Grrl Power #760 – Necessity is the mother of space travel
I hate when I think of jokes that require me to draw weird stuff I have no idea how to draw. Well, I’ve never drawn an alien space station before Grrl Power, or an alien food court, or the inside or outside of a spaceship… Or… buildings or cars or guns or parking lots…
Okay, maybe that’s not a valid thing to complain about if I’m trying to make a living as a comic artists, but I’m still allowed to complain that crabs are hard to draw. I guess I could have put Garthim warriors in those two panels, but I’ve never drawn them either, so that wouldn’t have helped.
Basically before I did this comic, 99% of my art was superheroine pinups and… other art mostly involving the female form. *cough*
The thing about Dabbler’s hypothesis is, I kind of hate this argument because it validates all the lazy alien designs in Star Trek and basically every other space show that I have complained about here and elsewhere. Really it’s my own fault for being lazy when it comes to drawing aliens. I could have made all the aliens on Fracture Station really bizarre, but it’s kind of not really in my wheelhouse to design stuff like that. Plus then I would have had a harder time justifying Dabbler’s looking like a sexy human woman with some cosmetic add-ons if everything Sydney encountered in space looked like something from the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
Maybe the next alien they encounter will look like a spider with jellyfish for legs.
But to sum up her postulate; the humanoid form is successful because it lets us do a lot with a little. A little less (one eye, one leg, etc) and we’d be fucked, too much (twenty arms) and we’d be fucked the first time a famine rolls around, and if we were too good (acid spit and regeneration and natural armor) and we’d be lazy, both physically and intellectually.
It’s kind of a big swing, but I was trying to come up with a reason so many aliens look… 85% similar without resorting to precursors/progenitors/ancients seeding the galaxy with life, while at the same time leaving myself wiggle room for basically anything I want to include.
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One of the youtubers I watch is TierZoo, who covers a bunch of evolutionary knowledge including the basis for a species to gain the use of technology.
the interesting thing is body form, environment, society and everything would also influence ship and vehicle design. I have a tauric species i made up as a hobby, that’s descended from Grazers, as such, their ships are fairly flat inside, have a lot of viewscreens/windows (Racial Claustrophobia due to being plains grazers), and so on.
Sounds like the kind of species that would work well in cubicles…randomly peaking their head over the walls like it is tall grass. Hanging around the water cooler “oasis”. Unlikely to have the ability to bend and or stop bullets mid flight.
Definitely not standard cubicles, there’s nowhere to run to if they see a predator, that’s sure to set off some racial anxiety.
If a lion was to somehow wander into the office, they’d be an easy lunch trapped in those rows!
eh, sapience can cause you to ignore your instincts, granted causing stress, and then you don’t know where the stress is coming from due to disassociation.
For instance, although humans can’t hear it, your body can still feel infrasonic vibrations. Your “primitive” brain interprets these as the sounds of a predator (tigers and lions use infrasonic sounds), the vibration is similar to that of a broken fridge as an example. So while you may know you only have a broken fridge, that part of your brain thinks there is a tiger in the other room and increases stress hormones in the body to “keep you at the ready”; but it keeps up and on and goes on…and well…that is very unhealthy.
“For instance, although humans can’t hear it, your body can still feel infrasonic vibrations.”
I can hear sounds down to 7 Hertz, I have tested it.
You don’t get many lions in a cubicle farm. Managers, now that’s another thing entirely. But while they might ruin your entire day they are less likely to actually kill and eat you.
While I acknowledge your general theory, I present this counterargument
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Bradley_P._Richfield
Triceratops are herbivores.
Didn’t stop B.P. (who was a styracosaur, not a triceratops)
I’m not familiar with the source material, but I can read.
Now of course wikis are created by volunteer contributors and can easily contain errors. But with that as my only source of information I choose to believe it, which I’ve never known to be wrong, over you, who is almost always wrong.
Try the link above that you replied to
“Richfield has also been shown as a cannibal, which is unusual since Styracosaurs were generally herbivores”
Looks like… you are both wrong and can’t read
Styracosaurus is a genus, the layer above the species.
Triceratops seem currently classified as a genus too, but back when that show was written it might have been considered a species in the Styracosaurus Genus
And when you look at skeletons of the two, they are different, and B.P. more resembles the Styracosaur than the Triceratops
What if the manager is a lion? Or a Tiger? The bigwig CEO in TaleSpin is Sheere Khan, who is a tiger…
You won’t get many lions in a cubicle farm but you will get at least one in a manager position. With a tucan and lizard in assistant positions to the manager. I present “Africa Salaryman”. Its like Aggretsuko or Arthur but with African animals in an office space. https://www.funimation.com/shows/africa-salaryman/africa-pervert/?qid=None
I also like Kurzgesagt to add to Tier Zoo. Their videos on size were very interesting.
I recently also found the channel “Primer”, wich does some basic computer simulations of evolution in action. Inlcuding one scenario where the too agressive ones wiped themself out.
Congratulations Dave on getting another crossover to a different comic.
I see your characters have an off-screen part in today’s Garfield strip.
https://d1ejxu6vysztl5.cloudfront.net/comics/garfield/2019/2019-08-08.gif
holy fuck. Garfield go down hill hard, I knew the strip was bad now but holy shit.
The comic strip Garfield was ever good?
If you want hilarious Garfield, check out realfield.
https://i.imgur.com/iKvijrb.jpg
Or just as good, Garfield Minus Garfield (more reliably found at Go Comics):
“a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.”
Pretty much the same concept :)
It was never as good as the best, but it was a lot better early on.
a lot of things that started before 2008 has gone donwhill in 2k’s, rest are usually already at bottom
I call Garfield “the Great Philosopher”. He is a cat. A fat cat. He knows it. He accepts it. He lives it.
Apparently Garfield was never meant to be funny. Only relatable. That’s worked for the author because of how much money he’s made from licensing.
Wow… I don’t think we’ve seen Dabbler angry yet. And what caused it? Human being stupid. :P
I think Dabbler looks adorable when angry. :)
Sort of how Maxima looked when Sydney called her out on the Lord of the Rings thing to distract her from chewing out the leering elf.
I begin to wonder if Suzie and Dabbler are “friends” and that’s the reason they can bicker together and she gets more of the snippets and news time than other reporters. I could very much see that developing after her always being around so much (may be getting inside info from the big D in exchange or report T&A).
Well, Suzie News is the favored reporter of Archon because she was the first one to break the story, and she’s a very ‘rah rah Archon yay’ reporter. :)
Nope, Suzie and Ari are ‘friends’, after the Restaurant Rumble
She has never been more Demonlike, than in that panel.
If you mean cute and adorable, then I agree.
“Come on, Suzie! I spent the last week polishing up this explanation and practicing the correct English terminology, and all you can think about is arm count!
I’m ill and fatigued of every audience with a different number of limbs ignoring a highly-condensed technical explanation of xenomorphology and only caring about why my arm count is different from theirs!”
Arianna: “Actually the idiom is ‘sick and…”
Dabbler: “I DON’T CARE! Ya’ll are 95% the same as every other species because it just works, okay?! Are you happy now?!”
“Why don’t you point out how many damn fingers I have while you are counting irrelevant details!”
Now I can’t stop focusing on how many fingers Dabbler has.
Right? Been reading for years and somehow only just noticed that today, I feel so species-ist now. Or maybe it’s a good sign that I didn’t notice…?
You were simply distracted by other… things, hypnotic things :D
i mean, cartoons love to give their chars the same amount on a hand, i remember the hospital scene in The Simpsons when Bart was born and Homer said how he had 8 fingers and 8 toes and that’s good enough
+1
You win the internet this day.
She ran into one of humanity’s greatest weaknesses: difficulty understanding and applying statistics. Unlikely things can and do happen, just with less frequency than likely things.
Evolution doesn’t guarantee a species will develop with 100% efficiency and/or without any redundant or flawed features.
DNA can also simply be turned off like legs on snakes.
Could result in the creature having a lot of extras that aren’t actually there.
If this could be activated and deactivated with diet and a regenerative ability then loosing limbs and regaining them later when food isn’t scarce, even if it takes a few generations could work well.
If I could I’d add a ton to my genetics.
No, it doesn’t, however in times of scarcity a species with less extra bits will survive better. More mass is more calories to keep fed.
Evolution isn’t a search for what’s ‘best’ its a elimination tournament for what doesn’t work, you don’t get ‘good’ you get ‘better than the other guy’.
