After the Ancients...

[captainjack23]

Actually, all these juicy nuggets give us license to retcon the ancients, or at least part of the story.

After all, the tale we have is unknowable to any person living in the 6th millenium CE. If their story is similar (well, it is), then it is just the pat, "Time Team" version. The evidence: scattered populations of hominids who must have all originated on the same world; an ancient and widespread and powerful civilisation, that, as far as can be said (the ruins that can be dated), was violently destroyed about 300,000 years ago - ergo, these Ancients transplanted primitive man across hundreds of light years of space.

However, we know that homo sapiens did not evolve in its present form until about 200,000-150,000 years ago (does the 3I know this ...?); what's more, we know that there was a bottle neck around 75,000 years ago where the human population was reduced to about 5,000-10,000 individuals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

Now, it really is stretching it that hominid samples taken 225,000 years before that would share exactly the same genome as the small, isolated number of survivors (who were probably all African) of that extinction event.

It is far more likely, therefore, that the Vilani, Zhodani, Darrians, etc, were transplanted after this event, taken from the small population of survivors, that is if they are to be as homogenous with the Solomani as presented in the books.

So that points to another set of ancients, who were active after 75,000BC, and the ones who died (if they did) 300,000 years ago may have had nothing to do with spreading humaniti all over the place.

Just a few thoughts, anyhow...

And excellent thoughts they are. The bottleneck is a valid issue, although one can make the argument from a genetic perspective that it would likely reduce variance and thus stabilize the population; that's assuming that it was a non-random effect that caused differential selection. Which, I think could well describe the Ancients (or some other power) meddling in our genepool.

To cut to the chase, I really, really like the idea of retconning, or even leaving mysterious what we know about the Ancients.

As I've said, I don't think the current ancient hypothesis is far fetched (particulalry given that MWM et al brutally failed to provide us with genome maps of all the human races in the OTU.* :wink: )
Still -and this is important-that doesn't mean I think it's the best one. I don't. I just think it fails on more storytelling considerations, and that hammering on its perceived real world contradictions is not very useful, particularly when the real world knowledge is complex, in flux, and still open to interpretation. That way lies madness, or at least eighteen pages of scientific blather as a corrective....

I like the fact that things aren't fully understood, particularly your idea that something shuffled the deck even after the last war.....if there was such a thing, at all..... :twisted:




More detailed comment about bottleneck theory:
Catastrophic events have differnt effects than environmental pressure on an entire population. In particular, events occur that create so much stress that pretty much every species has an equal chance of dying -evolutionary adaptaion just isn't fast enough when the deccan traps let go and scald the entire earth....accordingly, what happens is that the survivors are a subset determined by being in the right place at the wrong time, not becuase of any basic superiority. a 99% extinction event will leave survivors, but the real survivors may come from a small group that just happened to be close enough to find one another and keep breeding. the best example is in the precambrian era, where the BIG functionally random dieoff at the end of the period essentially stabilized all basic phyla where they are now, by destroying most of the preexisting ones, root and branch. The survivors survived simply due to random chance, not any inherent or responsively evolved traits.

This opens up lots of new ecological niches, but the variance isn't always available to effectively exploit them ; in fact one sees that sucessive generations of post catastrophy radiates are less variant than the extinct ones -as a broad rule. Insects survive everything, it seems, so have vast variability - but mammals are all pretty much varoiations on one or two basic body plans;much less than the clades they survived, in fact. And all of them are derived from survivors of the devonian dieoff, and further limited by the move onto land. both of which is all cordate animals are quadrapeds.


*One might think that that is an opportunity rather than a flaw. But I digress....

 

[captainjack23]

In my view the development of the Hominids in Niven's Ringworld novels
is far more plausible than their non-development in Traveller's Third Im-
perium setting.

keep in mind that the the root pak were a large population of Homo habilis introduced into an empty and completely safe biosphere, and given several million years to evolve. Not quite the same .

My question is this, and I suspect it may be answered in one of the later books: if so, why did the protectors allow them to evolve at all ? Mutations (and thus evolution) was somthing the whole Pak setup was geared to prevent. I presume they must have died off at some point, possibly after seeding fallout into the environment, as did the ones that tried to colonize earth ?

 

[Gamerguy]

:shock:

"Precursors" are VERY common in Science Fiction. Super High Tech aliens, now long gone who spread Humans around the galaxy in ancient times are a staple of Science Fiction.

As Science learns more about our origens, the details of "Legacy of the Ancients" will have to change too.

