Humanity Is Advanced

aka: Humans Are Advanced

Basically, this is when Humanity is the advanced "alien" species compared to both all other species in the setting, and "real world" Humanity at the time the work was released.

If the aliens are simply wielding clubs and the humans are hurling swords, that's Insufficiently Advanced Alien.

Often in this setting, humanity is the one with the interstellar empire, and the aliens are the ones who are planetbound. In this setting, it is also the Humans who initiate First Contacts or bring superior technology and ideals. In some cases, the alien species don't even use tools (let alone build spaceships), but with their jaws, claws, and tentacles, they remain dangerous to humans.

Subtrope of Humans Are Special.

Compare Humanity Is Superior for when it's not just tech level, or Insufficiently Advanced Alien for if it's not humanity being smart so much as aliens being dumb. Compare Advanced Ancient Humans and Humans Advance Swiftly for other versions of this trope. Contrast Sufficiently Advanced Alien and Humans Need Aliens.

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Examples

Comic Books

• Valérian: Humanity's Galaxity is a major galactic power due to their advanced technology, in particular their monopoly on Time Travel.

Films — Live-Action

• Alien: Humanity is the only extant race shown with any kind of technology. They are simply fighting an evolved monster onboard one of humanity's freighter spaceships. In the expanded universe of Alien, the Yaut'Ja (the technologically capable alien race from Predator) are encountered occasionally. Even then, when our (future) technology is compared with theirs, it is equal or better in almost every way, with the notable exception of cloaking technology.
• Avatar: Not only are humans the most advanced known species, they're also the Scary Dogmatic Aliens invading the less advanced species.
• Star Trek Into Darkness: Kahn and his fellow super-soldiers were created by humanity three hundred years ago, and now that he’s thawed out he can still curbstomp Klingons and out-logic Vulcans in Kirk's time. We might speculate that having such genetic engineering technology would have enabled humanity to dominate all other species, if non-augmented humanity hadn't outlawed and suppressed this technology shortly after creating it to prevent the superhumans from overthrowing them.

Literature

• The Ancient Ones: Humanity was the species that discovered FTL travel and built a galactic community. The title was applied to them by the demmies, a short-lived species that was contacted 58 years after the discovery of FTL and is all too happy to take on the tropes of plucky, reckless idiots that old writers expected humanity to fill.
• Ender's Game: The series features both technologically advanced and primitive races of aliens. In Speaker for the Dead, humans take to space, and some of them make a colony on a planet inhabited by small paleolithic pig-like aliens they call pequeninos. The human scientists must tread carefully to communicate with them and learn about their strange culture, without interfering by "corrupting" the pequeninos with human ideas. RetConned in the audioplay, where Artificial Gravity is revealed to be a wholly human invention, the Formics having to do without. That, of course, brings into question how their ships manage to maneuver so well without squishing the bugs.
• Honor Harrington shows humanity as the single spacefaring race in the 'verse. The only three alien races we've seen firsthand are the Medusans (roughly bronze age), Gremlins (stone age), and treecats (tribal forest dwellers). One of the short stories shows there was once another spacefaring race, but they are known purely via archaeology.
• Horus Heresy: The pre-Heresy Imperium is often this, building a massive interstellar empire in only two centuries, often by wiping out less advanced alien cultures and more primitive human offshoots that had been cut off for millennia.
• Invaders From Earth: Humans have discovered an amiable, intelligent native species on Ganymede who are still in their "low-tech, abundant-natural-resources foraging people" cultural stage (abundant to those with Bizarre Alien Biology anyway). The protagonist works at an advertising agency and is hired to come up with a campaign to sell the people of Earth on xenocide in order to get at Ganymede's resources.
• Junction Point: Humans are the second most advanced species within a 1000 light years of Earth, putting them above at least a dozen different civilizations. They're the only other species to achieve interstellar travel, and their starships are fairly advanced. However, the other starfaring species, the tianlong, are far more advanced than us.
• The Mote in God's Eye has the moties planet bound and the humans with the interstellar empire. Later on we see that the moties are technically at the same technology level.
• The Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio has this as the reason why aliens never contacted Earth. Millennia into our future, the various factions of humanity have genetic engineering (including lifespans in centuries and even over a millennia and Ideal Illness Immunity), faster-than-light travel, cryogenics, Energy Weapons and Deflector Shields. All the aliens they meet are at most Bronze Age in tech, until humans encountered the Cielcin who were space-faring but still considerably less advanced and the xeno-artifacts of the "Quiet", what's thought to be a disappeared ancient alien race whose tech is at Reality Warper level.
• The Road Not Taken: Humans are simultaneously less and more advanced. It turns out that gravity manipulation, including faster-than-light travel, is a relatively simple technology and humans somehow missed inventing it; however, when a species discovers it, their scientific progress generally stagnates at its current level. Humans are thus simultaneously less advanced in the field of gravity manipulation, and much more advanced in everything else; this becomes apparent when an invading alien race shows up in faster-than-light ships, but the rest of their tech is roughly on par with the Spanish conquistadors.
• H. Beam Piper's Terro Human Future History: Humans have a series of interstellar civilizations (the Federation, and later a succession of Empires) and along the way find about a dozen other sapient species. These range from the legendarily stupid Khoogras from the planet Yggdrasil to the cute, cuddly, quite bright, but Stone-Age-tech Fuzzies to the four-armed vaguely reptilian Ullerans, who were maybe Iron Age to Medieval before humans showed up. A number of other species are described or mentioned in passing; none has space travel or other high tech.
• Alan Dean Foster's short story "With Friends Like These": Humanity was sealed on Earth by the Precursors long ago, and when modern aliens contact the now-mythical planet's natives they find that humanity has become so advanced in their isolation that they developed psionic powers, are in telepathic contact with various other mammalian species that they presumably uplifted, filled the whole planet with machinery to miles below the surface, and when they agree to help they bring Earth along with them.
• Stephen Baxter's Manifold setting has the Downstreamers, the eventual descendants of humanity in the far future. In the first book, they were the most advanced simply due to being the only intelligent species to evolve in the universe. So they ended up creating an infinitude of other universes, including those that had aliens that more primitive groups of humans could come in contact with.