So centaur like species are unlikey because that’s a lot of extra body mass to feed. They’ll lose out to their smaller competitors the first time there’s a shortage of food. On the other hand, if the planet they come from is such a paradise that a food shortage never happens we might see centaurs because nothing causes all that extra mass to be a downside.
Depends on which comes first: food shortage or agriculture and farming
Evolution does not have an aim other than survival of the fittest in a given situation. Generally it is talking about a species survival plan, not really an individual survival plan, but a species survives by having its individuals survive and/or reproduce. If a group of individuals have traits that lets them survive better than other members of their (and other) species, then that trait will generally be selected for, in that environment. What works for a given environment is more likely to survive and have fertile children.
If you put the same species in two different environments, then different traits in individuals are more likely to be passed on to subsequent generations because those traits gave a survival advantage in each situation. Until the last couple of hundred years, snow-covered winters meant times of scarcity for us humans, even if you did prepare your food properly before-hand. So you would not be able to get fresh fruits, with very few exceptions, during this time, limiting your vitamin intake during the winter. People with lighter skin would generate more vitamin D during the low-light times of winter than people with darker skin, so would have less malnutrition during the winter than those with darker skin. Conversely, people living in more equatorial areas would generally not have that problem, but would need to protect themselves from the high UV doses; dark skin would be favoured here to help protect against skin cancer and other diseases caused by high levels of solar exposure;with high light levels, even dark skin can produce sufficient vitamin D. So skin tone tends to lighten as you move from equatorial places to arctic ones, where the environmental circumstances for hundreds of thousands of years has made a difference based on who is more likely to survive each environment. This covers way more traits than just skin tone.
The so-called king of the jungle does not live in the jungle, but on the savanna. A predator the size of a lion would have lots of trouble navigating narrow passages found in the Congo jungle, but that size and strength works for tackling (literally) big herbivores like gnu and zebra, which also would find difficulty navigating the jungle. The speed of the cheetah works on the open plains, but would be wasted in the dense jungle. The leopard is the top predator of the Congo, in part because that cat is smaller and more agile than the savanna predators and the prey animals are also smaller. A lion, hyena, wild dog, etc. needs big prey to get enough resources to survive.
Almost all vertebrates have 4 major limbs (some have less, e.g. snakes) and a flexible tail (the apes being a notable exception). For the most part, the layout of the structure is the same (12 pairs of ribs, 7 vertebrae in the neck, one long bone in the upper arm & leg, connected to a ball and socket joint at the shoulder/hip and a saddle joint at the elbow/knee, two bones that can pivot around each other in the lower arm & leg with similar joints in the wrist/ankle, head with brain and lots of the sensory organ up front/on top, etc.) but just the size of each varies. This is true for frogs, lizards, swans, humans, giraffes, whales, etc.
If the surviving body plan for the vertebrate-equivalent on an alien world had 4 fore-limbs and 2 rear ones, and it provided a survival advantage in some environments (if it lets the xeno-fish swim faster, or be more agile, either of which could allow it to avoid predators and hunt its own food better, even if it needs more energy to run all the extra muscles), and that general body plan survived environmental transitions, each with its own adaptations to survive in the new environment, then the guys taking off into space would still have the same basic plan that has worked for so many billions of years already.
The problem with that argument is that six limbs can produce a *great* body plan. It’s not “extra parts” if those extra parts are useful.
Keep in mind that the more limbs you have, the easier it is to *specialize* those limbs for particular tasks. There are a number of glaring weaknesses in our own body plan (and those of other tetrapods) that result from squeezing multiple functions into a small number of limbs.
Birds are probably the most glaring example. Since wings are extremely specialized limbs, birds are forced to walk, attack, lift, and manipulate with their feet, and they aren’t especially great at any of those things. Sure, they make do, but having an extra pair of limbs would benefit them greatly. Heck, an extra pair of wings could give them additional maneuverability (which is why most insects have four wings).
A centauroid body plan offers far superior stability (super important in wrestling prey to the ground) while allowing tool use and carrying.
You can have a centauroid cat-like predator that can slash at prey without slowing down or throwing its entire body into a pounce. Or a herbivorous “reverse centaur” that runs on its front four limbs and uses its back legs for fighting the aforementioned centaur-cats.
Four arms lets you specialize two for fine manipulation and two for heavy work or fighting. It also lets you grapple and punch at the same time.
But most importantly, the idea that “fewer limbs is more efficient because it takes more energy to grow them” doesn’t really work for limbs to begin with, because of how important the number of limbs are for an organism’s entire lifestyle. If an organism is having problems getting enough food, the simplest evolutionary response is to *become smaller*, not drastically alter the entire body plan. The only times that organisms dropped limbs were when the species’ new lifestyle rendered the limbs *completely* useless or actively detrimental, like snakes (adaptation for squeezing into holes) or whales (once the tail is reconfigured for swimming, the back legs just get in the way).
If we descended from a six-finned fish, we’d have six limbs today.
You touched on something that’s been bugging me these last few pages. It’s obvious Dave has put some thought into these arguments (even if that means the thought was “let’s steal some ideas”), but your flippant off hand remark hits the nail on the head. Size
Planets having different gravity would alter optimal size for various forms… but ignoring that for now, I’ll just focus on species getting larger or smaller. It takes many more generations to get larger then it does to get smaller. Size is the primary factor in calorie requirements, not the number of limbs. Well, I guess being cold blooded would help as well, but a species that sat in a tree and digested a meal for a few months before it needed to eat again really isn’t in a race to get anywhere, let alone the stars…
Crap, I’m side-tracking myself…. because lean times ARE going to happen, how to deal with it is major. Maybe a species turns cannibalistic… but that wouldn’t help in an ice age or other long term issue. But besides just getting smaller, the system for getting larger is slowed down. A species needs to be able to react fast to a shortage of food, but it also needs to react slow to an abundance of food. Grow to fast and the species as a whole is more vulnerable to the next shortage if they accidentally got to big. Makes the real giants all the more impressive (lookin at you, blue whale (is that what happened to the alari? Those things ate them cause they had huge calorie requirement? ))
So one wants to make many aliens humanoid shaped? Okay… but they would range from gnomes to giants, not all be 6-7 feet tall. (And omg mammary glands and reproductive parts would NOT be universal… shape changing aliens would be in High demand for that). The reason this isn’t a issue is the same reason most sci-fi are humanoid…. So that humans can play them. Mouse sized beings wouldn’t be a threat (ignoring what the spaceship could do) and thusly doesn’t make for a good story where conflict is needed. Be great where spacefairing races actually worked together… but no one makes a welcomiic about the space station where everything runs smoothly all the time…
Especially considering that the Grrlverse already has plenty of openings for a more logical (within the setting) explanation. Angels and demons exist, and from what we’ve seen, seem to be humanoid. While that’s a question in and of itself, it suggests the existence of a godlike entity or species with a preference for the humanoid form, and if *they* are the ones manipulating evolution it could neatly explain why a lot of aliens not only look like humans, but *sexy* humans.
But as Dabbler said, one revelation at a time.
Dabbler says that Demons are basically just aliens.
“So one wants to make many aliens humanoid shaped? Okay… but they would range from gnomes to giants, not all be 6-7 feet tall. ”
They do seem to.
Sydney meets a fairly short, and even a few inhuman looking, aliens at the port.
On earth size is also limited by a combination of oxygen requirements and how organs function, and that can also limit limb numbers and specialty because you would have to fit the neural and oxidizing infrastructure as well. The more limbs there are the more complex both get, and the more likely to have complications where circulation can get negatively impacted by other parts of the physiology and cause damage to the limb in question or the whole body. Insects bypass this through their respiratory system not being linked to their circulatory system, by it vastly limits their size. Calories don’t burn without oxygen and oxygen deployment limits size and extra limb development regardless of how much food there is. Dabbler’s heart is probably especially well developed because of the additional blood pressure regulation having two extra limbs causes.
The trying to imagine how an underwater race would try to evolve tech is a good brainstorming exercise, but can also make the more advanced technologically aliens look that much more like jerks when it comes to the “nope you have to overcome those filters/hurdles yourself”; when the spacefaring races had less to overcome.
