Pangea shown in cycle_response image...

Wild, speculative theories born from the communications with AdjutantReflex.

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Ranger_000
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Pangea shown in cycle_response image...

Unread post by Ranger_000 »

So we all know by now that Forerunner machines were here building the Ark, which was brought up in the comic for server 1, but why bring it up again?
Echelon Three
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Re: Pangea shown in cycle_response image...

Unread post by Echelon Three »

Perhaps they've had their eye on us for quite some time...

Or, perhaps this is part of the research the Forerunner may have done on our planet. We seem important, but moreover if I was building the key to the salvation or destruction of all sentient life in the galaxy, I would make sure I knew everything possible about where I was building it.
SKR
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Re: Pangea shown in cycle_response image...

Unread post by SKR »

Well... They built the ARK over 100,000 years ago. It seems they are researching the tectonic plates beneath the surface to predict how continental drift will effect the land masses. They don't want their ark to get ripped in half and dropped into the ocean, do they?
SinisterMinister
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Re: Pangea shown in cycle_response image...

Unread post by SinisterMinister »

They don't want their ark to get ripped in half and dropped into the ocean, do they?
In that case, building the Ark in the middle of Africa's Great Rift Valley doesn't seem like such a good idea :mrgreen:
yakaman
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Re: Pangea shown in cycle_response image...

Unread post by yakaman »

The odd thing, the really strange thing, is that Server 05 said that they found us only at the end, in the final stages of the war. Roughly 100,000 to maybe 101,000 years ago.

Pangea existed 250 million years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangea

I cannot make sense of this - mostly because I believe it is a hint to a deeper level of meaning. But what...?
SinisterMinister
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Re: Pangea shown in cycle_response image...

Unread post by SinisterMinister »

The formation of Pangea roughly coincides with the Permian/Triassic extinction, the most extensive extinction in the Earth's history, which killed pretty much everything.

If the Forerunners were using that as an example, they might have estimated that the evolution of intelligent life from a meager pool of multicellular critters (i.e. what the firing of the Halo network would leave behind on any life-bearing world) would run in the range of a few million years. This begs the question of how the species of the Covenant exist at all; their homeworlds would have been caught in the first firing, yet nearly a dozen intelligent species somehow managed to evolve from the biological equivalent of mud and sticks in only 100,000 years; by comparison it took over two million years for humans to rise from relatively advanced ancestors (advanced by comparison to the mud and sticks).

What's more, the Covenant species must have had something in common with each other, and with humans, on a galactic scale, prior to their alliance, because even the difference of a thousand years of development between two groups has enormous social and military implications (i.e. the Spanish Conquest) yet despite the Covenant's initial military superiority, humans have slowly closed that gap, but both groups are easily dwarfed by the Forerunners, an undisputably longer-lived and further-developed society. It's too coincidental that a dozen species evolved at the same speed at the same time, producing practically the same results in different flavors, and in total defiance of the intended effect of the Halo firing and the Ark. Something about the Earth and the Ark is directly tied to the very existence of the Covenant species. Or, as video 4 suggests, the Forerunners were preserving worlds other than Earth, which would logically include the Covenant worlds. In that case, the Ark is still unique to Earth, but has nothing to do with saving it from the effect of the Halos; if it did, there'd be an Ark on every other planet the Forerunners saved.

Anyway, the Forerunners' knowledge of Pangea doesn't really prove much; it could mean they knew about Earth 250 m.y.a. because they were there and saw it, or because they studied it a lot 100,000 y.a. and observed the geological trends indicating the supercontinent cycle and simply projected that Pangea once existed, exactly as we do today.
theShadowfox
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Re: Pangea shown in cycle_response image...

Unread post by theShadowfox »

SinisterMinister wrote:If the Forerunners were using that as an example, they might have estimated that the evolution of intelligent life from a meager pool of multicellular critters (i.e. what the firing of the Halo network would leave behind on any life-bearing world) would run in the range of a few million years. This begs the question of how the species of the Covenant exist at all; their homeworlds would have been caught in the first firing, yet nearly a dozen intelligent species somehow managed to evolve from the biological equivalent of mud and sticks in only 100,000 years; by comparison it took over two million years for humans to rise from relatively advanced ancestors (advanced by comparison to the mud and sticks).

