Humans, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, or the children of Old Earth, are a sentient species originating from primates on Old Earth. After evolving into advanced societies, humans became a truly space-bound species around the 21st or 22nd centuries CE. On 2282 CE, all human beings were forced to flee their home planet in the Hegira as Earth became inhabitable following the events arising from the Big Mistake, being eventually seemingly destroyed. Humans are "mostly harmless".[1]
After hundreds of years of space exploration, humanity becomes a major interstellar force, alongside the TechnoCore, which evolved from early human computing software. In the far future, millennia or millions or years after the events described in the Cantos, humans either take control of the entire Milky Way galaxy [see Ultimate Intelligence (Human)] or are in an eternal struggle for its control against the descendants of the TechnoCore [see Ultimate Intelligence (TechnoCore)].
During the Web Era and the Pax Era, humans had colonized hundreds of worlds, terraforming the vast majority of them to varying extents. Human populations originally relocated to all these worlds via Seedship. After centuries of adaptation to these new worlds, and sometimes cultural isolation, human populations became native -- what the Cantos call Indigenies.
Even though the Cantos contain many themes of ecology and life preservation, humanity via terraforming caused significant disruption to ecosystems throughout our arm of the galaxy. The planet of Garden, for instance, had a complete alien ecology, including a sentient species known as the Marsh Centaurs. All of the alien life on Garden, including the Centaurs, were exterminated and replaced by Old Earth species. Similarly, the Jewish settlers of Hebron were thought to have caused the extinction of the sentient Seneschai Aluit empaths.
Humanity during the Web and Pax Eras had divided itself into many political, ideological, religious and even genetically-modified factions: the Templars, Neo-Marxists, Christians, the people of the Amoiete Spectrum Helix, and so forth. More drastically, the Ousters are a human faction that underwent advanced genetic self-manipulation to adapt itself to the vacuum of space.
See also[]
References[]
- ↑ The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Adams D, 1979