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Welcome to the Alternate History Wiki,

We currently have 59,530 articles, and look forward to growth!

Since: 26 January 2005.

Conventions in use in this wiki • Guide to good Althist writing

Sandbox • How to make articles • Templates

How You Can Contribute

Alternate History imagines what would happen if history had gone differently. We are a community for creating and discussing a wide range of alternate timelines: large and small, ancient and recent, realistic and fanciful. If you'd like to add to our growing multiverse, the following pages will help you get started.

First time here? See the Guide to Newcomers.
Need inspiration? Look over our List of Alternate histories, Points of Divergence, and Ideas.
Want to add to a timeline already here? Contact the author to discuss your ideas, and follow our Adoption Policy.

Before you start writing, read the Conventions of this wiki. Especially, please note:

Future history is not alt-history, so all our timelines must take place in the past.
All our timelines must be original, not derivative of something published elsewhere.

This Month's Featured Althist

Terra Cognita

Terra Cognita is an Alternate History timeline with three major divergent points, leading collectively to many world shaping changes, as well as an abundance of smaller ripples throughout.

In this timeline, the Western Roman Empire does not collapse. A king in southeast Africa plants the seed of a powerful trade realm, shaping the continent and the world around it. And China opens its sea lanes to reach out across the world with a banner of trade goods, spreading technology and innovation far and wide.

Further changes echo through history. Norsemen, fleeing the turbulence caused by Roman involvement, move in bulk to North America, opening that continent to the world earlier and for good - unknowingly saving an entire culture from veritable annihilation by early disease. With no accidental introduction of Rinderpest to Africa and therefore no follow-up tsetse devastation, Africa flourishes.

Terra Cognita is recognizable because it is a story of humans, discovering themselves and their world, shaping it into ways we are familiar with today in an unavoidable and inevitable march forward, progressing earth. Yet it is unrecognizable because it is inhabited by different characters, different rivers of time that flow to familiar seas.