So Human?

[Molyneux]

The Ancients are the bad guys?

I'm only at season two of SG-1. Did the Ancients transfer humans all over the galaxy? I thought it was the Goa'uld.

...I think the answer to that is an unequivocal "yes and no"...and I can't get more specific than that without some major spoilers.

[Gustav32Vasa]

The Ancients are the bad guys?

I'm only at season two of SG-1. Did the Ancients transfer humans all over the galaxy? I thought it was the Goa'uld.

I can not answer that without giving spoilers but they did far more then that.

[Lord of the Abyss]

A point to remember in the evolution of intelligence is that it's not necessarily tool usage that drove the intelligence positive feedback loop in hominid evolution. For most of human and prehuman history, technology was very static. Increasingly complex societies might have done it instead. If the path to sapience is through social intelligence, then that would rule out solitary species altogether.

I've also heard it referred to as the "Machiavelli Theory of human intelligence." It makes sense; the one thing in the environment that you can't evolve superior intelligence too, are members of your own species. Against anything else, evolution in that direct will likely stop as soon as the species in question has intelligence good enough that the evolutionary pressure in that direct drops off. But when you are cooperating/competing with your own species. The pressure won't ever go away, and you can have the runaway increase in intelligence we see in humans. A non-social species wouldn't compete with it's own kind nearly as much, much less cooperate, so would lack that pressure.

If human-like aliens are really, really, really needed, than alien seeding program + thousands of years of natural selection in widely varying conditions is really the only option. But remember, Earth HAS to be the source - too much evidence for human evolution on earth for it to be otherwise.

Unless the aliens in question faked all that evidence; that happened in Terry Pratchett's Strata for example. It was a different group of humans and not aliens involved. It turned out that the entire universe was artificial, and only thousands of years old, not billions. Everything that showed otherwise, including the light passing between galaxies, was faked up by the godlike aliens responsible. The people who faked up Earth to look old were just doing the same thing on a smaller scale.

And yes, that's very similar to the explanation that various creationists try to pawn off for why the Earth and universe don't look a few thousand years old. It does have the advantages that it's written as fiction, and that hypothetical godlike aliens aren't required by this idea to be both liars and the fount of all that is good at the same time, the way the creationists insist God is. It's acceptable to answer the question "Why would the creator(s) of the universe do such a thing ?" with the answer "Because they're jerks !" when you aren't insisting that they are morally perfect.

Also, in Delta Pavonis by Eric Kotani and John Maddox Roberts, it turned out that yes, Earth and other planets full of near-human hominids were seeded by a race called the Arumwoi ( who are the original "humans", and billions of years old as a species ). The reason that you see evidence of millions of years of evolution on Earth is because they seeded Earth and started guiding it's evolution billions of years ago; they have both suspended animation and unlimited patience.

And the Earth people, by the way, do figure out that aliens must have seeded the hominids well before they reveal themselves; as one comments, it's just like all that old bad science fiction to have all these funny looking humans as "aliens".