Of the numerous alternate earths discovered by the Many Worlds Research Society, the one nicknamed Terra Expopuli holds a special fascination. A near perfect parallel that only split off from our reality 2.1 - 1.3 million years ago, it offers us a haunting vision of a planet unspoiled by the extinctions and ecological damage inevitably inflicted by sapient species such as ourselves.

Many species which died out in our Pleistocene still thrive in T.E.’s present, including ground sloths, short-faced bears, dire wolves, American lions, giant cheetahs (not closely related to true cheetahs but similar in form), saiga antelope, camels, llamas, three varieties of sabertoothed cats, tapirs, stag-moose, bison, shrub oxen, horses, giant beavers and teratorns (huge birds of prey). Old growth forests are much more extensive, including breathtaking temperate rainforests in the north.

The important historical distinction between our reality and Terra Expopuli seems to have been a slight increase in African pluvial periods. Extreme climate shifts from dense rainforest to near-desert conditions occurred several times when humans were first developing. Three of the greatest periods of climate change happened in the range of time it is suspected that T.E. diverged, and roughly coincide with the appearance of Australopithecus afarensis, a bipedal creature with a chimp-sized brain, Homo habilis, the first stone tool using human species with a brain half the size of a modern human, and later Homo erectus, a taller, smarter hominid with a body very similar to modern humans but with a brain only 75% of the size, which used fire and more sophisticated tools.

Terra Expopuli suffered considerably less desertification, and savannahs never became as extensive as they did here. Hominids didn't flourish to any great degree in Africa itself, the sole remaining example of the genus being a small population of nomadic scavengers closely resembling Australopithecus. However, hominids did migrate out of Africa into Asia, and from ancient Siberia over the Bering Strait land bridge into Alaska during a glacial period some time in the lower Pleistocene (approximately 1 million - 12,000 years ago).

These wanderers differed somewhat from human ancestors. Without the benefit of spears and axes, they had to rely more on speed and muscle to escape predators and chase down prey. Referred to as velocipiths (fast apes), they had developed elongate foot bones that gave them a greater ability to sprint and leap than is typical for familiar hominids. They retained a coat of insulating fur and larger canine teeth. Tool use is present, but has not progressed much further than what is displayed by our chimps. Still, primitive as they might seem to us, these other-world cousins proved tough and adaptable, and soon diversified to fit into many disparate ecological niches in North America. This is an overview of the known species, all of which belong to the genus Alloanthropus (other men).*


GEOFFREY

Alloanthropus altiprehens - "High-grasping other-man"

Soon after crossing into North America, the ancestral velocipiths split into two types, the small-bodied fleet carnivores and the tall, slow-moving herbivores. The herbivores flourished briefly during the depths of the Ice Age, using their tireless, efficient bipedal gait to quickly cover vast amounts of territory in search of food. Like many Pleistocene mammals, they grew quite large. Most died out when the climate became warmer and drier, and now the geoffrey is the last surviving example of these giant browsing hominids.

Geoffreys tower an incredible 12 feet tall, as one might suspect, their proportions are not very humanlike. The legs are columnar, designed to support their immense weight. The foot is shortened and padded with hooflike nails, resembling an elephant's more than a human's. The torso is pear-shaped, with a large gut to digest tough plant food. The arms are elongate and slender, perfect for reaching into leafy foliage and increasing the geoffrey's effective height to almost 20 feet. A sagittal crest and deep jaw to anchor chewing muscles and support grinding molars gives the head the overall look of a flat-faced gorilla, but what's really striking are the pendulous lips, which form a short but flexible trunk. The geoffrey uses its tough, dexterous lips to strip leaves and pluck berries from branches and shell nuts. While their ancestors were shaggy, the modern geoffrey is covered in a short, sleek, tawny coat, with brown and cream striping on the lower limbs. Youngsters are dappled brown and gold, camouflaging them in broken terrain.

Geoffreys, like elephants, live in matriarchal groups consisting of female relatives and their calves and led by elder females. These groups are constantly on the move, rarely staying more than a day or two in one place. Geoffreys use their excellent hominid brains to construct a detailed map of their stomping grounds, knowing exactly when and where to find the best food sources. These mental maps are built up over the creature's long life and passed down to the youngsters. A geoffrey herd suddenly finding itself in unknown territory, or whose territory had been drastically altered by an environmental cataclysm (such as a flood or hurricane), would have terrible difficulty finding food.

