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12-07-2013, 03:02 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Human evolution IN SPACE
So I'm working on a campaign built around space exploration where nearly all of the "aliens" encountered are evolved humans (the players will be modern humans, think of it sort of like star trek except with evolved humans instead of aliens). In some cases they will be humans who have evolved to live in drastically different environments, in other cases humans who have been subject to selective breeding imposed the state, psedo-religious bodies or just social custom. I'm trying to come up with ideas on what this would result in. How might a society try and selectively breed itself based on different social pressures and how might living in radically different environments cause humans to evolve?
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12-07-2013, 03:17 AM | #2 |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
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Re: Human evolution IN SPACE
How long has humanity been colonizing space? Any major changes would take tens or hundreds of generations.
Populations on low-gravity world will tend to be taller, while high-gravity worlds lead to shorter members. It is not beyond the realm of possibility for humans to expand their visible spectrum. |
12-07-2013, 04:24 AM | #3 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Human evolution IN SPACE
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12-07-2013, 04:33 AM | #4 | |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: Human evolution IN SPACE
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And changes can start from simple discoveries. Perhaps somebody develops a small device that can easily power a large house really inexpensively. The power companies go under, then the banks go under, then the economy crashes world wide. The third world countries may be the ones that come out on top because they may not have as much invested in a large centralize power infrastructure.
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12-07-2013, 09:25 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Human evolution IN SPACE
Absent genetic engineering, we're talking tens of thousands of years for anything terribly significant, so I'd assume advanced biotech.
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12-07-2013, 10:47 AM | #6 |
Join Date: Aug 2012
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Re: Human evolution IN SPACE
the TV show Andromeda was very much like this but with a few species of alien. The concept was that te commonwealth had fallen and communication and travel was cut off between worlds. I suggest trying to find it as a source of ideas.
Last edited by Mike_H; 12-07-2013 at 10:51 AM. |
12-07-2013, 12:39 PM | #7 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
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Re: Human evolution IN SPACE
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While I agree with your time scale for anything Exotic/supernatural (barring a strong exotic/supernatural environment in the colony). I could see colonies with a very small genetically screened initial population and with strong immigration rules developing very differently from the rest of humanity. If your initial colonist were selected from Olympic Level Athletes, and the environment of the colony really requires very athletic/fit people to survive then your colony is probably going to have a fairly high preponderance of people with various Athletic Talents. They will probably also have a higher Health Attribute/Dex/ or Strength scores as well. Just because the initial genetic starting pool might exclusively be composed of the top 1% of people in athletics in the world. You could of course set the criteria differently and get different results as long as your starting population is not generic humans but humans selected from the greater population because they all share trait x or lack traits y. As a bit more crude example if your colony is composed elusively of Asians then none of them are going to be blondes or red heads barring extreme environmental factors on the colony world. |
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12-07-2013, 12:57 PM | #8 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Human evolution IN SPACE
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A eugenics program backed up by real science (and with more practical goals than the mostly racist ones of the early 20th century) could modify the human species more quickly than the conventional natural selection method of shooting DNA at anything that survives to maturity. And be promptly wiped out by the virus nobody thought to retain resistance to 700 years ago. Or by reproductive freedom fighters.
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12-07-2013, 04:31 PM | #9 | |
Join Date: Nov 2012
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Re: Human evolution IN SPACE
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Example 1: Bio scientists have been selectively breeding lab rats for over a hundred years now. The breeders try to pick the healthiest animals, and tend to use rate of mass gain during infancy as a proxy for health. As a result, the most common strains of lab rats now used grow to adult size much more rapidly than wild rats, but also tend to have much shorter potential lifespans (if given time; in reality, most wild rats become prey or starve before they grow old, and most laboratory rats are eventually euthanased). The candle that burns twice as bright, etc. Example 2: There is an island off the coast of the U.S. (Martha's Vineyard), that was isolated from the mainland for a long time, and was settled by a group from a single English village. By chance, this village had a higher than usual rate of hereditary deafness. By the time they built a bridge to the mainland, something like 20% of the population were deaf. As a result, deafness had become something akin to colour-blindness in the severity of its impact. As everyone had deaf relatives, absolutely everyone on the island was fluent in sign language, so Deafness had lost most of its isolating and disabling effect.
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12-07-2013, 04:26 AM | #10 | |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: Human evolution IN SPACE
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Tags |
evolution, human evolution, sci fi, space |
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