The Crosh, a crayfish like race, had even managed to develop water tanks on tank treds…uh…don’t ask how I made these guys up when I was like 15, I hadn’t thought that far ahead back then; *cough*, anywho, they went extinct shortly after due to a meteor strike. However the multiversal traveling Kuhrai had been observing their development, but due to their own Prime Directive could not intervene, even to save them from a meteor.
more realistically, yeah, said last page; an underwater environment presents so many hurdles that air doesn’t when it comes to working with metals, fire, heat sources, electricity, as well as the whole *another level to explore upwards*, yeah humanity is still finding ways to explore the ocean better, but in the meantime also went to the moon, has satelites, a space station, and robots on another planet.
something else in the blurb, the too advanced and the need is missing, there is always curiosity, but that only amounts to so much; after all even human history is filled with so many set backs because someone invented something but the society in question found no “need” for it, so it turned into just an inventors curiosity or toy, like early computers *string and gear based but still programming basic concepts*, automotons, water fountains…oddly enough, magnetic lifts used to impress temple worshippers, farming equipment was shot down in ancient Greece because they already had slaves…, even electricity was practically a toy at first.
on the innovation is limited by need. Funny enough, in my own series, one of the most powerful species The Amana, in particular the Amarian Amana *elders*, make it a point to have avatars, possessions, and reincarnations limited in power and memory for the purpose of coming up with new ideas. Thanks to these limitations they are forced to get creative and come up with new ideas and features for their “games”, worlds, and even features for Hell with the ones who have the role of The Architects of Hell. Because how can you come up with ways to make a mortal suffer when you yourself can’t feel pain, can’t be damaged, and your psychology is completely different. Live in their lives; and thus come up with better soul bodies to stick those souls in, better features that are more psychological; and on the game end come up with fun features you’d never have thought of before including spells. After all why invent a skull faced triple fireball that screams when in your natural state your language can incinerate ephemeral matter.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and limitations are the mother of creativity.
“Necessity is the mother of invention”
My Hypothesis, is that inventions also come from a lazy man, looking for an easier way to do things.
Sex and Violence are the mother and father of invention. So much of our technology was developed either for war, or for sexual gratification.
The Internet: Originally DARPANet developed for the US Department of Defence as a way to keep computers connected even when some of the connections have been severed.
BetaMax/VHS: Mostly a commercial success because people wanted the convenience of porn at home.
Air Travel: Most major advancement funded by various country’s militaries during the 2 world wars.
Rocketry: Initial development funded because Hitler wanted to blow up London. Post WWII advancements driven by the Americans and Soviets trying to figure out how to have military superiority over each other.
Let’s face it. We humans like to fuck and kill, and that drives a considerable amount of our technological development.
Huh, surprised with the Betamax/VHS there and mentioning porn, you’d have mentioned that VHS’s success over the actually better quality Betamax is often attributed to the manufacturers of Betamax having a ratings limit (refusing to put porn on Betamax).
Betamax was more industry usage than home usage (used more in newsrooms than living rooms), and was still being used long after the decline of the home VHS
I like how the Daniel and Colonel O’Neill put it when talkin to the Asgard from Stargate when they needed help from humans in fighting the Replicators. Humans came up with the idea for projectile firearms, and the Asgard simply did not ever even consider something like that, which was extremely effective against the Replicators.
Daniel: Wait a minute, you’re actually saying you need someone dumber than you are?
Jack: You may have come to the right place.
… so amazingly primitive that they still think integrated circuits are a pretty neat idea
Digital watches :)
+1 to the both of you…
It’s environmentally viable. Different planets with different abundance/rarity mix of elements and natural compounds combined with the preferred thermal and atmospheric/ aquatic home of the life could do something very different.
Electrical circuits are our basic technical nature to date but aliens could try something very different and of an equivalent effect.
We used to use valves and other weird tech. Underwater can easily go for hydraulic or optic fibre based origins. Even using volcanic thermal vents could be viable. Our sharks can sense the electric impulses in a fishes nervous systems and I suppose chemistry can help with electrical tech advancement. It’s not impossible they could show interest in and develop electrical tech though it would look very different.
water dilutes everything and is a strong conductor, also dissipates heat rapidly. Amphibious species practicing how things are different above and below water have a descent chance, but a purely aquatic will be lucky to get past sharpening rocks and tying them to various things. If they have shelled organisms and hard bones organisms they can make weapons such as knives and spears out of.
Luck is a major factor, why half the time any aquatic race you see has magic. The Zora and their magic, some mermaid like species living near a mana well, or some such thing.
Here is a tricky one though, imagine a species that is sapient during an aquatic larval state, but molts like a dragon fly into a flying air breathing form, but at that point loses its sapience to become a pure breeding and eating only creature.
Now here is a the thing.
It is a fallacy that you can’t do all sorts of things in a water environment.
The majority here make the assumption that tech can’t be done because it cannot be done our way.
There are other ways of producing all sorts of technological products without following the path we ourselves have followed in the development of technology.
Why do you need fire? Because you need heat for smelting metals or baking pottery.
There are critters in the ocean that absorb metallic elements dissolved in the water and metabolize them into useful structures. No heat required. Just very slow.
Now for our theoretical Aquans
Grow tools and household items through agriculture.
Just think of it this way, they started with the the stone chipping for tools and skipped pottery bits along the way to develope agriculture.
Agriculture leads to breeding for domestication and selection for desired products and abilities.
Now take this to the extreme with a long lived and patient race. Deep dwelling therefore colder environment and slower growth.
They end up missing the whole explody kinetic modes of travel and jump right too the other modes of travel through gravity/kinetic manipulation. Supers do it so a race that are able to develops supers can do an end run around all that fire based stuff.
Their technology, including their ships would be grown
Ships would be the equivalent of a space capable Nautilus and our aliens could be cephalopods wearing re-breathers and gravity belts.
“Such thinking could hamper their technological development by centuries . . . ”
Centuries? Try millennia. Or it might halt the development of metallurgy completely. In our own human history we remained at the wood-bone-stone level for tens of thousands of years, and as near as we can tell the discovery of bronze and later smelted iron happened only once and spread from there. (Pre-Columbus Americans never got past easily smelted copper and gold.)
the always fun, luck factor.
The pure dumb luck of living in an area that even has the resources that could be used to further your technology, let alone all the other factors. People today take for granted just how slow, how many fall backs, how many times technological innovations were put on the shelf because those in charge didn’t see a use for them, technological advancements have been in human history.
people forget just how recent the Industrial Revolution was and actually sharing technological discoveries with other nations *in any great frequency* has been relative to the rest of human history.
In the D&D game I run, the party has been very annoyed that all the metal items from the elder empire that had collapsed and which items they have found from that empire have not had one bit of iron or steel, and very little gold.
Mostly because that resource was simply not available to them – copper and tin are common within the borders of the extinct empire, while bronze and brass are the standard for weapons and other such durable goods (they had about 3x as much tin as they had zinc).
Not that there isn’t iron and steel in the campaign – one of the party members began importing it years ago once they finally twigged that a need could be fulfilled. That character isn’t fabulously wealthy, but they’re pulling in the equivalent of about 60k a year in in-game money. Iron and steel are cheaper than they were (and significantly more available), but bronze is still the default working metal, since the empire left so freaking much of it just lying around around.
Actually, you’re wrong. There’s evidence Native Americans had smelted Iron before the Inuit even showed up. The reason why? The ancestors of the Inuit came to the Americas LOOKING for iron, and FOUND it.
One of the biggest mistakes of Western history is assuming Native Americans weren’t that advanced. Especially since those people you just bashed had a better grasp of Mathematics than people NOW have.
Who’s bashing? Simply put, the major Pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas didn’t use bronze or iron smelting technologies. This doesn’t mean they were less advanced as civilizations.
As to the iron-use you’re referring to, here’s what is known. “Native ironwork in the Northwest Coast has been found in places like the Ozette Indian Village Archeological Site, where iron chisels and knives were discovered. These artifacts seem to have been crafted around 1613, based on the dendrochronological analysis of associated pieces of wood in the site, and were made out of drift iron from Asian (specifically Japanese) shipwrecks, which were swept by the Kuroshio Current towards the coast of North America.”
(A side note: the Japanese were masters of iron-work, sophisticated enough that they bought early guns from the Dutch and Portuguese and advanced the technology to the point where, when they banned firearms after the Wars of the Shogunate ended in the 1600s, their infantry weapons were more advanced than those used by European armies of the time.)
