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[Nathan_]

Comic 59 has a map of where Naam is and its jump routes, the steppes are only about 20-30 LY wide from the look of it. Earth is way off to the side.

The Umiak can't be too bold with their own forward scouts, or they'll get eaten by loroi raiders.

[NOMAD]

This whole situation reminds me of WWI ( I might mentioned already), but without a physical barrier as to how long the step region can be.

It would make sense that humanity will eventually be discovered, given that both sides are trying to get into each other core areas. Speaking of which the inner defences have been discussed before, but In terms of fleet number what would a Umiak division be like ( say 4X the size of 27's (adm aphid) fleet). I know Umiak trust is not a given, but on a "winning the war scale" what would the umiak throw at the loroi in order to end this war, their built up capital ship reserves over multiple fleets in order to drive directly at the three main homeworlds ( and thus end the conflict). or would their be another another plan ( such as another battle of attrition where the loroi lose the battles as the umiak steam role over any of their fleets).

or is the battle to be going to be a Planet hoping campaigne ( Like WWII pacific) where each planet is invaded, secured and then the Umiak fleet continues to advance.

or will thing turn out better for the loroi, where their able ( unlikely as it would seem) to hit back at the Umiak as they cross into loroi systems and do a repeat of the post-Seras invation ?

just putting out some indeas ( for good or ill)

[captainsmirk]

Except Fireblades interrogation didn't work. They didn't get any information (or at least any useful information) out of Alex when they scanned him. So I'm guessing it's a bit more indepth than that.

Maybe it's a sales recipt? On the basis of Like Reality Except, our fossil record is still there, and the Loroi are xeroxes of humanity printed in xenobiology ink, rather than a product of simple coincidence. Perhaps the Soia thought it would be fair to give humanity something in return?

The problem with these theories is that it would mean that it is actually modern humans who have coincidentally evolved to appear similar to the Loroi not the other way round. Modern humans don't appear in the fossil record until at least 75'000 years after the fall of the Soia empire. Any Soia contact with and manipulation of humanity must have occurred to earlier species of hominid.

As such they appear to have predicted the eventual form of human appearance when making the Loroi (assuming humans were taken as a base at all). Given that Loroi from three different planets, after thousands of years of separation (the same length of time during which modern humans evolved and displaced all earlier hominids), are still recognisably the same species means that little significant evolutionary change has occurred within the Loroi population since they were designed by the Soia.

[Ktrain]

Here's my theory of the social/biological development of Loroi society

Asymmetry in gender ratio ------> Aggression and stress arising from mating competition
/\ .......................................................................................................................|
|.........................................................................................................................|
|.........................................................................................................................|
|.........................................................................................................................\/
Groups with higher female to male ratios excel over others <---------- Violence and inter-group conflict/tribe raiding for mates

It's a feedback loop which eventually resulted in a caste system (though this could have happened earlier along the evolutionary chain...)

@captainsmirk The Soia might not have ever disappeared or the collapse of their empire did destroy them totally; the idea of mankind being designed/altered has not yet be dismissed by the story (though it maybe that all the species the Loroi have had contact with were modified by the Soia in such a way that they are susceptible to telepathy and that this susceptibility is not normal for naturally arising species.)

[Grayhome]

Almost as if they haven't evolved at all...

[captainsmirk]

@captainsmirk The Soia might not have ever disappeared or the collapse of their empire did destroy them totally; the idea of mankind being designed/altered has not yet be dismissed by the story (though it maybe that all the species the Loroi have had contact with were modified by the Soia in such a way that they are susceptible to telepathy and that this susceptibility is not normal for naturally arising species.)

My point was relating to the suggestion that the Loroi were somehow based on humanity, all the information we have says that the Loroi were developed prior to the collapse. Whether the Soia survived, or indeed still survive is of course an interesting point in itself...

[Voitan]

Some of you are assuming that the Loroi looked the same as they are now, since the day they were engineered by the Soia.

[Mjolnir]

The problem with these theories is that it would mean that it is actually modern humans who have coincidentally evolved to appear similar to the Loroi not the other way round. Modern humans don't appear in the fossil record until at least 75'000 years after the fall of the Soia empire. Any Soia contact with and manipulation of humanity must have occurred to earlier species of hominid.

First, remember how sparse the fossil record is. Lack of earlier fossils doesn't necessarily mean populations more similar to modern humans didn't exist, they may have just been a relatively minor player for a while. Also, intervention might not have been directly genetic, they may have culled out some of the competing subspecies and transplanted that population around a bit, giving it enough freedom to and diversify that a few tens of millennia later, they did show up in the fossil record.

