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(Cross-posted to the unofficial DCU MBs.)
Consider the inhabitants of the alien worlds we've encountered so far - Mars, Oa, Krypton, Rann, Czarnia, Thanagar, and so on. In an overwhelming number of cases (though certainly not all) there is a startling resemblance. Bilateral symmetry. Two legs, two arms, a torso. A head with two eyes, a central nose, a mouth below, an ear on either side. An overall height of about five or six feet. The same gender traits. Verbal language. There are advantages to these things, to be sure, but there are any number of alternatives which could work equally well. And yet these things occur over and over throughout the multiverse. Even the Monitors fit the description to a tee.
Obviously, there are differences. But then there are differences amongst humans on Earth. Height, skin color, facial features. There's an entire city full of people who can breathe water as easily as air and whose adaptations to the depths have given them superhuman strength and toughness. Are Thanagarian wings so much more different? Are the abilities of alien races so much stranger than those of Earth-born metahumans?
The similarities don't stop with the dominant species, either. There are marked similarities in plant and animal life. Kryptonian dogs are just one example. How many planets have we encountered with lifeforms recognizable as trees and birds and so on?
What is more likely, then? A hundred cases of freakishly similar parallel evolution... or a common origin for all? Perhaps an ancient alien race that seeded planets across the multiverse. Perhaps an odd folding of time and space that scattered a number of early creatures to distant worlds. Perhaps some being for whom each planet is a petri dish. Perhaps a single anthropomorphic Creator. Perhaps a group of all-power beings who created the entire multiverse for entertainment and filled it with beings who would be exotic but not too unfamiliar.
Okay, perhaps that last is a little too "out there." (Although it would explain some of the oddities in the flow of time as well as a number of what sometimes seem like historical inconsistencies...) But, in light of the cosmic events and beings of unimaginable power we've encountered in just the last few decades, is any of those possibilities really so far-fetched?
Consider the possibilities. Consider the implications. Not just for the sake of scientific and historical curiosity, but for the future of what would otherwise be endangered species. For if this theory is correct, if we all share a common origin, whatever it may be, then it's possible that we are all functionally the same species. Wolves, dogs, foxes, coyotes, and other canids are, for all their differences, genetically speaking, almost indistinguishable. The same can be said for a wide variety of felines.
If we do share a common origin, then, if we are still so similar as we appear to be, then suddenly it doesn't seem so unlikely that we can interbreed. That an alien - Superman, for example - could have a child with an Earth-born human.
Consider the inhabitants of the alien worlds we've encountered so far - Mars, Oa, Krypton, Rann, Czarnia, Thanagar, and so on. In an overwhelming number of cases (though certainly not all) there is a startling resemblance. Bilateral symmetry. Two legs, two arms, a torso. A head with two eyes, a central nose, a mouth below, an ear on either side. An overall height of about five or six feet. The same gender traits. Verbal language. There are advantages to these things, to be sure, but there are any number of alternatives which could work equally well. And yet these things occur over and over throughout the multiverse. Even the Monitors fit the description to a tee.
Obviously, there are differences. But then there are differences amongst humans on Earth. Height, skin color, facial features. There's an entire city full of people who can breathe water as easily as air and whose adaptations to the depths have given them superhuman strength and toughness. Are Thanagarian wings so much more different? Are the abilities of alien races so much stranger than those of Earth-born metahumans?
The similarities don't stop with the dominant species, either. There are marked similarities in plant and animal life. Kryptonian dogs are just one example. How many planets have we encountered with lifeforms recognizable as trees and birds and so on?
What is more likely, then? A hundred cases of freakishly similar parallel evolution... or a common origin for all? Perhaps an ancient alien race that seeded planets across the multiverse. Perhaps an odd folding of time and space that scattered a number of early creatures to distant worlds. Perhaps some being for whom each planet is a petri dish. Perhaps a single anthropomorphic Creator. Perhaps a group of all-power beings who created the entire multiverse for entertainment and filled it with beings who would be exotic but not too unfamiliar.
Okay, perhaps that last is a little too "out there." (Although it would explain some of the oddities in the flow of time as well as a number of what sometimes seem like historical inconsistencies...) But, in light of the cosmic events and beings of unimaginable power we've encountered in just the last few decades, is any of those possibilities really so far-fetched?
Consider the possibilities. Consider the implications. Not just for the sake of scientific and historical curiosity, but for the future of what would otherwise be endangered species. For if this theory is correct, if we all share a common origin, whatever it may be, then it's possible that we are all functionally the same species. Wolves, dogs, foxes, coyotes, and other canids are, for all their differences, genetically speaking, almost indistinguishable. The same can be said for a wide variety of felines.
If we do share a common origin, then, if we are still so similar as we appear to be, then suddenly it doesn't seem so unlikely that we can interbreed. That an alien - Superman, for example - could have a child with an Earth-born human.