RuneScape Forum Archive | Evolution in RuneScape?

Hguoh

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AesirWarrior said :
Laton95 said :
I
Another interesting question related to this one is what races are actually native to Gielinor? I think dagannoth are the strongest candidate, with scavids being second although they could be another form of mutated Yu'biuskian.

Presumably none. According to Zaros life is the result of an imbalance in the Anima Mundi. Gielinor, being the "perfect" world, had a balanced Anima, so intelligent life couldn't form. Of course, events such as the Forinthry explosion could have imbalanced it somewhat, which would explain things like Living Rock Monsters.

The Tokhaar have been here pretty much since the plane existed (though they originated when and where Ful made the Kiln). So they're in the odd position of the plane being native to them rather than they being native to the plane.

Vorago and Telos, as avatars of Gielinor's Anima appear to be native to Gielinor. Though we know little of the former's origins (some theories posit Vorago may have formed when the Anima was particularly imbalanced in the past like the destruction of Forinthry), while the latter is likely a deliberate creation of the elders to protect the Heart of Gielinor.

As for the Living Rock Monsters, they don't appear to be particularly sapient. Much like Vorago and Telos's most basic functions, they seem to essentially be an immune system for the Anima Mundi, generally keeping things from reaching the points where they could damage the Anima.

26-Feb-2018 19:13:05

Hguoh

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AesirWarrior said :
I'm not sure. "Spirits" are incredibly vaguely defined in RS. The term's been used to describe both ghosts and creatures of the Spirit Plane, but there's never been any explantion as to what Dryads, Nymphs or other supposed "spirits" are. For all we know they could just be another species, and spirit is just some generic/superstitious description, or they could be Guthixian Ghosts who have attuned themselves to nature like Filiman.

'Spirit' in RS generally seems to have two meanings.

The first, applying to denizens of the spirit plane, is a concept made manifest. Literally ideas given form. The most clear demonstration we have of this is Akthanakos's creation of the camel warriors.

The second is a creature's personal anima. Not the stuff we produce, but the stuff that remains with us throughout life and seems to cause our personality to manifest. It is more commonly known as a soul. Typically, souls are bound to their body until death at which point the plane's Death severs the soul's connection to the body and the soul works it's way to an afterlife (which seem to generally be linked to a specific plane and it's anima). Some souls can persist after death rather than journey to an afterlife (ghosts, nature spirits, and the like), while other souls seem to be able to temporarily separate themselves from their living body (which seems to be the case with dryads).

Granted, trees don't seem to usually produce sapient souls (and we wouldn't expect them to given most species of them we interact with seem to be native to Gielinor) with the exception of spirit trees. So Dryads could very well have a human origin (being created by or originally having been human souls), but even then they wouldn't be genetically related to humans since the Spirit doesn't appear to carry any semblance of genetics (that falls to the body) unless the being is purely magic (Mahjarrat).

26-Feb-2018 19:33:17 - Last edited on 26-Feb-2018 19:37:17 by Hguoh

Oct

2005

Wahisietel

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I like to think cabbages are native to Gielinor. But they probably do count as a sentient race, since they are plants. Instances of sentient cabbages are probably just Brassica Prime magic. You never were our brightest star, Khazard. 'Vermin slaughtered like lambs'? What does that even mean?

27-Feb-2018 01:49:27

May

2008

Laton95

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During the Lore FC hunt for these new horror books, Raven revealed that humans are not descended from apes in universe. Apes have a new origin story from the books. In his own words: "The examine text (monkey's) is a question, one that is now proven to be false".

13-Mar-2018 03:44:12

Hguoh

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Laton95 said :
During the Lore FC hunt for these new horror books, Raven revealed that humans are not descended from apes in universe. Apes have a new origin story from the books. In his own words: "The examine text (monkey's) is a question, one that is now proven to be false".

Eh? Of course humans didn't descend from apes. They didn't even do that irl.

Humans and apes share a common ancestor irl (though if you want to get technical about it, the point where you could use ape as a monophyletic term (Hominoidea) would have us as a subset of apes (just like apes would be a subset of monkeys if you go to the point where you could use monkey as a monophyletic term (Simiiform))).

That being said, it does appear very unlikely that apes and monkeys are not as closely related to humans in game as they are irl. If they were as closely related as they were irl, you'd need to have a group of the ancestors of the apes of Jermyn/Bobonosia find their plane's version of the Schism and travel through it to Teragard where they would eventually develop into humans while the rest left on Jermyn/Bobonosia developed into apes. And all this would have to happen after the group that would become monkeys had branched off from this ancestral line.

It's possible that this course of event could have happened in game, but that would have the ancestors of humans colonizing another plane via Schism before they even developed into humans and then proceed to accidentally do so again and again so as to both spread across the planes like weeds and develop into other hominoid races. And I can see why Jagex might wish to avoid such complications in their lore.

Acknowledging that, I'd still expect ape-like creatures to exist or at least to have once existed on Teragard given the physical traits of humans and the knowledge that sapient life had to have evolved since the elders didn't make any outside of the TokHaar (as far as we know).

13-Mar-2018 04:14:44 - Last edited on 13-Mar-2018 04:15:22 by Hguoh

Aug

2023

William Witt

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Hmm.

Zooknock in Monkey Madness -

"Zooknock: Garkor had long decided that we need a monkey insider. I have the necessary magic to perform the shapeshifting spell, but we needed a human to transform.
Player: Why don't you just transform a gnome?
Zooknock: It has been tried in the past, but the results were far from... satisfactory. Although we, like you, are related to the monkeys, the link is too weak for a successful transformation. That is why we need you."