“The tradition of working with Asian drift iron was well-developed in the Northwest before European contact, and was present among several native peoples from the region, including the Chinookan peoples and the Tlingit, who seem to have had their own specific word for the metallic material, which was transcribed by Frederica De Laguna as gayES. The wrecking of Japanese vessels in the North Pacific basin was fairly common, and the iron tools and weaponry they carried provided the necessary materials for the development of the local ironwork traditions among the Northwestern Pacific Coast peoples, although there were also other sources of iron, like that from meteorites, which was occasionally worked using stone anvils.”
“Simply put, the major Pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas didn’t use bronze or iron smelting technologies. This doesn’t mean they were less advanced as civilizations.”
Pretty sure it means exactly that. Cortes was able to defeat and conquer 300,000 Aztecs in Tenochichtlan (however you spell it) with about 150 Conquistadors (after 350 were killed before the Conquistadors could regroup, after Montezuma was somehow accidentally killed while being held captive). 150 Conquistadors, 16 horses, 2 cannons, and some swords and armor, and after they regrouped, the fight was largely one-sided and only took 3 months for the Aztec empire to be conquered.
Wait, wasn’t a major reason the Aztecs lost due to the flu?
That was later decimation. The bulk of their warriors were killed against Cortes and his remaining 150 conquistadors
Thank you, was sure the flu played a major part
You are forgetting about the 10,000 Native warriors that hated the Aztecs and did most of the fighting. Cortes provided the leadership, not the fighting strength.
It’s one thing to know how to smelt iron, it’s another to build trans continental railways and skyscrapers. The ancient ass Egyptians invented steam engines, but they were basically just toys and nothing else. A civilization could invent a clean, inexhaustible power supply, but it doesn’t make them an advanced civilization if the only thing they use it for is as a curiosity in a museum that makes your hair stand on end.
precisely, there is even evidence of some ancient cultures have primitive batteries, string and gear based programmable devices, simple automatons, and even possibly (maybe) a lightbulb. But so many kept them as (secrets of the priesthood), or (that crazy inventor and his useless toys); either restricting access or failing to see an application beyond a mere curiosity.
A fun one I came across once, and forget exactly where this was, but sure it was northern Europe, found evidence one man had invented an indoor running toilet; but had apparently told no one and just kept it to himself.
then you have one society had it but didn’t spread it, like the Minoans who had indoor plumbing and two story houses *discovered something akin to cement* while the rest of the world was mainly still using single story sandbrick and straw huts. But their civilization collapsed/capital island exploded, and those discoveries were lost for centuries.
I’m sure to a spacefaring race which developed underwater, a species developing on-land to the same technological heights would seem similarly implausible.
no not really, its physics. Water is amazingly a major pain in the butt to work inside of for smelting, making electrical components, even mixing chemicals (the fall back of many a underwater race in a series). Unless they basically had everything handed to them in the most amazing luck factor ever of *we have a biochemical fuel source, we have the capability of breeding super strong sea weeds that we can shape into stuff*, their first hurdle to space is first the land, they have an extra step. Maybe once they find a way to work out of the water they can discover and harness the above, but they still have to get there first.
sure they could easily if they get to space end up thinking that only oceanic life forms could ever get that smart, because their limitations forced them to be creative and overcome major hurdles to advance.
Problem is, at the same a species the develops underwater understands the things that work in water far better then what works in air, they could discover things we don’t know today about how water because of a simple difference of perspective.
We just simply don’t know what an underwater race might.
cute but that’s not how it works
the laws of physics don’t care about perspective they”re the same no matter what. there are things that are harder if not impossible to do underwater no matter if a being lived there their whole lives or not.
with out metal, glass and electricity most advanced tech is outside the reach of a water bound race. and even if they magically did find away around that they’d still have to deal with the added weight of water when getting to space.
oh gods, the weight factor, add in water pressure, how water behaves in zero gravity, and space is pretty much a death trap on the first visit; they’d almost have to discover gravity controls first THEN be able to travel in space with any measure of safety (not even factoring the constant need to insulate their equipment from the water), they just added a multitudes of things that could go wrong in orbit to the equations.
I’d hazard to say unless someone helps them or they discover a portal in the sea to cross dimensions they are pretty much stuck on their rock till they die off.
I wander if those equations for likelihood of intelligent life in the universe and being able to contact include the possibility that any ocean bound but intelligent life isn’t likely to ever even reach radio communications levels.
(they might get on land if they have dexterous enough limbs using flattened out and if they also have something like hagfish, glued together sea weed and can work out a water screw using shelled animal parts for a pseudo-pump, but again, unless they are amphibious and can spend time out of water to make additional discoveries and wet suit type work arounds; they are pretty much stuck at stone age; hey we might find carved out by shell and pincer obelisks at the bottom of some alien world; and huts and humans could teach them out to use adapted equipment. Humans have figured out how to make stuff work underwater…but only after making it on land and working out how to insulate it.
Hmm, water-based lifeforms are already used to moving in three-dimensions, so as long as they managed to build an air-tight vehicle (that keeps out air as opposed to keeping air in like used by surface-dwellers) then they should be okay and could go straight from water to space (if they could develop propulsion not only to break free from the water butt also escape the planets gravity)
water doesn’t behave the same way in zero gravity, it tends to bubble up. Experiments on both aquatic and flying animals in zero gravity show there is a distinct difference when gravity is taken out of the equation to orientate; not to mention the surface tension issues with water in space. But the other issue raised it weight (there is ALOT of math involved in breaking free of the Earth’s gravity; and water has ALOT of weight relative to air occupying the same space, not to mention the needs of the crew regarding oxygenation of the water, salinity, pressure, ect… the pressure alone with the extra weight during lift off could its self prove a major hurdle depending on the durability of the species in question
If the entire vessel is filled, how does that ‘bubble up’?
Umm, did point out they would need to develop a propulsion system strong enough to break free of both the water and the usual gravity
Was just explaining why they would have no need of stepping foot on to dry land (if they had to first ‘evolve’ to walk on land, then they would no longer be an aquatic race, thus developing an aquatic space vehicle would also no longer be required)
3-D environment does not equal weightless environment, and water behaves differently in zero G than it does in Earth’s gravity, even with a fully filled tank, moving around INSIDE the water is trickier as you are no longer working with buoyancy and working against gravity and downward pressure. NASA experiments on Fish have shown they suffer the same problems as air breathing animals in orbit.
Didn’t say it did, butt isn’t that one reason part of Astronaut training involves playing in a swimming pool?
They tend to do free fall more so now in airplanes. The water was (as close) as they could get before. Not the easiest thing to train for, and NASA is still studying long term effects and how different material behaves in space. For instance without the pressure of being held down by gravity water loses its depth pressure for the most part and the surface tension becomes harder to break.
Again, that’s if you are attempting to enter a bubble, butt if the entire vessel is filled with water…
You are still looking at it from a dry-lander view point, not from that of an aquatic species
OTOH…
deep ocean creatures are naturally adapted to massive pressures and are unlikely to be reliant on photon sensitivity for their major senses (the incredible advantages of electrical & magnetic reliant senses on a sapient species development of some technologies comes to mind). Utilisation of buoyancy principles for initial upward thrust could also become a natural progression to flight if your a few km underwater to begin with.
From our perspective it is easy to see what disadvantages such a species may have, what they lack compared to us. However from their perspective the ‘surface world’ could be no more significant to their development and breaking into orbit then the upper atmosphere is to our own achievements.
sry for double post but just had to add:
The likely reality of slower metabolism and advancement rate in underwater species could translate into a serious advantage if they ever did make it into space (given a planet of sufficient tectonic stability to support such development anyway). Ie: they could live MUCH longer, even be essentially immortal.
Simply put unless humanity can beat the aging thing (or unless the laws of physics as we currently understand them are wrong) we will always be dabblers in, never conquerors of space.
That was kinda what was thinking (so glad there are other, more articulate, readers here who have similar ideas :D )
Just a point on the photon aspect. I would say it would be 100% the opposite.
A significant number of deep sea species are light generators and are VERY sensitive to light.
That is why I suggested cephalopods as a base species to work from.
Just add in the much needed ingredient of being social creatures so there is cooperation and dissemination of information within the group.
