Around a seemingly identical sun spins a planet with seemingly identical continents to Earth, and very different social forms: this is dath ilan.

You're curious about this planet's history, which the dath ilani themselves are permitted to guess, but not remember?  You wonder how their society ended up so supposedly well-coordinated?  You wonder if there were secret police or drugs in the water, at least at first?

Or maybe you're not so curious about its history.  In that case you can skip to the end.  But if you're curious -

You could find little moments, here and there in dath ilan's history.  What if another world's equivalent of the Ashkenazi merchant network had been studying a Pythogorean mystery-cult focused on alchemy, in their off-hours, instead of putting their cultural efforts into the minutia of Torah?  What if some of those alternate-world Ashkenazis had invented gunpowder?  Or what if some grand Pharoah-Emperor of the South American continent had recruited a harem of nubile mathematicians, and been blindly imitated by nobles for centuries after?  What if, in some alternate Indo-European religious empire with a caste system that put an increasingly wealthy and powerful merchant caste underneath an increasingly decrepit warrior caste, Martin Luther and Adam Smith had been the same person, nailing a set of theses to a church door that included the praises of trade over war?

But history is not made up of striking unusual moments that resonate with grand themes.  Earth itself would contain its own share of fortunate coincidences, if you went hunting.  Do you think every timeline contains a version of Francis Bacon who systematizes science and happens to praise the decentralization of epistemic authority while he's writing?  Do you think every timeline that sees the conceptualization of races and racial strife will also experience a Gandhi and a Martin Luther King?  In most timelines, conquerors don't just happen to discover a new-to-them continent, don't manage to wipe out all the local advanced civilizations with plagues; and then just happen to devise a novel democracy (for only their race's males, of course) in the emptied territories, and have that democracy work unprecedently well for a century or two.  None of that happened in dath ilan's history, just like Jews didn't invent gunpowder in yours.

So all of the striking anecdotes are meaningless, in the end, and convey only an illusion of understanding.

Around a seemingly identical sun spins a planet with seemingly identical continents to Earth, and very different social forms: this is dath ilan.

You're curious about this planet's history, which the dath ilani themselves are permitted to guess, but not remember?  You wonder how their society ended up so supposedly well-coordinated?  You wonder if there were secret police or drugs in the water, at least at first?

Or maybe you're not so curious about its history.  In that case you can skip to the end.  But if you're curious -

You could find little moments, here and there in dath ilan's history.  What if another world's equivalent of the Ashkenazi merchant network had been studying a Pythogorean mystery-cult focused on alchemy, in their off-hours, instead of putting their cultural efforts into the minutia of Torah?  What if some of those alternate-world Ashkenazis had invented gunpowder?  Or what if some grand Pharoah-Emperor of the South American continent had recruited a harem of nubile mathematicians, and been blindly imitated by nobles for centuries after?  What if, in some alternate Indo-European religious empire with a caste system that put an increasingly wealthy and powerful merchant caste underneath an increasingly decrepit warrior caste, Martin Luther and Adam Smith had been the same person, nailing a set of theses to a church door that included the praises of trade over war?

But history is not made up of striking unusual moments that resonate with grand themes.  Earth itself would contain its own share of fortunate coincidences, if you went hunting.  Do you think every timeline contains a version of Francis Bacon who systematizes science and happens to praise the decentralization of epistemic authority while he's writing?  Do you think every timeline that sees the conceptualization of races and racial strife will also experience a Gandhi and a Martin Luther King?  In most timelines, conquerors don't just happen to discover a new-to-them continent, don't manage to wipe out all the local advanced civilizations with plagues; and then just happen to devise a novel democracy (for only their race's males, of course) in the emptied territories, and have that democracy work unprecedently well for a century or two.  None of that happened in dath ilan's history, just like Jews didn't invent gunpowder in yours.

So all of the striking anecdotes are meaningless, in the end, and convey only an illusion of understanding.

