Pangea shown in cycle_response image...
Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2007 5:41 am
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?
Alternate Reality Games, Bungie style
http://args.bungie.org/
In that case, building the Ark in the middle of Africa's Great Rift Valley doesn't seem like such a good ideaThey don't want their ark to get ripped in half and dropped into the ocean, do they?
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.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.
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.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?
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 wrote: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.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?
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.But perhaps they found we had the most potential of all the species they found and helped.