Live-Action TV

• Red Dwarf: Humanity were the Precursors to all life in the known universe. In Lister and Rimmer's time they didn't even have FTL, just stasis fields capable of stopping localized time; artifacts from later include FTL drives, time machines, and terraforming equipment capable of making a dead planet lush in just a couple years (and small enough to fit in an Escape Pod).
• Star Trek: Zig-Zagged. The setting features aliens from all over the technological spectrum, with humanity somewhere in the middle between Insufficiently Advanced Aliens and Sufficiently Advanced Nigh Omnipotent Energy Beings. Among interstellar empires of roughly equivalent technological levels, the Federation's hat is producing engineers capable of "turning rocks into replicators", but then the Federation has many member races, not just humans. Specific episode examples:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • The original pilot episode "The Cage" and "The Menagerie": In the Back Story Captain Christopher Pike and the Enterprise crew fight primitive humanoids on Rigel 7. The Talosians later create a mental illusion of Pike's battle with one of them.
    • "The Galileo 7": The crew of the eponymous shuttlecraft had to deal with the large and aggressive primitive humanoids of a planet after they crash landed there.
    • "The Omega Glory": On the planet Omega Four, both the Yangs and the Kohms are considerably more primitive than 20th century Earth.
    • "The Paradise Syndrome": The inhabitants of a planet are Native Americans (AKA American Indians) whose ancestors were transferred there hundreds of years earlier by a Benevolent Precursors alien race. The natives live in the fashion of their forefathers.
    • "Errand of Mercy": Subverted. The inhabitants of the planet Organia appear to be primitive, but the reality is quite different: they're actually highly advanced Energy Beings.
    • "The Apple": The humanoids of the planet Gamma Trianguli Six are kept in their backward situation by a computer/device that also controls the local weather.
    • "Friday's Child": The people who live on Capella Four don't have advanced technology, but their kligat throwing weapon will kill you instantly.
    • "A Private Little War": On the planet Neural the hill people and villagers are supposed to only have bows and arrows and not fight with each other. So how do the villagers have flintlocks?
    • "Spock's Brain": The men of the planet Sigma Draconis Six are very primitive (at caveman levels). The women live underground in high tech luxury.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: "First Contact" (the episode, not the movie): The Enterprise visits a planet that is on the verge of inventing the warp drive, but Riker has an accident and ends up in some sort of reverse Roswell situation.
  • Star Trek: Voyager
    • "False Profits": The Voyager crew tries to stop two Ferengi from exploiting the religious beliefs of a Bronze Age civilization.
    • "Blink of an Eye": Stuck in the orbit of their planet, the Voyager crew has the opportunity to observe a civilization's development from Stone Age to Space Age. (On this planet, time flows at a much faster rate than in the rest of the universe.)
    • In the first three seasons, Voyager is consistently shown more advanced than most Delta Quadrant ships that are encountered. In particular, Kazon and Trabe ships are vastly outclassed (Justified: the Kazon stole all of their technology from the Trabe when they rose up and overthrew them, and are so ridiculously bad with new technolgies they once managed to kill the entire crew of one of their ships by trying to integrate a stolen replicator into it; the Trabe, on the other hand, simply lack the resources to improve their technology since the Kazon kicked them out from their homeworld, so we don't know if they could have been a match for the Voyager had they been able to do so).
    • After the ship cross the Nekrit Expanse in mid-season 3, they get into territory dominated by the Borg, meaning everyone is either too primitive to bother assimilating or too powerful for them to defeat.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise: "Civilization": The Enterprise visits the home world of the Akaali, who are still in the Medieval Age. It is revealed that the ENT-era Vulcans already have a regulation similar to the Prime Directive, Starfleet's famous non-interference clause regarding pre-warp civilizations.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Invaders", we see a backwoods woman who is tormented throughout the show by tiny aliens who have landed on her farm. We discover at the end that the tiny aliens are actually Earthers; she's a giant who lives on another planet.