And the beginning of Gnomic Negotiations -

"In the time before the Grand Tree came into being, the gnomes were planning to co-exist with the humans. For if you trace humanity back far enough, you will find that these two races share a common genealogy. Just don't tell some humans that - they tend to be a bit touchy about any comparisons with their vertically challenged counterparts."

It certainly seems to be indicated that monkeys, humans and gnomes are all related. Maybe not as strongly as real life, then - do you have any hypotheses on how they all connect, Hguoh?

The Asgarnian ale must flow.

13-Mar-2018 12:41:23

Dec

2023

Cthris

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Hguoh said :
If they were as closely related as they were irl, you'd need to have a group of the ancestors of the apes of Jermyn/Bobonosia find their plane's version of the Schism and travel through it to Teragard where they would eventually develop into humans while the rest left on Jermyn/Bobonosia developed into apes. And all this would have to happen after the group that would become monkeys had branched off from this ancestral line.

I think the inverse would be more likely. Let's say there was a group of human and ape ancestors living on Teragard. It is not impossible that such a group would stumble upon the schism and be teleported across the multiverse. One of the places they would be teleported to could be Jermyn/Bobonosia. Others could be Tarddiad, New Domina, gnome planet, dwarf planet etc. Each group ancestors on each planet that they found themselves on would be subjugated to different stresses and would consequently have diverging evolutionary paths. This would result in the plurality of races we see today: humans, horrors, elves, ape etc. Mod Raven's comment would not be contradicted here since the apes of Bobonosia would not be the ancestors of the humans.

This, of course, would require that you take the decaying tomb to not be literal but creation stories rarely are.

I'd say that its more likely that xau-tak uplifted the horrors from the rest of the apes.

Edit: This would explain Kitty's problem. The gnomes are the result of an earlier group of ancestors getting lost in the rift. They would have an earlier divergent period and consequently would share less genetic background then apes or humans.

13-Mar-2018 12:55:58 - Last edited on 13-Mar-2018 13:13:09 by Cthris

Hguoh

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William Witt said :
It certainly seems to be indicated that monkeys, humans and gnomes are all related. Maybe not as strongly as real life, then - do you have any hypotheses on how they all connect, Hguoh?

Cthris has the right sort of idea.

The ancestors of humans, gnomes, apes, and monkeys (possibly even Mwanu) could have evolved on Teragard and traveled through the Schism at different points in time to populate other worlds.

In order to maintain the concept of being more monkeys being more closely related to humans than gnomes, this requires either gnomes to have diverged from the common lineage (traveled through the Schism to an environment with different selective pressures) before humans, monkeys, and apes diverged from one another (in the same way as before, just a different plane and the species having evolved further to favor Teragard's environment). In this case, you'd first have the ancestors of the gnomes leave Teragard by Schism first, then the ancestors of monkeys and apes, and then the spread of humanity itself (first by Schism, like the others, and then by Saradomin transporting them about).

Alternatively, it could be that the ancestors of apes and monkeys left first, and then the ancestors of gnomes (which makes some sense since gnomes seem to share more traits with humans than humans with apes/monkeys). In order to maintain the idea that humans are 'closer' to monkeys than gnomes are, this would require the environment the gnomes' ancestors ended up in to be conducive to more rapid genetic change (resulting in a greater genetic and physical difference from monkey's and apes than the difference between humans and monkeys/apes).

13-Mar-2018 17:15:27 - Last edited on 13-Mar-2018 17:36:19 by Hguoh

Hguoh

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In Earth's history, such periods of swift genetic change usually have resulted from life entering an otherwise empty niche (such as the explosion of multicellular life that marks the Cambrian or the rapid diversification of plant life forms that came about when plants first colonized land). Such periods inevitably lead to periods of mass extinction as the variety of forms compete with one another for limited resources.

So the gnomes could have diverged from humans after monkeys and apes did provided they settled a plane that had at least initially low selective pressures.

There's also always my initial convoluted proposal (arise on Jermyn, human ancestors warp to Teragard, and gnomes diverged from there as in the paragraph immediately prior to this one).

Last, but not least, there's always the possibility that the races in question aren't related at all, and that humans simply share more superficially similar traits with monkeys and apes than gnomes do (likely internal traits (ex: organs) due to external similarities) as a result of convergent evolution (ex: dolphins and sharks having a streamlined, torpedo-like body despite the different origins of their bodies' shape).

13-Mar-2018 17:33:40

Dec

2023

Cthris

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Another possibility is that the fairy homeworld or Zanaris is the hominoid homeworld. Apparently, Bik created the fairies in an effort build a perfect world. The fairies somehow later acquired a way of leaving the planet and ended up finding Zanaris. There are a couple possibilities that I can think of:

-Perhaps Bik experimented with other types of hominoids before settling with fairies and those hominoids found a way off the planet just like the fairies and had diverging evolutionary paths for each planet that they ended up on.

-Perhaps the fairies are the common ancestor of apes, humans, gnomes etc. and got to the different worlds either through the way the found Zanaris or after they found Zanaris.
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It is almost unfortunate that the Runescape universe has such a universal language. The fact that the Mwanu and humans share a common language while gnomes do not (They used to speak gnomish) would be a good indicator of a shared ancestor between humans and Mwanu that gnomes do not have.
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Also, I do not think we can even be certain that the Mwanu (pre-horror) are not just archaic humans, like a neanderthal or Homo rhodesiensis. Heck, they could even have been anatomically modern humans. We have only ever seen horrors who could very well be an extremely devolved species of man.

13-Mar-2018 19:15:13

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Evolution in RuneScape?