Apparently there is this theory that if the dinosaurs weren’t all killed by that comet, we’d all be “Dinosauroids” (as opposed to humanoids, or whatever–you know, Mammals).
My question is, what would our civilization be like if we were humanoid lizards? Lizards on earth are cold-blooded in more than one way. Mammals are kind and nuturing. Not lizards. Another question: Would we indeed even survive as “Dinosauroids”, or would we ultimately destroy ourselves (with nukes, or whatever)?
Another idea that frightens me: What about Dinosauroids on other planets? Are they are danger to us? Or would they just destroy themselves first, as I said?
(BTW, I dismiss the idea it is natural for all intelligent life [on extraterrestrial planets] to ultimately destroy itself, or even just be warlike. Consider vegans. Humans are omnivores by nature. But we can become more than the sum of our parts. Again, what about dinousauroids?)
Regarding dinosauroids on other planets coming to destroy us (I’ll call them Cardassians for the sake of simplicity), you needn’t worry, I don’t think. Based on everything we currently know about the laws of physics, it’s impossible for any physical object to achieve the speed of light, and you’d need many times that to travel interstellar distances without taking darn near forever (from a human civilization standpoint).
If we were the Cardassians, I don’t know how we’d be different. Certainly we’d have all migrated to the equatorial regions and avoided northern and southern climes as much as possible. I find it highly unlikely a Cardassian, no matter how snugly wrapped, could have possibly survived a trip to the South Pole or a climb to the summit of Mount Everest.
And we’d surely have different views on climate change than the human race does.
Very likely, we’d not be anything at all - there might be no globally dominant, intelligent lifeform, or if there was one, it would look no more like humans than any other animal looks like humans.
This is just false. Although mammals (by definition) have to nurture their young, it’s not a universally mammalian trait. Arthropods do it, fish do it, birds do it a lot (and they’re reptiles, really), and reptiles do it too (crocodilians are quite devoted and caring parents, for example).
As Mangetout points out, most theories on dinosaur evolution indicate that avians are the most likely descendants from that family of animals. So, since the OP asked about lizards, referencing dinosaurs seems to be incorrect to this reader.
Lizards rarely grow to a large enough size to support a large brain. Komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis) might be used as an outlier from which a mutant strain could emerge. They exhibit group behavior while hunting, which is unusual (or perhaps unique) in lizards. The ability to interact with others of your kind is essential to the development of a culture and it can be stated unequivocally that this principle is applicable to the development of H. sapiens. I posit that this quality is a required component to a sapient species.
So, what would a civilization of the descendants of Komodo dragons look like?
And let us assume that ‘we’ are those descendants.
We might not have become bipedal. I imagine that we might have developed our prehensile tongues into manipulative organs, but perhaps our forelimbs (call them arms) might have developed enough dexterity to be comparable to that of a simian. Since the progenitor species is a burrower then it is reasonable to imagine that we would be as well. Since we are ectothermic, conserving thermal energy would be a survival trait. Working with tools we may have well developed an underground shelter type of culture. Think hobbit holes, but more serpentine in their layout.
We would never have left our equatorial area, but we would have spread from our ancestral islands in what Humans now call Indonesia to conquer the entire band of appropriate biomes around the planet. Exploring north or south will take environmental suits to support our metabolic needs. We might make bases into these cold regions, but families wouldn’t stray from the warmth of hearth and home.
And then we would hear about reports of strange creatures in North Africa, the Levant and Europe that hunted us for food.
Wild monsters that stood upright on two feet and couldn’t speak our language.
From there, I can only conjecture.
We may well have been annihilated before any of these monsters knew we were sapient.
There is an excellent SF trilogy written by Harry Harrison, “West of Eden” which fleshes out the OPs question. The books are very readable and constructed on solid science.
Dinosaurs are not lizards. Dinosaurs are reptiles to the same extent that mammals are.
I don’t think it’s possible to generalize emotional traits to such diverse groups of species as dinosaurs or mammals. The amount of nurture a species displays to its young is better correlated with what its reproductive strategy is. That is, where it falls on the continuum of large number of offspring and few resources per each versus few offspring and a large amount of resources each. (See r-K selection theory.)
But of course, there’s no inherent reason that a species that greatly nurtures its young will show any empathy to others. Look at how cruel humans can be to others of the same species, for example.
But as others have noted, many Dinos were what we’d call “warm blooded” (not really a scientific term, but that’s a different issue) and nurtured their young. It’s quite possible that sapient life might have evolved from a bipedal Dino, so “we” might have looked all that different. Fuzzy feathers instead of hair. Probably no tits, though, so that would be a bummer…
The descendants of dinosaurs might have evolved mammalian-like traits. The “alternate history” of the OP suggests they evolved larger brains, and so could support civilization, including science. Well, they might also have evolved empathy, social instincts, etc.
Or…fascinating possibility…they might be intelligent, and yet still somewhat (stereotypically) reptilian in moral outlook. Why not? A civilization could exist among creatures who don’t know love or trust. It might take longer for it to advance to a stage of recognizing individual values; it might well get stuck for a much longer period in Feudalism, where the big strong guy is in charge.
Actually, “the big strong guy is in charge” is characteristic of the social structure of many mammalian species, including many primate species. It’s not seen much (at all?) in reptiles or birds.
I don’t have anything to add to the discussion of what an intellegent dinosaur society would be like. I just have to say that they wouldn’t be Us, they’d be Them.
The popularity of glasses would have to wait until someone invents a way to make them stick to your scales, or place a magnetic disk in your forehead.
French kissing would be ridiculously more complicated. Every year many couples would end up in the hospital to get their tongues untied.
The household refrigerator would be unknown. There would only be a cage.
No mammary glands and no taste for milk means no cheese. And that means no pizza.
Think about that and tell me how much you love your lizard paradise now!
Yeah, but you know if we were sorta ‘lizard-brained’ enough to only be attracted to moving food items, think of all the neat gadgets that might exist for non-fresh dining. Like little hook and wire attachments to drag food across the table to stimulate the feeding reflex :D. Man, just that concept alone opens up so many possibilities - like the different qualities of ‘food jiggerers’ you might find in a truck stop vs. a reptile version of The French Laundry.
Or maybe we’d all be much more healthy, because we’d insist on fresh all the time. No twinkies or fast food in lizard-land. If the food isn’t still kicking it would be regarded with disgust. Like C. J. Cherryh’s Kif.
True…but reptiles don’t have societies, either. I’m only speculating, but I think that a species that did not have social instincts might, even so, be able to develop societies, but that it would take them a lot longer to develop abstractions such as individual rights. I think that they might manage to evolve these as pure intellectual abstractions – the same way humans have figured out democratic elections – but it would be harder, because they wouldn’t have the instinctive head-start that mammals have evolved.