Tabletop Games

• AT-43: The human factions are U.N.A and the Red Blok, but they are not the original humans. The real humans are the highly advanced Therians, immensely powerful, transcendent beings who reached The Singularity long ago and created the ancestors of the other factions in the distant past.
• Space 1889: Played with: modern humans are more advanced than the bronze-age Martians and the stone-age Venusians, but are much less advanced than ancient Martian civilization.
• Traveller: Played with. The Third Imperium is for the most part the most advanced of all and it is controlled by humans. However aliens, including aliens outside the Imperium are not necessarily primitive, and some are ahead of the Imperium in certain areas.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • This is subverted with the Imperium of Man. Humanity is one of the more advanced races in the setting, barring the Necrons and Eldar, but like the others, they're technologically stagnant: yes, our stuff is advanced, but it's all maintained by the Adeptus Mechanicus, a strange and oppressive machine cult who act like technology is magical and look down at anyone who tries to improve or modify it, "look down on" meaning "view as an abomination and execute for heresy".
  • The Tau are a special case. In the 35th millennium they were stone age hunter-gatherers and an Imperial Explorator discovered them. The Imperium planned to exterminate the primitive Tau and colonize their homeworld but the colonization fleet was destroyed by a warp storm, which protected the Tau from further interference. 6,000 years later the Imperium is little different but the Tau have an interstellar empire and many technologies that are more advanced than Imperial tech, though they don't have teleporters and their FTL method is orders of magnitude slower.
  • This was however played straight in the backstory during the Dark Age of Technology. However, one of the pieces of said technology, the robots known as the Men of Iron, rebelled against humanity. The resulting wars caused so much devastation that they set back humanity's development and caused humanity to forbid future AI development.
• Modiphius Entertainment published fantasy RPG game, Unity from Zensara Studios has the elf-like Valla, the beastmen Furians who have a number of dwarven traits and East Asian aesthetic and humans. The Valla can live up to a millennia and have greater than human intelligence, but because they're so inward-thinking and dreamy when they had their constant telepathic connection they quickly peaked technologically. The Furians live for a few centuries and were given the trait of industriousness. Their hard-working nature made them more technologically advanced then the Valla, but then they too hit stagnation fairly early on. Humans were given curiousity and drive, so despite having only decades of lifespan - they rapidly reached a point where they can make A.I. robots and giant mecha while the other two races are at the medieval stage of technology.