The death of a matriarch also means hard times ahead as the group dynamic struggles to adjust. Like other hominids, geoffreys mourn their dead, and as they endlessly patrol their vast territories, they will often revisit the death site to inspect and hoot over their fallen sister's huge bones. Young males live in small groups, but as they age they become more aggressive and short tempered, and older males tend to be loners. Benefiting from the protection of the group, a female geoffrey has a life expectancy of over a hundred years; most males will be very lucky to reach 40. They are easily distinguished from the females by their greater breadth of their shoulders and heavy musculature of the arms, which they use to rip up trees and throw boulders in displays of anger, and in titanic punching and shoving matches during the rut.

However, although bright for the average ungulate, geoffreys are distinctly lacking in intellect compared to other Terra Expopuli hominids. They do not make or use tools, nor do they have a language-like system of calls, mainly keeping in communication by purring, subsonic roars produced in the chest.

Unlike ungulates, a geoffrey's forward-facing eyes and dependence on vision over scent or hearing mean it is vulnerable to predation when feeding. Geoffreys therefore tend to feed in shifts, with several members of the herd on guard duty at all times. Higher-ranking members of the herd naturally feed first, leaving subordinates to scrounge whatever leftovers they can.

Geoffrey gestation lasts for 13 months, and the young are born in an advanced state, able to walk within a few weeks. Compared to the stately, slow-moving adults, young geoffreys are lively and playful, atypically carefree for prey animals as they frolic under the watchful eye of their aunts.

Few predators make a habit of hunting geoffreys, among them lions, short-faced bears, sabertooths, dire wolves and their own relatives, the ninjas. While the big cats and wolves attack using brute force, ninjas conceal themselves among the tree branches and rapidly lash out to slit their victim's throats as they feed unawares. A huge geoffrey carcass is a buffet for scavengers and opportunistic (or lazy) predators, although the grieving herd will often hang around the corpse for quite some time, flinging branches and charging at hungry carnivores.


MAHOUT

Alloanthropus pilohaibitatus “hair-dwelling other-man”

Let’s move from the largest American hominid to the smallest. The mahout is roughly the size of a large housecat, 12-14 pounds. They resemble a tailless lemur more than a hominid, with small heads, oversized eyes and neat little pointed muzzles filled with sharp teeth, limber bodies, spindly limbs all the same length, and spidery, clutching digits ending in sharp little nails. They’re colored an all-over reddish gold, with dark skin showing on the face and palms. Males and females are virtually identical.

Mahouts have adapted to an extremely specific environment: the shaggy fur of mammoths. At some point their small, insect-eating ancestors realized that mammoths were a virtual smorgasbord of ticks, lice, fleas, grubs, mites, and mosquitoes. They hopped aboard this moveable feast and basically never left.

The mahout spends its entire life with a mammoth herd, swarming through their fur and picking off tasty parasites. It also grooms the fur with an almost obsessive fervor, untangling mats, nibbling off skin flakes and helping itself to an occasional scab. A tick bird foolish enough to land on a mammoth risks becoming a hot lunch. The troop is quite vocal, chattering and shrieking as they leap about and jostle for the best bugs. At night the mahouts gather behind the mammoth’s ear, tangling fingers and toes in the fine, soft fur there and sleeping behind its leathery protection. Besides the unlimited food source, mahouts enjoy an degree of safety far greater than any other animal their size, as very few predators will attack a full-grown mammoth. Their biggest worry is being snatched by a ninja as their hosts saunter under trees with low-hanging branches or plucked up by a swift bird of prey.

The mammoths benefit greatly from their live-in pest control service, as parasites carry a wide variety of diseases. For the most part they seem indifferent to their noisy little passengers, although there are reports of a mammoth noticing a mahout that had been dropped by an eagle and suffered a broken leg. She tried several times to pick the little animal in her trunk and place it on her back. Eventually the mahout managed to cling there, and the mammoth resumed feeding.

Like many small mammals, mahouts have brief, compressed lives. Young are usually born in pairs, and within nine months are able to move about and feed themselves. By age two they are sexually mature, and can expect a life span of a mere 12 years. Mammoth herds tend to break up into small groups for the winter migration, but when the herds come back together in the spring, their mahouts will often swap herd, with the one-year-olds being the most likely to set out for greener pastures, so to speak, and preventing inbreeding.


