Posted by: CTN 0452 9
I imagine that after the war humanity would try to reverse engineer the artifacts of the Forerunners, but will still manage to make its own advances.
Think of it as what happened after the Apollo space program. All of the technology that went into making those rockets was repurposed to make a huge amount of consumer products. This advanced many industries greatly, but innovation continued. Forerunner artifacts will help humanity develop faster, but we will still innovate and improve.
The Covenant's problem was that they thought the Forerunners to be gods, so the artifacts were holy and not meant to be touched.
Thanks for the great answer.