"The Legacy of the Ancients

At some point thousands of years ago our region of the galaxy was dominated by a species, now known only as the Ancients, who wielded fantastic technology. Though the details are unknown (at least to the player's characters; the true history of the Ancients is available to the referee), it is believed that the Ancients destroyed themselves in a 2,000-year period of massive internecine warfare. Though long gone, the effects of the Ancients' reign are still evident, from the seeding of humanity (and creatures genetically engineered from Terran animals) across scores of worlds to the incomprehensible ruins and artifacts which are occasionally discovered.

Humans are common and dominant

Due to the Ancient race that scattered humanity across the stars, there are many worlds on which Human civilizations developed other than Earth. Two major space-faring races, the Vilani and the Zhodani, arose from such transplants. Solomani (humans of Earth) also eventually rose into interstellar dominance. Humans are the most populous species in known space and thus rule or heavily influence most worlds. The result of thousands of years of individual evolution on such widely divergent worlds (or, in some cases, deliberate genetic engineering by the Ancients) has resulted in broad speciation within the human genotype, however."

In MTU, I also have the K'ree and Aslans genengineered from Terrian stock also.

8)

 

[Cleon the Mad]

In my view the development of the Hominids in Niven's Ringworld novels
is far more plausible than their non-development in Traveller's Third Im-
perium setting.

Sorry if someone else brought this up, I haven't read every post yet.

But Niven's Ringworld hominids also evolved to fill specific niches on the Ringword since so many various niches didn't exist there, due to the Protectors trying to make a safe enviroment for their Breeders. Thus, all the different Hominids are in part due to their being a NEED for various species. For instance the "Ghouls" exist because the Protectors didn't bring in any hyenas of vultures from Earth, or anything else that's a scavenger carnivore from any other planet. Some niche for a large grazing cattle-like herbivore was left empty or only partially filled, so the Grass Giants also exist, and so forth.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I say leave the humaniti/Ancients a mystery...

1. Ancients apparently seeded Humans and other Terran species 300,000 years ago.

2. True humans did not develop on earth until about 100,000 years ago.

3. There was an evolutionary bottleneck on earth, but all (or most) of the non-Terran humans seem to have common traits with these post-bottleneck humans.

Those three points are all true, but they are also contradictory. The REAL reason is not known. There are several theories for how all three statements could be true, but no one really knows.

It lets you keep everything that has been printed in the OTU, but doesn't ignore what is known to 21st Century Terrans either. It also gives you back a mystery.

 

[captainjack23]

I say leave the humaniti/Ancients a mystery...

1. Ancients apparently seeded Humans and other Terran species 300,000 years ago.

2. True humans did not develop on earth until about 100,000 years ago.

3. There was an evolutionary bottleneck on earth, but all (or most) of the non-Terran humans seem to have common traits with these post-bottleneck humans.

Those three points are all true, but they are also contradictory. The REAL reason is not known. There are several theories for how all three statements could be true, but no one really knows.

It lets you keep everything that has been printed in the OTU, but doesn't ignore what is known to 21st Century Terrans either. It also gives you back a mystery.

Ditto. I also like the possibility that what they know in the 3I is both more and less accurate than what we know about the subject....or at least that key facts are long since buried in the Big Huge databases of data on the subject. (It's bad now....in another semi uninterrupted couple of millenium ?......gah)

 

[Stofsk]

If the problem is the dates involved, why not bring the Ancient's tampering forward by a couple hundred thousand years? Say they spread humaniti around 100K years ago, then disappeared, rather than 300K years.

In real life, theories get busted and updated all the time, why wouldn't it be so in a fictional sci-fi setting? It's a retcon, but this would be one of those instances where a retcon is viable and necessary in my opinion.

 

[Gamerguy]

8)

I checked with many Traveller players. THE BACKGROUND THEY LIKE IS THE SECRET OF THE ANCIENTS AND THE THIRD IMPERIUM BACKGROUND.

So - along with Emperior Strephon, Archduke Norris, etc. The Ancients story is quite popular.

And I can see why. Ancient ruins from a highly advanced civilization is quite fun to explore.

50,000 years, 100,000 years, 300,000 years does not matter really - and as we know more about our origens this should be revised - old is still old.

In MTU, I still have many TL 24 Ancient worlds that survived the great war intact, red-zoned and closely guarded of course.

:shock:

 

[EDG]

If the problem is the dates involved, why not bring the Ancient's tampering forward by a couple hundred thousand years? Say they spread humaniti around 100K years ago, then disappeared, rather than 300K years.

I'd be good with the dated revised to 100,000 years. That's still long enough ago to be "in the mists of [human] time" but not so long ago that the Ancients wouldn't have picked up something much closer to modern homo sapiens.

Heck, why not tie that in to the Atlantis myth. Maybe that was an Ancient City on Earth where humans lived with the Ancients, until the Final War gave Earth a glancing blow and destroyed it.

