History Literature / Evolution

* ApopheniaPlot: Mother is one of the first humans to develop an understanding of cause and effect, and a lifetime spent cogitating about complex causal chains eventually leads her to believe that there is a direct intent behind everything. Even if doesn't know the specific mechanisms by which something happened, ''nothing'' happens by chance -- after all, just because an antelope skewered by a spear doesn't see the hidden hunter, its death was still planned and determined by a hidden intelligence. As the story puts it, she essentially becomes the first conspiracy theorist. This is portrayed as a mixed blessing overall -- while it leads her to becoming incredibly paranoid and deluded (she sees possible traitors everywhere, and murdered her own aunt out of a belief that she caused the illness that killed Mother's son), it also allows her to create relatively complex technology, develop sophisticated survival strategies, and order her tribal society in a manner much more complex than her less mentally adept tribemates could.

* AnachronicOrder: Halfway throughout Purga's story in the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, the book takes a side-trip to the ''Ornitholestes'' Listener, an intelligent dinosaur living in the depths of the Jurassic.

* FormerlySapientSpecies: "Descendants" depicts the regression of humanity back into non-sapient, tree-dwelling primates.

* LastOfItsKind: A number of these appear in the apocalyptic segments as chance survivors of lineages too broken and scattered to reform. "The Devil's Tail" features the last ''Euplocephalus'', whose herd had endured the initial devastation of the K-Pg extinction thanks to their thick armor, but who gradually succumbed to the cold, starvation and the constant acid rain, which killed their last eggs before they could hatch. By the time she limps her way to the shore of the inland sea, dying and lost, she is the last non-avian dinosaur alive outside of [[spoiler:a small holdout on Antarctica]], and quite certainly the last one left in North America and the last living ankylosaur.

* NotSoExtinct: One of Alison Scott's genetic creations is a living reconstruction of an ''Australopithecus''.

* ToothyBird: Some of the marine cormorants, having taken the niches of the dolphins that went extinct alongside humanity, have regrown the teeth of their ancient reptilian ancestors. This trait is retained into the future, and the flightless birds of New Pangea also sport sharp teeth in their beaks.

* YouDirtyRat: A recurring motif of the chapters dealing with human evolution and [[FormerlySapientSpecies descendants]] is the competition between primates and rodents for resources and ecological niches, with rodents being [[BoringButPractical dumber but more efficient]]. The most feared apex predators thirty million years in the future are all rodents, such as rat-leopards and mouse-raptors, while humans have devolved back into arboreal apes, so it could be said the rodents eventually won.

* QuestToTheWest: In "The Crossing", a group of monkeys are swept out from the Congo River to the Atlantic by a flash flood. They survive the immediate peril by clinging to a raft of matted vegetation, but then have to endure weeks of thirst and starvation, during which many of them die. At length, the raft drifts ashore and the survivors find themselves in South America, becoming the progenitors of the New World monkeys that live there to this day.

* BlessedWithSuck: The mutant frogs of New Pangaea are extremely effective ambush hunters due to be invisible. However, their invisibility also means they're blind, because a transparent retina can't catch light, and their reliance on transparent replacements for organic chemicals makes their biology very inefficient. On top of that, their lack of protective pigments of any sort makes them extremely susceptible to cancer. All of them die before reaching adulthood. The only reason their kind survives is because they're only a small minority in a normally visible species, and catch a great deal of food for their siblings before they die.

* YouDirtyRat: A recurring motif of the chapters dealing with human evolution and [[FormerlySapientSpecies descendants]] is the competition between primates and rodents for resources and ecological niches, with rodents being [[BoringButPractical dumber but more efficient]]. The most feared apex predators thirty million years in the future are all rodents, such as rat-leopards and mouse-raptors, while humans have devolved back into arboreal apes, so it could be said they eventually one.

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Children with unusual hair colours like blue and green are only one of the products of genetic engineering undertaken by the rich elite to create perfect-looking kids.

