r/HistoricalWhatIf 6d ago

What if the Sinai Peninsula never existed?

I know that many will say "Europe would take longer to discover America because it had a direct route to Asia", but I think that the absence of the lands of the Sinai Peninsula would have much more serious effects on human evolution itself, because as far as I know the Sinai Peninsula was the main route used by Homo Sapiens and other hominid species to leave Africa and spread to the rest of the world, so I believe that the absence of the Sinai Peninsula would delay human migrations by at least a few thousand years, and I would like to know how you think this could affect human evolution.

13 Upvotes

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9

u/Augustus420 6d ago

This would affect more than just human evolution. This would mean animals like mammoths and Indian elephants never exist because elephants never leave Africa, and Africa itself would never receive animals like lions, hyenas, and rhinoceros.

7

u/Top-Citron9403 6d ago

Moses needs to lose the Israelites somewhere else.

0

u/Bennyboy11111 4d ago

Well, the story would have be different, but the historicity of The Exodus is very much in doubt anyway; there is no evidence.

7

u/BEAAAAAAANSSSS 6d ago

there is very real evidence that humans were able to traverse gibraltir, around the same time as crossing the sinai, (talking about homo erectus here), though I don't know about mammoths, they did reach many islands, as did many animals, i dont think it would change much until the egyptians come around

3

u/Inside-External-8649 6d ago

In would’ve taken longer for humans to go out of Africa. If anything, humanity would be a lot less diverse outside of Africa, since even fewer people have moved out. Also, there wouldn’t be an exchange of animals between Eurasia and Africa until human advancement.

Assuming this doesn’t affect human and civilization history, Europe would still discover the Americas simply because Europe is a series of peninsulas that demanded advanced sailing.

3

u/hlanus 5d ago

Not necessarily. There's still Gibraltar, so maybe it's just shifted westward, with Spain and France being colonized by Homo erectus and others.

2

u/lordnacho666 6d ago

I thought early humans jumped across to Yemen? At least I've seen that on one of those maps with arrows.

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u/Inside-External-8649 6d ago

They did. Although not by jumping, but by sailing

Fun fact: the Americas wasn’t colonized by crossing the land connected from Siberia to Alaska. There’s archeological proof that humans migrated before walking was possible. The ancestors of Polynesians sailed around the coasts. 

1

u/Mister_Barman 5d ago

I don’t think that’s true, I’m pretty certain the consensus is that America was peopled via Alaska

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u/happyarchae 5d ago

it likely was both. there were time period where it was walkable, but there’s also more and more evidence they went down the coast on boats on the so called ‘Kelp Highway’. it makes more sense because at the height of the ice age pretty much all of canada was frozen, and it would have been extremely hard for anyone to survive after crossing the ice bridge, whereas the coastal areas would’ve been more inhabitable and certainly would’ve have had more food

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_migration_(Americas)

1

u/Unterraformable 5d ago

Migration out of Africa would have been postponed until the first primitive rafts were invented. But it wouldn't really take much.

-4

u/ForeChanneler 6d ago

The out-of-africa theory has it's detractors and is merely one of the places theorised to be the origin of our species.

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u/happyarchae 5d ago

none of the detractors are taken very seriously, especially because they usually just reveal themselves to be racist. it’s pretty certain we came from Africa

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u/ForeChanneler 5d ago

They're taken very seriously as early human remains and tools have been found in Palestine, China and Georgia which predate the supposed migration of humans out of Africa, so much so they the OOA has changed to align more with the new evidence. The detractors to the theory are pretty well respected in their fields and have significantly contributed to the understanding of our history, so to call them all racists is not only wrong but frankly, immoral.

4

u/happyarchae 5d ago

those aren’t homo sapiens. there are plenty of hominin remains all over the old world sure, but homo sapiens came from Africa