News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Gondwanaland: The search for a land before (human) time. Parent comment

Re:Gondwanaland: The search for a land before (human) time by shiroiushi on Thursday December 26, 2024 @11:51PM (#42520025)
Maybe, maybe not. Human history has been drastically shaped by geography, causing humans to leave wherever they first evolved and travel across the world, becoming by far the dominant species.

Perhaps with different geography, humans would have gone extinct long before figuring out how to make fire or the wheel.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Gondwanaland: The search for a land before (human) time by Y_Y on Friday December 27, 2024 @07:02AM (#42521507)
I was wondering how difficult it might be to modify Earth's geography to ensure humans went extinct, while still having them evolve in the first place.

I think the answer is barely, if at all. Using the power of known population bottlenecks (e g. [0]) and chaotic dynamics we can say that any trivial change might lead to a brief existence for humanity. Specifically I'm thinking of something like Lotka-Volterra leading to Gambler's Ruin.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/h...

[ Parent | on HN ]