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So, I'm doing a bit of research for a novel submission and I keep running into this little stumbling block.
Genetics.
Baseline theory is that natural selection should've done something to even the commoners during Fourthy Bleedin' Thousands of years.
There is no static template for humanity, our strongest and most preferential genes are what is carried forth.
A planet full of guardsmen, like krieg or cadia, would mean the most hardy soldiers known to mankind, whereas a planet full of subservient administratum adepts would incur the most submissive servants.

Evolution just is.

Thoughts?

This is a really good point that I never thought of. Only think I could say about Krieg or Cadians is they haven't had those planets colonized for long enough to evolved majorly.

40k does have some of this though. Ogryns come from high gravity worlds, and therefore are massively muscled.

Remember, though, that whenever a population starts deviating from the "norm" they are purged as heretics and mutants. This would be something of a stabilising force against substantial changes.

Flinty, If so, what if the change is miniscule, a deviation that is 0.00001% of your base dna.
over time this phenotypical change would be in the genepool of the entire populace.

Not necessarily...
If there are no selection pressures then the mutation won't spread to the rest of the populace unless it's something noticeable and positive in the society...

now you're disregarding generations of preferential natural selection.
not that i don't see your point

edit:
selection pressure != mutation
we're talking about evolutionary genetics, variations in the genepool is what we're at.

It's not a disease, its genetics :p

xcasex wrote:Flinty, If so, what if the change is miniscule, a deviation that is 0.00001% of your base dna.
over time this phenotypical change would be in the genepool of the entire populace.

This type of minor differentiation is already noted in the background in terms of different sizes and colourings in the population of human worlds. Even something as simple as the Valhallan preference for cold climates could be put down to a slight genetic change.

Also the same changes wouldn't spread to the whole human population due to the distances involved. Its entirely possible that humans on one side of the galaxy are now a different species to those on another to the point at which breeding would be unlikely to be successful. As with most things in the 40k background, you can basically get away with whatever you like The galaxy is a big place and its hard to get to some parts, so there could be all sorts of things going on (and there probably are).

Hehehe excellent :>

thanks for letting me prod your brain flinty!

Generally speaking stronger genes is not something that'll make much fenotypical difference - and most of genetic change will be aimed toward survival in new habitat - i.e. things like cold-/hot-/heavy metal poisoning- resistances will be preffered over more subtle traits. And those things come with the prices like low iq/muscular power/life expentancy/birth rate etc.

Other moment is that more extreme mutations will make their carriers belongin' to either "mutant" or "ab-human" categories. i.e. there can be numerous local "next model" humans which though is too far from good old basic Human Sapiens Sapiens for voluntary cross-racial reproduction. For.ex. i didn't heard of ratling/human or human/ogryn hybrids while both ab-human races still exist in M40.

PS 'bout Krieg (and Vostroya). AFAR from novels, it's custom that guardsmen impregnate women just before they leave planet, so the only restriction for their genetic survival is "not being stupid and clumsy enough to die in boot camp"...which can be much lighter than "survive throught childhood in the hive" one btw.

The human body is basically ideal for the majority of environments the Imperium has settled, so there is little deviation from what we have now.

The biggest stable mutations are Ratlings and Ogryns, and the biggest that are tolerated(because they are stable and also useful to mankind)

There are planets where humans are 7-8ft tall normally, others where they are short.


The only real evolutionary leap mankind has left is a psychic one. The human body is incredibly adaptable and doesn't need to change all that much with various environments. Psychic evolution is all thats left.

chyron wrote:PS 'bout Krieg (and Vostroya). AFAR from novels, it's custom that guardsmen impregnate women just before they leave planet, so the only restriction for their genetic survival is "not being stupid and clumsy enough to die in boot camp"...which can be much lighter than "survive throught childhood in the hive" one btw.

But I thought the Kriegs didn't reproduce conventionally, instead using the Vitae Womb.

Also, bear in mind that evolution is slow as all heck.

Anatomically modern humans have been around for 200,000 years. Behaviorally modern more like 50,000 years. (thanks Wikipedia!)

The issues with evolution in the 40k universe are several-fold.

First, like I said, evolution is slow. Very slow. In 200,000 years, our anatomy on Earth hasn't really changed. Things like skin pigmentation have, but that is akin to local habitat adaptation, which was mentioned earlier in this thread.

