We know that The Forerunner were indexing all the sentient species in the ark,. Perhaps they picked us as reclaimers because they found us the most promising. This would make us special, yet at the same time not forerunners.

Except 343's quote stil bugs me


Figuratively only, perhaps?

An idea came to me last night. Perhaps the Forerunners were capable of breeding with these evolved monkeys and their offspring became the human species we evolved from. It would explain the fact that we have no evolutionary history as well as us being descendants of the Forerunners. I know its far fetched, but I will cling dearly to my belief that humans are Forerunner in some way other then figuratively.

yet still, based on the Evolutionary model of humanity, we'd have to evolve. Offspring of Forerunner would still be 'evolved' as Forerunner. They would have to start a brand new civilization genetically related, and cut themselves off from it entirely - whether they bred with ancient humans, or not. Why would they do that? That's even assuming ancient 'monkey man' was compatible with forerunners for breeding.
It is quite far-fetched... quite... but hey, you are allowed to believe it if you like
there's a lot of rumours and spec out there...

"The Forerunners were a bunch of monkey-fuckers." While I reluctantly agree that this adds quite a layer of complexity to the backstory, it's not really the awe-inspiring connection I was hoping for.

They weren't necesarily "monkey-fuckers," they may simply have taken humanity and gene-spliced some of their DNA into ours.

That's different than us being Forerunner though. That wouldn't make them our ancestors. That would make them scientists who genetically enhanced our own ancestors. Different idea. Though interesting and could make a good story, there's no canon that know of yet that indicates anything like that...

That's always been one of the ideas about how the forerunner constructs recognize us
It's a way to potentially reconcile the two sides in the we are-we aren't debate

totally agreed. I still hold to the figurative 'you are (essentially) forerunner' meaning from Spark...

The Precurser stuff is relatively new info, and I like the potential parallel in that the Forerunners are like humanity - they don't know their origins, and they discovered higher technology strewn about the galaxy, and they were in search of answers, struggling in a war with the Flood... what if, we are actually descendants of the precursers, so we're actually like the parents to the Forerunners? heh or we share them as a common ancestor? long before the age of the Forerunners, the Precursers did all this stuff that uncle_trubble believes, and that's why the FR think we're special...

really, just shooting aimlessly now, heh.