Video Games

• Aliens Trolls And Dragons: Humanity has all sorts of advanced technology while aliens are stuck in a medieval setting.
• Endless Space: Played with. The Vaulters (spacefaring Vikings) have a huge research bonus and access to research buildings. By the events of the second game, however, the Vaulters have been in cryosleep following the destruction of their homeworld and when they awaken the rest of the galaxy has caught up, although they still uniquely have their Mezari ancestors' advanced portal technology. Though more of an industrial powerhouse, the United Empire (basically a human-supremacist Soviet Union) can also pump out a ton of scientific data with a simple gear switch. But then, the eternally curious and Kerbal-like Sophons will always have any human scientist beat.
• Galactic Civilizations: Subverted. Terrans become the only race to invent fusion reactors, enabling ship-portable FTL drives, which sets them up for this trope. They decided to share, becoming diplomats instead.
• Grey Goo (2015): Humanity has long since perfected advanced interstellar spaceflight, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. The only reason humans have not yet conquered the galaxy is because they find space to be rather boring and are preoccupied with engineering a flawless utopia here on Earth.
• Master of Magic: Humans Are Divided, but:
  • The High Men have access to nearly all buildings (excepting only Fantastic Stables), including the Wizard's Guild (a center of research) and the Cathedral (the greatest of religious buildings), they have road-building Engineers, their Pikemen and Priests are more advanced than more common Halberdiers and Shamans, and they have a monopoly on the knightly Paladins. While they don't have the Dwarves' inherent knowledge of steamcraft, they can build Mechanicians' Guilds that are just as effective as dwarven craftsmen. In short, while a couple of races trump them in their own specialties, no other race has both the breadth and depth of knowledge available to the High Men.
  • Nomads are a little behind High Men, but remain one of the most advanced races. They don't have the high-level Wizard's Guild and their shipbuilding is a little worse, but they share advanced Priests and Pikemen with the High Men, can construct Mechanicians' Guilds and Cathedrals, and are the finest and richest merchants in Arcanus. They don't do engineers either, but that's because their caravans don't need roads to traverse the wilds of Arcanus. All in all, they're roughly as advanced as the Dark Elves without being an innately magical race.
• X-universe: Humanity was the only race in the Milky Way to construct working a Portal Network independent of the Precursors. They were also the only young race to (accidentally) create sapient AI, though that didn't turn out well. In the games proper, the Earth State (and their AGI Task Force in particular) build the most advanced ships, and safeguard their tech advantage with a huge spy network. AGI Task Force pilots will never abandon their ship to prevent the tech from falling in enemy hands. However, the Argon Federation, a Terran Lost Colony, doesn't enjoy the same tech advantage and are actually slightly behind the ultra-religious Paranid Empire.
  • Come X: Rebirth some twenty-thirty years after the jumpgate network was deactivated, the museum-piece Terran ships fielded by the Republic of Cantera (a Terran Lost Colony) are still largely competitive with the new designs used by the Argon remnants in Albion and Omicron Lyrae. The Canteran's Sucellus capital ship — a dated Terran design — in particular mounts the single most powerful weapon in the known galaxy, a massive spinal railgun
  • The Terrans return in force in the Cradle of Humanity Expansion Pack for X4: Foundations. The Terran ships tend to be able to hit hard and tank hits while still offering great maneuverability (at the cost of weak travel speed), and their economy uses Grey Goo giving them a vastly more simplified logistic system compared to the Commonwealth factions which allows them to pump out ships faster and more reliably than anyone else. The Terran Protectorate routinely sends out expeditions to attack their old rogue AI fleets and are the only faction that can face the AI without massive numbers on their side.

Web Original

• Veil of Madness: The humans are rather more advanced than the races around them, as the result of having 3% of the galaxy to themselves, while space is otherwise quite crowded. Of course, this is because said 3% of the galaxy drives everyone other than humanity Ax-Crazy, whereas humans can resist it by being a little insane already.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: The miniseries Islands reveals a population of humans survived the mushroom war hidden in an obscure archipelago. Their technology seems even more advanced than Princess Bubblegum's, as one of their ships easily defeat the Gumball Guardians, and none of the protagonists come close to defeating any of their machines without utilizing other human technology. They're also capable of Brain Uploading on a massive scale.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM): Over the last two decades, Planet Mobius has seen sudden and extreme technological advancement, so much so that the population's entire way of life has irrevocably changed: replicators, portable computers, Artificial Intelligence, cybernetics, holographic interface technology, the deployment of fully automated warfare and directed energy weapons... all of it is derived from Human technology, and it has gradually turned the world into an industrial nightmare. The worst is the roboticizer - a machine that removes a person's free will. Young streetwise punks flaunt the law, conducting guerrilla raids to overthrow the corrupt government.
• Star Trek: The Animated Series. In the episode "Bem" the aboriginal inhabitants of the planet Delta Theta Three are primitive lizard men who capture Kirk, Spock and the eponymous guest alien. The aborigines are actually under the protection of a powerful Energy Being.

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