Quote:I think it was the tens or hundreds of billions of miles separating these transplanted tribes that prevented the interbreeding. After they rejoin there is little to really stop interested parties from boinking each other. My problem is the whole 100,000 years of alternate evolution that with no inter breeding for balancing genetics that occurs in the meantime. They also didn't swipe Romans here or people from modern France... the swiped pre-Ice age man-kind here. Thats before we had that lovely Ice age to cause us to get all the body fat. Ive heard you say that Earth is a cold planet that means to me that there wasnt a recent Ice age on the others. Different reasons people died off means different traits for the survivors.
Changes of the degree and type you're talking about do indeed happen, and have happened on Earth. They haven't prevented interbreeding yet - not even close.
As a side note, perhaps what caused the cat people to be cat people was that biological apocalypse it cause massive changes to the planets gene pool that mean lots of big nasties and vicious little pack hunters made out of the flora, fauna and the populous. The cat people are the ones that survived the plague relatively unscathed. Tech development at the time went towards power armor and getting off of that deranged hell. Much of their tech was lost, because it wasnt immediately useful in the situation and the planet was to dangerous to go tech hunting on afterwards. Which can make a adventure hook tech hunting on a rather hostile planet.
Quote:The humans that got transplanted to the other planets by the precursors. Where did they come from? The time period we are taking about for this extra-solar movement is when we still had at least one other competing major humanoid race running around (Neanderthals, debatably interbreeding is why slavic/Russian groups look so unibrow thugish.) and a few other minor ones too.
Huh? I have no idea what you're talking about.
If the precursors ran into Earth and went 'Oh this species has potential! Lets drop some off on other planets and see what happens!', then they had to get the people they transplanted from somewhere. Yes Earth, but where on Earth. The thing about The Gulf of Mexico is an example.
Quote:Ideas come from somewhere. Reading about said reaper I've decided it was lack of motivation. If you have enough people you effectively own (slaves, serfs, peons, etc..) There is little reason to go through expensive, time consuming R&D for something of that nature. Many, Many societies ran off of the land owner with a shiny title commanding legions of small area farmers. Making that kind of device would have led to the land workers having far more free time which they get ideas like, getting rid of the land owner who nails your tongue to a tree for saying he doesnt like. Much of the power the nobles of the world had was, because of this system. Also, the reaper takes maintenance and an operator this means someone has to understand how to make a device with spinning blades when the peons have free time and mechanized spinning blade machine that spells trouble horse-propelled spinning blades are a weapon of war after all.
I'm taling about the fact that, for example, no one conceived of something like a McCormick reaper even though none of the parts of the horse-drawn type are out of the reach of your village blacksmith.
For the reaper in question its a matter of who it came from. It came from independent farmers who had enough land to farm for profit. Farm more land, make more profit. North America had enormous areas of land that meant a peon could own as much land as a noble. This not-a-peasant could only work so much of it himself so he produced 5-12 kids for workers (he could higher more also, which means he had enough extra money to pay or buy people to work for him). To make more profit you could produce/higher more people to work for you, or you could get more work from the workers you already have.
Now you have 5-12 kids possibly some workers and itd be great if only two of them are needed for harvesting the same area and its much faster. So a need and a want were established. Which McCormick and his father filled. Look at the different harvesting rates on this sight: www.vaes.vt.edu/steeles/m...vest.html, it explains this in manpower advantages and time save and the like. Look at the out put difference per man involved in each advancement they list that for.
Inventions come around for a few basic reasons 1) A need has to be filled. In this case harvesting grain. 2) You want to do something you are already doing faster and easier. (see that page), 3) your bored and have free time.