Would the Imperium want to purge Neanderthals, Denisovans and other hominids?

[Just123456]

Would the Imperium want to purge these extinct Archaic humans? I know the Imperium are human supremacists, but they have abhumans. Would they want to purge these extinct Archaic humans? 

 

Neanderthals and Denisovans were a different species, but still human. They are genetically close enough to us that they interbred with modern humans, and almost every human ethnicity today has Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in them. 

 

The Neanderthals and Denisovans also had comparable intelligence to us. Neanderthals also might have created cave paintings in Spain that are over 64,000 years old at bare minimum. 

 

Would the Imperium revere species like Homo Erectus as ancestors of mankind? While Homo Erectus were most likely not as intelligent as modern humans, they had symbolic thought capability and controlled fire and had forms of sophisticated art. 

Edited November 3, 2023 by Just123456

[Noserenda]

How would the Imperium even know about, let alone get into contact with already long extinct hominids? 

As a thought exercise they are essentially just another form of abhuman by Imperial standards, so id expect a similar level of abuse.

[Casual Heresy]

It's an interesting thought. My gut instinct is that at best Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo Erectus would be treated as Abhumans, and exterminated for not being human enough at worst.

 

A majority of Imperial worlds seem to believe that the Emperor is a divine creator of humanity, or that any human history before the Imperium is irrelevent until the Emperor arises. Concepts like evolution seem to be restricted to the learned and Magos Biologis of the Mechanicus. The Ecclesiarchy place an emphasis on the divine human form, which is to say, the baseline human of the 41st Millenium. Abhumans are regarded as inferior as they don't match that baseline. So an ancient human specise would fall into the same category as Abhuman, as they don't match up to the human baseline as defined by the Imperium.

 

'The Wraithbone Phoenix' WH Crime novel is a great example of how the Imperium treats Abhumans. Ratlings might be just as intelligent if not more so than the average human, but because they don't physically match the human baseline they are barely tolerated and shunned. Ogryns are physically superior to the baseline in terms of strength and durability, but because of generally lower intelligence, they're treated little better than beasts of burden. In the end, the Imperium, like any fascist state, only cares about what it defines as human. Anything that falls outside that definition is a tool or a threat.

[Grotsmasha]

If the Imperium can use Ogryns, they could use such species.

[Just123456]

On 11/3/2023 at 10:47 AM, Noserenda said:

How would the Imperium even know about, let alone get into contact with already long extinct hominids? 

As a thought exercise they are essentially just another form of abhuman by Imperial standards, so id expect a similar level of abuse.

 

Lets say that some of them were brought through time traveling by the warp. 

 

On 11/3/2023 at 10:55 AM, Casual Heresy said:

It's an interesting thought. My gut instinct is that at best Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo Erectus would be treated as Abhumans, and exterminated for not being human enough at worst.

 

A majority of Imperial worlds seem to believe that the Emperor is a divine creator of humanity, or that any human history before the Imperium is irrelevent until the Emperor arises. Concepts like evolution seem to be restricted to the learned and Magos Biologis of the Mechanicus. The Ecclesiarchy place an emphasis on the divine human form, which is to say, the baseline human of the 41st Millenium. Abhumans are regarded as inferior as they don't match that baseline. So an ancient human specise would fall into the same category as Abhuman, as they don't match up to the human baseline as defined by the Imperium.

 

'The Wraithbone Phoenix' WH Crime novel is a great example of how the Imperium treats Abhumans. Ratlings might be just as intelligent if not more so than the average human, but because they don't physically match the human baseline they are barely tolerated and shunned. Ogryns are physically superior to the baseline in terms of strength and durability, but because of generally lower intelligence, they're treated little better than beasts of burden. In the end, the Imperium, like any fascist state, only cares about what it defines as human. Anything that falls outside that definition is a tool or a threat.

If the facial reconstructions of Neanderthals by scientists are anything to go by, then Neanderthals don't look alien and look almost the same as us. 

Edited November 3, 2023 by Just123456

[Emperor Ming]

Ogryns fall under homo sapiens and officially sanctioned mutants. 

 

Anything else purge!!!!!!!!!!!*

 

*except for eldar for obvious reasons

[Just123456]

I was hoping there would be answers to my fanfiction thread about Damon Prytanis, but I guess its alright, because that wouldn't be as relevant as this thread here. 

Edited November 3, 2023 by Just123456

[Scribe]

3 hours ago, Grotsmasha said:

If the Imperium can use Ogryns, they could use such species.

 

Correct. And Navigators.