%%* EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys: Or monkey-like ancestors to both monkeys and apes.

** In "The Kingdom of the Rats", the borametz Trees have adapted to live symbiotically alongside colonies of ants, termites and eusocial posthumans, which stores their seeds and plant new trees when conditions are good in exchange for feeding on the Trees' sap. The narration notes that this will prove to be a very efficient system, and that the borametz Trees will eventually outcompete most other plants.

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: Baxter starts the frame story in the year 2031 (twenty-eight years after the novel's publication) with civilization at its apex, yet simultaneously threatened by the damage it has done to the ecosystem that supports it.

** Earth's sky in Ultimate's time is dominated by the immense spiral of the Milky Way, due to the sun's orbit having taken it out of the primary disk. It also has an Andromeda Galaxy that appears larger and brighter as it has moved towards the Milky Way and a brighter Moon thanks to a more luminous Sun.

* AmbiguousTimePeriod: It's not stated exactly when "A Long Shadow" (the first chapter in the Descendants section) takes place. The characters can only speculate that it must have been more than a millennium since civilization ended and they were put into cryostasis.

* CosmicHorrorStory: Baxter's explanation of how human civilization ends emphasizes that we are prey to powerful forces that we cannot control. The undoing of humanity is not nuclear war, global warming or a deadly virus grown in a laboratory, but an enormous super-volcano that disrupts the planet's weather systems enough to cause civilization to collapse. Volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, ice ages and indeed evolution itself destroy humanity's delusions of grandeur. Humans are no different from the millions of species that have come into being, thrived, then vanished into oblivion. In the eyes of Earth, we are a minor flash in the pan. In the eyes of the cosmos, we are less than a speck of dust. Look at those who have fallen before us; why should we fare any better? Are we really any different?

* TheFogOfAges: The replicator robots share their memories with each other through the generations, but over long spans of time these become increasingly less reliable. By the time of New Pangea, the replicator swarms scattered through the stars have long forgotten where they came from, and their collective memory eventually trails away into a vague emptiness.

* HumanitysWake: The "Descendants" section takes place in the future, about humanity's descendants after the end of civilization.

* LastOfItsKind: A number of these appear in the apocalyptic segments as chance survivors of lineages too broken and scattered to reform. "The Devil's Tail" features the last ''Euplocephalus'', whose herd had endured the initial devastation of the K-T extinction thanks to their thick armor, but who gradually succumbed to the cold, starvation and the constant acid rain, which killed their last eggs before they could hatch. By the time she limps her way to the shore of the inland sea, dying and lost, she is the last non-avian dinosaur alive outside of [[spoiler:a small holdout on Antarctica]], and quite certainly the last one left in North America and the last living ankylosaur.

** During the first five thousand years of the human colonization of Australia, they have killed off all the continent's megafauna, such as giant kangaroos, which survive only as cave paintings. They are dismissed as childish doodling by people who have already forgotten what has been lost.

** In "The Kingdom of the Rats", Eastern Africa is the last place where the animalistic posthumans exist, which in turn are the last primates. In most of the world, they were outcompeted and driven to extinction by the increasingly dominant and diverse rodents; in Eastern Africa, which had rifted off from the rest of the continent before the rodent radiation fully took place, was the only place where they had enough time to adapt into new niches and compete efficiently with the rodents when these eventually arrived there as well.
* RodentsOfUnusualSize: Thirty million years after the end of civilization, the rodent survivors of the crash have diversified into rat-cheetahs, rat-leopards and mouse-raptors that hunt rabbit-gazelles and duck-billed goats.

* ServantRace: At the end of civilization, humanity was heading to this when the genriched elite inserted a whole extra chromosome full of desirable genes into their kids, making them unable to breed with unenhanced ''Homo sapiens''. The rich have set themselves up as a separate species.

** With bitter irony, the characters of "The Long Shadow" name a feral posthuman girl [[Literature/TheTimeMachine Weena]], but she could not be more different from [[Creator/HGWells Wells']] "little doll of a creature": she is covered in fur and stinks "like a monkey cage".

