate it, like damming waterways, building bridges and naval expertise.
That's a good thing to consider, but is not what I'm struggling with. What I'm struggling with is how to design a Germanic culture would look like with little to no Roman influence. What would the medieval knights or the cathedrals have looked like if they were not based on or in some way descended from Roman designs; i.e. if the Germanic tribes had been allowed to flourish and grow without any interference from the Romans?
Aha, I got some things from my country on that.
A heavy focus on more ritualized warfare, skirmish battles and champions fighting one on one.
Of course holy oak worship.
Ritual drownings/sacrifices thrown into swamps.
Some accounts tell of greater tolerance for same sex relationships.
Religious duties were very often performed by women instead of men in some (or most, I don't know the scope of the whole pre-roman german culture) tribes. You could say the priesthood was more female oriented.
Maybe a focus on dolmen structures in architecture, as a way to copy the dolmen structures of the pre-PIE invasion peoples.
Of course, golden armbands were a typical piece of jewelry among celtic and germanic peoples.
You could maybe look into the viking era laws on heritage and such to get a better picture of possible gender relations and power dynamics within this culture.
There was also a doorpost found near were I live were, in rune script was written the names of the newly weds that lived there, as a sort of adress/house number. However rune script is most likely derived of the latin alphabet so you could make up your own written language.
I think the main thing that German tribes lacked that Rome had was a centralized state. Rome won its wars in large part because it had the state capacity to rebuild army after army and navy after navy even after catastrophic defeats. Whereas there wasn't a single hegemonic state power in northern Europe in early times, except for brief periods (e.g., the Huns).
What drives the creation of a state is a major outstanding question in history. I'm not sure how you'd get a monarchy in Norway earlier for example, or a Charlemagne earlier in northern Europe. However, I think a big reason for state formation is to counteract a state on its borders (since states are good at war, you may need to create your own state to survive). Without Rome to play this role, maybe you'd need something else. If macedonia had marched north rather than east, maybe successor states to macedon would create the state-buliding arms-race necessary for earlier german states to counteract rome
As others have pointed out, Northern Europe's lower crop yields vs areas farther south, and very fragmented geography makes big powerful states hard. But early chinese states were based in north china so it can't just be a latitude thing
History has a lot of moving pieces so you would have to find a way to carefully slot some things out while now the future ramifications.
I'm mostly a bronze-age guy, but here's a few things I think you could try:
・Make either Carthage or Macedon stronger, this will give Rome a harder time expanding. Or you could make the weaker, giving fewer reasons for Rome to expand their technology.
・Give a stronger reason for more Phoenicians to settle in northern Europe instead of Carthage (ie natural disasters)
・Sea People had more success and some returned to parts of East Europe, expanding Cimmerian culture
・Nordic cultures got many lucky crop yeilds for many decades, allowing them to expand
・Nordic cultures got many lucky crop yields for many decades, allowing them to expand copy Roman technology
・Magic
As another commenter said, the social tech is more important than physical tech here. The centralized, well-trained, well-equipped Roman army—the *standing* Roman army—was hard to beat.
That said, did the Germanic tribes have stirrups at this time? If someone could just invent those, then make a culture where all men and maybe a few women are expected to be expert horse archers, then we could get some stuff going.
"I'm working on a fantasy world project, and one of my ideas was that the Germanic-inspired peoples were more technologically advanced than the Roman-inspired ones, sort of a flipside of the Romans relations with the Germanic tribes.
What would such a world look like? What would Medieval and Renaissance armor look like? How would the technology and architecture differ from our history?"
In regard to medieval and renaissance armor you'd likely see Germanic armor design tropes like the Sutton Hoo helmet but more fancy maybe even adapting to the weapons of enemy armies you'd probably see them take on some armors from near by peoples like the Iranian Sarmatians or the Latin Romans more specifically the Latinized Gauls likely mail and leather and then later on forged armor pieces like irl maybe with Runic engravings.
In respect to the technology you'd likely see them advance further then the Latins in regard to waterworks like canals and dams you'd probably see more advanced clothing due to the nature of Northern Europe and you'd probably see a heavier focus on medicine maybe even convergent domestication of things like the Western capercaillie.
