What if...? Number 1

[Mycernius]

I have decided to start some 'What if...? questions along the same sort of lines a Smokes 'Phiosophical questions'. These will deal with alternative histories and see if you think the road we have followed would be different if we had gone another way. So let us start with Number 1.

"What if man dissappeared from the planet, which animal would take his place?"

Man's dissappearence needn't be extinction, he just buggered off one day, never to return. What would take our place as the next dominant species? Would intelligent life evolve? Most people would probably say the apes, but are there enough of them to make a go of it? Another is the Aquatic ape theory. It goes along the lines that our ancestors lived by the ocean and ate fish as part of their natural diet. This helped with the development of our brains, something our great ape cousins don not have. So would something else take our niche? Why not rodents? They are clever and resourseful. It took our tree swinging ancestors 3 million years to become us. How long would rats need?

[Pachipro]

If man disappeared from the planet I don't think any creature would be able to take his place, nor do I think intelligence of a particular species would evolve, because it would have begun to do so already. It is said that we evolved from the apes, but no one to date has been able to find the so called "missing link" to prove this theory. Neanderthal man suddenly disappeared and then it was us, homo-sapiens with no link whatsoever. I do not believe homo-sapens developed from the apes.

Why is it that we do not see evolution occuring during recorded history? Apes, chimpanzees, gorillas, etc. have not shown one one bit of evolution in thousands of years. Neither have plants and other animal species.

Where did modern man come from then if he did not evolve from the apes?

Lawrence Gardner in his book "Genesis of the Grail Kings", on pg 11, makes an interesting point:

It took man over a million years to progress from using stones as he found them to the realization that they could be chipped and flaked for better purposes. It then took another 500,000 years before Neanderthal man mastered the concept of stone tools, and a further 50,000 years before crops were cultivated and metallurgy was discovered. Such was the long and arduous natural process which brought mankind to about 5,000 B.C. Hence, by all scales of evolutionary reckoning, we should still be far removed from any basic understanding of mathematics, engineering or science-but here we are, only 7,000 years later, landing probes on Mars....

...So, how did we inherit wisdoim, and from whom?

Every single nation on this earth has a myth or myths, legends, and so on that say "beings" came from the heavens and fashioned man from the hominid that was already on this planet in order to make a species of slaves in their own image that would do their bidding. Sounds strange I know. But the Japanese, Chinese, American Indian, Aztecs, Myans, all speak of the same thing. In ancient Sumerian clay tablets, this species, or being, is translated as the "Adamu". The Adam of the bible.

And the "beings" that created the Adamu were called the serpent people, dragons, etc. Is it any wonder why the dragon is so prominent in Asian history and mythology? But this is another thread in itself.

So, in answering your question, would an itelligent being evolve or emerge on this planet? I don't think so without outside intervention.

I think I read somewhere that the oldest living species on this planet is the cockroach as they have been around for millions of years and other than genetically learning how to overcome insecticides, have not evolved into an intelligent being. At least what we humans consider to be intelligent.

[lexico]

Regarding out-of-this-world-theory-of-origin-of-primitive-life: Once this theory was laughed at, but the rock sample from Antartica and the study of exceptionally large meteorites popularized by and reflected in
1) the one that cause the end of the giant reptiles (keywords: Gulf of Mexico, Iridium)
2) the fictional ones popularized by films Deep Impact and Armageddon
are said to have much validity. In the early billions of years of the Solar System, much debris kicked up by incoming meteorites were exchanged between the Earth and Mars. Whatever organic matter (chemically, not exactly deriving from a living organism) that were forming on either planet could easily have been transmitted between the two planets. When the first life forms appeared, that would have been exchanged likewise, trapped in the mud or rocks as we can find in many geological levels. Of course this is a different line of reasoning from the migration of intelligent beings, it does emphasize that our ecological sphere limited exclusively to the earth is only an approximation and that it should be expanded to include other close planets or even distant planets as well.

As for evolution, it's happening before our very eyes. The influenza virus keeps mutating, keeping the medical scientists busy and the industry profotable. As for the missing links, the fossils are so varied that even to define what is Neaaderthal is quite difficult, and the various stages of transition from mid Neanderthal Man to early Cro Magnon Man beginning around 200,000 yrs ago and ending around 45,000 yrs ago is quite well established, getting better every year. The huge variation of the Neaderthals is another good proof of natures way of tinkering with genetic diversity. So it would be safe to say, although not all the missing links are there, records of nature's trial and error, mutation and natural selection are abundant. Another good example of evolution would be the forced kind wrought by man; domesticated wild plants and animals what we eat today are those that went through mutation and artificial selection.

Coming to the question of the original post: I can't think of a good straight answer, but perhaps animals with already deveoped brains as well as some physical preparedness for some kind of language coupled with some marginalizing environmental change to force them into a new way of subsistence would be a good place to begin.

1) deforestation causing certain chimps to come down
2) dolphins forced to become amphibian or to abandon the sea
3) dogs forced to become their own masters; wanting to recreate the human ways of living from fond memory of masters and mistresses who abandoned them for the ET land
4) foxes evolving into politicians
5) certain viruses incorporating bio-electronic hybrid composition building multi-viral colonies, amassing information for sustaing the colony.

I really can't think much in particulars, because I don't know what conditions will be in effect, and I don't know how the animal species will respond.

[Pararousia]

My first impulse was to say Cockroaches. But what IF...octopus were silently advancing in the deep AND THE REASON WE ALL DISAPPEARED is because the octopus suddenly rose up and ATE US ALL!

(Having just returned from Japan and seen their love of the creature as food...the octopus may have followed the old adage "don't get mad, get even!" ;oD

[lexico]

Fossil **** Roach
3.5 cm **** Roach
Posthuman Hightech RoboRoach
Happy Octopus
Flying Octopus
Evil Octopus
Kita Nihon Kaiyou Octopus
Gentle Giant Octopus
Stately Octopus
Camouflaged Octopus
Lurking Octopus
The Octopus New Magazine Online

These will surivive some severe nuclear destruction of the human species. Get a glimps of posthuman civilzation. Meet the ancestral prototypes of XXX sapiens sapiens.

[Dutch Baka]

i would go for Koala's ... just sit in a three all day, sleep for 20 hours.. that is LIFE dude... same most of our man are doing now isnt? how many times do koala's get laid btw? that is an important thing i think...

beside Koala's i do think Ape's yeah... or Scorpiones... just because there Beautiful.. and you can Biatch with them LOL

[Frank D. White]

"CATS" would rule the earth with dogs as their slaves!

Frank

[Mycernius]

"CATS" would rule the earth with dogs as their slaves!

Frank

You think as I do. Our dog is already under the thrall of my three cats. Oldest cat (Silas, aged 15) treats the dog as furniture. Middle cat (Winston, aged 12, my current avatar) using the dog as a scratching post and our youngest (Nermal, aged 10) uses the dog for something to butt against. This has led to the dog (Mooragh, aged 7) being somewhat confused about what she is and acts like a cat in some cases.

[Kara_Nari]

Well... at first I was going to go for RODENTS... simply because they have good survival instincts. They hunt for food, they can attack, swim, run fast and possibly if they had to learn how, they could invent some sort of speedy transport.
Im thinking that if rodents had cars, they would be along the lines of the 'Flintstones' car, im sure most of you have seen how fast a mouse can run on those little wheels!
Not being the biggest fan of Rodents, I dont mind if they take over the world, because as it was pointed out, I wont be here anyway... :)

But then if your guys Cats are still around "Power to the Felines!" Im sure they will do a great job ruling our mighty universe!