After reading about an individual Vilku, Ilyandi, we later receive a list definition of the Vilkui:
"...an international order of sacerdotes, teachers, healers, and philosophers..." (IX, p. 210)
- what CS Lewis would have called "the intelligentsia."
Ilyandi believes that she serves the star-gods. In fact, it is the Terrestrial intelligence alone that has created and guided this second human race. But Ilyandi is right that there are comparable intelligences among the stars. She is wise within the parameters of her understanding which is the most that anyone can be.
The new human race has very black skin, thin nose and lips, oblique eyes and straight blond hair. Christian reflects that there was no such race on old Earth and the new human beings do not suspect that they had predecessors.
The extra-solar intelligences might intervene to end Gaia's experiment. Time will tell but not to us.
6 comments:
When they get around to paleontology, they're going to get some surprises. Everything around them will have an evolutionary history... except them.
No primates, and I suspect that the animals in their environment wouldn't even really be mammals, not after that length of time.
Note that evolution is not "progress". Eg., dinosaurs -- and birds, their surviving exemplars had/have more efficient central nervous systems than we do. They get more "ooomph" per gram of brain matter.
I thought about the paleontology. Gaia would have to start appearing and explaining things.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
After at least a billion years would there even be human/primate FOSSILS for those future humans to discover? Tectonic plate movements alone might destroy them.
Ad astra! Sean
We do find microfossils in rocks well over a billion years old. Stromatolites might be considered to be macrofossils, and we find those from that far back. So the new humans would have a chance of working out some parts of the really ancient paleontology, even without a full explanation from Gaia.
Kaor, Jim!
Interesting, that I had not known. Thanks!
Ad astra! Sean
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