Multiverse travels: Humans

   When examining the multiverse, other variations of Earth, it is best to use a "key-on" that is a reality signature of a particular object, species, or material and targets Earths where these also exist. So for examining alternate Earths with sapient life forms that have developed complex societies and technologies we will first key-on humans. When examining worlds that humans have evolved on one will find one of four scenearios for the species.

1: Failure to advance, extinction by natural causes: To be fair this is rather common of 99% of all hominid worlds not just humans specifically. This means the species went extinct before developing the neccessary tools and social structures needed to spread out and overcome things such as natural disasters, epidemics, or predation/competition. To be fair though this is the usual outcome of most life forms. Life forms tend to either evolve physical traits that allow for long term species or classification survival (crocodilians for example), or else evolve an offshoot species that can do those things; as humans were from other hominids that couldn't; a new species does not after all mean the one they came from automatically goes extinct after all, just a gradual drift apart. That said hominids like most mammals become habitat dependent and if there is too quick of change their population tends to either bottleneck or go extinct; a problem common amongst apes in general. Becoming nomadic and developing social structures and tools to overcome hostile environments and other organisms was instrumental for something as physically weak as a human to survive long term. However again, the majority of worlds this just doesn't happen and either something else out competes them, or some disaster or epidemic wipes out the small population living in their one corner of the world. It is observed most successful hominids and humans specifically resulted from a gradual decline of the abundence of their original habitat with enough time to develop clever solutions to these problems till they learn to use horticulture and send groups to find new areas to live in as well develop hard tools, protective clothing, and weapons to fend off rivals and predators.

2: Endless cycle: Most human inhabited worlds that make it to the point of spreading to much of the planet, developing complex tools, boats, houses, even gun powder weapons and smelting iron and so on; end up not going any further. Instead they end up in this cycle of decline and regrowth; where the various societies advance to a certain point; usually with metal weapons and armor, roads, complex building materials, a form of writing and commerce; and abstract ideals; but then (something) causes the society to collapse either gradually or quickly, losing most of what they had before (sometimes intentionally thanks to toxic ideaologies blaming these things wrongly for their collapse); or else some plague, climate change such as drought or rising sea levels; or natural disaster caused too much loss of life or land all at once hindering further growth and loss of faith in their society so spread away from those social centers to start over again in new areas retaining very little of what they had before. So these human worlds end up seeing this rather consistent growth, decline, regrowth, even to the point of continent wide empires that in a few generations split apart and decline anyway. Such worlds end up in this state till something (generally global scale extinction events such as ice ages, ocean stagnation, meteors, ect..) exterminates the species; unless they develop enough and put effort into unifying their cultures through commerce and the exchanges of ideas and technologies enchance the species as a whole to withstand events that would have before causes more isolated groups to lose almost everything.

3: Collapse of industrialized societies: Unfortunatly the majority that make it to industrialization while able to survive natural disasters (save extinction level cosmic events), through their interconnections, international aid efforts, and trade in food and supplies when locally they'd be suffering; tend to exterminate themselves regardless. This is most often due to massive disruptions in these survival needing supply chains caused by ludicrous levels of greed by the corporations and governments controlling those supplies; and due to toxic ideologies preventing aid to their own suffering people seemingly unaware that society requires all levels to prosper to...well; prosper; and the "wealthy" are not immune to these problems, only able to stave them off longer until the entire support system collapses and they find themselves as equally "screwed". At which point the damage is already so severe they may very well collapse back into the "endless cycle phase". If this happens to an industrialized society it rarely recovers back to where it was before; although it does rarely happen everywhere at once on a global scale, resulting in many unstable zones; that the greed of other societies rarely help. Leading to the second and most common cause of industrialized society collapse; war fare. Along with advancing everything else, weapons also advance and due to humans' toxic ideology tendencies due to a rather unfortunate connection in their neurology to combine abstract thought with memory (thus treating it as real), along with the defensive behavior where their social survival need to be part of a group and fear any divergence in that group as a threat (something useful in their distant ancestry but not when ideology is involved); causes them to react to any challenge to their abstract beliefs the same way they'd react to a physical threat to their well being and survival. Thus we get entire societies bent on annihilating each other over differences in abstract thoughts and outlooks. For most industrialized societies that end up in a (constant war cycle) it is unfortunatly 90% of the time roughly unavoidable their cultures will collapse. In some times lines all the above causes for collapse happen all at once and they either completly eradicate themselves or fall back into the endless cycle phases and never really recover again.


4: Intersteller Power: As impossible as it might sound given 1-3, occassionally searching for human inhabited versions of Earth turn up a variation that has spread beyond its own planet, possibly even overcoming the short comings of the industrialized society struggles against all odds and have built colonies on other planets and bodies in space. Some of them even discovering the means to open the gates of the multiverse and colonize other timelines of Earth *breaking off sometimes resulting in isolated versions of 1-3 in a more confused manner*, but enough times retaining their status as an advanced culture. They key ingredient for stability on a cosmic scale looks to be overcoming their physiological (namely neurological) short comings. Most such human societies have altered themselves in some way, either through protein based nanites such as the Aesperians and Ju-el, cybernetic enhancements, or gone completly techno-organic reworking their entire phytsical structure such as the Andros (found in several timelines, usually as the sole evolution of humanity, more rarely sharing the timeline with other off-shoots). There are a few rare examples of techno-organic manipulations resulting in becoming whole different species *sometimes over time* while on other planets; that on occasion oddly match up with natural (or otherwise) sole sapient inheritors of their own Earths (Reality-H tends to be the stand out as having developed counter parts all in one time line set to alot of other timelines).