"'You, the Master Merchant, trained in cultural comparisons and swogglehorning. A planetologist and a xenobiologist. They should be nonhumans. Different talents, you see, also not so much nerve-scratching when cooped together.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Trouble Twisters" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, March 2010), pp. 77-208 AT II, p. 99.
A Coordination Service team in Anderson's Psychotechnic History:
"Homo sapiens is a wolfish creature; two of him can end with ripping each other apart, on an indefinitely long voyage in as cramped a shell as this. But even when our agents have gentler instincts, we try to make up teams out of diverse breeds. The members must be compatible in their physical requirements but, preferably, different enough in psychologies and abilities that they form a whole which is more than its parts."
-"The Pirate," p. 144.
Van Rijn instructs Falkayn. A narrator a generation later refers to Trevelyan Micah and Smokesmith. Falkayn's companions resemble a squirrel and a dinosaur whereas Smokesmith resembles nothing on Earth which, parallel evolution notwithstanding, I think is far more probable. We inherit a head with two eyes above a nose above a mouth and an ear at each side from some early Terrestrial ancestor.
2 comments:
In fact, humans are -literally- wolfish; that is, wolves are probably the species whose instinctual behaviors most closely parallel that of human beings.
Which is why wolves were the first nonhuman species to 'move in' with us. We're compatible -- particularly in a pre-agricultural setting; we fill the same ecological niche.
This is demonstrable from physical evidence; stable bone isotope ratio analysis of Paleolithic human beings indicates a diet almost identical to that of wolves in the same area. About half from large grazing animals, the rest from small mammals, birds and occasionally fish.
Neanderthals, btw, have the same ecological footprint as lions or sabertooths.
Kaor, Paul!
I still believe parallel evolution may well happen with some intelligent races on other planets, under the right conditions. Because I think a roughly humanoid form (one head, four limbs) will make evolutionary sense for some species.
Ad astra! Sean
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