Don't change the planet, change the animals living on it.

Do you remember the story of John Henry? As the story goes, he was the best railroad track layer in the country and he challenged a steam hammer to a track laying competition. If he could beat the steam hammer, then the railroad company would use manual labor instead. He was fast enough to win, but he died of exhaustion, and the railroad company used steam hammers anyway. But... what John Henry was just an average railroad track layer, and there where other guys much stronger and faster than he was who could leave a steamhammer in the dust?

Now imagine a world where biology is just better across the board. Horses that haul several ton carts at interstate speeds, people who are dexterous enough to weave clothing at the pace of a loom or carve furniture at the speed of power tools, and Oxen that can plow and reap fields with all the speed of a tractor.

You don't need to make animals Marvel action hero better, just better enough that creating a technology good enough to beat good-ol-fashioned elbow grease would require too many individual improvements to get from point A to point B for people to ever get there. After all: if steam engines and water mills are never needed, no one would have come up with all of the hundreds of incremental advancements in modern metallurgy and mechanics necessary to finally make people obsolete.

Don't change the planet, change the animals living on it.

Do you remember the story of John Henry? As the story goes, he was the best railroad track layer in the country and he challenged a steam hammer to a track laying competition. If he could beat the steam hammer, then the railroad company would use manual labor instead. He was fast enough to win, but he died of exhaustion, and the railroad company used steam hammers anyway. But... what John Henry was just an average railroad track layer, and there where other guys much stronger and faster than he was who could leave a steamhammer in the dust?

Now imagine a world where biology is just better across the board. Horses that haul several ton carts at interstate speeds, people who are dexterous enough to weave clothing at the pace of a loom or carve furniture at the speed of power tools, and Oxen that can plow and reap fields with all the speed of a tractor.

You don't need to make animals Marvel action hero better, just better enough that creating a technology good enough to beat good-ol-fashioned elbow grease would require too many individual improvements to get from point A to point B for people to ever get there. After all: if steam engines and water mills are never needed, no one would have come up with all of the hundreds of incremental advancements in modern metallurgy and mechanics necessary to finally make people obsolete.

The effect that this would have on society is that tools powered by man or animals would just be seen as better. After enough steam powered contraptions come and go, they would begin to be regarded with so much skepticism that even when someone does have a good enough idea to improve things, most people would laugh it off, IE: "A turbine engine? Haha, that's just a fancy steam engine. If I want to fly cross country, I'll just ride a giant bird like any reasonable human being. Good luck not exploding!"