The world that the big lunk of muscle known to many as Tank hails from has never thawed out from the last ice age, in fact the ice encroached much closer to the equator, almost making this Earth a frost coated planet. Seeking shelter from the freezing wastes above, early humans became mostly subterranean, this has resulted in the evolution of the human following a different path, diverging after homo heidelbergensis, neither homo neanderthalensis nor homo sapiens came to exist on that world.
The modern humans of this Earth have continued with H. Heidelbergensis’s evolutionary steps in terms of physical stature and build, being both taller and with more muscle mass than the modern humans of our world. Homo nivalisensis has some other evolutionary peculiarities from their mainly subterranean evolution of the last 600,000 years. Their eyes have a greater ability for seeing in the dark compared to H. Sapiens, the iris is also a uniform red colour with no discernible pupil, the shade can be noticed to change depending on the amount of light available from a deep crimson in the pitch black, to a striking scarlet in full daylight.
Although agriculture as we know it is not feasible on that Earth, the cultivation of hardy tundra grasses and also of various cave algae and lichens has supplemented H. Nivalisensis’s diet of the great furry beasts of the ice. Over time, the minerals leeched from the rocks by the algae and lichens then ingested by generation after generation of humanity have subtly altered (along with the greatly lessened exposure to the sun) the colour of the skin to various shades of blue.
H. Nivalisensis average height (male) – 203cm
H. Nivalisensis average weight (male) – 150kg
Culturally and technologically this Earth is very similar to our own. However the polytheistic religions were not subsumed by the monotheistic Abrahamic religions. As such there are a great number of various pantheons of the gods that are still believed in.