Also, we don't know how slavishly they copied the appearance of the protohumans they selected...the Nibiren and Barsam have a notably similar appearance, but aren't identical. They may have adjusted Loroi appearance in the direction human appearance would develop in entirely by accident, or out of some careful guesswork of likely outcomes. If you think about the specific changes involved, convergence isn't that unlikely. (Bigger brainpan, that's obvious given the trends in development. For the expansion to be largely in the already-rapidly-changing forebrain is likely. Evolutionary forces seem to be optimizing for more upright posture. We're designing a spacefaring species with optimizations for rapid maturation and population growth, so make them a bit lighter and smaller...less food and space requirements per individual.)

[Mjolnir]

Some of you are assuming that the Loroi looked the same as they are now, since the day they were engineered by the Soia.

More like they do now than humans of the same periods look like modern humans. They're longer lived...fewer generations in that period of time...and have a synthetic or at least very heavily re-engineered biology...their creators could easily have built in better safeguards against genetic errors than we have. These error checking systems might even be implied by their long lives.

[captainsmirk]

First, remember how sparse the fossil record is. Lack of earlier fossils doesn't necessarily mean populations more similar to modern humans didn't exist, they may have just been a relatively minor player for a while. Also, intervention might not have been directly genetic, they may have culled out some of the competing subspecies and transplanted that population around a bit, giving it enough freedom to and diversify that a few tens of millennia later, they did show up in the fossil record.

Also, we don't know how slavishly they copied the appearance of the protohumans they selected...the Nibiren and Barsam have a notably similar appearance, but aren't identical. They may have adjusted Loroi appearance in the direction human appearance would develop in entirely by accident, or out of some careful guesswork of likely outcomes. If you think about the specific changes involved, convergence isn't that unlikely. (Bigger brainpan, that's obvious given the trends in development. For the expansion to be largely in the already-rapidly-changing forebrain is likely. Evolutionary forces seem to be optimizing for more upright posture. We're designing a spacefaring species with optimizations for rapid maturation and population growth, so make them a bit lighter and smaller...less food and space requirements per individual.)

This is a true but I still think we're probably reading too much into it, the Loroi are hardly the only bipedal species other than humans, two of the other Soia-Liron species are in fact bipedal, if of course nowhere near as human in appearance. The earliest fossils of "modern" humans are from around 150'000 years ago so i was allowing for some margin in error, and indeed those humans would be further from current human appearance than the Loroi are.

Although Nibiren/Barsam connection brings up some interesting points, the Nibiren must be (compared to humans or indeed most of the races of the local sphere) incredibly slow in their social development if they are still in the hunter-gather stage even after such a long period of time (All the other known species in the region have managed to return to a level of space flight admittedly with the aid of Soia-era remains in the same space of time). An interesting question is have the Nibiren always been in their current state of advancement or were they actually a space-faring society during the Soia era?

Some of you are assuming that the Loroi looked the same as they are now, since the day they were engineered by the Soia.

The Loroi are an interesting case as they are a species who have developed on three different worlds (with significantly different climates) from the stone age to the space age, yet once they recontacted each other they were still recognisably the same species, this suggests that relatively little has changed since they first ended up on those planets at the fall of the Soia. Given that during a smaller period of time modern humans developed all of our current racial groups, whilst the Loroi simply have some variation in skin colour (the actual features of the Loroi don't seem much different between individuals with different colourations).

[discord]

half a million years ago, is about the time for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis to emerge, and they are really not THAT different to modern humans, not more than inuit or some inbreed southern rednecks of doom for example....
or for that matter australian bush people, or....etc.

evolution is NOT very fast changer....which does not exclude some tampering at that time, or that some soia might not have stuck around and continued tweaking.

captain smirk: on the speed of 'social evolution' it is just a matter of combinations of factors, runaway intelligence breeding, check, tribal social structure combined with a 'alpha' mentality, so someone can get something done...and after that it's laziness and a few other factors, oh right, and non-nomadic tradition, figuring out written communication of some sort....after that it starts to move.

we have made more 'technological' progress the last five thousand years than we did the previous fifty or a hundred thousand, or a million, basically it's a feedback loop, the more technology we create, the faster we create more, if the conditions are not just right, technological progress is slow as hell.

