A long time ago I had an idea about an alternate evolutionary path for a few species of American animals (North and South america), specifically the ringtail cat family and a particularly crafty member of that genus, the Raccoon.  I decided after much thought and comments from the previous TL to start over with the Othermen.

        Basically the POD is that the same climactic cataclysm that caused the massive deforestation that occurred in africa and brought about our species also occurs in South America, circa 2.5 million BC.  The ancestor of the Raccoon, an early ringtail cat that resided in what is now Columbia, are forced from their dwellings in the trees and onto the plains that have spread out across northern South America.  Their omnivorous diet allows them some flexibility in this, yet the fierce carnivorous birds that roam these plains are of stiff competition, so to survive tribes of these early creatures form together to hunt and gather collectively and to offer protection in numbers.  Over the millennia that follow they gradually become more bipedal, and become incredibly thin and lithe (1,000,000 BC).  They spread all over South America, and when the continents finally collide into North America as well.  Tool use increases among them as the thumb evolves, and eventually their tails atrophy away, though they are still nocturnal hunter-gatherers.

        By 200,000 BC, the Othermen span all of the Americas.  Although they retain short hair all over their bodies, it is quite thin in all places but the head, and a strip all the way down their back, and on their triangular ears of which they have fine motor control and express most of their facial body language.  They are incredibly thin and agile, with fine sharp claws about 2 cm long.  Their physiology is similar to Humans since our ancestors both shared a treebound existence.  They cannot sweat but have a unique temperature control mechanism.  Although the muscle is still partially there, it is much flatter, the brain has tripled in size to about their human equivalent.

Part II, Sentience.

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