ORICHALCUM UNIVERSE Sidebar: Multisapients

[Johnny1A.2]

MULTISAPIENTS

SIMPLIFIED TAXONOMY: Solarigensis Terrigensis Eukaryota Animalia Chordata Vertebrata Mammalia Primates Hominidae Homininae Hominini Protohomina Nonhomo multisapiens

The species taxonomists in the early Twenty-Second Century will refer to as Nonhomo multisapiens is actually a remarkably close relative of Mankind, considering how very, very different from us they are. The evolutionary line that led to N. multisapiens diverged from that leading to H. sapiens only about two and a half million years before the present time, almost exactly at the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary.

The first division of the two evolutionary lines occurred in eastern Africa, and for some time (on a mortal scale) the two lines coexisted in similar environments and exploiting comparable niches. Considerably hybridization occurred during the early stages of the split, before the two lines became too different to successfully interbreed, at about 2.4 million years BP.

Subsequent to this division, the first great change that pointed the two lines toward different destinies was the incursion into their African home territory of the invasive ancestors of the infamous species Incubus devoraris, a predatory ape that was a distant cousin of both the proto-human line and the proto-multisapient line. [1]

In those early times, both lines were of comparable intelligence, and both were among the most intelligent creatures that Earth had yet seen. Both had reached the minimum stage of mental organization that enabled them to actually use the latent psionic potential present in Solarigen life, and both were making extensive use of these new abilities, though in somewhat different ways, at the time that Devourer predation became a danger.

As described elsewhere, that initially use psionic potentiality actually made the early proto-humans and their proto-multisapient cousins very vulnerable to the new predators. [1]

In the proto-human line, the countering adaptations were self-nullification of psionic abilities by ever-increasing antipsionic activity, coupled to a steady increase in both intelligence and social organization.

The proto-multisapients displayed a different set of adaptations in response to the advent of I. devoraris. Instead of self-suppression of psionic power, the ancestors of the multisapients increased their telepathic connectivity, and became ever more organized socially. Initially, both evolutionary lines showed greater sociality, but the proto-human line became 'sociable' in the sense of groups of individuals, while their cousins became ever more mentally linked, so that their small tribes and bands were able to act with a coordination that made them very difficult prey.

The initial price of this, though, was that the telepathic nature of the sociality meant that higher intelligence was not necessarily a selective advantage to the same degree as with the proto-human line. The proto-multisapient line could achieve the same level of coordination and cooperation without the higher levels of social intelligence necessary for cooperation in the proto-human line. The high metabolic cost of greater brain size, in fact, selected to some degree against higher individual intelligence among this line, because the cost was not counterbalanced by advantages.

At the same time, climate shifts were causing various species to move around in Africa, and these creatures were no exception. It so happened that the two lines moved in different directions, for the most part, and eventually became separated by some hundreds of kilometers in their primary breeding populations.

(It should be kept in mind that at this stage, the numbers of both groups were very small in absolute terms.)

While the proto-human line eventually overcame the threat from I. devoraris through self-suppression of psionic activity and higher individual intelligence, the other line eventually achieved a victory of their own through the increase of collective intelligence, and refinement of their psionic power so that they could make use of it and conceal its presence from the senses of the Devourers.

Both evolutionary 'approaches' worked, but they worked in different ways and produced very different results and very different side-effects as well. By the time the proto-human line had overcome the Devourer danger, they had evolved into Homo erectus and were well on their way toward becoming modern Man and his close evolutionary cousins.

By the time of the extinction of I. devoraris, the other line had become something very different. Superficially, they still resembled their cousins, some of their physical evolution had paralleled the proto-human line. Both lines had gained height, become more comfortably bipedal, both had increased their brain size (though the proto-human line more so at this stage), both were comparable in size. Indeed, in later ages, proto-multisapient remains would occasionally be mistaken for H. erectus remains, especially when the skull was absent.

This error was made the less common, though, because by this stage (about one million years BP), the proto-human line, mostly meaning H. erectus in his various regional variations, was vastly more numerous than the proto-multisapient line. By this stage, H. erectus had spread through much of Africa and penetrated well into Eurasia and was still spreading.

The proto-multisapient ancestors, by contrast, were still limited to a few regions of Africa, particularly the deep jungles and some remote mountain regions. They were being severely outcompeted by their distant cousins.

The reason for this lay in the radically different mentalities of the two breeds.

To be continued...


[1] As noted here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=70292&page=3