What's more, the Covenant species must have had something in common with each other, and with humans, on a galactic scale, prior to their alliance, because even the difference of a thousand years of development between two groups has enormous social and military implications (i.e. the Spanish Conquest) yet despite the Covenant's initial military superiority, humans have slowly closed that gap, but both groups are easily dwarfed by the Forerunners, an undisputably longer-lived and further-developed society. It's too coincidental that a dozen species evolved at the same speed at the same time, producing practically the same results in different flavors, and in total defiance of the intended effect of the Halo firing and the Ark. Something about the Earth and the Ark is directly tied to the very existence of the Covenant species. Or, as video 4 suggests, the Forerunners were preserving worlds other than Earth, which would logically include the Covenant worlds. In that case, the Ark is still unique to Earth, but has nothing to do with saving it from the effect of the Halos; if it did, there'd be an Ark on every other planet the Forerunners saved.
Isn't it possible that several species on several different worlds were pre-sentient and Forerunners found them, studied them all in hopes for answers to some of their mysteries and decided to save them? The Forerunners were one race, probably the most advanced the galaxy has seen. (Especially speed of evolution wise) Yet they fell to one mind with it's endless armies. Perhaps their plan was to save the pre-sentient species hoping that several sentient races could do what one couldn't.
With the threat of extinction the worst of enemies can become allies.
SinisterMinister
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Re: Pangea shown in cycle_response image...

Unread post by SinisterMinister »

Isn't it possible that several species on several different worlds were pre-sentient and Forerunners found them, studied them all in hopes for answers to some of their mysteries and decided to save them?
Entirely possible, and that seems to be what Video 4 implies. However, it doesn't answer why all of those pre-sentient species share a very, very close level of development as of the 26th century; how and why did they all develop at the same speed, beginning at the same time, resulting in a dozen species within a few hundred years, or even decades, of each other's technology levels when it could have easily been thousands or tens of thousands? An obvious answer is Forerunner intervention; the Forerunners took the worthy species, then genetically and socially "tuned" them all to the same level of development; the ooga booga loincloth Flintstones period. Yet, even that doesn't answer what was so special about Earth and/or humans that it deserved to host the Ark, rather than any of the others planets being saved.
theShadowfox
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Re: Pangea shown in cycle_response image...

Unread post by theShadowfox »

SinisterMinister wrote:
Isn't it possible that several species on several different worlds were pre-sentient and Forerunners found them, studied them all in hopes for answers to some of their mysteries and decided to save them?
Entirely possible, and that seems to be what Video 4 implies. However, it doesn't answer why all of those pre-sentient species share a very, very close level of development as of the 26th century; how and why did they all develop at the same speed, beginning at the same time, resulting in a dozen species within a few hundred years, or even decades, of each other's technology levels when it could have easily been thousands or tens of thousands? An obvious answer is Forerunner intervention; the Forerunners took the worthy species, then genetically and socially "tuned" them all to the same level of development; the ooga booga loincloth Flintstones period. Yet, even that doesn't answer what was so special about Earth and/or humans that it deserved to host the Ark, rather than any of the others planets being saved.
Good point. But perhaps they found we had the most potential of all the species they found and helped. (I agree the Forerunners helped out a few species; the Prophets, the Elites,the Brutes, and Humans. The Prophets thought they were Gods and decided like all good missionaries do to spread the word. Humans, Elites, and Brutes on the other hand eventually forgot about them and carried on by themselves; therefore the difference in technologies.) We may have been the closest to them then all the others or a number of other things which sets us apart from Brutes, Elites, and Prophets.
SinisterMinister
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Re: Pangea shown in cycle_response image...

Unread post by SinisterMinister »

But perhaps they found we had the most potential of all the species they found and helped.
I would wonder what their qualifications of "potential" are, but evidently humans are the only one of the known species to innovate as well as emulate, so that could be all it takes - the will and inspiration to do things differently so that the Forerunner's mistakes aren't repeated.

On a more on-topic note, although it may be entirely coincidental; the formation of Pangea and that time period in general coincided with the appearance of the first ancestors of modern crocodiles/alligators.
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