Second, the Imperium is huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge. Evolution can happen more effectively in smaller population groups. With the human population spread all over the place, even a benefical and stable mutation that increases success in a breeding situation is going to have to first survive long enough to reproduce on its planet and then survive long enough to breed on other planets. This adds a huge brake to the whole process. A trait, once emerged, first has to take enough of a root on a single planet (a process that will take, at the very limits of evolutionary speed many thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands) then has to do the same feat over the galaxy as a whole.

Second of all, any evolution that is going to increase breeding success that is going to spread across the Imperium is going to have to be beneficial across a huge range of environments and settings. A trait that may help one person on Catachan resist humidity and toxins is going to do jack doodily for someone on Valhalla for whom poison jungle plants are not a problem. This lends credence towards genetic dispositions based more on planet than on an Imperium-wide scale.

Third, population. The Imperium, as we well know, has a gargantuan population. Billions upon billions. It takes a LOT of evolutionary force to affect any change on the common population. It's taken millions of years to reach modern humans on one Earth with an infinitesimally smaller population, how long do you think it'll take evolution to get going on the Imperium?

xcasex wrote:now you're disregarding generations of preferential natural selection.
not that i don't see your point

edit:
selection pressure != mutation
we're talking about evolutionary genetics, variations in the genepool is what we're at.

It's not a disease, its genetics :p

Mutations increase in frequency through them providing an advantage against selection pressures...
Example: Rats resistant to rat poison have a selective advantage over those without resistance however if you stop using rat poison this becomes a disadvantage as they need an increase in a certain vitamin to survive which means rats without the resistance become more prevalent in the population. The mutation is what provides a selective advantage...
Variations in the genepool, without a breeding program, would simply come and go unless there was a selection pressure that turned the variation into a selective advantage.
Coupled with the physical isolation of populations you may see people becoming slightly better adapted to their environments than outsiders but there wouldn't be a massive change... unless the selection pressure was truly extreme.

Sturmtruppen wrote:

chyron wrote:PS 'bout Krieg (and Vostroya). AFAR from novels, it's custom that guardsmen impregnate women just before they leave planet, so the only restriction for their genetic survival is "not being stupid and clumsy enough to die in boot camp"...which can be much lighter than "survive throught childhood in the hive" one btw.

But I thought the Kriegs didn't reproduce conventionally, instead using the Vitae Womb.

Well, checked again...for Krieg looks like it was well-written fanfic. My bad. Though in "Dead man walking" there's mention of permanently pregnant women of Krieg that leads to idea that VW is used for already developing "natutal-conceived" fetuses.

Yeah, i think the Vitea-womb works by placing an existing embryo into the womb.

Its basically a way of mass producing people. A single women can give you a new embryo every 30 days or so.

I see. I thought the Vitae Womb was used for cloning people without the use of women, but thanks for correcting me.

I don't see any mention of artificial selection/engineering in this. Natural evolution is very slow, 40,000 years is not much time at all, but science can move things along a lot faster.

Prior to the Imperium there was the Dark Age of technology when the human race had Star Trek levels of tech. Terraforming, teleporters that actually work, you get the idea.

I would figure most colonized planets had at least a little tinkering to meet the needs of the new world if not wholesale modification ala the Ogryn and Squats. IIRC Navigators were genetically engineered.

THe Imperium may be intolerant but they're also practical, they're not going to exterminate an entire world because people have blue skin or whatever.

Plus the Imperium is perfectly happy to tamper with genes when it needs to. Marines are barely human and I would imagine Assassins and high-end Imperial nobles are also highly engineered.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Plus the Imperium is perfectly happy to tamper with genes when it needs to. Marines are barely human and I would imagine Assassins and high-end Imperial nobles are also highly engineered.

Well, while marines and possibly assasins do have post-birth genetic alterations, and are not supposed to transfer these alterations to new generations. BTW after the Crusade/Heresy there's no mention of gene-bred "common" warriors.
And i doubt that any sane aristocrat approves of something more than "replace damaged chromosome with best possible one from approved terran human stock, and btw, eyes of all descendants should be blue" - as bein' purged on "desecration of their holy humanity" is thing you don't get with custom AM rejuvenat and implant options available to them.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:
THe Imperium may be intolerant but they're also practical, they're not going to exterminate an entire world because people have blue skin or whatever.