(it does kinda baffle me that no attempt was made in CT to tie all those groovy 70s mysteries like crystal skulls, nazca lines, the bermuda triangle and atlantis to the Ancients. Maybe Von Daniken beat Marc Miller to it?).

 

[alex_greene]

Bear in mind that all of human written history, from the "dawn of civilisation" to the modern day, is only 5,000 years old from the time of the first established writings.

If humans have been, in some form, in existence for between 40,000 and 100,000 years - leaving rock art on walls, etched pieces of worked stone and bits of stuff like pornographic Venus figurines and flint axeheads - that is an awful lot of history we don't really know, except by looking at the few artefacts they have left behind.

Their artefacts, and their bones.

 

[captainjack23]

Bear in mind that all of human written history, from the "dawn of civilisation" to the modern day, is only 5,000 years old from the time of the first established writings.

If humans have been, in some form, in existence for between 40,000 and 100,000 years - leaving rock art on walls, etched pieces of worked stone and bits of stuff like pornographic Venus figurines and flint axeheads - that is an awful lot of history we don't really know, except by looking at the few artefacts they have left behind.

Their artefacts, and their bones.

Changing the date isn't a bad idea at all. If nothing else, it breathes some new life into the old "ancient terraforming" argument for small planets with atmospheres...

So, 100K is probably as good as any, particulalry as it brings the events close to legendary times (atlantis et al) ; but Honestly, the differnece is entirely one of literary preference -100K isn't any more or less scientific than 300K.

The difference is pretty trivial when choosing between 300K or 100K in evolutionary terms . According to the most conservative estimates, humans essentially indestinguishable from modern humans have been around for at least 200K years; and not unreasonable finds seem to stretch it back to near 300K; and remember -Anatomically modern homo sapiens isn't our ancestor -it's us; and the archaic homo sapiens isn't chimpoids -its us with slightly bigger brows and smaller chins.

I hate to keep on about this, but while I don't mind scientificizing traveller tropes, in general it's an issue when people seem to have considerable misinformation on the subject - not ignorance, not at all. Its a complex subject. Modern humans do go back well over 100K; and evolutionary genetics isn't straightforward or reliably linear in the timeframe we are talking about.

Possibly its such a bee for me is has to do with the recent politicization of evolution and genetics here in the states; there is a considerable amount of misinformation being passed around by biased parties, and a want of education on the subject. So its easy for otherwise smart and uninvolved people to get bad data.

In point of fact, the Wikipedia entry on human origins and Archaic homo sapiens are pretty good for presenting a timeline, and acknowleging that the timeline is still a matter of probabilities in paleoanthropogy. Check it out.

 

[captainjack23]

So for traveller, what I see is this: the advantage of the 300K date is that it leaves the ancients with a much wider choice of humans and human cousins to pick from -and leaves open the question of them creating modern stock. However, the 100K date seems to fit the elements of the story better, certainly from casual inspection, and it doesn't make any particular issues arise on detailed inspection. Plus it seems to fit in the epic ideas of the ancient's story.

The third option is this: evidence points in both directions, so the matter is unsolved. All the issues that EDG and I discussed are exactly what is going on in imperial science.....hard dates exist for ancient artifacts, and some genetic data, but contradictory ideas based on different basic views of genetics,evolution and and biology, with the the rest being unproven causal links. Perhaps the ancients did exist 300K ago - perhaps not. Did they move humans around ? Create vargr, sure. But........humans ? Why then don't things add up more clearly ?Why does it look like there are partially solid cllues to multiple interventions, even after the last known date of the ancients.... Somthing seems to be missing.

Plus, let's not forget. All the evolutionary data is from Earth -and in Solomani space, that has become firmly attached to a supremist political ideology. Possibly, human evolution is regarded as just as iffily as.....eugenic ideas of race in the late 30's are to us.

 

[kafka]

Ok, how is this as a possible solution (afterall is this not one of the functions of this board to act as a sounding board for ideas).

Could their be two sets of Ancients? One with the familar Grandfather and all and another that retained many of the characteristics of the first but came later on the scene...say, indeed, around -100,000. Both were engaged in kidnapping early homids.

The two Ancients could be combined really confusing the fossil record on many worlds. We know that Ancients routinely used pocket universes for isolated experiments, could it be one of the Ancient-Primus escaped (like that article about the further worlds in the Regina system) and became Ancient-Secondus carrying out experiments.

Or when did the coyns start to appear? Perhaps not all Droyne lost all their technology...perhaps, another mutation leading Eve/Grandmother.

Even more exciting would be an entirely new set of Ancients to replace Grandfather and all.