- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Has anyone ever read the Ringworld books, by Larry Niven? In them, he presents the idea of a race of aliens, before we existed, that colonized earth, but their metamorphosing chemical required for them to advance from breeder, to protector, couldnt grow on the earth's soil. Because of this, and constant territorial wars, the Pak (the name of said alien race) eventually died out, and were succeeded by races that developed without the root they had to eat in order to obtain the virus that metamorphosed them, like Humanity.
Now, if you look, Humans, and the Prophets, and even the Brutes, are extremely similar in stature, behavior, and infrastructre. Brutes and Humans, especially, but that could be due to the environment. You cant just say that Humans and Forerunners are linked, it is scientifically stupid. Humanity has extreme genetic similarites to Higher apes, and even lower apes. It is possible for similar life to develop in diffrent places, look at the yak and the buffalo, yes, they came from the same ancestor, but millions of years seperated their genetic development, and still, they are very similar.
What I think, is that the Prophets and Humans, and possibly, the Brutes, are all descendants of the Forerunner. The Prophets are from a world with the Forerunner structures exposed, and so they think themselves highest of all races, hence, whent they started the Covenant, they were the top of the chain of command, and manipulated the elites into a lower position with suggestions of honor and pride at being the lowly warriors. They continued to assimilate races until it became the Covenant we know, but what about the Brutes? They just came in, and were accelerated to the top of the Prophet's Favor List.
This makes me think, maybe the Prophets knew that they were genetic cousins of the Brutes, so the Elite's betrayal wasnt as due to Halo's destruction as we think, maybe the ascention of the Brute's was a family favor, and they (the top Prophets,) didnt want the ELites to know this.
When the Prophets discovered the Humans, they were paranoid. They recognized a cousin species that was even less diverged from the original Forerunner genetic code. Humans were also smart, and adaptable. And, as an added side note, they happened to colonize planets that suspiciously, all included Forerunner structures of some kind(Reach, Coral [to my knowldge], Sigma Octanus, etc.) . And Earth, as we all know, is the Ark, the Cradle of life, home to millions upon millions of diffrent species.
So, maybe the Brutes, being slightly more diverged from the Forerunner genetic code, were still 'lower' than the Prophets, and so were liable to be assimilated. (Also, please note the similiarities between the Brutes and the Humans in other areas besides physical presence. They both have sleek aircraft, and similar weapons. They are also prone to emotional outbursts under stress. Examples: a close friend dies on the battle field, a man will charge the enemy line, just to avenge his friend. If you kill all but one Brute in a unit, the last one, torn by anger and/or grief, will drop his weapon and charge you, on all fours. They also developed similar weaponry systems, with grenade launchers, and bayonette like structures attached to their gun, whereas the rest of the covenant lack thise things, preferring smooth weapons, and quieter plasma weapons.)
The Brutes also seem to run on a patriarchal system, where the oldest (presumable explaining Tartarus' bone white hair) is in charge, similar to how the human families work, for the most part. The Elites obviously developed an honor system, where the most honor is earned by acts of suicidal bravado earn respect. The Prophets also have a democratic, (presumably) and equal system amongst their own race. It is also a theocracy, of some degree, which is a noteable aspect of early Human civilization.
So, my points of similarity being made, I present to you my hypothesis; If the Forerunner are gone, as 343 Guilty Spark says, then the Prophets, Brutes, and Humans, are their descendants, the Prophets being cut off from the rest of the Forerunner civilization first, and having genetically diverged most, and the Humans and Brutes being seperated from the Forerunner race for approximatly the same amount of time, at primitive, most likely breeing, states, and thus had to evolve to intellegence on their own.
This also helps explain the similarites between Humanity and the apes of earth, they are just other genetic divergences of Forerunner Breeders.
So, Humans arent just the Forerunner descendants, they are one of many different descendant speices.