 

1. Is said organism useful?

2. Did said organism bend the knee to the Imperium/Emperor?

 

If both of those are yes, then said organism is welcomed into the Imperium.

 

Otherwise, and especially if item 2 is "No", then its been a good visit, but goodbye. 

[Just123456]

1 hour ago, Scribe said:

 

Correct. And Navigators.

 

1. Is said organism useful?

2. Did said organism bend the knee to the Imperium/Emperor?

 

If both of those are yes, then said organism is welcomed into the Imperium.

 

Otherwise, and especially if item 2 is "No", then its been a good visit, but goodbye. 

And Lexicanum names 'Realm of Chaos: The Lost and The Damned ' as the book with the shaman backstory, even naming the page numbers for the shamans, Sensei and Star Child. Lexicanum is strictly moderated, with a no nonsense policy. Just look at the discussion pages on Lexicanum for that. 

 

The belief of the shaman backstory being nothing more than a theory originated from misunderstanding the words of YouTube , which contextually didn't actually say it was nothing more than a theory. And 40k YouTube channels are not reliable anyway. That is what I personally think, anyway. 

 

I am sorry. I had to say that again. 

Edited November 3, 2023 by Just123456

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

1 hour ago, Just123456 said:

And Lexicanum names 'Realm of Chaos: The Lost and The Damned ' as the book with the shaman backstory, even naming the page numbers for the shamans, Sensei and Star Child. Lexicanum is strictly moderated, with a no nonsense policy. Just look at the discussion pages on Lexicanum for that. 

 

The belief of the shaman backstory being nothing more than a theory originated from misunderstanding the words of YouTube , which contextually didn't actually say it was nothing more than a theory. And 40k YouTube channels are not reliable anyway. That is what I personally think, anyway. 

 

I am sorry. I had to say that again. 

Which has nothing to do with this thread

[cheywood]

I don’t think there’d be a one size fits all approach. Some in the Imperium are quite ‘tolerant’ of abhumans and would put them to work as a slave-labor population, seeing minimal difference between them and other sanctioned abhumans. Flesh is flesh provided there’s no chaos/xenos corruption. Others would look on them as corruptions of the human form’s purity and kill them outright. 

[Scribe]

Yeah now I am confused.

[Emperor Ming]

The answer is probably varied, but on the whole, they would be a subspecies of humans right?

 

So the adeptus terra would accept them

 

That's doesn't mean they wont end up in the departmento munitorum labour corps, or as corp starch or as servitors

 

 

 

 

[Just123456]

On 11/3/2023 at 10:09 PM, Mechanicus Tech-Support said:

Which has nothing to do with this thread

I am sorry. I was talking about something in the discussion for the three volumes of 'The End And The Death'. Which I told Scribe about in the thread. 

 

Back to the discussion. 

 

On 11/3/2023 at 10:18 PM, cheywood said:

I don’t think there’d be a one size fits all approach. Some in the Imperium are quite ‘tolerant’ of abhumans and would put them to work as a slave-labor population, seeing minimal difference between them and other sanctioned abhumans. Flesh is flesh provided there’s no chaos/xenos corruption. Others would look on them as corruptions of the human form’s purity and kill them outright. 

Are they a corruption of the human form's purity? The Neanderthals and Denisovans technically evolved before modern humans, but are not our ancestors and are instead evolutionary cousins. 

 

Homo Erectus are probably the direct ancestors of modern humans. 

[cheywood]

23 minutes ago, Just123456 said:

Are they a corruption of the human form's purity? The Neanderthals and Denisovans technically evolved before modern humans, but are not our ancestors and are instead evolutionary cousins. 

 

Homo Erectus are probably the direct ancestors of modern humans. 

Religious zealots never let facts get in the way of a good purging. 

[Just123456]

On 11/4/2023 at 12:54 AM, cheywood said:

Religious zealots never let facts get in the way of a good purging. 

 

I'm sure the Great Crusade era Imperium would be alright with them. A few Perpetuals from that time might have encountered a few extinct human species, like Oll Persson, who is 45,000 years old at bare minimum and the oldest Perpetual as the 'Perpetual' audio book and 'Saturnine' novel said. That places Oll Persson being born in the Upper Paleolithic. 

 

While the Great Crusade era Imperium was genocidal, they were much more focused on science and evolution than in the 41st millennium with the exception of maybe the Mechanicus. 

 

Neanderthals and Denisovans are also almost identical to us in DNA. 

 

On 11/4/2023 at 12:54 AM, cheywood said:

Religious zealots never let facts get in the way of a good purging. 

