If we colonized Mars, what would a human being from Mars be called? I’d assume Martian just as one from Earth is called an Earthling or Terran in the case of Sci-Fi media.

An AI rendering of a Martian colony. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

However, by five millennia, the physical differences between Martians and “Terrans” will likely be quite discernibly different, even to the degree that each consider may the other as comprising a different species.

Human colonist almost inevitably would settle on the term Martian. It's also likely that a social hierarchy would emerge over time, with the highest status afforded to the the descendants of the very earliest Mars settlers, those who withstood all the deprivations of the planet’s bleak environment to secure the transformation of the planet into a form that resembled Earth to one degree or a other.

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To be sure, Mars is close enough to Earth that frequent back-and-forth travel will ensure that a lot of cultural cross-fertilization persists Even so, as Mars becomes more densely populated and economically diversified it invariably will diverge from that of Earth, and this challenge will be compounded by the Martian experience of inhabiting and coping with a significantly different ecosystem.

It took roughly a century after the establishment of the Protestant plantation in Ulster, Ireland, for this settler society to regard itself as a culture set apart from the Covenant Presbyterian civilization in Scotland from which it derived. Roughly 170 years after the first permanent English colony at Jamestown, the American colonists, affirming their historic constitutional rights as Crown subjects, issued a unilateral declaration of independence.

Martians likely will improvise sparkly different cultural practices and unifying narratives across the stretch of time and, of course, increasingly become more conscious of their distinct legacy and identify. To be sure, emerging AI-driven technologies may diminish the likelihood of economy rivalries emerging between the planets. Yet, if Earth history provides any insight, it will require roughly a mere century for settler colonies to cultivate a sense of cultural identity and distinctness setting it apart from the Earth.

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Martian destiny conceivably may unfold in a similar way.

One fact about space colonization that is wantonly of ignored is the effect that extraterrial environments and their distance from Earth will have in rendering settlers less consciously “Terran” and even less human over the course of time.

Moreover, physiological changes - mutations - in Martians will occur much sooner because of the radically different conditions of the planet's environment. The first interaction of Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere occured after a separation of 20,000 generations. Yet, the Europeans regarded these peoples as discernibly human, despite profound differences in language and cultural practices.

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