SHEP

Alloanthropus lycophilous - "Wolf-loving other-man"

In our world, human hunter-gathers were direct competitors with wolves, sharing the same habitat and hunting the same prey. Later on, humans who herded domesticated herbivores had to remain constantly vigilant against marauding wolves who, naturally, could not understand why such plump, slow prey would be off-limits. Global human cultures tended to demonize and vilify the wolf, and it is only recently that modern civilization has come to view the animal as an important part of the ecology and not a vicious monster that should be exterminated at all costs.

Oddly enough, although the wolf was humankind’s most-hated enemy, arguably the animal humans care for most is the dog, an animal genetically almost indistinguishable from its lupine ancestor. This behaviorally unique offshoot of Canis lupus was not intentionally domesticated by humans but rather domesticated itself. When early humans settled down, wild animals were attracted to their garbage. Wolves which were less fearful of humans and less stressed by their presence were able to exploit this new food source, and over succeeding generations became more and more tolerant of human interaction. This was achieved by neoteny, the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood. At some point humans realized the potential usefulness of these self-domesticated animals and began using them to assist on the hunt, guard homes, and as beasts of burden.

On T. E. the relationship between hominid and canid has taken a fascinating reverse twist. The allo-species called Sheps (after their discoverer’s childhood pet) have essentially domesticated themselves to cohabitate with timber wolves. Like the faxenmachers, the ancestors of sheps probably began scavenging wolf kills. Over time their association with wolves became closer and closer, and now the two species have a symbiotic relationship. Although more intelligent than the wolves, it must be emphasized that sheps have brains only twice the size of a chimps and are in no way the animals’ masters.

Mixed hunting parties of wolf and shep benefit from the strengths of both species. The wolves are faster, but sheps can throw stones that injure and disorient prey, making them easier to bring down. Sheps use simple stone hand-axes to efficiently butcher carcasses and crack bones to reach marrow wolf jaws and teeth alone cannot, and they stand guard, displaying noisily to chase off other meat-eaters while the wolves get their fill. Sheps also carry much more food back to the pack in their arms than wolves can in their bellies. At the den, shep kids and wolf cubs tumble playfully together while elderly sheps and young adult wolves keep watch. The wolf’s superior hearing and sense of smell perfectly compliment the shep’s sharp vision and pattern-matching brain (allowing them to identify threatening clues in the environment). Just as early humans relied on the long memories of their elder members, who might have a store of wisdom accumulated over most of a century, the wolf pack benefits greatly from the sagacious old sheps they support. Any individual wolf may not have encountered a flood or one of the rare sabertooth cats, but a shep may have encountered such dangers several times over her life span and will be able to calmly oversee coping strategies.

Physically, sheps are more robust than H. sapiens, with bandy legs, long, powerful arms, barrel chests, flattish heads and heavy brows over jutting faces. They strongly resemble miniature Neanderthals, but boast a thick coat of fur in subtle shades of grey, charcoal, cream and silver which makes them closely resemble their lupine companions. Young sheps, like wolf cubs, start life almost solid black, shedding gradually into their adult color at age three. There is considerable variation in colors, with northern specimens often pure white and southern ones cinnamon tinted. Each wolf pack will be attended by a small family of sheps, a breeding pair, their sub-adult children, and usually some juveniles and elders.


GIG

Alloanthropus palustris - "Other-man from the swamp"

Gigs, also known as 'bog goblins', are a species adapted to the swamplands of the American southeast. They are in general quite similar to the papageno, with the same small stature and long-limbed, sinewy build. They are the sole Terra Expopuli hominid with bare skin, presumably because it sheds water better than fur and it makes parasites like ticks easier to find and remove. They do retain a mohawk-like strip of dark, coarse, white-tipped hair running from the scalp halfway down the back, which is the target of social grooming in the group.

Gigs hunt a wide variety of prey animals, the menu including snails and other freshwater mollusks, insects, crustaceans like crawdads, fish, small mammals, birds nestlings and eggs, reptiles (and their eggs) and amphibians, with a particular emphasis on frogs as their name suggests (’gigging‘ refers to frog hunting). They will also eat fruit in season. Like the papagenos, gigs are excellent vocal mimics and utilize this talent in their hunting strategy. For example, one gig will imitate the distinctive quacking call of an alligator hatchling, drawing away a defensive mother gator while a second gig quickly digs eggs or hatchlings from her nest.

Gigs are one of the few Terra Expopuli hominids which use tools to hunt, in their case a pronged spear stabbed into shallow water to catch fish, frogs, and young alligators. Gigs are quite selective about the branches they choose to make into spears, and spend hours nibbling them into shape with their oversized incisors.

