What If?

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Geology is in all senses a more solid intellectual exercise than most, and when it comes to imagining truly plausible geological counterfactuals—what tectonically realistic what-ifs could have shifted the four-billion-year course of the planet’s history—it becomes quite clear that the possibilities are really rather limited. By comparison with earth scientists, historians have it easy: it is perfectly simple to imagine, for instance, the cascade of consequences that might follow if Hitler had sipped chamomile tea instead of a double espresso on a certain afternoon at Berchtesgaden; or, more recently, if the American secretary of defense had broken his neck instead of his arm when he tripped on the curb of his Chevy Chase driveway. In history all is plausible, so all is possible.

The earth, however, does not permit such flexible imaginings. One cannot realistically suppose a volcano erupting in Manhattan; and it would be difficult to persuade any reputable geophysicist that the Atlantic Ocean could be ten thousand miles wide instead of its present three. The hard facts of the earth’s equally hard surface circumscribe such fancies. Even in those areas where some imaginings can reasonably occur—what if the Bering Strait had never closed, or what if the English Channel had never opened, both of which are within the realm of the geologically possible—the imagined effects are generally rather limited too.

Then again, contemplating the development of Britain as a peninsular rather than an insular nation is, perhaps, a little more likely to yield some interesting scenarios. The English like to believe their uniqueness derives from the maritime barrier that stands between them and France. But it is perfectly reasonable to argue otherwise. It is just as likely that Britain’s remarkable genetic mélange has mattered most and that geology has been less important than any soliloquy about scepter’d isles and precious jewels set in silver seas would have us believe.

In a far corner of the world, however, there is one geological possibility—a very reasonable, very plausible one at that—which, had it been exercised about forty million years ago by the planet’s subterranean engine, would have changed just about everything. And that is the imagined shift, by just a few hundred yards, of a small and insignificant-looking mountain that rises two thousand feet from within a flower-filled valley in the southern part of the Chinese province of Yunnan. If Cloud Mountain, as it is locally known, had been only half a mile from where it currently stands then the entire world would be a very, very different place.

It all has to do with the Yangtze River and with a geological configuration known all across China as the Great Bend.

Five of the noblest rivers in the Eastern world have their beginnings at an altitude of over fifteen thousand feet in the soggy grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau. To get around the Himalayas all five of them first swing to the east, although one of their number, the Brahmaputra, turns swiftly south to wander through the lowlands of Bengal. The other four, however, turn rather more lazily in tandem. Indeed, they all run alarmingly close to one another and in parallel like two sets of railroad tracks.

Eventually, the Irrawaddy peels off toward western Burma, while the remaining trio—the Salween, the Mekong, the Yangtze—travel for a long and topographically unprecedented stretch. They rush due south in adjoining valleys not thirty miles apart. All keep their relentlessly identical direction. The Salween spears its way down toward Rangoon. The Mekong barrels its way into the jungles of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. And the Yangtze—it is worth mentioning that the Chinese do not know it by its British-given name, but as Chang Jiang, Long River—would do the same. But after nine hundred miles of unyielding southerly progress, the river reaches the point where it suddenly collides, head-on, with the utterly unexpected protrusion of Cloud Mountain.

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