If the Asteroid Missed Earth, Humans Wouldn’t Exist

What if the dinosaurs got the chance to keep evolving? Would they write Substacks?

Let’s take a break from Venezuela, wars for oil, North Korea launching missiles, the Epstein coverup, the nonstop cognitive tests, and talk about something completely different.

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid about six miles wide struck what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula. The impact sparked fires across continents and threw so much debris into the air that ecosystems collapsed worldwide. Most large land animals died. The age of dinosaurs ended.

We exist because of that collision.

But what if Chicxulub missed Earth entirely?

Dinosaurs Don’t Get Wiped Out

This isn’t guesswork dressed up as science. The fossil record shows non-avian dinosaurs were doing fine right up until the day the asteroid hit. They were widespread, varied, and filled every major role on land. There’s no sign they were fading out.

Without the impact, they keep ruling the planet. For how long? Tens of millions of years at least—maybe a lot longer. Some groups adapt, some shrink, some become specialists. But there’s no sudden collapse, because nothing knocks the system over.

The Cretaceous doesn’t end. It just keeps going.

Mammals Stay in the Shadows

Mammals had already been around for more than a hundred million years. But they were small, mostly active at night, and stuck in the background.

The asteroid changed that by clearing the field. Suddenly, big niches were open—large plant-eaters, top predators, everything. Mammals moved into those roles fast, and within ten million years, the world looked completely different.

Without the asteroid, that doesn’t happen.

Mammals don’t get their moment. They stay small—mostly insect-eaters and burrowers—because the big jobs are already taken. No big mammals. No whales. No bats as we know them.

No primates.

No us.

What About Intelligence?

Here’s the real question.

Could dinosaurs have kept evolving bigger brains? Could one line have developed something like intelligence, maybe even self-awareness?

Yes.

Dinosaurs weren’t “stuck.” Evolution builds bigger brains when bigger brains help an animal survive—when memory, planning, social life, or communication pays off.

And some dinosaurs were already leaning that way.

The usual example is Troodon—a small, birdlike predator with a high brain-to-body ratio for a non-avian dinosaur. It had forward-facing eyes, grasping hands, and likely complex behavior. Not “human-smart,” but on a path that looks familiar.

Given another fifty or one hundred million years, its descendants could become more intelligent.

Could they become self-aware? Possibly.

Could they build a civilization? Probably not.

The Anatomy Problem

This is the limit.

Brains don’t automatically lead to technology. To get from “smart animal” to “tool-building civilization,” you need more than intelligence. You need:

• Hands (or something close to hands) with fine control for fingers

• Long lifespans

• Stable social groups

• Pressure that rewards constant innovation

Dinosaurs might hit a wall on that first point. Claws aren’t hands. Beaks aren’t hands. Talons aren’t hands.

Modern birds—dinosaur descendants—are already very smart. Crows use tools. Parrots solve multi-step problems. Some birds plan ahead. But they can’t manipulate the world the way primates can, and that matters.

So here’s the interesting possibility: a dinosaur line could become self-aware, social, and emotionally deep without ever inventing fire, writing, or machines.

They could think without building.

A World That Thinks but Leaves No Traces

Imagine it.

A planet where dinosaurs still dominate. Mammals still dart through the undergrowth. Birds are clever but limited. And one dinosaur lineage—maybe descended from small, social theropods—becomes inward-looking.

They recognize individuals. They grieve. They pass learned behavior from one generation to the next. They have something like identity and tradition.

But they don’t write. They don’t build cities. They don’t leave monuments.

A thinking world that never industrializes.

Millions of years of inner life—culture, memory, maybe even meaning—and no one would ever know.

We’re Not Inevitable

That’s the point.

Humans aren’t destiny. We’re not evolution’s goal. We’re the beneficiaries of a terrible day for something much bigger than us. In a real sense, we owe our civilization to the Chicxulub asteroid.

If it missed Earth:

• Dinosaurs stay on top

• Mammals stay small

• Humans almost certainly never exist

No agriculture. No radio telescopes. No one asking what might have been.

The planet would still be lush and loud and full of life—just unfamiliar. Forests shaped by hundred-ton plant-eaters. Predators larger than anything alive today. Oceans ruled by reptiles instead of whales.

It wouldn’t be a ruined world. It would be a world where we never got our chance.

And maybe—just maybe—it would be a world where something else thought quietly to itself, wondered about its own existence, and left nothing behind but bones no one would ever find. No records. No poetry. No novels. No Substacks.