[Mjolnir]

Although Nibiren/Barsam connection brings up some interesting points, the Nibiren must be (compared to humans or indeed most of the races of the local sphere) incredibly slow in their social development if they are still in the hunter-gather stage even after such a long period of time (All the other known species in the region have managed to return to a level of space flight admittedly with the aid of Soia-era remains in the same space of time). An interesting question is have the Nibiren always been in their current state of advancement or were they actually a space-faring society during the Soia era?

Assuming the same starting point, they're only about 11 thousand years behind us, out of 500 thousand. Modern homo sapiens stuck around for a good period of time before we started using agriculture. That development allowed rapid growth in population, construction of cities, formation of large civilizations, and everything else that allowed larger scale production and sharing of ideas.

That they're still hunter-gatherers is probably largely chance, agriculture just hasn't caught on. Even a stone age culture can build sprawling empires once they have that.

[Ktrain]

Assuming the same starting point, they're only about 11 thousand years behind us, out of 500 thousand. Modern homo sapiens stuck around for a good period of time before we started using agriculture. That development allowed rapid growth in population, construction of cities, formation of large civilizations, and everything else that allowed larger scale production and sharing of ideas.

That they're still hunter-gatherers is probably largely chance, agriculture just hasn't caught on. Even a stone age culture can build sprawling empires once they have that.

That argument is similar to Jared Diamand's argument about the development on human civilization. Developments in agriculture lead to greater population densities and more people leads to more innovation, which in turn supported greater populations. Though this might just be a unique human paradigm.

Perhaps the Nibirem do not subsist in a climate where agriculture is very viable or maybe food is so plentiful and reliable in their environment there has never been a need to farm (why spend time developing cultivation when you have a plentiful natural source of food/material). Nevertheless, the development of agriculture may not necessarily lead to comparable tends in technology advancement due to biology/environment/culture, and furthermore, farming may not be a prerequisite for other developments such as civil society (there are a few outliers in human culture that exhibit such atypical advancement).

[Razor One]

half a million years ago, is about the time for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis to emerge, and they are really not THAT different to modern humans, not more than inuit or some inbreed southern rednecks of doom for example....
or for that matter australian bush people, or....etc.

No. No. Stop. Just stop right there.

That's not evolution. That's not evolution at all. Do not even begin to associate the concept of race with evolution. They have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with each other. At all.

The genetics that control skin colour and appearance number only several hundred base pairs. Out of BILLIONS. Two complete strangers of, say european or asian descent can be more genetically similar than than myself and my own brother.

Speciation occurs when you can no longer have viable children between two organisms. If one were to do the nasty in the pasty with Homo Heidelbergensis (you sick bastard ) you could, conceivably have a child together, but that child would not be not be viable in the same sense that a liger is not viable.

You will note that Inuit, 'southern rednecks of doom' and 'australian bush people' (Aborigines is the correct term) are all perfectly capable of having viable children with other 'races' because they're the same species as us with practically no major genetic differences. The only place on earth where you will find any significant genetic differences between various groups of people... is in Africa. It's the most genetically diverse region for Homo Sapiens on earth.

Now... if one were to do the nasty in the pasty with a Homo Sapiens from 100,000 years ago, you would definitely be able to have viable children with them because the human genome hasn't mutated to the point of speciation in that long. Evidence suggests that anatomically correct humans have been around for 195,000 years.

The Loroi have been around for... I'll be conservative and say 300,000 years as a species. According to Insider, their lifespan is "Potentially 400 years".

Let's math this out a bit.

400 years with future tech.

Let's cut off 100 years to get an equivalent for Atomic / Information Age levels of medical intervention and work from there.

Assumption: Present day (Outsiderverse) Loroi Medical Technology is advanced enough to put on an extra 100 years to their lifespan.

So, 300 years or so with our present level of tech as the average lifespan. Mapping this over, 300 years for Loroi = 80 for humans. Not a bad run at all.

Average life expectancy in a stoneage culture is 35 or so. Some basic math and the assumption that this maps over well...

X = Stoneage Lifespan
Y = Average Lifespan (Atomic / Information Age Tech)

For humans, X divided by Y reveals...

35 / 80 = .4375

Assuming the same for Loroi

X / 300 = .4375

Rearranging to solve for X...

X = 300 * .4375 = 131.25

So, average life expectancy for Loroi living in stone age conditions is 131.25 years

Potential Insight: Atomic / Information Age technology adds 169.75 years to the Loroi Lifespan. 55 years for humans.

Now, to extrapolate this forwards, we'll need to work a bit.

