Status Updates From The Years of Rice and Salt

Finally, a mention of Africa...and it's enslavement (though Ibrahim recognizes this subjugation as a great inequality).

But really, it's a continent sized hole in this whole "what if the Black Plague killed off all Europeans" premise.

“History as a story worth telling will only begin when the whole lives outnumber the wasted ones. That means we have many generations to go before history begins. All the inequalities must end; all the surplus wealth must be equitably distributed. Until then we are still only some kind of gibbering monkey, and humanity, as we usually like to think of it, does not yet exist.”

Heyyyy title drop in the aside about life stages, with "rice and salt" being between children and widowhood (it might've shown up earlier? I forget.)

543

The Alchemist was really "what if we speed run the scientific revolution in Samarqand" huh