Theoretical question about evolution

[JustHatched 12,103]

If you believe the evolution theory vs the creation theory read on..

 

Let's say people evolved from bird like creatures, rather than ape like creatures, and can fly. How do you think society would be different?

Specifically, would there still be a need for roads?

[Prodigy_Rocks_ 231]

If humans evolved to fly, society would be more elevation based. There would be a need for air traffic since we can simply fly to avoid ground obstacles; basically ground traffic being put into air where planes are cars and humans are pedestrians. However there's a con where people might fly too high and we all know what happens; ear pops from the pressure, less air the higher you go. This is also a good lead for rooting out those who use automobiles. Assuming that the wings are located on the back and strong enough to support us during flight, the roads would be a lot clearer of pedestrians and there wouldn't be all the need to build sidewalks as much. While we have the ability of flight, I believe we will need roads. Like I stated, with humans flying, it clears the ground so that there's more room for cars. We would need roads so that we can transport goods or simply transportation due to a thing called "laziness". This just my thinking and it kind of jolted my mind for the day.

 

What you, the reader have read:

-There would be a need for air traffic

-Con of the ability of flight would be flying too high

-Flight helps with rooting out pedestrians from the ground (a sifter as visualization)

-Wouldn't be a need to build sidewalks as much

-Roads are just as important

 

~Prodigy

[Fido_le_muet 5,197]

If Humans could fly since Humans existe, I think we wouldn't have invented roads and ground based transportation. Why make it so complicated since you can fly ? Although for long distance flight we would still Need things like airplanes I think.

[Team_Bub_8487 194]

I think we wouldn't have developed (ground-based) agriculture in the first place, which means no settlements, no towns, etc. As such, I think we would have effectively remained hunter-gatherers at most, with none of the trappings of human society and technology we know today .

[Squirrel 5,180]

Very interesting question but evolution may have led us down a different path. Birds & Mammals both evolved from the same basic set of DNA and Bi-pedal body structure. Dinosaurs dominated the land and their body physiology is the most birdlike of all reptiles so it's really a case of evolving from Dinosaurs not from Birds. If the great climate changes which led to the extinction of the dinosaurs hadn't have happened the small mammals which thrived in those conditions wouldn't have flourished, instead the dinosaurs would have continued with their trend of getting smaller and faster to cope with the changes in the environment. 

Eventually they would have adapted their hands to use tools and Homo-Dinosaurus (made up latin sounding name) would be the dominant species on the planet.

This concept has been examined before especially in the Elder Scrolls series, the Argonians are a humanoid reptile species.

 

[Team_Bub_8487 194]

David Icke was right!

[djw180 6,841]

I don't think we would have evolved into anything particularly intelligent from birds, unless wings evolved back into arms. So things would be extremely different and certainly no roads. As I understand (and evolutionary biology is not my area) having hands gave the ability to hold basic tools (sticks, stones, bones etc), this produced an evolutionary pressure to develop bigger brains, i.e. more intelligence, as that meant better ability to use and make tools to get food, so that then led to the evolution of higher intelligence.

As Squirrel says it may be more a case of something intelligent evolving from dinosaurs. But they had plenty of chance to do that and didn't. Dinosaurs were around for a couple of hundred million years and never evolved higher intelligence. Mammals were also around pretty much all that time (I think) and didn't either. Then something happened about 66 Million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs (recent research has suggested the asteroid impact that was thought to have led to the mass extinction was not solely responsible) and allowed the mammals to dominate eventually producing us. Even then our ape-like tool-wielding ancestors only evolved about 4 million years ago. I don't think we know how much things are just down to luck. It could have been a 1-in-a-million chance coincidence that led our ancestors to a situation where having hands and being able to use tools was an advantage and the dinosaurs simply never got that chance.

[Fido_le_muet 5,197]

3 hours ago, Squirrel said:

Very interesting question but evolution may have led us down a different path. Birds & Mammals both evolved from the same basic set of DNA and Bi-pedal body structure. Dinosaurs dominated the land and their body physiology is the most birdlike of all reptiles so it's really a case of evolving from Dinosaurs not from Birds. If the great climate changes which led to the extinction of the dinosaurs hadn't have happened the small mammals which thrived in those conditions wouldn't have flourished, instead the dinosaurs would have continued with their trend of getting smaller and faster to cope with the changes in the environment. 

Eventually they would have adapted their hands to use tools and Homo-Dinosaurus (made up latin sounding name) would be the dominant species on the planet.

This concept has been examined before especially in the Elder Scrolls series, the Argonians are a humanoid reptile species.

You had me at dinosaurs