Various activities of living organisms stimulated their bodies to change. The giraffe’s neck elongated, the eagle’s beak sharpened, the snake’s tongue forked, and the crocodile increased the strength of its jaw. They practiced something akin to bodybuilding. It wasn’t a conscious effort to work on their figures or teeth; it happened rather by accident—mostly while foraging for food. We can only envy our predecessors. It would be much more enjoyable to sculpt our physiques by buying potatoes, eggs, or a pound of pork neck (with or without the bone) rather than by sweating our guts out at the gym, doing cardio or CrossFit, or dragging weights. Not to mention riding a bike for dozens of miles without moving as much as an inch.
Instead of modifying their bodies, humans went the other way. Or rather, they took a shortcut. People didn’t want to wait indefinitely for this or that to sharpen, elongate, or grow stronger and decided to use whatever was readily available: sticks, stones, or pieces of metal. With a little processing, they managed to bang together pretty nifty devices, much more effective than the sharpest teeth or the most ripped of muscles. Then they dominated the entire plant and animal world in record time. Humans not only overpowered their equals and smaller creatures but also much bigger ones. The elephant, for example, was used as a means of transportation or a construction machine. I’m quite certain that if people lived in the dinosaur era, they would have found some work for them, too.
Okay, now you’ve gone a bit overboard, dear author. If dinosaurs had lived on, humankind would have never come to exist, so there would be no one to find any work for them. On the other hand, since the appearance of humans was all but inevitable, the dinosaurs needed to go. Without diving further into mental gymnastics, this is the only time I would be willing to accept the intervention of a higher power in the evolutionary processes on Earth. It watched with growing impatience as the existence of the oversized extended mercilessly, preventing the events from unfolding as intended. And then, it slightly manipulated the trajectory of a certain meteorite. (…)