Quote Originally Posted by Alleluia View Post
Yoshida has said in an interview or q&a that the speciation we’ve seen has evolved since the sundering. I assume Oda agrees? It makes little sense to me precisely bc the idea of humanity on each shard branching into the same subspecies due to random evolution beggars belief, but it seems to be the answer. At least for the moment. I mean it’s not actually specified in the game yet, so I think it’s up for changes till it is.
I just wanted to point out that Yoshida's assumption here isn't at all far-fetched. The Sundering happened only twelve thousand years ago. Homo sapiens had appeared on earth as long ago as two hundred thousand years. So twelve thousand is barely any time at all in evolutionary terms. All the species and races most likely existed pretty much as they are now on Etheirys before the Sundering and would have evolved only slight differences since. Obviously cases like the Dragons and the Ixali are exceptions and won't appear on the other Shards