But only if there's no xenos genes.
And...extermination of world's population =/= total Exterminatus, empty world can be easily repopulated.
There was short story in one of anthologies when IG soldier saved four-armed population of some feral world from exterminatus by forging data to say they're xenos (ie no active interest for Empire) and not descendants of humans(which automatically sentences them to purge - squats and Ogryns are inside terran human variativity,if barely and on pathological side)

There was that Barrington J Bayley short story that had the human-descended centaurs on some super-heavy gravity world, or something. I think they engineered themselves that way.

Also when it comes to the warp I tend to assume nothing can be taken for granted. It's very hard to predict, much less compensate, for what the Warp can do to influence things like development and such. Such is the way of magic.

On the other hand, indoctrination means that you can probably tap into the warp via mass belief and reinforce some sort of desired mindset.

Connor MacLeod wrote:There was that Barrington J Bayley short story that had the human-descended centaurs on some super-heavy gravity world, or something. I think they engineered themselves that way.

Yes, they did. And the Commissar in the story wanted to destroy them because they were illegal, unauthorized, and thus unacceptable modifications of the perfected human form. Hence why the main character didn't tell the officers on the ship that picked him up about the truth of the inhabitants so that they wouldn't be wiped out.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:THe Imperium may be intolerant but they're also practical, they're not going to exterminate an entire world because people have blue skin or whatever.

Exterminate, maybe not - but subjugate?

I think this is one of the cases where we'll have a lot of individual interpretation, here in the forums just like in the novels. When I'm looking at Codex material, I read about purity sweeps, genetic screening protocols, and mutant pogroms which set entire worlds ablaze. I certainly see the potential for much slaughter there.

Depending on how you weigh various sources, the IoM may tolerate a certain degree of mutation - as an enslaved and disenfranchised worker class constantly toiling away under the brutal regime of their pure human masters, in turn laying the groundworks for rebellion and more violence in a never ending cycle of hate. Such is the way of the Imperium.

As far as the Space Marines go, there are influential voices in the Ecclesiarchy calling them abhuman... and let's not forget that the Astartes were created by the Emperor Himself, long ago in a more enlightened age.

"They were not human, and only the God-Emperor has the divine right to create new life."
-- Celestian Superior Miriya during the Cleansing of Hollos M41, so ordered by the holy mandate of the Adepta Sororitas

Technology and culture affects selection. Once you have certain technologies and cultural structures in place, certain pressures go way down and mutations become "unnecessary" and of course unwanted. For such a far flung venture, the IoM has an extraordinarily uniform sense of technology and culture. One of its core tenants, as has been pointed out, is that the human form (that is, the genetic identity of homo sapiens sapiens) is considered "sacred" -- i.e., perfect as-is. The IoM may tolerate some abhumans (I'm thinking more of navigators, astropaths, and psykers rather than Space Marines) but its culture is eugenically reactionary. The IoM selects against mutation in 99% of all cases. Add to this that the "tolerated" mutations are either preferably selected by strict dynastic cultivation or occur extremely infrequently. During the Great Crusade, the Legions came across quite a few "post-human" societies and wiped them out.

Space Marines are a special case because they are not the product of evolution in any meaningful sense. They are engineered through a combination of genetic and technological know-how ... and, going back to the primarchs, probably with some magic thrown in for good measure, too. In other words, the Astartes in no way represent the ideal human in M41. Even the Emperor himself didn't seem to view them as ideal. The Space Marines of that era certainly understood the end of the Great Crusade as a existential crisis for themselves: once this long war was won, they feared they would have no place in the resultant Imperium. Ironically, that was basically the result of the Heresy anyhow.

Platuan4th wrote:
Yes, they did. And the Commissar in the story wanted to destroy them because they were illegal, unauthorized, and thus unacceptable modifications of the perfected human form. Hence why the main character didn't tell the officers on the ship that picked him up about the truth of the inhabitants so that they wouldn't be wiped out.

Abhumans being treated as freakish aberrations that must be wiped out for not being 'pure' human happens in 40K, in large part because the defiinitions are malleable (or at least, noone can agree on them, and the fanatical can embrace some very narrow definitions.)

