The Absence of Christianity

This is an AU where Jesus never came down to Earth / the urban legend of Jesus stayed an urban legend and didn't form a cult.

Roman Empire
This AT would remain mostly the same until the Western Roman Empire collapses at the hands of the Vandals and Huns. The Eastern Empire was headquartered at a city which was named Constantinople in Otl but since there was no christianity for Constatine to make legal, the city retained its original name: Byzantium (hence the Byzantine Empire).

The jewish revolt would have still ocurred in 70 AD and they would have been spread out across the empire as a result of their failure. In this timeline however, Jews would often get seen as barbaric because monotheism was very foreign to the Romans who held many gods.

Byzantine Empire
Without Christianity, monotheism would have likely not been popular enough for Islam which was mainly founded on Judaic ideals. The Byzantine Empire took a percentage of the territory once held by the Roman Empire like in Otl. Without Islam to cause a caliphate, the Byzantine Empire would remain unrivaled in southeastern europe, the levant region, and north africa. And without the caliphate to weaken the Byzantine Empire, the Ottomans would have likely not risen to prominence. Despite the lack of Ottomans, the Mongol Invasion did take part of present day turkey and Iraq. Although Mongke Khan died before they could take Byzantium, it was a sign of the Byzantine Empire's vulnerability. Eventually, the Mongolian Empire split into several pieces; the area which the byzantines lost was part of the Timurid Empire. The Timurid empire was able to take Baghdad and Ankara from the Byzantines which was a sign that the mongols, though divided, were still at large. 3 years later, Timurid died and the empire became weaker and the byzantine made a full recovery.

Vikings
The vikings still exist in this timeline but dispite europe being more divided in this timeline, many people groups such as the saxons were very resistant of the scandinavians. The europeans were a collection of tribes much like africa because in otl, it was the catholic church which unified europe into nations. Since it was the russian orthodox church which helped Ivan III drive the Golden Horde from Moscow, the latter lived on for some time but before that point, there was a civil war and the black death, both of which weakened the horde. Eventually, the vikings defeated the horde and claimed eastern europe. After taking present day western russia, the vikings there interbred with the slavs and claimed much of eastern europe in the 1500s. In this timeline, the vikings never set foot on north africa due to byzantine presence.

In the 1600s, the Nordics set up colonies in latin america