Answering AbdultheImpailler

There are a few different ways I could interpret your question. Ill try to address all of them. If all humanity died off at once, would nature be inclined to fill the niche of having a cognizant, sentient, dominant cosmopolitan life-form?

There doesnt seem to be a word for what Im trying to describe here. I need a word to depict our so-far uniquely human level of intellect and perception.

In our absence, would nature eventually replace us with another imaginative, enlightened, philosophically sophisticated and consciously adept race ingenious enough to devise their own literature, advance technology, -orchestrate plans to be implemented by future generations, to think beyond the limitations of the present, and our own mortality, -or their own mortality. That is certainly possible, and I think it would happen, though theres apparently no impetus to do that, and certainly no need to fill that void, considering that the biosphere had operated perfectly fine without it for well over three thousand million years.

It also seems to me entirely incidental that life is even here at all. There is evidently no goal of Gaia to maintain any degree of quality in her collection of organisms, and our passing wouldnt be felt by any adeptly-intelligent and perceptive entity addicted to our presence.

Still, I have also noticed a trend wherein several unrelated lineages will adapt new attributes and fill a vacant environmental niche as if they got the idea by watching someone else do it first. I mean you have vertebrates following several lines of arthropods onto the land, in line behind fungus, plants, and algae. And then you have terrestrial lines of mammals and reptiles both returning to the water, turning into ichthyosaurs and dolphins as if theyre trying to look like fish again. And of course we have flight emerging separately in a succession of insects, pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and bats. So it is certainly possible that in the wake of our demise that another similarly astute species would arise, and such a being is more likely to emerge among surviving apes than any other comparably competent creatures currently creeping about. I mean, elephants and dolphins are both remarkable intellectually and both a degree of language. Some birds have a lot of potential there too. But theyre all morphologically damned because they cannot adapt their bodies to pull themselves into our arena of aptitude.

In evolutionary terms, too much specialization imposes restrictive limits. You need to start with a more generalized physique like we did. Given enough time, and the advantage of a spark of genius emerge in a body that could adequately employ it, and perhaps the next advanced wave of human level intellectlite and technological culture would arise from raccoons. But whatever the next wave of human-level capacity is, it certainly would not be another lineage of humans. They might be primates, -being descended from lemurs perhaps; They might even be apes if bonobos would get their shit together. But they wont be human. Biological humans couldnt evolve twice for the same reason that two different authors couldnt both independently compose verbatim compositions of The Way of All Flesh. Just like the order of specific words in a particular book, humans are a complex array of compiled mutations in a precise order. For all that to happen twice would be like two alien and entirely separate races independently developing the same language.

Hopefully that answers your question. Thank you.

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People & Blogs

Tags:

• AronRa
• AbdultheImpaler

[PaperSoapy]

Okay, here is a question for you. If humans make it to mars, terraform it, and then colonize it. And the all of a sudden, communication and travel becomes impossible for 5000 or so years. Will the human species on mars, have had enough time, to change so much so, that we are no longer able to copulate with them? And for that matter, would we even be genitally compatible?

[AronRa]

I think we would still be genetically compatible, because our generations are so much longer than most other species, and even dogs are still genetically compatible with wolves.

[BFGStevo]

If the Bonobo's get their shit together im off to join them

[LostSubsForever]

Thanks Aronra! I was looking for a suitable analogy to explain to my brother that the ending of the Battlestar Galactica series didn't make any sense whatsoever (ie that humans are descended from an alien species that happened to have the same DNA as some 'primitive' species of human, and then interbred with them). The '2 authors, same book' analogy, is perfect!

[ytmndman]

Or cephalopods

[RadarGuidedVermin]

@caveman73 Caveman73's favorite spanking video:

/watch?NR=1&v=A3A1nprfuJs

[MrLittletomdj]

Aron Ra - "The biosphere's operated perfectly well without out it for well over 3000 million years"

Carl Sagen - "That's Billion!!!"

Audience - "Hahaa... you got PWNED by a cardboard cut out of Sagen! XD"

Aron Ra - "A billion in English used to represent a million million. I said 3000 million years which was still technically correct & saved unnecessary confusion!"

Audience - "Damn, the arguements water tight!!"

[zeldaofarel]

The small dogs would miss us. They'd be dinner. :-D

[Reip187]

@AronRa Interesting discussion. Wouldn't it be just as likely that even with us here that there could eventually be another species that evolves in a similar way as we did? That is if we were able to survive long enough to see it, which I assume is improbable. We'd actually observe the evolution first hand and document it. Where might we be as a species then? Are there any theories in place predicting the evolutionary processes in a species now? Is it even possible to predict such a thing?

[logicked]

@PaperSoapy This has happened many times already, as proven by the holy scripture of Star Wars. The alien species such as the Twi'lek and Togruta were isolated from humans and diverged. Also, humans already evolved before us, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. So sayeth The Force, amen.

[wohodude100]

Is it just me or does AbdultheImpailler look like ray comfort?

[hypercub]

Damn Aron, you are smart!

[Hypastpist]

there are possible candidates for the replacements other than primates, they could be the crow or raven they have or nearly have the same kind of ingeniuty like a chimp or even the octopus though itl take em a while but they are possible candidates