Supernova radiation kills the inhabitants of a planet later named, for other reasons, "Good Luck."
Trevelyan Micah of the Stellar Union Coordination Service explores a city on Good Luck.
Although some statues and dimmed murals show combat and two murals show a being in rags bursting out of chains, most imagery is peaceful with a strong floral motif.
In Satan's World in Anderson's Technic History
On the planet Dathyna, the dominant species is exterminated by a mutant species generated by a solar flare.
Chee Lan of Solar Spice & Liquors explores ruins on Dathyna.
Two scenes on a mosaic show individual combat but most pictures show:
"Masses of Dathynans...working together: never fighting."
-Satan's World, XXIII.
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Anderson was careful to say about herbivorous intelligent life in SATAN'S WORLD that just because they don't eat meat did not mean they were better than other races, merely that their sins were different.
But if the organized, institutionalized use of force did not come naturally to the Old Shenn of Dathyna, I can see how a mutated form of the parental species, better able to cope with changing conditions, including learning how to eat meat, could exterminate the older race.
Ad astra! Sean
For that matter, if you're familiar with Cape Buffalo... well, let's put it this way, they're not one-ton weights of armored muscle and horn for nothing.
They'll sometimes charge you just for the hell of it. If you hurt one, they'll do things like lay a blood trail through a swamp, then circle back on their own tracks and hide in the reeds, waiting all day to ambush you.(*)
They stomp lions to death on general principle sometimes, and chase them up trees while trying to quite often -- I've seen them do it myself.
There's a scene in ICE AGE, the animated movie, where two giant herbivores are pursuing Sid the Sloth. Manny the Mammoth protects him, and asks: "I thought you guys were herbivores?"
They reply: "Who said we were going to eat him after we kill him?"
(*) you can sort of tell African animals co-evolved with human beings. They're much more dangerous and/or cunning than their equivalents elsewhere for the most part.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Ha! Your point being, of course, that some herbivores will be just as bellicose and aggressive as any carnivores or omnivores.
Maybe that's why early hominins/humans left Africa, because the rest of the world was safer!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it was certainly -easier-. Note how the spread of h. sap. sap. out of Africa coincides with extinctions of large animals.
They didn't know what hit them.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
These animals got hit by merciless apex predators! And these massive extinctions were esp. noticeable after the proto-Indians reached the Americas. And these early "modern" humans were probably responsible for the extinction (aside from some minimal interbreeding) of Homo neanderthalensis.
Ad astra! Sean
Yup. All hominins from Homo Erectus on were apex predators; modern humans turned out to be apex predators on steroids.
And without the danger of overspecialization, which makes apex predator a chancy ecological niche.
If humans wiped out a favored prey species, they could just switch to something else -- eat rabbits and roots instead of mammoths.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Eating rabbits and grubbing up roots beats starving, I agree, but nowhere as satisfactory as hunting mammoth was! To say nothing of the status and bragging rights hunters would get from chasing down really dangerous prey.
Ad astra! Sean
Hunting large animals is also more energy-economical than taking lots of smaller ones. It's risky, but the payoff is high if your technique is good.
Theodore Roosevelt noted that American cougars were about the same size as African leopards, and hunted prey of roughly similar types, but were much less dangerous to human beings.
(Leopards -are- dangerous, btw.)
I think this is a result of co-evolution.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I have read about how much more energy efficient larger animals are compare to small ones in some of Anderson's stories. A mammoth not only supplied far larger and much more satisfacctory quantities of meat than rabbits, it also provided hunters and their clans hides, bones, tusks, etc., for many, many useful purposes.
African leopards are much more dangerous than cougars to humans because the former preyed on hominins/humans millions of years when they were much weaker and vulnerable.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: not only that, but each generation of leopards was the offspring of those who”d survived in contact with increasingly capable hominids.
Cougars got the whole package dumped on them ‘at once’.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I can see that. And humans no longer have to cope with leopards with just hand thrown rocks or fire sharpened sticks.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: note that a well-trained, active, experienced human hunter with a spear (or even a knife) can be -physically- a match for a leopard or cougar.
The difference is that cougars don't have good instincts for dealing with humans that way, compared to leopards -- who have been around hominins with spears, knives and clubs for going on 2,000,000 years, as opposed to about 14,000 years.
TR might have come out unharmed from jumping on a leopard while equipped with a bowie knife in 1901, but he was less likely to do so than jumping on a cougar of equal size and strength.
The leopard has 2,000,000 years of ancestors shouting: "Deadly dangerous, ignore the dogs and deal with the human, kill or flee NOW NOW NOW!"
Because the ancestors that did that survived to become ancestors.
The cougar had more of a: "Surrounded by wolves, focus on them... uh, what? What's that?" response.
And the bowie knife goes between the ribs.
Neither of them is going to be great when confronted by a human with a rifle -- except that the leopard has say 500,000 years of ancestors who survived "Human with a distance weapon" problems, whereas the cougar has only the 14,000 years.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I read these informatively amusing comments twice! I think you meant to say TR was less likely to be injured from leaping on a cougar with just a Bowie knife, not a LEOPARD.
And I would first want to get that required training and experience before trying my luck with either kind of animal. But even a tenderfoot like me might survive if I had an adequate weapon and kept my head.
The first distance weapons leopards had to contend with were spears throw faster and harder with spear throwers. Next came bows or even cross bows, finally guns.
Ad astra! Sean
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