Extra Lore: Astronomy, Life, and Intelligent Life · 2:46pm Aug 16th, 2021
There are a lot of differences between our universe and the universe of Equus:
1. Age: Our universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old, and Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old. Equus, on the other hand, has a universe that is at most 500-600 million years old, and Equus itself is around 50 million years old.
2. Life: The ideal time in our universe for life was 13-10 billion years ago. This is the period our universe would have been most full of life. Earth formed and came into the picture long after this prime period. That is not to say that there isn't more life out in the universe, but that it is no longer at the point when it would have been most abundant. Our universe is slowly moving towards conditions where it would not sustain anywhere, but those are still a long way away. Earth is 4.5 billion years old and first supported life 3.7 billion years ago, with the first intelligent life 2.6 million years ago and the first early signs of proto-civilization around 10-12 thousand years ago.
Equus is very much at the opposite end of the curve, and it could very well be the first planet in its universe to support life and definitely the first planet to support intelligent life. The planet is 50 million years old; the first single-cell organisms formed around 12 million years ago.
What went radically different was that then portals started dumping things from Earth approximately 7 million years ago, and complex ecosystems were in place on Equus by 5 million years ago as a result. The first signs of intelligent life on Equus were about 2.2 million years ago, but the first signs of proto-civilization began 2 million years ago. Believed to be a result of a human ancestor from Earth crossing over to Equus through the portal dump and being saturated in thaumic energy by the unstable portal, causing rapid change to how biology worked and evolving into a new species of human within 100 generations, a species full capable of using magic—Homo Equus (now extinct). Similar results happened with other wildlife, including the ancient proto-horse ancestors of ponies. Homo Equus was followed by a string of other unrelated intelligently species after its extinction, sometimes multiple at once, and the current species on Equus are just the most recent of these to evolve. However, Homo Equus left a permanent mark on how cultures after them developed and examples for things like basic tool design and shelter design were inherited by each following species regardless of that would be ideal for the new species, which led to species designing many basic things that would have been more ideal for a humanoid than a quadruped simply because that is what their ancestors emulated when they found old ruins.
