I want to answer this question to better understand what nonhuman cultures could be like.
human culture varies greatly across the world, but universal similarities exist because of several factors:
>sex
roughly half of humans are male, the other half are female. men and women are different, but most men are similar and most women are similar. what would happen if the male-female ratio was changed, if sex differences were reduced (or amplified), or if some sexes were added and removed? (e.g. asexual reproduction)
>diet
humans can eat some plants, and can eat meat (albeit poorly unless the meat is cooked). what if humans couldn't digest plants, or could digest grass and leaves? what if humans got much better at digesting uncooked meat?
>miscellaneous
what if humans were bigger (or smaller) on average?
what if humans had additional features? (e.g. claws, a tail)
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Ants
it's cool but somehow I don't feel that much effort was put into making the fictional ant society feel plausible
haha very funny
>sex
If a culture had more females it would likely cause them to be larger and more aggressive while males would be on their whims and have developed to have their bodies fit being smaller. Pretty good sample would be how viera got handled a few years back when they added males to lore.
Also in warcract the goblin women are slightly larger than goblin men most likely because they are horndogs that could continue goblin existance even with non goblins simply by having them "fit".
>diet
Bordering between absolutely rancid and filthy no matter what direction you swing. If you want a real life extreme sample then look at how Koala's function and why they decide to commit suicides very often.
>misc
Like mentioned in the sex part creatures would likely have developed due to it working or because they had to. If you plop a race into your setting that are giants or midgets then explain why it came to be. Example of this could be divine entity blood, defense mechanism against giant flying predators or a very specific diet.
>females larger and more aggressive while males would have developed smaller
That’s only vaush doe
Where is the horse mutation
The what? Please elaborate.
>If a culture had more females it would likely cause them to be larger and more aggressive while males would be on their whims and have developed to have their bodies fit being smaller.
Why though?
It is unlikely that the gender ratio of humans (or human-like species, I suppose) would change much under almost any biological circumstances. The roughly 1:1 ratio is extremely evolutionary stable, and if you sit down a think about it for a minute, you can probably figure out why.
Let's look at lions for a minute. As you probably know, lion prides tend to be one male with many females, a harem, if you will. The same structure exists with the noble walrus and some primates, gorillas and chimpanzees. Not bonobos, though. They're much more egalitarian. These species have in common that the evolutionary pressure selects for larger, stronger, and more aggressive males. It's almost always the female that's the more discerning partner in reproduction, as they're (usually) the ones who has to invest more. Pregnancy is expensive y'all. In some species of birds, males are completely separate from child-rearing. Chick-rearing? And the females tend to grow larger because there's evolutionary pressure on them to protect and survive the whole ordeal. In these species, males often become much more colourful and spend most of their time being twinks. Females also tend to mate with many different males in these species.
Also in case you're curious, biologist might be the best at naming in the entirety of science. They have ballers such as the "sexy son hypothesis" and the "sneaky fricker strategy"
Moving on the another thing: What if humans couldn't into plants?
Being able to eat plant is what allowed us to build society. Humankind experienced a population boom when we learnt how to grow crops reliably (sort of) and it's this food production surplus that allowed for people to do other things than just hunt and forage all the time. Like inventing cool shit or building boats or deciding who should be in charge like for real. If humans had been obligate carnivores all along, it's likely that we wouldn't have have grown past nomadic society, if we'd even get there in the first place. It's likely that we'd be something close to wolves, lions, hyenas, or maybe dolphins. Nomadic hunter families.
>Being able to eat plant is what allowed us to build society.
You will eat the söy chicken and you will like mister
I think its best to candidly reject evolution as a factor in the creation of fantasy races and society. You should only use the barest amount necessary to suspend disbelief. That will give you a lot more range to play with different ideas.
You can of course use nature as a baseline for creativity.
> can eat meat(albeit poorly unless the meat is cooked)
Meh, uncooked meat is superior for digestion. It is just that cooked meat can be preserved for longer periods of time. Seriously tartar is probably the most easily digestible meat you can eat. Our predecessors were most probably carion-eaters after all.
Sauce on this please? Because I’ve never heard of humans primarily eating carrion.
Not homosexual sapiens, our predecessors.
Still, never heard of that before. Where’s the sauce for this?
You're asking a lot of different and very large questions which could likely justify entire threads of their own.
>sex
9 months of pregnancy is one of the big factors and bottlenecks that made a lot of human societies prefer women in non-combat and low-risk roles. If women were as strong as men, tribes that used female warriors instead of exclusively male ones would take longer to recover from losses.
If women were stronger outright, that could change things, but I think the more likely thing to change it would be egg-laying, shorter pregnancies, or larger litters.
A different ratio would certainly impact a lot. Fewer females and you likely get something even stricter about women than real life. More females and you simply end up with more harems, though it also might leave that society with a lack of males for soldiers and labor.
With a lopsided ratio towards females that were also stronger, you might see a caste system between breeding women, warrior women, and men.
>diet
Crops and livestock were a big reason why stationary civilization played out. With the ability to graze or the inability to subsist off of crops, you have cultures that are more likely to stay nomadic, rather than putting down roots. Grazers have very little reason to try when food is abundant, and obligate carnivores couldn't stay in one place at a large volume for extended periods.
>misc
Bigger humans would basically be neanderthals. Better at taking prey, but higher caloric demands. Less likely to make a big community as a result, and as such less room for diversified labor.
Humans have been smaller than the modern day historically, unless you mean drastically smaller like a pygmy tribe. Obviously being small makes things difficult, especially for individual tasks. That could theoretically be made up for via sufficient cooperation, but it also adds more hurdles to anything that could previously be a one-man job.
Well, assuming that races like Elves and Dwarves are evolutionarily related to humans, wouldn't their cultures have branched off of human ones too?