All hominids on the planet are killed by a virus, which species do you think would evolve to be what we are now?

All hominids on the planet are killed by a virus, which species do you think would evolve to be what we are now?

flowers

Probably one of the Gibbon species, as they are most similar to the hominids, genetically.

A cephalopod species.

Anal tape worms

without fire, how?

I'm a geology student. My answer is none.

The things that had to happen to bring us into existence are so insanely rare they happened 1 time in 4.6 billion years.

Let's take stock. Origin of life itself, seems kinda easy but we still have no idea how it happened, could be insanely difficult. Still it happened within 500 million years of the formation of the planet and as far as all our genetic analysis of life on Earth shows, once and never again (although this could be because resources were being used by one branch of life so another couldn't start)

Then it did jack fucking shit for 3.5 BILLION years. All we had until 541 million years ago were single celled life. For some weird reason one organism went to eat another organism and then just didn't. Instead they formed a symbiotic relationship. This event happened once. Ever. ALL life on Earth is related to those first Eukaryote cells.

It then took another 470 million years to develop early primates.

Then another 50 million years to develop early hominids.

Then another 16 million years to develop Homo Habilis who developed no complex society and went extinct.

Finally settling on us around 200,000 years ago and we ran around in our underpants for 190,000 years before developing cities, agriculture, and writing.

The trigger is most likely language. Because language is required to develop complex ideas necessary to society. This is well supported by modern examples of feral humans who grow up without language and cannot develop mentally past that of a two year old. It is also well supported by Neanderthal who had a larger brain than Cro magnon and practiced burial like Cro magnon but with almost no ceremony and wen't extinct.

If we simply look at the time it took for all the required steps it's unlikely to happen again before the Earth gets too hot to support life 500 million years from now. There's no way in hell I could ever see it happening again with the removal of hominidae

Just my opinion.

Why would you need fire when you can just use hot vents to cook food?

Some other primate.
Maybe there's a slight chance for opossums, raccoons and otters. If you meant to say all 'primates' instead of 'hominids' were killed.

>implying evolution is completely random

Love this meme, you don't have to be religious to understand that no matter how much you shake life's building blocks in a box, the chances of random mutation resulting in us in the time it supposedly took is beyond any unreasonable explanation.

can you cast iron there? build stuff and create industry and technology?

Sonoluminescence

They'd probably be the first to do agriculture by capturing shell fish and other crustaceans. Maybe a few simple stone tools like spears and axes. But without any way to smelt ores, I don't see them getting much farther than that.

Rolling for anal tape worms

>t. someone who hasn't read a genetics or evolution textbook

>Let me preface this comment in that it is pure speculation.

Some cephalopod species are able to survive on land for several minutes. I don't think it would be completely out of the question for them to recognize this weakness and accordingly develop land-based technology. Proper development of land-based technology may enable them achieve "Iron Age" status.

Yes

>It then took another 470 million years to develop early primates.
Everything up to this point is irrelevant to the question.

>Instead they formed a symbiotic relationship. This event happened once. Ever. ALL life on Earth is related to those first Eukaryote cells.
All eukaryotic life anyway. But endosymbiosis happened twice, not just once: Mitochondria and chloroplasts.

Don't know, but it certainly can't be worse than this shit.

>Then it did jack fucking shit for 3.5 BILLION years. All we had until 541 million years ago were single celled life.
The Cambrian Explosion wasn't the origin of multicellular life, and that "jack fucking shit" included development of the ability to survive away from the original conditions which, the development of photosynthesis and therefore independence from chemical energy sources, the conversion of the Earth to an oxygen atmosphere, and the development of nuclei and other sophisticated organelles.

A tremendous degree of sophistication had to be developed in the cell before something like a leaf or a tooth was possible.

>Then another 16 million years to develop Homo Habilis who developed no complex society and went extinct.
Are you kidding me with this shit?

There's a difference between just going extinct, and evolving into the most successful species ever. The hominids generated various branches that could have developed into a civilization-level intelligence, but were outcompeted by the line that became us.

>It then took another 470 million years to develop early primates.
>Then another 50 million years to develop early hominids.
>Then another 16 million years to develop Homo Habilis
Note the accelerating schedule. If all hominids were wiped out, that would still leave quite advanced primates, such as gibbons. Furthermore, we've been applying a selective pressure toward intelligence in other species, since the ones that are predictable to our intelligence were easy prey and many consequently went extinct, while others have had their less intelligent members weeded out and been changed.

Primates, mammals with opposable thumbs and forward-facing eyes, are on that slope of incremental advancement and competitive pressure toward sapience. Just not in every niche, and never more than one family could be expected to be making that leap at a time.

I expect if hominids were wiped out, there'd be new literate sapients in under 50 million years.

>I expect if hominids were wiped out, there'd be new literate sapients in under 50 million years.
I think that's too deterministic. With a sample size of 1, you can't rule out historical contingencies with a high probability.

Crows

Mitochondria happened once.
Endosymbiosis with other cells happened multiple times.

Probably nothing. What led humans to become what we are now (or even what we were 1 000 000 years ago) was so full of coincidences and luck that it's unlikely it will happen again.

octopus.

Octocrows

Fucking nothing it will take millions of years for the last of Africa's rainforest to dry up into savannahs which would force the chimps to finally start walking assuming they even exist by that time.

Rodents of some type. They would dominate the landscape and have enough social contact with each other that it may trigger more tight knit groups and thus evolve into something sentient.

Though, I doubt that will happen since sentience isn't needed to be successful.

They couldn't even get close to them, the water around them would be too hot. The heat of a fire doesn't travel far in air, but any disturbance in the water would swirl a scalding plume over whatever was trying to use the vent.

This most likely. Smartest animals next to humans. I would imagine on some kind of place, where they would be free of predators, they would have less need for wings, and flying. The wings can over time evolve in hands, which would enable their already superior tool manipulation to come to fruition.

This is the only correct answer.

Can't believe you forgot to mention Crowoctos.

>implying humans aren't brainlets

The domestic house-cat.

tiny robots

What's the purpose of the brain mass anyway?