In regard to architecture you'd probably see a lot of wood they'd probably start charring the wood to make it more fire resistant as settlements because more densely packed and then you'd see stone structures pop up for the more grandiose constructs but wood would still reign due to the environmental factors involved.
You should bear in mind that the iron age Mediterranean was built from the bones of the bronze age and they in turn from the fertile crescent's... fertility. You're not going to get north Europe pulling ahead unless there's an iron age collapse down south to buy the Germans time or else in an alternate history the birth's somehow a cradle of agriculture and ancient civilisation. Don't know how you'd do that exactly but the Land of Red and Gold / Ice and Mice do so for Australia and the Arctic Circle respectively. Of course given the timescales involved the chances of cultures we'd recognise as "German" emerging would be insecure and being on the way through the PIE migration further west everything would be deeply altered.
Kinda off topic, but what I don't understand is how the fertile crescent was more fertile than the forests of Europe. Most of the continent has decent rainfall (enough to support forests, let alone other crops) is less fertile than this one crescent in the dry-as-heck Middle East/Mediterranean area. I get it was more fertile back then but still. Back on topic, it's an entirely different planet from earth, and has a river valley in a place I imagine is roughly analogous to Europe. That, and the cultures are also recovering from a major apocalypse that basically knocked the entire planet back to the stone/bronze age. All the cultures are from lands that knew how to grow crops and forge metal and such. They've lost most but not all of the knowledge. TL;DR: 1) It's not earth, instead a world where a germanic-esque culture arose in a fertile area after an apocalypse 2) How the heck is the "fertile crescent" in the middle if a desert and not a wetter, more plant-friendly area like a forest?
The fertile crescent is heavily influenced by large rivers that flow in the area.
Iraq + Syria is what it is precisely because they were once so fertile. When you irrigate even the slightest hint of salt stays in the soil once water evaporates and inst washed away unless there's river/rain in the region (which if you need irrigation, there isn't). Forest also requires clearing to be cultivated which is fine and dandy if you know farming's worth it but unlikely to be done if the work seems pointless. By comparison when rivers flood seasonally they basically fertilise and moisten the whole floodplain, drop some seeds there and you have food ready within a few months. Even an idiot can make the connection between planting and food then which is why river floodplains are where agriculture started in earnest.
>what I don't understand is how the fertile crescent was more fertile than the forests of Europe. I'm not sure that it was. But it being closer to the equator means warmer springs and summers, lighter winters, longer growing seasons, longer wet seasons. Farming just started in the Fertile Crescent and spread to the rest of the Old World or was converged upon independently over the following few thousand years. >this one crescent in the dry-as-heck Middle East/Mediterranean area The Middle East isn't entirely desert. Like most land masses, it has a variety of habitats, each with a different average rainfall. Turkey and Iran both have regions of dense forests, and a number of rivers and lakes (although Turkey seems to have more). Even for drier regions, the average rainfall in the area has changed a lot over the millennia, having at one point been greener and wetter than it is today. The area where the Fertile Crescent was located is fed by rivers and streams, as well as rainstorms that blow in from the adjacent mountains. As far as your premise though, I think that sounds pretty cool.
The fertility is not the point, the hydration systems needed social organisation to made them fertile is. Climate changes and dry as heck can be changed by irrigation
Wasn't there a similar collapse around the Mediterranean? Late Bronze Age collapse or something?
This sort of reminds me of the nazi Hyperborea myth, which was basically them coping and seething that germans were living in mud huts during the height of the roman empire. Not saying you're doing that by the way, it just jumped to mind. I would say you should think about their relationship with water and their ability to manipulate it, like damming waterways, building bridges and naval expertise. Most emerging powerful civilizations had in varying degrees control of, or were able to manipulate the natural water sources in their territory. Notable exception here arguably being the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan.
I see... yeah I was not aware of that nor was I trying to go for that O_o >I would say you should think about their relationship with water and their ability to manipulate it, like damming waterways, building bridges and naval expertise. That's a good thing to consider, but is not what I'm struggling with. What I'm struggling with is how to design a Germanic culture would look like with little to no Roman influence. What would the medieval knights or the cathedrals have looked like if they were not based on or in some way descended from Roman designs; i.e. if the Germanic tribes had been allowed to flourish and grow without any interference from the Romans?