Around a seemingly identical sun spins a planet with seemingly identical continents to Earth, and very different social forms: this is dath ilan.

You're curious about this planet's history, which the dath ilani themselves are permitted to guess, but not remember?  You wonder how their society ended up so supposedly well-coordinated?  You wonder if there were secret police or drugs in the water, at least at first?

Or maybe you're not so curious about its history.  In that case you can skip to the end.  But if you're curious -

You could find little moments, here and there in dath ilan's history.  What if another world's equivalent of the Ashkenazi merchant network had been studying a Pythogorean mystery-cult focused on alchemy, in their off-hours, instead of putting their cultural efforts into the minutia of Torah?  What if some of those alternate-world Ashkenazis had invented gunpowder?  Or what if some grand Pharoah-Emperor of the South American continent had recruited a harem of nubile mathematicians, and been blindly imitated by nobles for centuries after?  What if, in some alternate Indo-European religious empire with a caste system that put an increasingly wealthy and powerful merchant caste underneath an increasingly decrepit warrior caste, Martin Luther and Adam Smith had been the same person, nailing a set of theses to a church door that included the praises of trade over war?

But history is not made up of striking unusual moments that resonate with grand themes.  Earth itself would contain its own share of fortunate coincidences, if you went hunting.  Do you think every timeline contains a version of Francis Bacon who systematizes science and happens to praise the decentralization of epistemic authority while he's writing?  Do you think every timeline that sees the conceptualization of races and racial strife will also experience a Gandhi and a Martin Luther King?  In most timelines, conquerors don't just happen to discover a new-to-them continent, don't manage to wipe out all the local advanced civilizations with plagues; and then just happen to devise a novel democracy (for only their race's males, of course) in the emptied territories, and have that democracy work unprecedently well for a century or two.  None of that happened in dath ilan's history, just like Jews didn't invent gunpowder in yours.

So all of the striking anecdotes are meaningless, in the end, and convey only an illusion of history.

Around a seemingly identical sun spins a planet with seemingly identical continents to Earth, and very different social forms: this is dath ilan.

You're curious about this planet's history, which the dath ilani themselves are permitted to guess, but not remember?  You wonder how their society ended up so supposedly well-coordinated?  You wonder if there were secret police or drugs in the water, at least at first?

Or maybe you're not so curious about its history.  In that case you can skip to the end.  But if you're curious -

You could find little moments, here and there in dath ilan's history.  What if another world's equivalent of the Ashkenazi merchant network had been studying a Pythagorean mystery-cult focused on alchemy, in their off-hours, instead of putting their cultural efforts into the minutia of Torah?  What if some of those alternate-world Ashkenazis had invented gunpowder?  Or what if some grand Pharoah-Emperor of the South American continent had recruited a harem of nubile mathematicians, and been blindly imitated by nobles for centuries after?  What if, in some alternate Indo-European religious empire with a caste system that put an increasingly wealthy and powerful merchant caste underneath an increasingly decrepit warrior caste, Martin Luther and Adam Smith had been the same person, nailing a set of theses to a church door that included the praises of trade over war?

But history is not made up of striking unusual moments that resonate with grand themes.  Earth itself would contain its own share of fortunate coincidences, if you went hunting.  Do you think every timeline contains a version of Francis Bacon who systematizes science and happens to praise the decentralization of epistemic authority while he's writing?  Do you think every timeline that sees the conceptualization of races and racial strife will also experience a Gandhi and a Martin Luther King?  In most timelines, conquerors don't just happen to discover a new-to-them continent, don't manage to wipe out all the local advanced civilizations with plagues; and then just happen to devise a novel democracy (for only their race's males, of course) in the emptied territories, and have that democracy work unprecedently well for a century or two.  None of that happened in dath ilan's history, just like Jews didn't invent gunpowder in yours.

So all of the striking anecdotes are meaningless, in the end, and convey only an illusion of history.