Let's see how much they've comparitively gained. To do this, we'll take the change in lifespan, Delta Z (DZ) divided by the Atomic / Information age Life expectancy and create a number I'll call CR (Change Ratio).

DZ / Y = CR

55 / 80 = .6875
169.75 / 300 = .5658

Comparitively speaking, the CR appears to be better overall for Humans than for Loroi. In other words, medical intervention appears to work better for us humans with my current assumptions.

Now lets work forwards.

Assuming that life expectancy trends from 1960 - 2009 continue...

Year = Avg. Life Expect.
1960 = 52.5
2009 = 69.2

Delta Yr. = Delta LE.

49 = 16.7

Delta LE / Delta Yr.

16.7 / 49 = .341

For every year from 1960 to 2009, the average life expectancy for your average citizen of the world increased by .341 (rounded up). Do note that this is a world average and not the average for a well developed western democracy.

If we assume that this rate is more or less constant...

.341 per year.

2009 = 69.2
2158 = ?

2158 - 2009 = 149

149 * .341 = 50.809 years added to the average human lifespan.

69.2 + 50.809 = 120.009. We'll round that down.

M = the current day (outsiderverse) average life expectancy.

DZ / M

268.75 / 400 = .671875
95 / 120 = .7916

Assuming that the Loroi take roughly a sane level of medical intervention to preserve their lives, it would seem that Humans benefit more, lifespan for lifespan, from medical intervention.

...Wow. That was a hell of a tangent from my original line of thinking. Time to get back on track.

If we assume that the average stone-age life span of the Loroi lies at 131.25 years and that Loroi were around 300,000 years ago at a stone age level during the reign of the Soia, then...

300,000 / 131.25 = 2285.71 generations from pre-fall Soia Empire to present day Loroi.

That number is a significant simplification. It assumes that all Loroi, everywhere, lived under stone age conditions for their entire history until present day. The number is likely closer to 1800 generations or so to account for the technology posessed pre-fall and that developed after they underwent their agricultural revolution and subsequent industrialisations.

Compare with Humans.

195,000 / 35 = 5571 generations from Stone age to present day.

Anatomically correct homo sapiens were present 195,000 years ago. Comparitively, we've gone through two to three times as many generations as they have and barely changed at all.

Disclaimer: These numbers are lazy guess work and assumptions, with some rather oblique generalisations and simplifications thrown in.

Further Disclaimer: I'm significantly jetlagged at the moment. If I've come across as sharp, biting or nasty, I apologise in advance. I'm just being analytical... trying to be... probably failing.

Even Further Disclaimer: Yes, I realize I have probably committed genocide against the catgirl population.

I prefer Spaceship girls after all

[Mayhem]

half a million years ago, is about the time for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis to emerge, and they are really not THAT different to modern humans, not more than inuit or some inbreed southern rednecks of doom for example....
or for that matter australian bush people, or....etc.

No. No. Stop. Just stop right there.

That's not evolution. That's not evolution at all. Do not even begin to associate the concept of race with evolution. They have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with each other. At all.

I don't believe he was.

The way I interpreted it, he was suggesting that - from a visual and structural point of view (not genetic) - given the natural variation in Homo Sapiens - Homo Heidelbergensis don't seem that different from us.

In the same way - even though the Loroi are vastly different from us genetically and biologically - there is an amazing degree of similarity between the Loroi and us.

Speciation occurs when you can no longer have viable children between two organisms. If one were to do the nasty in the pasty with Homo Heidelbergensis (you sick bastard ) you could, conceivably have a child together, but that child would not be not be viable in the same sense that a liger is not viable.

Given that (IIRC) modern Homo Sapiens is believed to be the offspring of early Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis, I wouldn't want rule on viability of such children without someone (else) engaging in experimental testing.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Either way, I don't think there's a very strong case for a continuing influence on the two races making them look similar. I've seen a lot of faces pass by my desk every morning at the newspaper where I work, and I gotta say, there's a lot of different looking people out there that don't look anything like any of the Loroi we've seen so far.

"I've already got a female to worry about. Her name is the Enterprise. - Kirk"

[fredgiblet]

Although Nibiren/Barsam connection brings up some interesting points, the Nibiren must be (compared to humans or indeed most of the races of the local sphere) incredibly slow in their social development if they are still in the hunter-gather stage even after such a long period of time (All the other known species in the region have managed to return to a level of space flight admittedly with the aid of Soia-era remains in the same space of time). An interesting question is have the Nibiren always been in their current state of advancement or were they actually a space-faring society during the Soia era?