The law of physics say that us land people cannot handle hot molten metal. But we found a way. We cannot touch fire, but can create and control it. We cannot detect electricity unless there is a lot, still we can create electric circuits that are smaller than the eye can see. Yes, it takes some extra time in the evolution to be able to do that, but the main Steps are all reachable for a species that can use its brain.
you’re really not getting the problem are you.
imagine if cave men could only move onto the bronze age if they could fly to space first, that’s what a purely aquatic specie would be facing. no one is saying they couldn’t have an amazing culture and do amazing things but they will never become a technological one and not one that gets off the planet.
Do you need bronze to make plastics? Or glass?
yes.
without bronze or the other metals that come later you’ll never make the tools needed to work glass. without metal or glass you’ll never make the tools needed to learn what you need to make plastic. science builds off of what came before so you can’t just jump stages and expect things to work. more so when these things need similar skill sets metal working and glass making. (heck making bronze is easier then making good quality glass.)
Plastic is petroleum-based, not a metalloid
And the reason why bronze is easier to make is because it’s harder to melt stone
you’re missing the domino aspect of stage development here.
You need a combination of metallic/ceramic vessels to create the conditions under which you make plastic while it may be possible to make some of them in stone vessels stone is a very difficult material to work into non-simple shapes
That’s why they have this wondrous invention: clay, it can be molded into many fantastical and non-simple shapes
And not missing the domino aspect, just questioning if the bronze part has to be in the same place as it was for us (it could come later, after they discover metals), or if it even has to be part of the aquatic path at all
Divergent life in a different environment and all that
clay doesn’t work very well underwater, baking it is part of the process of making it hold a desired shape.
bronze and iron are simpler metals to work with, but if you don’t work with metals then you can’t work with refined materials like…well other metals like copper and aluminum, make functional circuits, make glass (something that also requires fire), there are a lot of powered tech that simply require their base components to have a path back to early metallurgy. Without them you physically can’t make circuits, electrical power, or anything of that nature.
water is a major hurdle due to its properties and even discovering metal underwater, they would have the monumental task of reshaping the ore without heating it up first…not impossible (just nearly so without tools they’d have to shape from the same ores first…)…but they’d never be able to refine it, the heat does more than just soften some metals.
Fairly sure an aquatic race would use other materials than metals, simply because of the problem with getting a match to light underwater
I wonder how thermite works. Because from what I understand, thermite can burn underwater And there might be underwater grottos with air pockets.
thermite can burn underwater because has all the oxygen it need within itself. a thermite reaction it a mix of aluminum power and another metal oxide. the AL is so highly reactive that it will rip the oxygen form the metal oxide in a highly exothermic reaction ending in aluminum oxide and a pure metal. military thermite is mostly aluminum and iron oxide 4 (Magnetite/ hematite) with some other odds and ends to maximizes the reaction. it also makes so much heat it makes a air bubble around itself keeping the water form sucking the heat out of the reaction.
the problem is aluminum is so reactive that its impossible to find in metalic al in nature and it can only be made by a lot of electricity to remove the oxygen form the molten al source so that wouldn’t really help them.
An aquatic species *could* get into space, but not if that species evolved on Earth. You’d have to start with a species on a lower gravity world, (likely a moon, really), such as IO. In fact, such a race could easily develop space travel: Bud off a large chunk of ice with water encased inside (like a comment), keep the inside warm with a biological heating process, and control bubbles by constant filtration and separation (likely with some specially bred organism), and propulsion could be gained by ejecting some of the seperated air and supplement it by rotation or acceleration to simulate gravity. It’d be slow, cumbersome, and chances are they’d die before they could make it to another planet… they might become a comet though.
The problem with Dabbler’s argument is that she’s arguing in favor of a general form, but the examples we’ve seen are not just of roughly humanoid beings, but of humans with addons.
Maybe, possibly, you can make an argument for a biped that’s bilaterally symetrical. Maybe. I’m doubtful. But even if so, why a head? Why breasts (hell, most primates don’t have breasts), why head hair, why muscles in areas we fined aesthetically appealing?
Arguing for critters with two arms and legs, maybe but that’s not going to give us rubber forehead aliens.
I think our wonderful comic creator missed a chance to add some conspiracy theory that’d be a bit more likely and possibly be a Chekhov’s Gun for later. Maybe no one knows so they assume someone, maybe the Nth, is doing it on purpose but they’ve never found any evidence.
Not all features have to be evolutionarily efficient to pass on, they just need to not be detrimental.
previous page did mention there are non-humanoids, and that some panspermia was detected just can’t place the who and why.
Yes, the theory of evolution as i understand it is not the survival of a the fittest but the elimination of the unfit.
Related and to my mind fascinating article:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/01/040120033216.htm
I suppose that’s where the panspermia and meddling shows up. Apparently the species that did it looked fairly like humans, so there’s a disproportionate number of really human looking species.
Hylian goddesses whistling nonchalantly in the background LoL
-it is a fan theory that the Hylian Goddess in the Zelda series due to an obsession with balance and looking humanoid are why so many creatures are humanoid or changed to humanoid once they became smart…the balance part why they turned fish people into bird people when an ocean appeared in direct defiance how evolution would have made the Zora the dominant super power instead so they zapped them into birds to keep the balance.
Advantage of bilateral symmetry – you’re not going to drop stuff like those one-prehensile-limb types (think elephants trying to do any complicated like building a house while holding a hammer in their trunk). Symmetry is easy to evolve since it re-uses existing genetic code, so even numbers make sense. More limbs does mean more calories, but more control does provide some nice advantages. As a result, in nature, we see generally things come in 4 limbs, or 6 limbs (that seems to be a sweet spot), with more limbs or less limbs being an exception, not a rule.
Animals that are both larger and longer-lived generally get shorter fur or no fur. This is because over a longer lifespan and more surface area, parasites become more of a threat to that longer lifespan, and larger animals have more problems with not losing enough heat rather than not keeping it (e.g. elephant). So as they grow larger, longer hair becomes less prominant. However, besides humans, even lions (which have short fur), gorillas, and elephants have more hair on their head than elsewhere. This is because the head is the vulnerable point, and hair provides a little extra protection. (A lizard people would probably have thicker scales there, if they even still have scales elsewhere.)
However, having a head makes sense. A head is the location of the majority of sense organs, and it’s advantageous to have senses responded to quickly, which means you want them close to the body’s processing unit (including mouth, so you can spit out a poisonous food eaten before digestion starts). However, the brain also generates a lot of heat, so you want it separated from the core to allow more dissipation in hotter environments. So it’s difficult to meat those requirements without a head. And a neck makes sense because it increases the scanning area of eyes without having to invest in more eyes.
BIpdedalism allows for more efficient movements.
As for aesthetically pleasing muscles, muscles fit to the form. So a humanoid body is likely to have humanoid muscles.
As for breasts, a high-intelligence species is going to need lots of calories as a child to evolve a complex brain, calories it’s not prepped to get, so there needs to be a feeding mechanism. On the chest works, because it allows the protector to hold the child close while also feeding. That said a reptilian species would simply have a larger egg so it doesn’t make as much sense for a reptilian species.
So, all in all, you’d probably end up with a true space-faring multi-species culture having about 5 or 6 general body plans covering the majority of species, with a lot of outliers. But ‘birds of a feather’ and all, you’d probably have the ones of the same general body plan mingling together more often.
Just a quick note that it is already an egg layer that suckles their young fully documented here on earth so don`t rule things out just because you haven’t seen one.
As an adjunct, photosynthesis, while not the most efficient energy source for a low surface area to mass creature would be advantageous, resulting in a smaller egg package being required though with higher initial complexity during the development stage. Would give a whole new twist to alien sunbathing.
Mind you the whole protect the eggs and raise the young bit requires a social species as opposed to solitary hunters.
On the topic of breasts, most mammals don’t have breasts. In fact, only humans do. The breasts on a human have very little to do with milk, other species produce plenty of milk without having breasts. Their teats get a bit bigger when they’re lactating, but when not lactating they don’t even have mild swelling.
Hell, look at chimps. Even when lactating female chimps don’t have breasts like humans do.
You might be able to make a case for lcatation (I don’t think it really works, but ok) but no way can you make a case for mushroom girls with tits like we see on the next page. Not from evolution in a totally different ecosystem on a totally different planet anyway. Meddling by precursors could do it, natural evolution nope.
Twenty arms?
Sidekick!
Acid spit?
HERO!
“I am, of course, Captain Loogie!” (Full marks if you get this reference…)
“And I’m his sidekick, Spittoon!”
Guybrush Threepwood. Mighty Pirate.
“How appropriate. You fight like a cow!”
