Midnight's Broken Toe

I read in the most recent Adbusters a blurb accompanying a photograph. The blurb was a quote from a biologist or population analyst, or some other equally qualified specialist. And the quote was, to the best of my memory, this specialist explaining how, because people are becoming so much more careful about how they breed (that is to say, seeking mates with certain features to ensure a greater likelihood that their offspring will also have those features), the human population would eventually split into two separate but genetically similar species. One of these would be superior in that they would be more attractive, taller, with fair skin and hair and fewer health problems. The other species would be inferior, having all of the "problems" that the superior species have tried to get rid of.
The theory inspired me so much that I started writing a story about it.

In the story, I named the two species Subs (the inferior species; their scientific name is Homo improbus. Improbus is the latin word for...inferior.) and Urbs (the superior species who retain the Homo sapien name despite the fact that technically they are the new species and should be renamed), and I decided to abandon genetic theory to some degree to make the story work for me, so I also created Halves, who are half-breed Subs and Urbs. Halves are rare and the males are infertile, but female halves, when they are found, are bred into Urb society to preserve genetic diversity.

Now, in my head, the story, some 200-400 years in the future went something like this: The Subs (Homo improbus, i.e. inferior), are the more populous species because they are kept, "like rats in a cage" in terrible cramped inncer city living conditions...think tenements for immigrants in the 1800s, projects, etc... and are controlled in a pretty much totalitarian government by the Urbs. In order to keep the Subs in a concentrated area, they pretty much add onto cities by building down as well as up, so parts of the city extend underground, while the nicer parts of the city are farther above ground...literally, up-town. So the subs have basically no knowledge of the control that urbs have until one of them, while running from Urb police, hides in a dumpster and finds an old book about the holocaust.

But as I was writing this, I realized that this situation has happened before within the context of human evolution (...if that is a theory to which you subscribe. As an armchair anthropologist and archeologist, and for the sake of this entry, I will discuss human evolionary theory as fact). Anyway, this divergence of one species overtaking another has happened before. It began when Australopithecus split off from our cousins the Chimpanzees. Australopithecus found another niche when it stopped eating meat and started walking on two legs instead of four. Since then, bipeds adapted and evolved so that when Neanderthals were sharing a niche with Homo sapiens, the Neanderthals began to die out. Homo sapiens were just more able to adapt just like the Neanderthals were more adaptable than Homo erectus before them. For some reason, in the past, bipedal hominids have never been able to occupy the same niche. Biologically, of course, it goes without saying that no two species can occupy the same niche and expect both to live very long. One species will out-compete the other.

But what would it be like to share the same niche...the same lifestyle...with a bipedal hominid who you knew was a different species? I hate to think, but it seems inevitable...that there would be racism on a whole new level, especially considering that race, as far as humans go, is a completely inadequate way to classify a group of genetically similar people.

I had to look up some things to refresh my memory from physical anthropology, so...

Source

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus

Posted in Wax on, wax off byMidnightsBrokenToe at 06:49 AM Posted by: MidnightsBrokenToe at 06:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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