I would guess that the Nibiren were in the same boat as humans. Since we've only gone space-faring in a big way (not just billion-dollar weekend trips to the moon) in the last 200 years or so and since it's canon that we are much faster at tech than anyone else it's not at all unreasonable for the Nibiren to still be hunter-gatherer.

[Razor One]

half a million years ago, is about the time for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis to emerge, and they are really not THAT different to modern humans, not more than inuit or some inbreed southern rednecks of doom for example....
or for that matter australian bush people, or....etc.

No. No. Stop. Just stop right there.

That's not evolution. That's not evolution at all. Do not even begin to associate the concept of race with evolution. They have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with each other. At all.

I don't believe he was.

The way I interpreted it, he was suggesting that - from a visual and structural point of view (not genetic) - given the natural variation in Homo Sapiens - Homo Heidelbergensis don't seem that different from us.

In the same way - even though the Loroi are vastly different from us genetically and biologically - there is an amazing degree of similarity between the Loroi and us.

Ahhh, if that's what he meant then my bad on misinterpreting there.

Speciation occurs when you can no longer have viable children between two organisms. If one were to do the nasty in the pasty with Homo Heidelbergensis (you sick bastard ) you could, conceivably have a child together, but that child would not be not be viable in the same sense that a liger is not viable.

Given that (IIRC) modern Homo Sapiens is believed to be the offspring of early Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis, I wouldn't want rule on viability of such children without someone (else) engaging in experimental testing.

As I understand it, Homo Sapiens and Neanderthalensis split off from a common ancestor 400 - 500,000 years ago as opposed to the interbreeding theory. About 1 - 4% of the human genome in certain subsets of the population do appear to have commonality with Neanderthals but there's been no definitive scientific explanation... it's possible the genes were preserved in those populations since the split.

This area of study is still being researched, the two theories currently on stage are the Recently out of Africa Theory and the Multi-regional theory. While multi-regional theory does support the possibility that neanderthalensis interbred with humans it also supports Homo Sapiens interbreeding with other tribes of Homo Erectus that had migrated out of Africa earlier on. Given that the further you trace human ancestry out of Africa, the more human genetic diversity falls, I can't say I buy into that hypothesis all too much.

Whatever the case may be, I'm sure the reality of human evolution is infinitely more complicated than the cut and dry stuff we're discussing here. Its possible that viruses could be responsible for the shared genetics. Viruses can jump species, especially so when they're closely related. It may have gone both ways quite a lot in pre-historic times before we finally killed off all our competitors.

[dex drako]

Here’s the biggest problem I see with any per human being the base for the loroi.

the difference between loroi and humans is the same as two identical shaped statues made of marble and bronze. They are made by different people using different techniques and with different materials with different physical properties. The only thing that makes the two statues seems connected is the fact they look alike and that's it.

It’s the same here, Loroi do not have DNA they have... XYZ.

Their biochemistry uses completely different chemicals that react with each other in completely different ways then our own ATGC based DNA does. The only connection between humans and Loroi is a physical similarity and a possible psychic ability. The same goes for the Nibiren/Barsam as well minus the psychic ability that is.

So leads to too options.

1) the Soia just stumbled across at least two planets ( earth and the Nibiren home world.) with interesting species and studied the physical properties of our distant ancestors. Then loosely copied these physical properties in a completely different medium but did nothing with the two natural species (which would have been 1000’s of times easier). Only for some unknown reason these two species naturally evolved to look even more like the “man made” ones.

2) the shape and abilities are part of a template the Soia used when ego engineering a planet.

I’m a big believer in occam’s razor and option one just has too many whys and leaps in logic for me. While option two is simple and explains things like why do humans seem to have higher psychic potential then loroi, it’s simply the fact we’re a newer model.

[osmium]

I haven't checked the time-lines, but I think that humans are the base species for the Loroi. I think the soia re-wrote the genes of species with interesting abilities into their own "template" genetic code, maybe through some degree of trial and error, but once they had a viable species "copy" (or perhaps mirror image) they knew very well the ins and outs of this specific genetic template and could alter things to their advantage. Perhaps they used the "inward" focus of human psionics and turned it outward in tweaking the loroi. I have no love for the 40k milieu but there are some strong similarities in my mind between the old ones and the soia at least as they've been presented (minus the fact that we don't know if there is a specific threat that actually caused the Soia collapse).

-O