Vargr

[Sigtrygg]

The numbers don't work.

The Ziru Sirka had more worlds than the current Third Imperium. Canonically Terrans numbered around 12 billion at the start of the ISW era.

During the ISW era Terra gains worlds from the Ziru Sirka, sets up colony worlds, and some hybridisation begins.

At the end of the war there is a diaspora of Terran military personnel throughout the Ziru Sirka, nost Terran military at this time come from the colonies and ex-Ziru Sirka worlds.

There simply are not enough Terran humans making the trip into the Ziru Sirka for there to be more than a token splash of Terran DNA...

That said it it likely to trigger an event like homo sapiens breeding with neanderthals and denisovan, some of that DNA is so important to the new hybrid that it is retained within the genome of the hybrid generation to generation. There are no "pure" homo sapiens around on Earth today.

 

[Vormaerin]

Oh, I agree. It makes no sense that the Solomani and their one planet totally outbred thousands of worlds of Vilani. Or even the Solomani plus the dozens of other human minor races.

Which is why I think that environmental adaptations to the many worlds that "Vilani" have been living on for three or four thousand years probably has a lot to do with "not being pure strain Vilani" any more. Just like the idea that Vilani would have that 32 hour circadian rhythm after thousands of years of adaptation to a different planet makes no sense

 

[rinku]

I doubt the Terrans particularly breed faster than other humans. But, yes, the general assumption of the setting is that those thousands of worlds of Vilani did not retain their longevity, whether through local environmental pressures or mixture with the dozens of other humans that they encountered.

Even if your character has Vland as your homeworld, you've got a 17% chance that you're basically not Vilani to any meaningful degree. And only a 27% chance of having pure Vilani ancestry?

And, I suspect that most people who choose to play in Charted Space choose to play in one of the regions that actually has sourcebooks, so odds are you are not from Vland

We're horny monkeys, as a species. Family size is basically a cultural thing and economic choice... I was assuming Vilani have the same baseline fertility as Terrans... but a more rigid tradition about family size. Quite likely a Population Bureau to manage it all. New colonies will allow bigger families... but the Vilani as a group aren't founding any, the Terrans are. The more adventurous Vilani would mostly be joining Terran led projects and becoming part of the modern gene pool.

 

[rinku]

One million humans having on average three children per woman that survive until adulthood to continue the cycle (assume that comes to a growth rate of 150% over 20 years, or an annual increase of 7.5%) will be 1.3 billion in a century. Those aren't unrealistic figures, and require no technology, just recruitment of colonists that want kids.

 

[G'Naakbusters]

Population controls would definitely depend upon the era, in fairness. Third child inherits in Vilani culture; it's almost a reverse ihatei situation. Given their great expansionist ethic for much of their history it seems that once the Vilani got jump drive they were more interested in encouraging large families for populating the stars than they were in containing the population. How things changed when the Ziru Sirka was at its height and turned more to ensuring stability (and ultimately arguable stagnation), that is indeed the question; they might well have had rigid controls at that point. That said, Tradition is the ultimate source of Vilani custom; if fifty generations of ancestors did it one way, some government coming along and trying to promote something different was probably scandalous.

There was also the Plague of Duskir. So large families might have been justified during the era of Terran contact/war/control as a means of recuperating losses from disease?

 

[rinku]

Well, pre-contact Earth itself might have enforced population control issues. It's a common trope, anchored in actual real world experiments such as China's One Child policy. An interstellar era following a period of enforced reduced childbirth should see a big population explosion, as restrictions can lift and those that still object to them can leave.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

One million humans having on average three children per woman that survive until adulthood to continue the cycle (assume that comes to a growth rate of 150% over 20 years, or an annual increase of 7.5%) will be 1.3 billion in a century. Those aren't unrealistic figures, and require no technology, just recruitment of colonists that want kids.

Better still you have a military demobilizing people all over the space you've conquered taking local spouses (and thereby "contaminating" the blood lines). So the hybrids multiply at that rate but because only one parent is foreign it increases the hybrid population faster. Not to mention all the women impregnated and abandoned when the troops ship out never to return spreading the Solomani genome far and wide.

 

[rinku]

Well, unless they remain as occupiers, and in numbers that are large enough, their influence is going to fade within a couple of generations. That's a minor effect, like Dutch in Indonesia or Japanese in China. A few stationed troops with local wives just ends up with great grandkids that may or may not have some of their great-grandparent's genes.

Major demographic changes need more than that.

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on how far you're prepared to go.

 

[GypsyComet]

The Interstellar Wars were around 200 years, and the RoM another 500. Here on Earth, the last 700 years has seen about a 20x increase in population. Then add the Long Night, another 1700 years. That era came with some tech regression that may have led to higher birthrates if an agrarian surge took place, but that would be locally variable.
The key is that Vilani dilution had already been going on for at least two millennia prior to that, and probably longer. The Consolidation Wars lasted a thousand years and led to the ZS, which was another thousand-year empire, roughly. Those wars were in response to the prior three or four thousand years of "unregulated" sales of jump drives to barbarians.
The Vilani have been questionable first dates for as much as 10,000 years. That there is any purely Vilani population remaining is remarkable.