* SlaveRace: 31,000 years ago, humans co-exist with the last Neanderthals, but despise them, call them "boneheads", treat them no better than vermin and have reduced them to pack-animals to haul their sleds.

** In "The Kingdom of the Rats", the borametz trees have adapted to live symbiotically alongside colonies of ants, termites and eusocial posthumans, which stores their seeds and plant new trees when conditions are good in exchange for feeding on the trees' sap. The narration notes that this will prove to be a very efficient system, and that the borametz trees will eventually outcompete most other plants.
** The inhabitants of New Pangaea took the principle of cooperation and sharing to its extremes to survive in the dying Earth. The descendant of the borametz tree cannot survive without the insects that bring nutrients to its roots, and the mammals who bring it water, food, and salt, and plant its seeds. Even its leaves belong to another plant. Likewise, the symbiotes cannot have survived without the tree, which shelters them from predators and climate, and feeds them with its sap.

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Children with unusual hair colors like blue and green are only one of the products of genetic engineering undertaken by the rich elite to create perfect-looking kids.

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: Baxter starts the frame story in the year 2031 (twenty-eight years after the novel's publication) with civilization at its apex, yet simultaneously threatened by the damage it has done to the ecosystem that supports it.

* TheRemnant: "The Last Burrow" depicts the Antarctica ecosystem 55 million years after the Cretaceous impact, where small lemming-like primates compete with the last non-avian dinosaurs to have survived the Cretaceous impact, including the descendants of ''Muttaburrasaurus'', ''Leaellynasaura'' and ''Allosaurus'', with a ''Koolasuchus'' thrown in somewhere.

** At several points in the Earth's history, such as in the Jurassic and the Paleocene, its land is entirely covered by immense forests. Jurassic Earth, in particular, is ecologically very uniform due to the joining of the continents having allowed all kinds of beings to migrate, mingle, and outcompete each other until only a select few were left, and cover all the lands until only a uniform, global forest community was left.

* NobodyPoops: Averted. Boy, do they ever. There are few chapters where the author does not go into [[TooMuchInformation gratuitous detail]] [[{{Squick}} about excrement, urine and/or raging erections]].

* FutureImperfect:
** In the first part of "Raft Continent", Echan and Rocha sail to Australia on a primitive outrigger and are briefly startled by a giant snake. A thousand years later, their descendants tell tales of how they flew across the sea on a boat lined with gull feathers and battled giant serpents and other such monsters.
** During the first five thousand years of the human colonization of Australia, they have killed off all the continent's megafauna, such as giant kangaroos, which survive only as cave paintings. They are dismissed as childish doodling by people who have already forgotten what has been lost.

* LegendFadesToMyth: In the first segment of "Raft Continent", Ejan and Rocha craft a simple outrigger canoe, sail to Australia, and briefly encounter a giant snake. A thousand years later, the distant descendants of the early colonists that followed them tell legends about how they flew across the straits on a boat lined with gull feathers and fought giant serpents and other monsters.

** "Last Contact"
** "The Dying Light"
** The epilogue

* FutureImperfect: During the first five thousand years of the human colonization of Australia, they have killed off all the continent's megafauna, such as giant kangaroos, which survive only as cave paintings. They are dismissed as childish doodling by people who have already forgotten what has been lost.

* MolePeople: Thirty million years after the end of human civilization, a strain of humans has become adapted for living in crowded, mazelike burrows among the roots of a symbiotic tree. These mole folk are small and shrunken, entirely hairless, and with small ears and eyes completely covered by skin, and instead rely on touch and whiskers to get around. They have also developed sharp, shovel-like fingernails for digging.

* BlessedWithSuck: The invisible mutant frogs of New Pangaea are blind, inefficient and ''very'' susceptible to cancer. All of them die before reaching adulthood. But that's okay, because they catch meat for their siblings.