I also wouldn't rule out the Imperium sparing a planet of potential abhumans or 'human like' for anything resembling pragmatism. There are always people who will be pragmatic (or greed driven, or sometimes even honourable in their motivations) but there are also those unthinking, diehard and 'purge everything' fanatics who won't bat an eye at destroying cities or even worlds if they feel it is neccessary. And not just the more puritanical Inquisitors, eiither. There's always the Krieg Example.

Flinty wrote:Remember, though, that whenever a population starts deviating from the "norm" they are purged as heretics and mutants. This would be something of a stabilising force against substantial changes.

Not necessarily. Some stable mutations are tolerated.

Right. And it's important to separate the biological definition of mutation and the Chaos 40K definition of mutation.

The most important factor to evolutionary changes in 40K is technology. Most of the evolutionary changes humans underwent between monkey and modern humans were forced by necessity. Modern humans are less likely to evolve because we now have the ability to mold the environment to our will. The concept of an "all white people" future is mostly the result of the gamer population and design team population of GW beening principally white and painting their human figures to look like they do. But simple changes like skin pigment result from environmental factors that modern clothing and shelter can negate. Even on a desert planet, assuming the population retained modern technology, skin pigment might never alter from whatever color the original colonists had been simply since the skin would have been continuously protected by clothing and shelter. Worlds in 40K probably aren't nearly as diverse as modern Earth.

Aren't Australian aborigines supposed to have remained pretty much unchanged for 40,000 years? At least that is the time they're supposed to have been in Australia and they were still hunter gatherers when the Europeans arrived suggesting no real change to their way of life.
They are also capable of producing fertile offspring with other human populations despite a prolonged period of isolation.

There's millions of years difference between humans and apes, our form is at least 200,000 years old. It's not hard to suppose that even 40,000 years on planets that regressed to the stone age did not overly affect the general concept of the human.
We know of three abhuman examples, Ogryns, Squats and Ratlings, there may have been others that were exterminated or simply bred out but the rest appear within normal parameters.

Regarding populations that conform to a norm over time based on cultural pressures, that does seem likely. Then again, things may balance out by having the administratum populace being sent around the local system because of their skills while the soldier populace is likewise spread around the system because of theirs.
It's this fear of dilution that sees certain Space Marine Chapters prevent their recruitment worlds from progressing beyond a certain level of technology - to preserve the martial character of the people.

Pretty sure it wasn't 40,000 years. That's a little too convinient of a number.

Grey Templar wrote:Pretty sure it wasn't 40,000 years. That's a little too convinient of a number.

If you mean the aborigine, I looked it up and it's 45,000 years. I'd heard sometime the estimation of them being in Oz for over 40,000 and assumed it was around there.

cadbren wrote:Aren't Australian aborigines supposed to have remained pretty much unchanged for 40,000 years?.

Nay the entire human race has remained relatively unchanged at a genetic level since it's existence started approximately 200,000 years ago.

The divergence from our common ancestor with chimps happened 5 million years ago, it took us 4.8 million years to get this far. So I don't know what you are hopingfor in 40,000 years.

Glorioski wrote:

cadbren wrote:Aren't Australian aborigines supposed to have remained pretty much unchanged for 40,000 years?.

Nay the entire human race has remained relatively unchanged at a genetic level since it's existence started approximately 200,000 years ago.

The divergence from our common ancestor with chimps happened 5 million years ago, it took us 4.8 million years to get this far. So I don't know what you are hopingfor in 40,000 years.

Not me, the original poster. I was using the aborigines as an example of how conservative populations can be. I agree with him that selective pressures would allow certain types to predominate. Fair skin is thought to have started as a mutation from a darker skinned individual and for whatever reasons was seen as a desirable trait and most of the northern hemisphere is depigmented to some degree. Conversely, some central african populations kill albinos for magic rituals which is going to make it a lot harder for a lighter skinned mutation of any kind to establish there.

Thousands of years of isolation could produce all sorts of local morphology such as purple eyes, and hair and skin colours that currently do not exist. Even without extremes like ab-humans you'll have notable differences in physique based on the various gravity differences of planets. Maybe some planets are regarded as suitable for producing soldiers and others for adminstration. There could be a whole other level of classification that means guard regiments will never be raised by planets with a nerd tithe grade owing to a lack of gravity that results in weaker people.