I hope I get the second volume for 'The End And The Death' soon. What about you? 

 

I know that is off topic, but I wanted to ask you. 

Edited November 4, 2023 by Just123456

[byrd9999]

Maybe the Emperor did purge them, and that's why they died out?

[EverythingIsGreat]

The Inquisition (at least the non-Puritan part) doesn't seem too bothered in using anyone or anything if it does the job. Individual Inquisitors have gone to extremes time and again. Eisenhorn using a daemonhost is a celebrated example. Imperial officers of all stripes have been shown able to rationalize anything if it gets the job done. As was said if the primitives were useful, they would likely be brought aboard. This is pretty realistic behavior, at least for baseline humans.    

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

An interesting question. I actually think not because while they may not be 'proper' humans as the Imperium see's it they tolerate other Abhumans and actually hail from Terra. I mean, they aren't significantly mutated. 

 

Though, given this is the Imperium, it wouldn't surprise me if a few Inquisitors had conflicting views and had a little civil war to settle the question. 

[grailkeeper]

We purged them and we aren't the Imperium. I'm going to go with yes. I'm not sure exactly of the time line but the Emperor was around in thr stone age. Maybe he witnessed/participated in/led the purge?

 

 

Edited November 7, 2023 by grailkeeper

[N1SB]

Likewise, not sure if the Emperor was around that time, but an alternate take: what if they were the Emperor's earliest (failed) experiments?

 

I don't take this idea too seriously, just a weird take, but the Emperor isn't exactly homo sapien.  In fact, in Saturnine, the Perpetual lady considers all of their kind some separate thing, homo superior.  I also thought Oll Persson was the oldest of them, but not sure if they were counting the Emperor (whose background kinda morphs.)

 

In Belisarius Cawl: the Great Work, we get that memory from the guy who developed the Black Carapace on how around the 20,000 era, he visited the Emperor who was like a marriage matchmaker.  It was weird, but it reminded me of how the monk Gregor Mendel was breeding things to discover recessive/dominant genes.

 

The idea was the Emperor was already trying to guide the course of mankind long before the Unification Wars.  What if he was doing that for far longer than we knew?

 

For the purposes of your writing, it might be a crazy theory one of your characters really believes in.  I dunno, not a serious thought, just riffing.

[Just123456]

On 11/9/2023 at 6:18 AM, N1SB said:

Likewise, not sure if the Emperor was around that time, but an alternate take: what if they were the Emperor's earliest (failed) experiments?

 

I don't take this idea too seriously, just a weird take, but the Emperor isn't exactly homo sapien.  In fact, in Saturnine, the Perpetual lady considers all of their kind some separate thing, homo superior.  I also thought Oll Persson was the oldest of them, but not sure if they were counting the Emperor (whose background kinda morphs.)

 

In Belisarius Cawl: the Great Work, we get that memory from the guy who developed the Black Carapace on how around the 20,000 era, he visited the Emperor who was like a marriage matchmaker.  It was weird, but it reminded me of how the monk Gregor Mendel was breeding things to discover recessive/dominant genes.

 

The idea was the Emperor was already trying to guide the course of mankind long before the Unification Wars.  What if he was doing that for far longer than we knew?

 

For the purposes of your writing, it might be a crazy theory one of your characters really believes in.  I dunno, not a serious thought, just riffing.

Why wouldn't they count the Emperor? As The Unremembered Empire said the greatest Perpetual can build an Imperium. 

 

Oll Persson is explicitly older than him. 

 

I hope it's alright. 

Edited November 10, 2023 by Just123456

[Brother Hellion]

This thread feels like it got off topic waaaay long ago.

 

For my two cents; The Imperium tolerates mutants like Ogyrns, ratlings, pariah, navigators and even psykers because they have a use and can be used. That's not even mentioning beastmen, or that fella who has two heads with a spiky mohawk that share a facial cheek stretched between both heads for even these "people" are allowed in some cases. People being the broadest stretch of being qualified as human both physically, mentally or genetically. 

 

In regards to Neanderthals and the like, I could see Arch Magos Biologists scrape together a rough approximation using fossilized records then twike it with some bionic/cyberware and gene-vat modifications to act as a Servitor alternatives or the like. 

 

Heck, Arkhan Land once made a pet monkey because he was curious. Course he got it wrong but he believes that they had scorpion tails based on how homicidal this little capuchin acted.

 

[casb1965]

Seeing as the average human has 1 to 2% Neanderthal DNA in them and in so.e caes 4 to 6% Denisovan I think they would have been tolerated by the Imperium but put to menial tasks.