On some other planet there was an intelligent life form which had monkeys as pets. After a certain amount of time , domestication, and selective-breeding of these monkeys they became too intelligent to have as pets. Complex politics ensue and it is decided that a planet should be found (and/or terraformed) for these intelligent monkeys so that they can continue to evolve and eventually become like the people who domesticated them (while at the same time knowledge of their origin is denied).
One likeness being the habit of domesticating animals… Thus the cycle continues.
Does this theory exist, and if so what is it called?
Sorry but that is fairly close to the story in Fantastic Planet though to be fair the Humans are pre-evolved, but kept as pets until they prove they are salient enough to deserve freedom and their own planet.
Isn’t this the main idea behind Stargate: Atlantis? Except humans are livestock and not pets.
I also want to say that this may be the sort of stuff that Zecharia Sitchin covers in his books, but I have never read any of them beyond the back cover.
It’s an old idea; but unless everything we ever thought we knew about biology is not merely mistaken but fundamentally wrong, it’s impossible. Humans are anatomically, genetically and biochemically like apes. And apes are like monkeys, primates are more broadly like all other placental mammals, mammal are clearly like all other vertebrates, and even vertebrates have some otherwise inexplicable features in common with all other multicellular animals. Heck, humans share genes with yeast. How could any of this be true if humans were the product of a completely separate heritage from another planet?
It is only your ignorance and arrogance that makes you conjecture that humans alone are the pets of an alien species, and the rest of Earth’s life is native. In fact, all of Earth’s biomass in sum is just one gigantic pet, and Earth is a gigantic petbowl.
I remember a sci-fi short story where humans descended from a parasite of a more ancient, more evolved race. They involuntarily spread the parasite all over the Galaxy before they realized it, and this was why, in that universe, so many alien races looked either plain humanoid, or humanoid with bumps and funny colours.
Hang on… I am definitely sure it was not a Star Trek story, but it could just be rigged in as a post-explanation for the aliens they have, right?
No, Star Trek did have a couple episodes in TNG that explained why most of the aliens looked humanoid - a long time ago a humanoid species that naturally evolved went around seeding a bunch of planets with their DNA, tweaking the life on those planets to make sure they end up with humanoids.
