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This topic has moved here: Subject: The 3 theories of Forerunner-Human contact.
  • Subject: The 3 theories of Forerunner-Human contact.
Subject: The 3 theories of Forerunner-Human contact.

So far we now have 3 rather contradicting stories of how humans and forerunners came in contact.

The first was that humans were the descendants of the Forerunners. This theory was back up mainly by Guilty Spark's dialogue throughout the games but has been proven wrong by most other sources since then.

The second fits rather neatly into the real-life history of mankind. We were just a primitive species on Earth which the Librarian found while cataloging species to be saved on the Ark. The Librarian developed a fondness for mankind so they were entrusted with the mantle, thus explaining why forerunner tech responds to humans. A sample of humanity survived activation of the rings on the Ark and repopulated Earth, possibly giving rise to the story of Noah and the Ark.

*warning Cryptum spoilers*

The third and newest comes from the Cryptum. Humanity is much older in this version and was spacefaring at the time of the Forerunners. They may have even been created by the Precursers in their image just as the Forerunners were. Eventually humanity lost a war with the forerunners and was de-evolved by them. Humans started to rebuild but were (I assume) set back again by the activation of the rings.
Theory 2 could fit in here if humanity had been forgotten by the forerunners and rediscovered by the Librarian just before the activation of Halo. However, the novel states that the Librarian had been responsible for the de-evolution of mankind after the war, and the Forerunners had maintained an outpost on Earth.

So what do you believe?

Note: I have not yet finished Cryptum, so I might be a bit off on some of the details.

  • 04.16.2011 8:35 PM PDT

Have you seen my mind anywhere? I seem to have lost it...

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I have seen you future

Theory 3 is basically canon now after Cryptum.

  • 04.16.2011 8:38 PM PDT

Posted by: CTN 0452 9
Theory 3 is basically canon now after Cryptum.

yeah, but I liked theory 2

  • 04.16.2011 8:39 PM PDT
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Theory 3 is more interesting, and somewhat plausible. After all, anatomically accurate modern humans appeared 150,000 years ago, and our earliest records only stretch back to about 8,000 years.

  • 04.16.2011 8:56 PM PDT

RED BRICK STUDIOS!


Posted by: Zephryon
Theory 3 is more interesting, and somewhat plausible. After all, anatomically accurate modern humans appeared 150,000 years ago, and our earliest records only stretch back to about 8,000 years.


It is truly interesting to see how the Halo Universe relates to ours.

  • 04.16.2011 9:00 PM PDT
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Except Cryptum completely throws out the evolution of our species. The Forerunners "devolving" us (not really sure how that can be) may take other hominids into account ( -blam!- floresiensis, -blam!- erectus, -blam!- ergaster, -blam!- neanderthalensis) but that doesn't explain our kinship with the other primates (apes and monkeys) or indeed all of Earth's life. Maybe it'd be more plausible if the fossil record was more barren, but the leap between chimpanzees and the Australopithecines we descended from is really quite small. Human evolution is actually pretty well documented.

  • 04.17.2011 1:22 AM PDT

Posted by: SubjectNameHere
Except Cryptum completely throws out the evolution of our species. The Forerunners "devolving" us (not really sure how that can be) may take other hominids into account ( -blam!- floresiensis, -blam!- erectus, -blam!- ergaster, -blam!- neanderthalensis) but that doesn't explain our kinship with the other primates (apes and monkeys) or indeed all of Earth's life. Maybe it'd be more plausible if the fossil record was more barren, but the leap between chimpanzees and the Australopithecines we descended from is really quite small. Human evolution is actually pretty well documented.

Yeah, it might make more sense if we still had a "missing link" in human evolution.

They really need to make the cencorship of the word h o m o context sensitive.

  • 04.17.2011 6:18 AM PDT


Posted by: jfull117
Posted by: CTN 0452 9
Theory 3 is basically canon now after Cryptum.

yeah, but I liked theory 2


All of them are true.

1) Humanity gets obliterated by the Forerunners
2) Librarian preserves some of them on Earth.
3) Over time, she senses a strange "specialness" about them, possibly coming to realize they as a race made a huge mistake.
4) Realizes that the Precursors likely created us as well as them in their image (giving rise to the Genesis story).
And so on so forth; I'm tired so not writing much, but it does fit if you think about it.

  • 04.17.2011 6:39 AM PDT

jful117, you pretty much got all the major points right.

_:SPOILERS:_

Humanity, in it's first iteration, evolved roughly parallel to the Forerunners. They, along with the San 'Shyuum (Prophets), developed slip-space technology and began to colonize the galaxy even before contact with the Forerunners was made. It was not until the Flood became a legitimate threat that humanity was forced to encroach on Forerunner territory. After the ensuing conflict, the human survivors were rounded up by the Forerunners and (at the behest of the Librarian) exiled to Earth.

The 'devolution' mentioned was likely done through genetic alteration of subsequent generations as well as suppression of knowledge and memory of humanity's former glory.

As Cryptum progresses, the Didact (or at least his personality inside of Bornsteller) makes multiple comparisons of humanity as an equal to the Forerunners. The exact word used escapes me at the moment but the point was to liken the two species as brethren from a common ancestor, the Precursors.

The book also talks about the fossil record:

"If Erde-Tyrene had been [Humanity's] true planet of origin, then these later
transplants and interventions must have muddied the fossil record beyond all
sense."

This is definitely a valid issue. You would think humanity would have eventually discovered signs of an ancient civilization on Earth. Then again, they only found the Ark portal below Mombasa right before the Covenant invaded. The only explanation for a lack of fossil records that I can perceive is a combination of Librarian intervention and side-effects of the Halo array.