Gigs are also notable as the only hominids to use fire, although in a highly specialized way not at all similar to the way hominids in our home reality did. Fire is employed only in the nocturnal hunting of frogs. A small pack of armed gigs will quietly spread out and wade into a pond, striking a pose with spears held overhead, and freeze, holding utterly still until the small-brained swamp animals forget they’re there. One gig remains near the shore, some distance away from the hunters. When insect and frog noises start back up, the fire-starter knows it is time. She quickly stirs the mud with her toes, release a belch of methane formed by rotting organic detritus trapped below. At the same time, she holds her flints low over the water and strikes them, creating a spark which ignites the escaping methane. There is a brief flare of light, not enough to destroy the hunter’s night vision but plenty bright enough to reflect back blue from the eyes of large frogs floating near the pond’s surface, illuminating what would otherwise be invisible to the hominids. The hunters strike with deadly precision at the frog nearest to them. They very rarely miss. However, gigs do not create sustained fires used to cook meat, keep warm (hardly a problem in the deep south) or frighten off other animals.

Gigs live in large, loosely structured groups that gather at nightfall, but during the day they generally disperse in groups of three or less, silently stalking their small prey. Food is eaten where it is captured and not brought back to the group, although after a nocturnal frog hunt the fire-starter is always given a share. Males and females are equal in size, and there is very little dominance-based aggression between individuals, probably because they do not directly compete with one another for food sources during the day. On nights when they don’t hunt, the group gathers in live oaks and huddles into nests of woven branches padded with Spanish moss. Groups tend to return to the same tree year after year, but also fission and reform into new groups fairly often.

Gigs normally mate while out on paired hunting forays. This is the rare time when they share food, with the male offering the female he’s courting tasty morsels to prove his hunting prowess (and the fitness of his genes). The female will go hunting with several males before she settles on a mate. The young, usually twins, are born after a brisk 6-month gestation and spend most of their first three months clinging tightly to mother’s mane. After they quickly learn to toddle about and are soon picking up small sticks and thrusting them at anything that moves. Young stay with the mother for about 5 years, often helping care for their younger siblings. Gigs reach sexual maturity at age seven and have a lifespan of thirty years.


PAPAGENO

Alloanthropus mastigovenator - "Other-man who hunts with a whip"

Papagenos (named after the bird-catcher character in Mozart‘s “The Magic Flute”) are closely related to gigs, and like their evolutionary cousins employ a specialized weapon when hunting. But where a gig hunts with a carefully crafted pronged spear, a papageno cracks a whip like a tiny, goblin version of Indiana Jones.

Physically, papagenos are unimpressive animals, a mere three feet tall with a skinny, long-limbed build and snub-nosed, goggle-eyed faces. Their short fur is gingery, with white markings and a bristling mane of darker fur that runs from scalp to spine. Their ears are upstanding, mobile and pointed with distinctive white tufts, giving them a characteristic alert expression. Their enlarged incisors are used to harvest the thin, flexible branched they use as whips. The life history is quite similar to the gig.

Papagenos are skilled enough with their whips to snap a passing dragonfly right out of the sky, but they depend on one prey animal above all others, the passenger pigeon. These grey and orange birds travels in flocks that could number over two billion strong, darkening the sky as they pass overhead. Papagenos migrate with the flocks and feast especially well when the birds are laying eggs and raising squabs. A hunter will lure a bird by leaving food out in the open, while it lays concealed in the underbrush. When the pigeon lands, the papageno leaps out and snaps the whip, usually shattering a wing. Sometimes the papageno (especially a nursing mother with young kids to feed) will leave the injured pigeon alive. Its helpless fluttering will often attract other members of the flock, which the papageno can then pick off at leisure.

Like gigs, papagenos live in casually structured groups which often fission into smaller groups and join into larger ones, with individuals going about business on their own for most of the day and gathering to groom one another and sleep in the safety of numbers. They often keep in touch with distant comrades by means of high-pitched trills that carry long distances. Unlike gigs, papagenos will kill more than they can eat in one sitting and bring the extra home to share. If one’s hunting has not gone well, he will be almost assured of a few scraps of meat from a generous comrade, often but not always a close relative. Papagenos are not very hierarchal, but they do have good memories and lazy cheaters who don’t bother hunting and beg too often will be refused.


FAXENMACHER

Alloanthropus territus - "Frightening other-man"

Faxenmachers are most closely related to gigs and papagenos, and likely to the ninja, more distantly to sheps and geoffreys.