Bad Dabbler/Xuriel! Do not upset Suzie, you could have calmly pointed out that statistical outliers exist.
I thought Dabbler’s all 4 arms and purple was classified? Or it was when Sydney was first being interviewed.
Zophan “Why did you drop your spell Dabbler? You know she does not have clearance to know about you?”
Now the media does?
She revealed that she was an alien two (maybe three) pages ago. “Battle form? I can’t believe you guys fell for that!”
Not since the initial press conference, in fact:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-153-xuriel-tantalis-friend-to-conspiracy-theorists/
Am I the only one bothered by Dabbler’s appearance here? 2 things there:
1. The green stripes above her eyes have previously been connected to the green strupes on her ears. While I love the new art style the inconsistency bothers me.
2. In the last panel Dabbler has no green stripes over/around her eyes at all!
I dug through the archives and the whole scene in the ballroom shows several clocompared Dabbler’s face. The art there looks kinda cartoonish compared to now, where her face in the last panel looks almost 3D. So we’ll done on that front! Just….details, ya know?
The green stripes above her eyes are essentially her eyebrows, and when she’s scowling, the drop down. I might have overdid it though.
Can still see it above her left eye
The green eye-brow stripes are still connected to her ears, the connections are just covered by her hair on this page (just like her right cheek-horn is covered by her hair)
No Dave. It’s still great. You can see where the green stripes are when she’s scowling still. I love how Dabbler looks in the last panel. :)
LOL
“The surface world is literally Hell.”
Implying that an aquatic species has a version of Hell that is fire.
Implying that the species is familiar with fire. Underwater.
Okay … maybe they are familiar with magma, due to undersea volcanic activity.
or they’ve poked their heads above water on occasion and long before attempting a walk out to the heavy surface had used telescopes from a distance to observe. But imagine how different space travel would have gone if those first steps on the moon had the misfortune of being hit by some strong solar wings and being irradiated (fun fact: they didn’t have adequate protection for the more intense radiation that can occur, but didn’t know about it, so got lucky they didn’t get hit).
There are so many little things that can alter the entire path of discovery.
Apollo 13.
I see that I am not alone in my belief of the difficulty of developing advanced electrical technology if you are an exclusively underwater dwelling species. The extremely simple fact that air is a great insulator and water is generally a terrible one makes that whole leap from “smart” to “computational power capable of advancing to intersteller travel” a lot bigger. To say nothing of metalurgy (try to refine or forge anything entirely underwater, particularly starting at primitive technological levels), and the whole problem with weight of your environmental suits.
BUT… it’s already been established that there is magic in this universe, even if you skip all the superhuman things (Maxima’s entire power set, say, which required no technology for her to acquire), so if you’re not bound at all by the laws of physics as we know them, it’s totally plausible for a marine species to develop all sorts of advanced capabilities.
From a sci-fi perspective that’s flat-out cheating, though.
Though once you have some form of technology, you could bypass electricity altogether for geothermal and chemical energy sources. I remember ages back in college someone had posited that if humanity had discovered how to utilize fiber optics even five years sooner than it had, humanity would have been far more advanced than it is today.
Now put those two together; fiber optic computing coupled with chemical engines and fiberglass components… is pretty advanced technology. All accomplished without electricity.
Pure water, is a non-conducter, it requires a “contaminant”, to conduct electricity.
There’s one fallacy I feel the need to point out here, which is that the “ideal human” you describe, that has acid spit, armor, etc, they have it for a reason, and the reason is environment. Humans evolved to the point where we could survive in our environment, and then developed technology to make that survival easier, because though we could survive, survival was super difficult due to us not having the proper natural edges that other species had.
Thus, aliens might develop an excessive number of limbs because they need to be constantly moving, and they exist in a food rich environment. Or a species might have natural armor, but still developed synthetic armor to augment their own, because while their armor fends off smaller attackers, their larger natural predators have no problem getting through their armor at all.
It doesn’t help if their defenses are already about as strong or stronger than copper, such as if they had bone plates neither bronze or steel would likely be invented, since the basic ideas behind metallurgy would not exist. Natural armor would be as strong as artificial armor, so people would not experiment with artificial armor until strong metal was developed, which requires a lot of knowledge on how to smelt metal already, usually gained by making armor. Without fire, metallurgy would not exist. If they have strong natural short to medium distance weapons, or can spit acid, short distance weapons are pointless so nobody makes metal weapons until armor is developed to the point where natural weapons are useless, at which point they’ve missed out on a bunch of weapon specific metallurgy, again significantly slowing development. If they had thick bones, blunt weapons might be developed, but none of the precision techniques developed while making swords – meant to cut through soft tissue easily, but not hard bone. Another reasons humans survived instead of dinosaurs: extinction events. Those just kind of periodically happen, and food becomes scarce. A species that has to move around a lot also has another disadvantage: they have no way to develop farming, without which there is no metallurgy. Really, the main reason the native Americans didn’t have European style towns / cities: they had no pack animals, without which they had to find ways to live off of a small area of land, and often had to travel due to resources simply running out and not being able to be brought in.
Metal was first smelted to make tools, not armour. After tools they developed weapons, on after they developed weapons did they work on armour
Not going to talk about sexual dimorphism?
It’s a pretty significant issue on the evolutionary scale.
Women, who invest resources in the children remain at base state.
Men, who gather the resources and protect the women, advance and specialize.
Physically and mentally. Technologically and civilizationally.
It’s generally considered that, while men did most, or all of, the hunting, the gathering part of hunting/gathering was mostly done by the women. So, resource gathering was more of a team effort.
And defense was more of a male aspect, which would make more sense that the men staid behind and protected the children and the home
Got to disagree there. At least as far as humans are concerned, males tended to be the hunters, if for no other reason than that females are biologically the only ones capable of feeding the infants (not to mention females give birth, which would be a problem for regular hunting treks).
This isnt even taking into account the higher levels of endurance and upper body strength of men on average, which is going to naturally be better for a hunt. Also hunts usually took place a considerable distance from the ‘home’ since primitive man was a persistence hunter. And usually for an extended period of time. So either you’d have to bring the children with you on a hunt, which puts the children at risk, or keep the children at home and the women would contribute to resources by gathering, which could be done close to home, and/or with the children present. In addition, at least for long-term survival of the species for ancient humans, men are more expendable than women since one man can create multiple offspring in a short period of time, while a woman having an offspring would generally involve 9 months between doing so. So if most of the men in a tribe were to die, but a few survived, the tribe could still repopulate within a reasonable amount of generations. If most of the women in a tribe were to die, the tribe would be likely to go extinct in a few generations or less.
It could be different in different alien species though, obviously. Just like it’s different in other animal species on Earth, like prides of lions. There’s only one or two male lions to a pride, so the male lion would not be the hunter – he would be the one that stays at ‘home’ and protects the cubs, while a few of the female lionesses, being more expendable when there are multiple females to one male, would do the hunting (plus I think female lions are faster than male lions, which is useful in how lions hunt, since they are ambush predators, not persistence predators.
But I agree with what both VGer and Tomamo said. :)
Thanks for the defense. I probably should have been more articulate.
I had at least one prof whose rationale that the hunters tended to be men and the gatherers tended to be women, was that the males were expendable.
Assuming otherwise good conditions, a species whose women mostly survive periods of bad conditions and whose men mostly don’t, have a huge advantage in reproduction over a species whose men mostly survive periods of bad conditions and whose women mostly don’t.
Especially considering the reproductive strategy we suppose to be common among intelligent life, of investing major resources in each child. That means the reproduction rate of the women will be sharply limited even in good conditions, because it takes a hell of a lot more than just plentiful easily-obtained food and water to raise a thriving child.
If your band has been killed down to 5 females and 20 males, your next-generation cohorts are 5 kids, tops, if you’re lucky. If your band has been killed down to 5 males and 20 females, your next-generation cohorts are probably fifteen to seventeen or so if everybody gets busy.
How does survival go, if a rival tribe attacks and kills all the women and steals the children?
Guesticus, it’s literally less of a problem than the problem of starvation, especially with ancient man. Even with your scenario, impractical as it might be, it would not doom the species – children going from one tribe to another. And there wasn’t a whole lot of ‘child stealing’ in ancient tribes in the first place. Starvation and consistent child-rearing were far more important to protect against.
