In the last tho posts in this series we looked at the Æsir and the Jötnar species as depicted in Ragnarok Conspiracy. Both these species originated in far away galaxies. In this post we are going to be looking at a species a little closer to home, the Hylobo Sapiens.
Apes and humans
If we look at ourselves, humans are genetically closest related to apes. In fact, biologically, humans are apes. Chimpanzees are geneticly closer to humans than they are to gorilla's. Orangutans are further removed from chimps and humans than gorillas, and within the ape clade are the gibbons.
Just like in your family, where you basicly express how related you are to your living same generation relatives by looking how far away your common ancestors are, we do the dame with species. Your siblings and you have a common ancestor (or usually two) one generation ago. Your first causin two generation, and so on.
For humans and chimps, their last common ancestor lived about five million years ago. For gorillas it's eigth million years. Orangutans 15 million and gibbons 22 million years. In terms of family paralels, chimps wouls be the human race it's sibling, gorilla's its first cousin, orangutans its second cousin and gibons its third cousin.
Only for species we arent counting in generations, we are counting in many millions of years, millions of years where a lot of evolution happens in each of the branches. Counter to popular perception, our last common ancestor between us and chimps wasn't a chimp. Chimps have evolved from that common ancestor just like we have. And just like us, they will have had a few dead-end evolutionary branches that went extrinct some time ago. We as homo sapiens are about half a million years old, and are currently, as far as we know, the only surviving species of the homo genus.
A hidden twig in the Hylobatidae branch
Think for a moment about the cognitive distance between a chimpanzee and a human and about our common ancester being only five million years ago. Now consider the 22 million years of evolution between the last common ancestor we share with gibbons.
In Ragnarok Conspiracy, somewhere in these 22 million year, around nine million years ago, we find the last common ancestor on the Hylobatidae family branhch between current day gibbons on the current day Hylobo Sapiens. A species of inteligent apes that relate to current day gibbons the same way we as modern humans relate to chimpanzees, but with one main difference: The proto Hylobo Sapiens reached civilication level five million years before homo sapiens did. In our lore, the branching between humans and chimpanzees started in a way similar as the branching between wolves and dogs: through domestication.
Enter the Æsir
In our lore, earth and all of it's creatures had long received the gift of family from the Æsir before the hylobo sapiens started to develop. The proto hylobo sapiens also received the gift of connection from the Æsir.
We will discuss the full hidden history of Earth in a later post, but one event we can not ship as it defines the start of the transition from proto hylobo sapiens to hylobo sapiens.
Proto hylobo sapiens to hylobo sapiens
During the Jötnar uprising and the war of three thousand worlds, the Jötnar invaded three thousand galaxies in the Laniakea Supercluster, includinr our galaxy represented by earth. In the war and freeze-over, many proto hylobo sapiens died, and the surviving proto hylobo sapiens hid from in underground cave cities Jötnar. We will revisit the war of three thousand worlds in later posts.
Two important outcomes of this war though are the evolutionary impact of moving from the planets surface to their underground cities, and the Midgard Decree.
Going underground resulted in the proto hylobo sapiens to start developing into current day hylobo sapiens. The species lost its hair that used to be similar to humans in distribution (or actually the other way around, as domesticated homo sapiens were bread to have proto-hylobo alike patterns of fur for eastatic reasons). And the already dark gibbon like eyes grep much larger to accomodate the low light conditions in the underground cave cities.
The current day apearance of the hylobo sapiens should be familliar to readers, because it is that of the species that in popular culture is often refered to as a gray alien. Only the hylobo sapiens aren't alien, they are from Earth like humans are.
Post occupation
While the Hylobo Sapiens succesfully hid from the Jötnar for many milenia, the homo sapiens that weren't perceived as a threath by the Jötnar, thrived. It wasn't untill the Midgard Decree that was issued by the Æsir in an attemot to drive back the Jötnar from Laniakea that humans received the Gift of Space from the Æsir, a gift that turned out to be a double edged sword. A gift that helped the Hylobo Sapiens and the humans together with Vall to drive out the Jötnar, it also kickstarted human civilication. Something that led to many events of human agression towards the Hylobo Sapiens. The hylobo sapiens had to remain a largely hidden species on its own planet because its apearance combined with supersticioun and agression from the humans, as well as their own deep sensitivity to rudeness combined with the ability of mind controll flowing from the gift of connection and the their superior inteligence compared to humans. Over the milenia, hylobo sapiens have been mistaken for daemons, trolls, evil aliens, and even on some ocasions Jötnar.
More about this and other aspects of the hidden history of earth in upcomming posts in this series.
Openworld
This bit of lore and world building from Ragnarok Conspiracy, just as the novel itself and all of its lore and world building can be used in your own fiction under the terms of the OpenWorld Character Usage, (OW4-CU) licence. You can basicly use the lore, world buikding and characters in your own fiction under the condtion of attribution plus a few pretty reasonable conditions regarding licencing your own work under a cmplatible licence and respecting the original world building and characters.
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Very interesting read, thank you. Sorry I stumbled on it too late to upvote it properly.