Evolution and GURPS

[Ketsuban]

(This is generalised from discussions regarding Homo neanderthalensis which took place previously.)

I was pondering a game in which a smallish town (including the PCs) is 'picked up' and deposited sometime in the geologic past (probably the Pleistocene or the Eocene). The town is rendered uninhabitable by the transport, but the inhabitants retain some emergency medical supplies.

My question is how to stat typical creatures of the geologic period I end up choosing, especially when they represent direct ancestors of modern species whose stats are given in existing books (e.g. H. erectus).

[nanoboy]

That wasn't very long ago in evolutionary time. Most of the creatures will have identical stats for the purposes and resolution of GURPS. Some creatures will be new the characters, as they are now extinct (dire wolves, saber-tooth tigers, woolly mammoths, etc.) The same pretty much goes for fellow humans of the period, too. Homo sapiens have not evolved much from the time. There may be an issue with disease resistance, though. Post-civilization humans have a much greater range of disease resistance, since city life and animal domestication selects against susceptibility more than hunter-gatherer lifestyles.

[Fish]

There's a huge difference between the Pleistocene and the Eocene... which do you mean?

The Pleistocene dates from 1.8 MYA to the very-recent past (12K years or so). We're talking H. erectus, H. neanderthalis, H. sapiens, H. rhodesiensis.

The Eocene dates from 55 MYA to 45 MYA... at best, 40 million years before Lucy (A. afarensis).

[Rabiddave]

Originally Posted by Fish

There's a huge difference between the Pleistocene and the Eocene... which do you mean?

The Pleistocene dates from 1.8 MYA to the very-recent past (12K years or so). We're talking H. erectus, H. neanderthalis, H. sapiens, H. rhodesiensis.

The Eocene dates from 55 MYA to 45 MYA... at best, 40 million years before Lucy (A. afarensis).

Yep, if you're thinkin Eocene, this is the period of the earliest known prosimians (monkeys, basically), no apes yet.

[nanoboy]

Oh, yeah. As Fish mentioned, a bunch of other members of our genus were running around at the time. It's hard to know what they were really like from the evidence that we have, but if you're putting it in the period and place where you can find these guys, they'll be rather different. It appears that there was no interbreeding between H. sapiens and the other members of the genus Homo. That the others went extinct, presumably from competition, indicates that there was probably some degree of conflict among these people.

How you treat this could be interesting. Issues of "racism" can come up, and if you make the other people sufficiently different from modern humans, lots of fun can be had.

Mind you, if you plop your village down in North America, the humans will be utterly alone there, prior to 30,000 years or so ago. If it's Europe, Asia, or Africa, though, watch out!

[Rabiddave]

For Erectus, roughly 1.7 - 0.5 mya. Should be later than around 0.9 mya if you are on any continent other than Africa (ie. europe or asia).

for erectus:
-average brain capacity = 1000 cubic centimeters (by comparison, modern humans have average of 1350 cc). This is more than predessessor species, and Erectus sights had Aechulian tools (sharper, biface condtruction) than the prior Oldowan tools (although not in asia). They never advanced much beyond this, however, so many speculate that the larger brains relative to their predessessors was a physical evolutionary advantage (ie. they could hunt for longer periods of time in the hot midday sun because larger brains overheat slower). alternately, they could also run for longer distances chasing predators (see space p.145 for an idea of this).
-due to a more physical lifestyle and less overall reliance on technology, they probably required at least slightly higher physical stats than humans do today.

overall, maybe: ST+2 (hunter-gathering lifestyle)
DX+1 (ditto)
IQ-2 (lower brain capacity)
HT+2 (Chase-hunters)

Per+4 (to put it at least 12)

advan: fit,
disads: bestial, cannot speak, dyslexia, hidebound (slow cultural change), stress atavism, short lifespan,

[Ketsuban]

Originally Posted by Fish

There's a huge difference between the Pleistocene and the Eocene... which do you mean?

Either. I only know I want it to be some point in the geologic past; if I can avoid Jurassic Park crap I'd even go for dinosaurs. If I can find a way to get humans underwater, you can bet your sweet bippy I'm going to the Devonian or even the Cambrian. (Dunkleosteus!)

Both the Pleistocene and the Eocene have good points to them. The Pleistocene has a whole raft of interesting fauna - machairodonts, mammoths and such - and some hominids (mainly H. erectus) to compete with; the Eocene has some equally interesting fauna (the emergence of ungulates and equids, and I'd love to have the PCs interact with Pakicetus) and a slightly unusual map (Europe is mostly underwater).

I guess I could bend historical truth and combine features from different epochs, making a generic "fossil world" rather than a realistic representation of a particular time...

[Quadrone]

Are you familiar with GURPS Lands Out of Time? Not the most serious treatment of the subject, but it might help out. There's also GURPS Ice Age. Admittedly, it's for 3rd edition, but might have some useful into (and it's only $3!).

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

Homo erectus were a bit better runners than us, because their heads were smaller so they could afford to have narrower hips. I don't know if there was enough difference to change their Basic Move in GURPS terms, though.

They did have the use of fire, in at least some capacity, and but Homo habilis and the Australopithecus species did not.

Neanderthals had thick bodies, probably high Temperature Tolerance, and high ST. Their brains were as big as ours, but their larger bodies also required more coordination. Also, they produced very little art, and only after contact with our species. So their intelligence, language abilities, etc. are unknown. I would make them more intelligent than Homo erectus for sure, though. But give them Innumerate and Non-Iconographic.



In terms of animals, there's no easy answer. During the Pleistocene, pretty much every animal species alive today was already around, and many extinct species were similar enough to modern ones to make very little difference -- ie, a woolly mammoth is pretty similar to an African elephant, probably. Giant Colombian and steppe mammoths would require larger HP, ST, and HT, but otherwise should be similar.
However, some Pleistocene animals were like nothing alive today. Glyptodonts, sabre-tooths, giant sloths, moas, Machrauchenia, dwarf elephants, Sivatherium, Thylacoleo, mastodons, giant kangaroos, etc... and it depends on where you send the village. In Europe and parts of Asia and Africa, the fauna won't include many animals that require you to invent stats, but there will be a few. In the Americas, Australia, or New Zealand, its a different story.

The further back you go in time, the less and less the animals will resemble living forms, and the more of them will require you to write new stats. In the Pliocene, I think you could get away with using the stats of modern animals for some species. Before the Pliocene though, I would not use modern animal templates as-is for any of the animals. Especially if you are planning to use the Oligocene, Eocene, or Paleocene, when mammals were radically different from living families.



If you pick an epoch and continent, I can help you stat out the animals, though I will be pressed for time after Jan 30.

[Fish]

I'm thinking that only the megafauna would need stats; creatures on the size of fish, birds and rabbits wouldn't really register on the GURPS charts for ST, DX or IQ anyway.

If it were me, I'd slightly modify the creatures that already live on Earth. Of all the species that ever lived on Earth, we have fossil records of a tiny, tiny fraction. Only the creatures who died at the right time and in the right place left any bones for us to discover. Whole generations of species are virtually unknown. As long as it fits into some logical niche in its ecosystem it could plausibly have existed beyond our knowledge.