Impact of living on a world with no terrestrial fauna
Assume Humanity was really wrecked by some malignant force, and a group managed to escape and find a habitable planet and 'settle' it. They weren't able to bring along much in the way of advanced technology, but they were able to bring along relevant knowledge. So, while they reverted to the 'Middle Ages' as far as basic technology goes, they can take care of things like medicine and nutrition much better. They're then able to, over time, re-build up to a WWII/1950s era technology level.
The world they found is very early in its development cycle. There's plenty of fish in the sea, but no creatures have made their way onto land yet.
Clarifications & Updates The planet is assumed to have plant life (Otherwise it is far too uninhabitable even if technically livable). It is noted below that trees developed much later, so I am curious as to what could replace them (even if it is handwaving trees into existance).
Initial population size is a few dozen thousand - perhaps 40 to 75. They arrived in a small fleet of vessels, with small craft for planetary transportation. There is no method of refueling these craft, and the large craft are too large to land. I am presuming they can use these ships for a few dozen years to set things up. The craft have some manufacturing capabilities (IE, printing books), but were not designed or supplied for a long term mission. They function long enough to establish a foothold, gather some images for maps, do some limited surveys, etc.
What sort of impact would this have on a (re-)developing civilization? From what I've read and seen, there would still be things like coal and oil (Although in lower quantities), but beyond that I have no idea on what sort of repercussions there would be for civilization.
1 answer
edit: The OP allows plants, but no trees. Actually this is reasonable; woody trunks may well be an evolutionary response to predation and trampling by early animals; the fact that many trees can survive collision with a car could be a result of withstanding collisions with dinosaurs; or attempts by dinosaurs to eat them.
Medieval technology (and earlier, some from thousands of years ago) is capable of forging steel as good as modern steel, glasses and fine polished lenses, refining metals (like gold, silver, copper, tin) and forming alloys, casting them into shapes.
The OP allows libraries of relevant knowledge, we will rely upon.
For fuel, we can gather plants and leaves and let them dry; starting a fire should be no problem. With 40,000 people, we will have plenty of 1%ers: Not in the wealth department, but the knowledge departments: biology, engineering, human medical, medicine, physics, architecture, astronomy, geologists, mining, metallurgy, refinement, etc. We have to figure out what is edible and what is not.
On Earth we used a lot of animal power for farming. Getting organized we will have to use human power. Eventually we need engines, and what can be built easily using the medieval tech is steam engines. The first steam engine was invented by Thomas Savery in 1698, and in fact a proof of concept of using steam to create rotary motion (as the article shows) was built 1600 years earlier, in Greece.
So everything needed by a steam engine is theoretically available to us, in time. We can mine, and the basics of how to build a steam engine should be in our library and known amongst our population: Given a population of 40,000 we have a 99.998% chance of somebody knowing anything we need to know (computed as $0.5^{\frac{1}{40,000}}$); an even better chance if we include our library, so we just need to get our knowledge map in order (the types of things that specific people are expert in).
The Steam engine allows for turning any kind of plant life into energy for machines to plow fields, dig mines, break rocks, etc. We have had steam powered cars, and of course trains.
I expect this society to leap pretty quickly from medieval to early industrial, late 1800's on Earth, perhaps even early 1900's: They know what electricity can do!
A great deal of technological advancement comes from ideas, and just as teaching is often a very fast recapitulation of key ideas that advance something, these settlers already have the key ideas, they brought them along. For example, nobody has to come up with the idea of the car, truck or steam locomotive, or convince anybody that a locomotive on rails could transport thousands of tons. They may have to work out some details, but all of them know this is both possible and valuable and will work.
Nobody has to invent the tractor, thresher, or the idea of industrial farming on a vast scale. Nobody has to invent the lumber mill or casting iron. Nobody has to be the first to try using steel beams to build tall buildings. Aircraft do not start as a curiosity that nobody really knows what to do with; nobody doubts plastics (or something similar) and rubber can be made from plants and everybody knows what they are good for, nobody doubts the use or existence of tough light ceramics or metal foams and their utility.
