Another Earth but there are no people there

[The Mists Of Time]

What if scientists discovered another Earth that physically was an exact duplicate of our Earth? All the same geography, climates, plants and animals, everything except that humans never evolved. Nothing ever took on the position that humans have on our Earth. Chimpanzees are the highest evolved and developed animal life form, and they and their societies are exactly like and no more developed than chimps on our Earth.

In other words it would be exactly like our Earth would be if man had never evolved at all and no species had ever developed or transformed that other Earth the way man has here on this Earth.

What next? Would the nations of this Earth claim the territory there that is the equivilant or duplicate of their territory on this Earth? Just how would humans handle this situation?

[stevep]

What if scientists discovered another Earth that physically was an exact duplicate of our Earth? All the same geography, climates, plants and animals, everything except that humans never evolved. Nothing ever took on the position that humans have on our Earth. Chimpanzees are the highest evolved and developed animal life form, and they and their societies are exactly like and no more developed than chimps on our Earth.

In other words it would be exactly like our Earth would be if man had never evolved at all and no species had ever developed or transformed that other Earth the way man has here on this Earth.

What next? Would the nations of this Earth claim the territory there that is the equivilant or duplicate of their territory on this Earth? Just how would humans handle this situation?

Mists

Two points to clarify.

a) You would have drastically different plant and animal distributions and possibly climate without humans. [There is an argument that without humans we might already been in another ice age, due to the effects of the development of agriculture, even apart from industrial greenhouse problems].

b) Where would this earth be and how would people get there? If some parallel dimension the question is would it be easy for any community to get there - some simple mechanism once the knowledge is available. If so you might have the sort of disputes you mention. [I.e. X is ours here so we’ll have it there]. If only relatively difficult to transfer to the other earth then whoever discovered the method would almost certainly claim as much as they could.

Steve

[JLCook]

of every oil well, iron, tin, copper, silver, gold, titanium and lead deposit, plus all that untapped farmland. There would be an enormous landrush!

One question: Are the icecaps on this pristine wilderness planet also melting?

[Mr_ Bondoc]

Consider the theological implications, especially when you have every fundamentalist Christian evangelical leader pointing to the Book of Revelations, citing the arrival of "a new heaven and a new Earth". Already you can see Pat Robertson claiming that it is a sign of "the End Times"....