Great post by site, but let's assume we come out as the dominant species.
Carlos wrote:Let’s go with wings for a sec because levitation is just outright magical.
Let’s consider the scientific basis for this. Based on the standard Terran 4-limbed genetic template all non-insect life follows humans would have wings under their arms (and possibly a tail) rather than looking like an Angel.
Birds only fly because their bones are incredibly hollow and light. Their power-to-weight ratio allows them to get off the ground with a 9.8m/s gravitational pull against them. Anything larger would need an exponentially larger force to get off the ground. Therefore if winged humans can fly either our bone structure is much lighter or the earth this race has evolved on has a much lower gravitational pull.
Let's go hollow bones, but great observation.
Humans as large, brittle creatures would make us incredibly delicate. We may have, in our earlier tribal days banded together more to offer greater protection from ground-based hominids that we would never have inter-bred with. Because flying humans have access to the sky above the clouds they never mutate lower melanin in the skin and different shades of human never appear. Because we appear as airborne gods the other hominids either worship us and become enslaved or are wiped out.
I'm with you on all of this. No other hominids is the outcome.
Humanity develops waterborne craft at a slower rate and as such civilisation in the americas and Asia is much more advanced when coming into contact with Europeans. In fact our lighter frames mean that heavy weapons and armour are not needed and so metalworking is much slower. As a result civilisation develops technology at a slower rate but at the cost of greater peace, a cleaner planet and less intercene conflicts. Space travel is never developed as the fragile flying humans cannot cope with the g-forces involved.
Gonna disagree on these though (except space flight). Assuming we exert as much effort flying as running, we are into top flight times of 3mins to 3hrs. Given hollow bones, we may be able to carry 10kg in flight. That probably still rules out sea crossings.
I agree metalworking would be slower, but I think we develop similarly for warfare. Caves are natural defence points to eliminate the flight advantage, but beyond that I think we stick to towers and walls for defence. You just get to higher altitude quicker from it. Attackers may be able to fly over walls (3min flight) but you then build your defences behind the wall rather than atop it. If the defenders are armoured then the attackers are now disadvantaged in the fight.
Intermingling with other people's really depends on our first contact protocols and I'm assuming we remain largely territorial. (If we switch to being migratory due to our flight then we are on a whole different evolutionary path, but I suspect it ends with us behaving like a swarm of locusts and ravaging the earth into habitat loss and famine)