Heck, nobody has to invent algebra, calculus, physics and mechanical engineering, or medicine for that matter, or the hundreds of crucial and game changing ideas that brought us from the middle ages to the modern age. (The idea of germs, extreme sanitation, and doctors simply washing their hands before and after treating patients or doing surgery has saved literally millions of lives, as has the simple idea of boiling water before drinking it or using it on an open wound).
Given 40,000 people drawn at random, anything known on earth by 1 in a 1000 people should be known by a few dozen in this group.
Of course the biggest cultural change is going to be a seafood and vegetable society. They need to feed themselves fast!
I presume the fish are edible; at least edible if cooked. The best fast tech I know of for catching Earthly ocean fish without wood are stone fish traps. Remnants of some of these have been found from over 2000 years ago; it is not a new idea. They do need to be located in chosen places based on current and tides, they do not necessarily just work anywhere.
There is a tidal trap: The idea is to find a place where high tide is several feet, and fish come to feed in waters too shallow to reach during low tide. Build a semi-circular loose stone fence (meaning don't fill in the gaps with mud), of a specific height, tight enough that larger fish cannot swim through it. Place it just before the water line at low tide: You want fish to be able to swim over (or around) your fence at high tide, but be stranded on the shoe by it at low tide. At low tide the water drains out, between the rocks, and you go collect your fish, using a rock to kill them.
There are current traps: On earth at least, fish do not reverse course to get out of a trap, and they don't seem to have any memory of how they got someplace. So the current trap is built as a fence (using rocks again), in the shape of a 'comma'. Fish swim with the current along the shore line; some end up on the shore side of this fence (at the tail of the comma). They won't reverse course to get to the other side. The fence guides them into a circle; the ball of the comma, and the fence spirals inward for a loop, trapping fish in a pool. they can't figure out how to reverse course or swim against the current, so they become concentrated in the ball of the comma, making them easy to net (vine nettings), brain (with rocks), or just get in and throw them out by hand. Plus it keeps them alive and fresh until needed.
Other fish traps are ancient also; see this weir (could be build with rock), and the double-heart (which is built with rock), both of which can be adapted to work offshore in a current, both of which can be built quickly by many hungry settlers working together.
Fishing Wier. Click on the picture to enlarge.
Double Heart of Stacked Stones fish trap. Click on the picture to enlarge.
so we have food and water (steam distilled ocean water, can be made even using clay pots), and quick shelter. The society progresses by steam engine and quickly implementing their knowledge of basic sciences. They will arrive at a full electrical stage within a century, IMO. Of course they don't use traps forever, they will be building steam powered boats and fishing nets pretty quickly.
Other details (crops, what they can use for fiber and rope, whether they have coal or oil products) are all going to be peculiar to what you put on the planet for them to use. Something like cotton would be great for a textile industry, but what they get is up to the planet designer, or perhaps additional world-building questions.
You want those knowing the most about geology and mining in the group to focus on finding simple ores for tools, and progressing toward iron. Flint is not of biological or animal origin; that is the first thing to find; it can be shaped by using flint rocks as hammers, knapping can be self-taught to make razor sharp hand tools very quickly. These can be used for simple tasks like harvesting plants for fuel and food, killing and butchering fish, and digging for ores. The majority of people can be put to work both on these tasks, on building fish traps, and on becoming specialists in making these tools.
Use other specialists among the 40,000 to make teams of surveyor/explorers; to find the best candidate places to settle: For fish production, farming potential, and mining potential. If possible for caves that can serve as initial shelter and shade from the weather.
Use plant specialists to understand and start categorizing the new flora (categorization being the first step in science), with an eye on finding fibrous stalks, leaves, or roots to be able to make strong ropes and nets (for fish and woven mats that have utility in shelter and comfort).
0 comment threads
0 comment threads