There werent a bunch of rival tribes waiting for the menfolk to leave so they could zoom in and steal the kids. Usually because rival male tribes were doing the same exact thing, sending out the men to hunt while the women gathered. It even happened cross-species of humans, with neanderthals. It’s pretty deeply ingrained in humans because of the males having superior endurance and upper body strength, which means being more effective as hunters, and women being the only ones capable of feeding the young. It’s not like they had formula back then.
Hmm, you seemed to agree with me, in part, last page…
even if half of what you’ve said hasn’t been dis proven for us don’t project a mostly mammal limitations onto everything else.
What has been disproven? Women doing comparatively menial work doesn’t disprove anything I said. The odd female genius doesn’t disprove anything I said, given the higher IQ you go the crazier the distribution gets, ranging in the millions of men per woman around the extremes. Same with strength. 4% of women are even capable of passing the male standard in Military Psychical exams. And we’re expected to believe they can compete in the special forces which screens 99% of men by the end of it? 60% in the first week?
As far as “dont impose our mamal limitations on humanoid aliens” the last three pages have been 1001 reasons why aliens are probably going to be more human than not. As though humanity itself were one of the great filters.
wow you really are something aren’t you. lol
i honestly don’t know where to start with you since to truly get you to understand I’d have to unpack a lot of biased teachings. suffice it to say a lot of old studies are being proven to be more about personal view of the of the researcher at the time then the facts presented by the evidence. much like how the female viking burials sites have been down play until recently. the facts show women have always play larger roles in war and other fields but any example to the opposite were down played by the researcher because of there own internal biases.
even the whole “men do the hunting” in hunter gather cultures isn’t really backed up by facts. its more a case of selection bias. ( or even a form of survivor bias if you will as the woman would hunt until she got pregnant)
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/14/early-men-women-equal-scientists
heck even the idea of hunter gathers is kind of broken because some groups in even more modern history never “hunted” until western influences got involved. at the end of the Day these groups were far to small to be so picky about who did what job.
the simple answer is they did what ever jobs they could until they couldn’t any longer
and I want to specifically want to point out the absolute hilarity of you thinking the “US military standards” are some how meaningful standards. i mean do you think the Viet cong used those standards or the Taliban, no but they seemed to put up good fights. what matters in war isn’t fitting a mold of a perfect warrior its knowing the strength and weaknesses of both yourself and your enemy and making you enemy use their weakness against your strength (even in the art of war). the problem is the us military is stupid and instead of understanding what they have and adapting to use that. they’d rather force everyone into one small box that they know how to use really well with out thinking.
as for your last point you’re just over generalizing here, the point is the general rules work not the details. sure you’d be able to pick a technological race out of a line up but you won’t be able to tell anything else about them. more when they start getting into reptiles and insectoid races where male are far more likely to smaller and weaker.
The Guardian? Wow. Ignoring that Rag, I went to their source. They’re talking about protohumans between erectus and sapian. You can get the same data by looking at chimps. That is to say, it’s not useful for talking about humanity now, and only better illustrates my point that sexual dimorphism got greater as we evolved to be able to handle more civilization.
US military standards also work just fine, they’re measuring something easily measured and standardized, which is strength, endurance, speed and agility. As far as the Viet Cong and Taliban are concerned, how do these matter? Our military killed them on mass. We didn’t lose against them militarily, we lost against them in moral and money because both wars were run by politicians who’d never been in the military rather than the people on the ground.
You also seem to have missed a major point with those viking burials. The woman were an alarming find Specifically Because It Was So Rare. Thousands of male graves with the same or more burried with them per female grave.
You’re trying to use the exception to disprove the rule, but that’s not how it works. The fact that they are exceptions and thus rare reinforces the rule.
Dex, the ‘men doing the hunting’ is most definitely backed up by facts and I’m not even going to get into how you used the Guardian as a scientific citation. Women did not ‘hunt until they get pregnant’ – they stayed at home, did gathering, most of the men went out to hunt (the youngest ones would stay behind until they were taught how to hunt) usually for days at a time. The women were the only ones who could feed and care for the young. The females were considered less expendable from an evolutionary survival standpoint because of how long it takes to raise a human child to the point of independence, and the women were simply less effective at hunting, and in a hunting party, you are only as effective as your weakest member.
Even in the few current examples of primitive tribes, we see that. Pre-farming, the bulk of the food production is from hunting, and the hunting is done in these tribes by the men largely because of a combination of effectiveness, child rearing, and how important it is for there to be a sufficient number of females in a tribe in order to have long-term viability, compared to how many men are needed. I mentioned this in another post. Women would only hunt if there were no men of sufficient age to do so, and usually it spelled death for the tribe because they would have to split up their ability to take care of the youngest children at home, and because any deaths of hunters would affect the long-term survival of the tribe as a whole.
There’s a reason that certain female warriors like Boudicca (who was a queen of the Iceni and had to fight because the Iceni had been decimated by the Romans when they conquered southern England) or Joan of Arc stand out so prominently, despite that they did not really engage in as many fights as male warriors had. It’s because female warriors are relatively rare in history – especially successful female warriors (Joan of Arc was in 13 battles, nine of which were victories), Boudicca was in 3 battles that she won before her and her army were slaughtered by Paulinus. And in those battles, her warriors were all men – she took a prominent role mainly to stir up resentment and anger against the Romans for how they had flogged her, the queen, and raped her daughters. Do not mistake exceptions to the rule for the rule.
As for the viet cong and taliban, Tomamo pretty much nailed the response. Inferior armies can hold off a much larger, much better equipped army, at least for a while, when incorporating the environment and guerilla tactics, which both the Taliban and the Viet Cong did. and in the case of the Taliban, it didnt even help them in the end. With the Viet Cong, it only helped because of a lack of morale by the politicians when the civilian population saw a lot of it reported on television, which resulted in war weariness. In actual combat, the US won almost every single battle except about 50 of them. There were thousands of battles btw, and even more engagements. Even in numbers killed, the amount is incredibly one-sided. The north vietnamese and viet Cong lost about 1.1 million. The US lost just under 58,000 (which includes death by illness – about 1000, snake bites – about 400, ACCIDENTS – about 9100, suicide – about 400, homicide by other Americans – about 250, and friendly fire). Total actual KIA from battles was about 41,000. Still a huge loss, but 41,000 (or even 58,000) vs 1.1 million incredibly one-sided. South Vietnamese lost about 200,000, showing that even being allied WITH a technologically superior power means a massive imbalance in amount killed by the enemy.
A woman only needs to provide food for a child until they are weaned, and in those days, it was no more than two years, and the mother didn’t even have to be the one providing the breastmilk
They also could not afford to segregate due to gender: if they could hunt, they hunted, regardless if they carried their own ‘spear’ between their legs or not
Women trapped small prey, and after the invention of the bow, hunted small prey near the home, but outside of noblewomen and orphans, it was more common to find women hunting in stories than IRL.
And who were the writers or originators of most stories? Men
Speaking of sexual dimorphism go to wiki and look up the blanket octopus.
That happens in a number of fish types. And some amphibians and insects.
I kind of love angry Dabbler.
Crab people, crab people…
Not a crab expert myself, but I think they’re drawn very well especially for a first time. I laughed upon looking the second time and noticing the flowers.
Of course, recent media suggests there’s other things they’d want metal for. Things like currency. Or blinging themselves out. Or weapons, like hammers or otherwise.
Dave, if you want a good variety of ‘builds’ that work, I’d recommend Space Trawler or Schlock Mercenary for a wide variety of shapes that still mostly work.
Your post text reminded me of one of the Dr. McNinja strips, where the alt text says “and *I* have a feud with pirate HATS, because they are HARD to DRAW!”
Is that crab’s single emerald-green vambrace worn on the left arm a DanMachi reference? For some reason I really hope so.
Seems to me it isn’t about giving humans tech, we could learn how it was developed just as anyone new to a subject does. It’s about giving tech to humans who still can’t even get along with their own people. Be like trying to have a pet tiger. There’s always the chance they’ll attack you because they were never domesticated.
Looking at comments I do have to argue against a species having superior armor defense preventing metallurgy; if anything it might actually increase it.
If one the species has access to metals and means to smelt it,
and second; they want to kill each other.
you generally develop weapons not only to kill your prey *if your world didn’t evolve prey animals strong enough to iwithstand your natural claws, horns, spikes, acid spit, bio-electrical shocks, ect…* but also to kill rivals.
