Since its four and a half billion year history, the face of planet Earth had been constantly changing. Textbook examples—like Rodinia, Pangaea, Laurasia and Gondwana—are features of what happened. These are broad examples of history, the knowledge of what really happened. But for a while, there is a genre of its own right, alternate history, the knowledge of what would have happened had the greatest moments in history taken the other direction. Scholars had long speculated on how the big things in human history would have changed, like what would happen if America lost the Revolutionary War, or if the South won the Civil War.
I have read a few alternate history scenarios myself, but they all have one thing in common, for me, at least—Earth is still the Earth we recognize.
In my neverending strive for original directions in already-told stories, my mind buzzes with the one strategy of alternate history that hasn’t been used either before or often—I don’t alter history without altering the Earth first. How would the climate be affected if we arrange the continents to a different place or a different shape, and how would that alter the course of human history? That’s a question that I’ve been asking and answering myself since 2012, when I first started creating an altogether alternate Earth—Great Lakes Earth, the one that I crafted for us humans.
Even so, I’ve been changing and rechanging Great Lakes Earth over and over as I follow the advice of my Earth Science teacher, who’d given me sound advice on which landmarks to alternate and why. For example, I’d once cut the height of the Rocky Mountains by half because I understood that the Rockies played a part in the creation of Tornado Alley, and having experienced a few close calls in my lifetime back home in South Sioux City, Nebraska, I wanted to live in a Nebraska where I wouldn’t worry a thing about that spiral of death. However, by reducing the height of the Rockies, I’ve also demoted the Great Plains into a continental desert, so I continued on looking for ways to put northeastern Nebraska off Tornado Alley without sacrificing the Midwest’s prairire fertility.
I grew up with maps all my life. I’ve read and reread a few atlas books to understand the world beyond South Sioux, and they give me an opportunity to alter the Earth. It’s not just the maps of today that fascinate me. As a big fanatic on lots of things prehistoric, I’ve paid attention to the different faces of the continents over the millions of years of life’s history. For Great Lakes Earth, I’ve looked up the maps of the latter half of the Cenozoic era because they were the most familiar to the 21st century, and this gives me the chance to decide whichever prehistoric landmark to revive, like the great lakes of Bonneville or Lahontan in western North America or the Tethys Sea in the Old World.
I am an avid lover of all things natural, whether they be now or then. The Badlands of South Dakota were a barren labyrinth of jagged sandstone, yet they hid a vast treasure trove of fossils. The Black Hills, a labyrinth of solid granite carpeted by vast forests and prairies, always take my breath away and provide me words to describe them too vast to post here. Nature is one thing that we are currently fighting to protect at a desperate rate, as fossil fuels continue to dictate our way of life. That is the main reason why I created Great Lakes Earth—to provide an Earth that, if it ever did suffer the same environmental crises as today, at least the consequences would be less severe. As I craft this alternate planet, I use my best knowledge of geography, geology and many factors of climate, like the law of albedo, into place. By rearranging the landmasses in the Arctic, not only have I provided additional summer pitstops for the polar bears, I might’ve also put on more ice, which means a cooler climate, which means the effects of carbon pollution would be slowed down before nature’s next major payback. By turning certain basins and depressions into water, I’ve not only brought on the potential for a more diverse environment, I might also have solved the problem for drought-stricken parts of the world.
The questions of “what if” fill my mind in the past few years, and Great Lakes Earth seems to provide the perfect alternative. There are plenty more moments of alternate history for me to think up, and they are tied with how I change the face of the Earth. Whether the logic behind these changes that I’ve crafted is sound, I’m still trying to figure it out. If not, then I have the opportunity to recraft it once more.
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One of our current environmental crises is desertification, as manmade climate change is turning fertile habitats into more arid wastelands. If there is one natural habitat that I can not stand, it’s deserts. The idea of living months in intense heat and with little to no water is more than enough to make me feel ill. Yet, in Earth’s recent history, these deserts were more favorable places full of water. Lakes Bonneville and Lahontan were among dozens of great lakes that made the Wild West a verdant Eden as recently as 20,000 years ago. In Africa, the seasonally-verdant Okovango Delta, the Nxai, Sua and Nwetwe salt pans, Lakes Ngami and Xau and the Mababe Depression all used to be Lake Makgadikgadi, a lake 50,000 square miles in area and 100 feet deep that vanished as recently as 10,000 years ago. North of the equator, North Africa had its share of great lakes, too, but they vanished as recently as eight to seven thousand years ago, turning the Sahara into the largest and hottest desert on the planet. Australia’s Lake Eyre basin was at its peak 60 million years ago before becoming the arid depression we’d recognize today. Would the Sahara, Kalahari, Mojave and Outback still be deserts if those great lakes of the past persist into the 21st century?
A similar problem I have with desertification is salt lake or closed basins, which would have a high enough rate of evaporation to become overly salty. Places like the Dead Sea, Lake Mono or the Great Salt Lake bug me because the water is still liquid, but its salinity content is too high to be considered drinkable, which really irks me because water regulates climate and water draws all forms of life to drink and cool down. For closed basins, I look back to history and recall the Tethys Sea, which connected Asia to the Atlantic. This becomes key to the birth of Great Lakes Earth’s civilization.
Portugal is left untouched, as the Prime Meridian is also known as the Greenwich Meridian. This, to me, strikes me as stopping before reaching all the way through — in this case, Lisbon, Europe’s westernmost city.
The connection between North America and Asia via the Bering Land Bridge has been an on-again, off-again process. Troödontids, ceratopsians, hadrosaurs and tyrannosaurs originated in Asia before colonizing North America. 55 million years ago, at the start of the Eocene, mammals from Asia migrated to North America. That same story would be repeated 20 million years ago, during the Miocene. And again, hundreds of thousands of years ago during the Pleistocene. The bridge is currently underwater, and this creates a frustrating degree of ecological distinction — in the Old World, pigs, vultures, Old World sparrows, hyenas and antelopes; in the New World, pumas, peccaries, condors, New World sparrows and pronghorns.
But by widening the Atlantic, Beringia would be open on permanent business, creating more homogenized ecosystems.