Earth, Void of Homo Sapiens.

Greetings. The planet we reside on is a gorgeous, watery home for the fauna and flora now in existence, although it has often challenged life to change and undergo evolutionary adaptations as environmental conditions have mandated. Life has survived global ice ages, intense volcanism, asteroid impacts, and atmospheric turnover, but one factor has recently had a powerful influence on complex life on the planet; the presence of human beings. 

Recent scientific research has determined that our species, Homo sapiens, was once close to extinction. Between 930,000 and 813,000 years ago, according to the available data and evidence, the global population of humans was only at approximately 1,500 individuals, with about 1,280 being of breeding age, capable of sexual reproduction. That is a very low number, a total which brings genetic diversity and viability issues to the forefront. The information that has been uncovered by archeologists strongly suggests that various climate changes had a negative effect on human populations for at least 100,000 years, perhaps longer. Since humans are still in existence, in substantially larger numbers (8 billion and counting,) we have the opportunity to engage in some reasonable speculation about what might have occurred had humans gone extinct all those many centuries ago. I'll compile a list of likely changes to history had such an extinction come to pass. Off we go....

1. The Dodo, the Moa, the Elephant Bird, the Great Auk, the Passenger Pigeon, and many other species of avian dinosaur would still be alive today. 

2. The forests of the world; in Brazil, Great Britain, Australia, Madagascar, and a majority of the European and North American continents would still be intact and untouched. 

3. The fish populations in the world's oceans would be viable, healthy, and not under intense pressure. 

4. Endemic species like the fauna of Mauritius, Australia, Madagascar, and the Hawaiian Islands, would still be in existence.  

5. The world's oceans would not be peppered with trash, plastics, and fossil fuel runoff and residue.

6. Many iconic species of prehistoric life; the Woolly Mammoth, the Thylacine, the Irish Elk, among others, would still be in existence throughout their natural population ranges, albeit in different densities due to unpredictable natural changes. 

7. There would be no artificial scars on the planet's surface; roads, towns, cities, bridges, factories, parking lots, and vast military installations. 

8. The biosphere would be unpolluted by unnatural contaminants. 

Unfortunately, that is not how natural history unfolded. Humans did not go extinct, but the Elephant Bird did, as did the Passenger Pigeon and the Woolly Mammoth. The forests of the world, the biosphere's lungs if you will, are being systematically decimated by humans, and the planet's surface is slowly being covered by steel and concrete, with no end on sight. 

The long history of complex life on Earth has only witnessed one species only too willing and fully capable of destroying its own home, its own habitats and environments, and directly responsible for the extermination of other forms of life. Only one species. Homo sapiens. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.