Markup View

Author: Malady

Apr 12th 2017 at 7:13:48 PM

WebOriginal:

Literature/WhateleyUniverse: From [[http://whateleyacademy.net/index.php/original-timeline/344-the-braeburn-report The Braeburn Report]], there is discussion of mutants overtaking baseline humanity and past events of hominoid species wiping out the previous ones:
[[note]]
** Mutants wiping out Homo sapiens:
--> "Yes. You have to remember that the ... person in question ... is an Afrikaner of the old school. He's seen how minor genetic differences can divide a culture and tear it into pieces. In many cases a mutation is a trivial difference. Some people might think that norms and mutants could live alongside one another. Others think that there can never be peace until once side is unquestionably supreme, and rules the other side with an iron fist. Due to certain childhood experiences, our director takes the second opinion."
** Homo sapiens wiping out Homo neanderthalensis:
--> Peter leaned back, sighing. "The short of it? ''Mutants are a new species. Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens, Homo mutandis'' – or whatever they will decide to call it. Compared to the Neanderthals, we sapiens retain more youthful and childlike features. [[note]]We don’t grow the heavy brow ridges of the Neanderthal adults, our eyes are proportionally larger. Also, our women show more extreme differences – Neanderthal women had poor figures compared to an average sapiens girl.[[/note]] Mutants continue that trend. Eyes that are slightly larger again, they average less body hair, a more extreme difference between women and men. Their women seem to have better figures, on average, and they seem to retain characteristics that we associate with youth, even into full maturity.
** homo sapiens wiping out homo heidelbergensis.
--> [[note]]“Fossil remains at the Leakey sites in Kenya.[[/note]] Homo heidelbergensis – the common ancestor to both Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis. The date of these fossils is about 200,000 years ago, when Heidelberg shuffled off the stage. Now here’s what you need to know: the Heidelberg was about the same height as modern humans, more muscular, and more primitive. Anthropologists can identify clothing, tools, bones and quickly peg them to either Heidelberg, sapiens,or neanderthalensis. Now look at these.”
--> [...] We think it was a battlefield, where Heidelberg fought sapiens. This battlefield appears to be a single incident, but it correlates with other digs.”
--> I shrugged. “So the old species fought the new one. No surprise there.” I sighed. “Look, I know what’s got me paranoid. What’s got you so worked up?”
--> “What you’re missing is the gender story. In sapiens, there are twenty-three female remains, and only two male. It’s the opposite for Heidelberg – forty-five male, and no female at all. What do you conclude from this?”
--> “Uh… raiding gang or maybe even a rape gang, attacking the hunter-gatherer women while the men were out hunting. Also, we trounced them. But other explanations are possible. It’s hard to know. Reconstructing a story from such partial evidence is tough.”
--> “Here’s more evidence, then. Dating is crude. You can get within plus or minus a few thousand years, but that’s all. For finer work, they rely on physical positioning, layers, disposition within the site. If we call that point 200,000 years ago ‘the end’ – at least from the perspective of Heidelberg– then there’s a clear trend in the hundred years prior to the end. A steady collection of remains, but proportionately more male pelvic remains. [[note]]Initially, the dig team thought they had to be in error.[[/note]] Constant population, but a suddenly shifting gender balance, followed by extinction. [[note]]The second thought was that the females were being buried elsewhere. The dig supervisors finally concluded that the graduate student supervising the dig has messed up his markers.[[/note]]
--> “In a completely different dig, but same time period as near as we can estimate, we have the opposite issue. Homo sapiens, starting with a population of around two, followed by a virtually exploding population that seems to have nine females for every male. Again, the dig teams have dismissed it as absurd, and the result of bad technique. But it fits too well.
--> “Because that battlefield is the last item on the list. You know what it looks like to me? It looks like the last members of a dying species, enraged against their replacements.”
[[/note]]