We know that the Librarian brought the last remnants of post-war humanity to Earth as part of a 'special project.' If it were up to the Builder and Warrior castes, our species would have been completely wiped out. As such, the Librarian was undoubtedly only allowed to carry out her project if she adhered to a strict protocol of keeping humanity evolutionarily 'dumb.' That is to say, make sure we never progressed technologically and intellectually enough to pose a new threat to the Forerunners.

If this was indeed the case, part of her stewardship would have required an initial 'cleanup' of Earth before transplanting our ancestors there. She would have had to seek out and destroy all traces of the ancient human empire, lest we manage to find and learn from them at a later date. It would certainly have been within her power, logistically, to do this so it makes sense that no ruins or artifacts were ever found.

As for the lack actual biological human remains, I posit that the Halo array, when it was fired 100,000 years ago, took care of this. We know that Halo targets all sentient life (life with a central nervous system). Whether it reacts with specific DNA markers, macro-biological characteristics or something else entirely, we don't know. However, it is very likely that its effectiveness is not limited to live organisms. It would need to target dead tissue as well to be completely effective. Thus, when the array was fired, it took out, not only all living humans, but also all of those dead and buried. As a result, post-Ark humanity was never able to find traces of pre-war human civilization on Earth.

I think that more or less covers everything here.

[Edited on 04.17.2011 10:07 AM PDT]

  • 04.17.2011 10:06 AM PDT
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Spoon, that does pretty much explain everything, and I can accept the Librarian removing or destroying all structures built by ancient humanity, and the "devolution" process. I do not, however, think that the firing of the Halo array would remove biological remains. If the Halos were fired around 100,000 years ago, why then can we find fossils of organisms before that time and date them before 100,000 years ago (assuming the Halo array can indeed remove non-living organisms. A good species to use as an example is -blam!- ergaster/erectus. I will call it Ergaster for sake of argument. Ergaster is the most long-lived human species we know of, living for at least 1.5 million years. Anthropologists put Ergaster and Erectus within our own genus. If the Halo array destroys fossil evidence, why then can we date some of the older Ergaster fossils back before the Halo event and also after the Halo event? Now, you may explain older fossils of "lower" animals escaping the Halo array because they lack sentience (which I don't think matters anyway, as sentience can be granted to MANY "lower" species that currently live today), but Ergaster was definitely sentient. To push that forward even more than them being social, having large brains, many anthropologists think that because of the development in Ergaster's throat, they could speak. Of course, it would be a primitive "pre-language", but it'd be more advanced than the calls of chimpanzees, it'd have more advanced symbolism.

Basically what I'm saying is, the fact that we can find fossils of many organisms that, if they were alive, we would consider "sentient", then that seems to show that the Halo weapon cannot obliterate fossils.

  • 04.17.2011 5:53 PM PDT


Posted by: SubjectNameHere
Except Cryptum completely throws out the evolution of our species. The Forerunners "devolving" us (not really sure how that can be) may take other hominids into account ( -blam!- floresiensis, -blam!- erectus, -blam!- ergaster, -blam!- neanderthalensis) but that doesn't explain our kinship with the other primates (apes and monkeys) or indeed all of Earth's life. Maybe it'd be more plausible if the fossil record was more barren, but the leap between chimpanzees and the Australopithecines we descended from is really quite small. Human evolution is actually pretty well documented.


It's a fictional universe, they can do pretty much whatever the hell they want and it'd be complete truth, for their story at least. I could make up a story that said Humanity evolved from intergalactic flying space pigs, and that would be completely truth for my story, even if evidence from real life says it's complete malarky.

My point being Halo doesn't have to make sense in light of Evolution, or Creationism, or any other theory explaining how Humans came to be (it doesn't have to follow any real world theory). As long as the story stays true to itself throughout it doesn't matter how life came to be in it.

  • 04.17.2011 7:20 PM PDT

I started up the heated debate on whether the SPARTAN-II in the cryo tube near the end of Reach is really Linda.
I created the Moa XING avatar pic.
Also I earned the All Star nameplate with this submission to Week 14 All Stars http://www.bungie.net/images/News/Inline11/bwu_0415/art/likea boss.jpg

Since Halo 3, we've known (or all of us should have) that humans were not Forerunners. If you read the terminals, the Librarian was talking about humans.

Though I believe that when 343 said that humans were forerunners he was just rampant.
Or it could be that by "inheriting" the Forerunners, the humans have "become" forerunners

  • 04.17.2011 9:07 PM PDT
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Posted by: OrderedComa

Posted by: SubjectNameHere
Except Cryptum completely throws out the evolution of our species. The Forerunners "devolving" us (not really sure how that can be) may take other hominids into account ( -blam!- floresiensis, -blam!- erectus, -blam!- ergaster, -blam!- neanderthalensis) but that doesn't explain our kinship with the other primates (apes and monkeys) or indeed all of Earth's life. Maybe it'd be more plausible if the fossil record was more barren, but the leap between chimpanzees and the Australopithecines we descended from is really quite small. Human evolution is actually pretty well documented.


It's a fictional universe, they can do pretty much whatever the hell they want and it'd be complete truth, for their story at least. I could make up a story that said Humanity evolved from intergalactic flying space pigs, and that would be completely truth for my story, even if evidence from real life says it's complete malarky.

My point being Halo doesn't have to make sense in light of Evolution, or Creationism, or any other theory explaining how Humans came to be (it doesn't have to follow any real world theory). As long as the story stays true to itself throughout it doesn't matter how life came to be in it.


Well, creationism isn't a theory. Now that's out of the way, any fictional universe is grounded in reality one way or another. If human evolution is something that isn't correct in the Halo universe, then that's fine, but it's cool to find these breaks in reality.

  • 04.17.2011 9:15 PM PDT