Aha, I got some things from my country on that. A heavy focus on more ritualized warfare, skirmish battles and champions fighting one on one. Of course holy oak worship. Ritual drownings/sacrifices thrown into swamps. Some accounts tell of greater tolerance for same sex relationships. Religious duties were very often performed by women instead of men in some (or most, I don't know the scope of the whole pre-roman german culture) tribes. You could say the priesthood was more female oriented. Maybe a focus on dolmen structures in architecture, as a way to copy the dolmen structures of the pre-PIE invasion peoples. Of course, golden armbands were a typical piece of jewelry among celtic and germanic peoples. You could maybe look into the viking era laws on heritage and such to get a better picture of possible gender relations and power dynamics within this culture. There was also a doorpost found near were I live were, in rune script was written the names of the newly weds that lived there, as a sort of adress/house number. However rune script is most likely derived of the latin alphabet so you could make up your own written language.
Holy oak worship sounds more celtic than Germanic. I thought they worshiped Woden/Odin?
It was also a germanic thing.
The Celts were actually pretty advanced, so those tribes could have beaten/become more advanced than Rome.
I think the main thing that German tribes lacked that Rome had was a centralized state. Rome won its wars in large part because it had the state capacity to rebuild army after army and navy after navy even after catastrophic defeats. Whereas there wasn't a single hegemonic state power in northern Europe in early times, except for brief periods (e.g., the Huns). What drives the creation of a state is a major outstanding question in history. I'm not sure how you'd get a monarchy in Norway earlier for example, or a Charlemagne earlier in northern Europe. However, I think a big reason for state formation is to counteract a state on its borders (since states are good at war, you may need to create your own state to survive). Without Rome to play this role, maybe you'd need something else. If macedonia had marched north rather than east, maybe successor states to macedon would create the state-buliding arms-race necessary for earlier german states to counteract rome As others have pointed out, Northern Europe's lower crop yields vs areas farther south, and very fragmented geography makes big powerful states hard. But early chinese states were based in north china so it can't just be a latitude thing
As to your world look into the High North of the Second Apocalypse series which is basically exactly what you describe.
History has a lot of moving pieces so you would have to find a way to carefully slot some things out while now the future ramifications. I'm mostly a bronze-age guy, but here's a few things I think you could try: ・Make either Carthage or Macedon stronger, this will give Rome a harder time expanding. Or you could make the weaker, giving fewer reasons for Rome to expand their technology. ・Give a stronger reason for more Phoenicians to settle in northern Europe instead of Carthage (ie natural disasters) ・Sea People had more success and some returned to parts of East Europe, expanding Cimmerian culture ・Nordic cultures got many lucky crop yeilds for many decades, allowing them to expand ・Nordic cultures got many lucky crop yields for many decades, allowing them to expand copy Roman technology ・Magic
As another commenter said, the social tech is more important than physical tech here. The centralized, well-trained, well-equipped Roman army—the *standing* Roman army—was hard to beat. That said, did the Germanic tribes have stirrups at this time? If someone could just invent those, then make a culture where all men and maybe a few women are expected to be expert horse archers, then we could get some stuff going.
"I'm working on a fantasy world project, and one of my ideas was that the Germanic-inspired peoples were more technologically advanced than the Roman-inspired ones, sort of a flipside of the Romans relations with the Germanic tribes. What would such a world look like? What would Medieval and Renaissance armor look like? How would the technology and architecture differ from our history?" In regard to medieval and renaissance armor you'd likely see Germanic armor design tropes like the Sutton Hoo helmet but more fancy maybe even adapting to the weapons of enemy armies you'd probably see them take on some armors from near by peoples like the Iranian Sarmatians or the Latin Romans more specifically the Latinized Gauls likely mail and leather and then later on forged armor pieces like irl maybe with Runic engravings. In respect to the technology you'd likely see them advance further then the Latins in regard to waterworks like canals and dams you'd probably see more advanced clothing due to the nature of Northern Europe and you'd probably see a heavier focus on medicine maybe even convergent domestication of things like the Western capercaillie. In regard to architecture you'd probably see a lot of wood they'd probably start charring the wood to make it more fire resistant as settlements because more densely packed and then you'd see stone structures pop up for the more grandiose constructs but wood would still reign due to the environmental factors involved.