Physically faxenmachers appear almost as much mandrills as hominids. They are bipedal, with short, muscular thighs, lengthy shanks, and extended, narrow feet, slender overall with sloping shoulders and ape-like, thin arms. Their faces are more prognathic that other hominids, and their canine teeth are shaped like ivory sabers.

Most of the pelt short and fine, ashen grey with subtle darker and lighter bands, but along the back of the arms and in a mane around the neck and head the ‘display hair’ is long and coarse, almost quill-like. When at rest, the outer layer of dark, rusty brown is relatively subdued, and the face, bracketed by cheek tufts of white hair, is unremarkable in shades of light blue-grey and pink.

However, then the faxenmacher display, its hair bristles fully upright, becoming a wild mane. The under-layers of the mane and arm fringes, in brilliant orange and gold, are visible. The face flushes, the lips turning crimson and the nose and area around the huge yellow eyes becoming cobalt blue. Raising up from its usual low crouch to an erect posture, the faxenmacher appears to be several times larger than its actual size. It increases the effect by leaping wildly into the air, waving its arms around (often clutching a leafy branch), flinging sticks, rocks, and handfuls of dirt, and letting out piercing, reverberating screeches which are amplified by vocal sacs in its thorax (present in ancestral apes and re-evolved to warm cold air before it reached the sensitive lungs). Mated pairs often perform together, with the female standing on the male’s shoulders or the somewhat larger male even grabbing the female and tossing her into the air in what looks like an over-enthusiastic ballet move.

They use this impressive display to frighten away other predators from their kills. Very few animals will willingly face a troop of faxenmachers at full display. Thus with a little bit of melodrama, the hominid is able to scavenge at its leisure. They are clever enough to keep a sharp lookout for flying scavengers like turkey buzzards and track them to find recent kills.

In between stolen meals, the faxenmachers will hunt small animals and nibble on fruits, nuts, and new, soft leaves. Their leaping and hooting is also used in courtship displays and during fights with other faxenmachers. Even quite young infants, who only have the barest fringe of dull-colored display hair, will practice playfully trying to frighten each other and whatever little animal they happen to stumble across.

Faxenmachers live in strongly bonded troops of 10-20, though in times of plenty they may come together in surprisingly large groups for short periods of time. Males and females pair off when adolescent, and remain paired more or less for life. Very rarely a female will leave a male, or another male will challenge her mate for her. If one mate dies, unless they are still quite young the remaining animal often remains celibate for the rest of its life. Homosexual pairs are not at all uncommon, and typically raise youngsters who’ve been orphaned or one of a pair of twins. Youngsters stay with the mother for their first few years, and by age eight usually develop an urge to wander off and find a mate. They tend to be extremely territorial, and adolescent males will patrol the edges of their ranges, tearing up the vegetation to warn off other troops, and getting into high-vaulting screaming matches with other teenage males. The older males leave these antics to their juniors, who have plenty of energy to burn, not to mention it keeps them out of their hair.


NINJA

Alloanthropus cryptumbra - "Hidden Shadow other-man"

Not much is known about the hominid nicknamed the ninja. No clear image of it has ever been captured on film. Like sasquatch, all we have to go on are blurred photographs, a few film clips, and leaving such as scat, abandoned nests sites, and bits of fur caught on twigs. From the small amount of data available, it seems to be similar in size and proportion to the faxenmacher and covered in short, dense, blackish-grey fur, with dark grey skin and large, pale blue eyes. The fingers and toes boast hooked, rather catlike claws.

Ninjas are ambush predators, with a unique strategy - they construct hunting blinds, weaving together branches and vines, often plastering over them with mud and decorating them with leaves and other forest detritus. These blinds provide a perfect concealment for the hunters.

Fascinatingly, ninjas adapt their blind-building to the terrain, utilizing branches in trees and grass on the ground, even making floating blinds to hunt on the water. When unwary prey wanders too near, the ninja will leap out with the swift deadliness of its namesake, killing with a swipe of its scythe-shaped thumb claw (a weapon comparable to the killing claw of raptor dinosaurs, thylacoleo, and the caranoctian lateovul). The element of surprise allows the ninja to take down wary prey and animals that would otherwise be able to outrun or out-fight them.

This behavior clearly evolved from the ancestral ape's nest-building behavior. Tentative research suggests ninjas build elaborate permanent nests high in trees where they dwell in small family groups, but as yet we must await further research.



* This taxonomy is disputed, with some researchers placing the admittedly distinct geoffreys into genus Altianthropus, mahouts into genus Nanoanthropus, and all other into Xenoanthropus.