C3PX said:Interesting take. I thought humans were usually considered inferior to vulcans, as well as any number of other races in the ST universe (for example, when observing emotional human behavior, Spock's response was often to cocked eyebrow and say, "fascinating" in a semi-condensending tone, as if observing a much lower species. I think it has always been suggested that vulcans have evolved further than humans. There is a lot of racism shown from the sides of Klingons, Ferangi and other species, but I have always felt Star Trek has done a good job of painting racism as a negative thing, and shown the Federation to meet all alien races with open arms. Perhaps I am wrong on this. Mind citing a few examples of aliens needing to act more human in order to become better?
Gaffer, like DF stated, Romulans and Vulcans are not the exact same species, but represent a split in their evolutionary chain. They have the same common ancestors, but somewhere along the line they went their separate ways and continued down separate evolutionary chains. Romulans continuing along the same warlike, barbaric path, and the vulcans taking the high road and becoming more spiritual and intellectual, and eventually throwing emotions out the window.
To point 1: "Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... human."
"We're all human!" "A homosapiens-only club!" Quotes from the two best ST movies. The theme is... human is better.
To point 2: Even a thousand or two thousand years doesn't seem to be enough time for any kind of considerable evolution to take place. Again, this would be like saying that we're a different species from Jesus or Ceasar. Like you said, they took different paths. It was choice, not physical evolution. If there was any kind of physical predisposition, Vulcan youths wouldn't spend years attempting to harness logic over emotion. And like DarkFather said, Vulcans/Romulans seem to be inherently predisposed to being more emotional than humans. And in that regard, both Romulans and Vulcans are exactly the same except in how they choose to deal with: Romulans with war, Vulcans by psychosis-inducing and bigotry-spawning repression. ^_^