So a species with bone plate armor, spiked whip tails, acid spit (assuming then a natural immunity to most corrosive compounds), claws that can slice into rock, ect… then fighting each other hand to hand might be difficult. So…weapons, tools, trying to find that upper hand against your enemy. You find and build a thin blade to get between the joints; so they figure out how to make shields and armor enhancements for their body joints, and it goes back and forth.
an aggressive species could end up having these technological advances, which can then later be applied to times of peace and improved upon when other applications are discovered; all because they really, really, wanted to kill their own kind.
and yes a species like that could eventually get to space and change their ways…not that we didn’t just see muggers at the Fracture so not like this setting is a utopian federation or anything.
I’m convinced most intelligent life lives in ocean worlds. The evidence suggests that Earth is a bit on the runty side compared to most rocky exoplanets, and models suggest that Jupiter played a role in that, drifting into the inner orbits during planetary formation and stealing resouces from proto earth. Evidence also suggests that the amount of water a planet retains is closely tied to size, which explains why Mars had water, but was unable to retain it. Earth like other rocky planets was bombarded by ice in the early solar system, but was just a tiny bit too small to hold on to enough to cover itself completely, staying at only 70% water covered. Larger worlds would be 100% and even larger worlds like the ones we’ve found would be covered by oceans miles deep.
Think about what that would mean. Not only would ocean surface dwelling intelligent life be like dolphins, unable to reach the depths of the deep oceans of their worlds, with no arms to advance technology. But depth dwelling intelligent life that could reach the bottom of their oceans would live in a world of darkness with no ability to reach the surface. What tech could you devoulope at the bottom of miles of oceans? Who knows, but likely nothing involving combustion, which would limit them to stone age, and with no access to to sun or stars, why would they ever leave their world? Nothing but death awaits if they try to swim upwards.
Mars still has water, but it’s now mostly locked up in ice (along with frozen carbon dioxide) at the poles or underground and full of perchlorates to the point that the water would be toxic to humans.
You know, it occurs to me that a species doesn’t have to have the right stuff in order to make it into space.
They just need to lay a bunch of eggs in the cargo hold of a ship which is sending a distress signal and hope that someone with access to a warp drive answers the distress call and then puts their head close enough to an egg that a facehugger can launch out of the egg and win a free ticket to the next system.
Well, that’s how hyu-mons got to Dirt…
I think Dabbler is confusing humanoid for bipedalism. Aside from our intelligence, the only biological advantage humans have over most other animals of similar size, is our stamina.
Strength; outclassed by any of the great apes. Dexterity; outclassed by by any of the smaller apes. Speed; outclassed by any of the larger flightless birds. Heck, ostriches alone outclass humans in strength, speed, and stamina as well if you compare it to the average joe.
And if you incorporate prehistoric creatures than humanity is easily outclassed, and I’m not even talking about dinosaurs. (Unless you want to count the terror bird as a dinosaur descendant).
Take our intelligence away and humans are nothing special. We’re not a jack of all stats, nor are we highly specialized. As prey, we’re frail. As predator’s, we’re weak.
I don’t think Dabbler is as intelligent as advertised, and not even due to a low wisdom stat. She’s got an impressive breath of knowledge from exposure, but little depth outside of whatever catches her fancy. Coupled with perhaps a better memory and computation speed, she comes across as highly intelligent superficially, but she pales in comparison to anyone who’s done a decent degree of research, let alone an actual expert.
That’s actually a big part of Dabbler’s argument. We’re not as strong as a gorilla, but we’re intelligent enough to invent a lever or block and tackle. We’re not as fast as an ostrich, but we’re intelligent enough to tame horses. She says it on this page, sucking at survival motivated our evolution toward intelligence. Presumably only the smartest of us survived to have kids back when we were pre-neanderthal.
These days, any old idiot can have kids.
Well that’s the thing, even before intelligence, human’s didn’t ‘suck’ at survival, we were mid-range. We weren’t at the top of the food chain by any means, but neither were we at the bottom. The predominant evolutionary driving factor behind intelligence, specifically human intelligence, isn’t ‘purpose’, it’s curiosity.
This is literally the worst and most self-destructive way to learn, but also, quite ironically, the fastest.
Take fire. Fire is ridiculously dangerous and even now, our ‘mastery’ over it is tentative at best. The discovery of fire probably did originate via lightning strike or similar, but harnessing it would have been suicide for early man. And most likely was. Multiple times. However, human’s are, if nothing else, persistent, even if it kills us. We’re willing to take monumental risks without the certainty of reward. That’s been driving our intelligence forward ever since we set foot out of the cave.
I’m reminded of Dresden Codak’s ‘Caveman Science Fiction’.
You say “Take our intelligence away and humans are nothing special”
That is more than likely very true, except, we do have our intelligence, and that makes us special
We are not as strong as a gorilla, so we came up with a way to make their strength meaningless
Ostriches are stronger, faster and hardier than us, so we tamed the fuckers and used them as mounts :P
We may be outclassed, naturally, in almost every aspect to other animals, except for our intelligence, which allowed us to create the things we were lacking in
Not stamina. Humans ran or walked many different types of prey to death simply through the ability to dissipate heat better and continue moving. It is called persistence hunting.
Yep, not the ostrich though. It can keep up a sustained gait of 34 mph for extended periods of time and sprint up to 43 mph. It’s one of the few creatures that outclass us in stamina and the only biped.
Which is why man trained it as a mount in areas that didn’t have horses
Only small people though- they don’t have a lot of carrying capacity.
Funnily enough, it was small people who populated those areas
I have to say I’m still partial to some of the ideas that sci-fi writers have come up with over the years for evolutionary tracks which vary radically from human beings but still accomplish the basic requirements for eventually developing advanced technology. For instance, EE Smith’s Rigelians which have tentacles which terminate in multiple ends of varied sizes which are perfect for complex manipulations and no outward sensory organs because they have a “sense of perception” that allows them to “see” not only the surface but the inside of objects. Or Scott Card’s Formics, who create biological “machines” for much of their fine work and only use relatively crude mechanics otherwise.
4 arms so she can grope twice as much as a normal humanoid. Plus the second set is cybernetic so does that even really count?
No, only one hand (and possible forearm) is cybernetic, the rest of that and the other three arms are completely natural
Suzie (thinking to herself):
Wow, a real alien knows MY name! Two months ago I was only an intern being sent out to top up the petty cash from the bank. Now I am a news reporter, anchor and am talking with ALIENS.
I’m still trying to figure out why Dazzler has four arms but not four boobs.
DaveB couldn’t figure out how to have her skimpy shirts hang properly with four (check out “Were-world” to see both Dabbles’ extra bewbies and her tail)
On a side note: glad to see you posting here, and equally glad to see the ‘problem’ with “Quantum Vibe” has been fixed (for about a week, wasn’t able to view the actual comic as the banner showing what you read was almost completely covering it)
I’m not seeing your basis for the correlation. Sure, humans have two arms and two boobs, but dogs and cats have four limbs and more than four nipples. Cows have a single boob with multiple nipples. Etc. There doesn’t appear to be any hard rule for these things.
Confusing breast tissue for the pectoral muscle group. On the opposite note I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a four armed humanoid concept with all of the support structure required for useful motion (clavicles, shoulder blades, pectorals, deltoid group) and are usually just another limb slapped onto the side of the ribcage. Especially considering that a normal deltoid would be nonfunctional or would run into the chest cavity so that muscle would be shorter and have less raising force.
Yeah, as noted above, she did have 4 boobs right up until her first appearance in the comic. The problem was that most prior drawings I had done of her had her in a less clothed state, which looked fine, but when you pull a shirt over 4 boobs, it made her torso look weird. My choice was to always draw her wearing double bikini tops and the like, or drop her back to 2 boobs. It was a tough decision, but I’m glad I went the way I did, as I like drawing her in corsets, and that would be really hard to work out if she still had 4 boobs.
Good man. *Slow Clap.*
I believe Dabbler has a treatment for that.
The hardest choices require the strongest wills.
Suzie did in fact, miss the point :p
Seems Legit.
Comment 400! Woot!
jellyfish with jellyfish for tentacles
Dabbler’s disproportionate frustration at Suzie is freaking hilarious.
Heh. Imagine if Dabbler had responded:
“Well, Suzie, remember that there are exceptions, and my race is one of them, and it’s normal for us. In fact, in my culture we had a saying, ‘What is the sound of three hands clapping?’ “.
CARCINIZATION.