Romulan Colonization

[Vger23]

The Romulans are supposedly an "off-shoot" of the Vulcan race. They rejected Surak's teachings and headed out into space to find a new home.

Anyway, one has to wonder why they would have colonized Romulus, which seems to be an Earth-like planet that has very little in common with Vulcan's dry, hot deserts. It seems unusual that a species would chose to colonize a world that is so unlike their home.

Thoughts?

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Perhaps the convoy was running low on provisions and they had to settle for the nearest habitable world they could find.

Or the Romulan faction was from a more temperate region of Vulcan, where there was more greenery so they sought out a world that reminded them of their home province.

Or they wanted to further distance themselves from those that they shunned by opting for a planet that was in contrast to their ancestral homeworld.

 

[Imperator-Zor]

The Romulans are supposedly an "off-shoot" of the Vulcan race. They rejected Surak's teachings and headed out into space to find a new home.

Anyway, one has to wonder why they would have colonized Romulus, which seems to be an Earth-like planet that has very little in common with Vulcan's dry, hot deserts. It seems unusual that a species would chose to colonize a world that is so unlike their home.

Thoughts?

1: Not everywhere on Vulcan is going to be a barren desert. There has to be some places on the planet which have a lot of vegetation to sustain an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere.
2: The Jared Diamond factor, deserts are not terribly productive farmland. A temperate wet climate is better for farming than a dry barren one, which means more calories per square meter of cultivated land which means more calories which means more people which means more workers, technicians, engineers, scientists and soldiers.

Zor

 

[Timo]

We don't need to assume that Vulcanoids would find Vulcan to their liking. The "Return to Tomorrow" story has Vulcans being transplanted (or something comparable) to the hellhole desert world as part of the old Sargonian game of galactic dominance. But they are barely adapted to life there, and OTOH do not find themselves uncomfortable on those planets the various human hero crews visit, or at least they never admit to such a thing.

Romulus might be the true Vulcan ideal, the paradise they lost when their ancestors were relocated from their original home. OTOH, it might also be the closest match to Vulcan in the known galaxy, what with two planets in close orbits, passing each other at close range more or less regularly. This is what we observe at Vulcan, after all - giant proximal companion planets one night, an empty sky the next.

As for Vulcan not being all desert, we have seen plenty of orbital views of the planet. Sometimes it is homogeneously covered in apparent clouds of varying color, but ENT shows the planet "naked" during an apparent clear-skies season. There are no areas of evident vegetation, although there are many shallow seas; possibly the oxygen cycle is dependent on those bodies of water, and vegetation on dry land plays little or no role and indeed is almost nonexistent.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nerys Myk]

The Romulans are supposedly an "off-shoot" of the Vulcan race. They rejected Surak's teachings and headed out into space to find a new home.

Anyway, one has to wonder why they would have colonized Romulus, which seems to be an Earth-like planet that has very little in common with Vulcan's dry, hot deserts. It seems unusual that a species would chose to colonize a world that is so unlike their home.

Thoughts?

People often migrate to lands with a different climate than their homelands, often because they are nicer than where they came from.

 

[Timo]

Of course, much of Vulcanoid history is shrouded in mystery, both in-universe and out-universe. That is, the audience has not been told everything yet, but we have been told that Vulcans at least in ENT have misconceptions about their past, and that Vulcans as late as TOS consider their own past ridden with unknowns.

We don't know how cosmopolitan the Vulcans were back during the Romulan schism. Was Romulus an interstellar colony that had been established some time before and now broke away in order to preserve the pre-Surakian culture? No exodus from Vulcan to Romulus is actually indicated in onscreen material, and Spock's evasive theories in "Balance of Terror" associate a Vulcan colonization period with the identity of the Romulans (although he never actually says he would think the Romulans are a lost colony - he only says that if Romulans are like the old brutally colonizing Vulcans, thus supposedly devoid of Surakian calm, then all hell is about to break loose).

For all we know, Romulus is the ancestral homeworld of the Vulcanoid species, the place from which Sargonians banished some political prisoners to Vulcan (or did they escape there from Sargonian tyranny?). Trek since TOS is rife with references to Vulcanoids not on Vulcan: "offshoot cultures", apparent second-generation "ancient offshoots of the Romulans", explicit Mintakans, implicit Denebians. Perhaps there was a past interstellar empire whose scattered remains have more complex relationships than mere "X begat Y"?

...Say, Romulans might be a distinct political and/or racial group banished to Vulcan and at odds with the other prisoners there, among the first to leave in a huff when indigenous interstellar emigration became an option. Perhaps the ridgeheaded race never adapted to desert life quite as well as the flatheaded one?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

^ I thought that "Gambit" made mention of planets the Romulans visited on their journey away from Vulcan before settling on their new homeworld, which was why various Vulcan artefacts could be found there and how the worlds shared similar language traits.

 

[Timo]

This depends on how we define "Romulan". If it means "people living on Romulus", then their "offshoot" such as described in the episode must have settled on Romulus first and then emigrated again (which would be rather logical - if emigration solved a problem once, why stop doing it?).

If, OTOH, Romulans existed on planet Vulcan already, then they could have shed "offshoot" all the way from Vulcan to the planet they end up calling Romulus in honor of the mountain chain where their ancestors lived or whatever.

In the latter case, we could attribute the offhand VOY mention of a century-long Vulcan-Romulan war to one of the ancient scuffles on planet Vulcan, rather than to some interstellar conflict we would have to squeeze into the already congested timeline after Surakian Vulcan regains starflight but before they lose all memory of Romulans!

I don't think anybody ever spoke of "Romulans" in ENT or any other spinoff when discussing "those who marched under the raptor's wings" or "those who left". So this could go either way.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I always go under the assumption when they left they left Vulcan they did so as Vulcans and, over time, they adopted a new name and cultural identity to differentiate themselves from the mainstay of Vulcan culture who were adopting a lifestyle and practices they disagreed with. But that's my interpretation.

 

[Timo]

I guess the deciding point is how T'Pol knows how the name Romulan "should" be pronounced, in ENT "Minefield".

She blurts out this correction to Sato's slight mispronunciation, then clamshells. So when, after a cut, she tells that these Romulans are only familiar to her or the High Command at the level of "rumors", without "direct contact", she's quite probably telling a Vulcan lie. Obviously, she has some independent channel to knowledge about Romulans, because Hoshi Sato cannot mishear or mispronounce, and Romulans are extremely unlikely to pronounce their name differently on different days of the week.

So how deep does T'Pol's lie go? In what language is "Romulan" pronounced the T'Pol way as opposed to the Romulan/Sato way, and why? Is T'Pol's knowledge from an earlier era, after which the pronunciation has changed, and if so, is she merely omitting the fact that the rumors and indirect contact are 650 years out of date, or the fact that the old pronunciation comes from the time the Romulans lived next door to the Etrurites and the Hellanians on planet Vulcan?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

T'Pol may not by lying but telling the truth as she knows it, seeing as how the man in charge of the High Command seems to be keeping everyone in the dark about his dealings with the Star Empire.

 

[Timo]

That would leave us wanting as regards two things:

1) The mechanism of how T'Pol knows and cares about the "correct" pronunciation of the name of these rumor folks.
2) The reason why she essentially goes to shock when hearing the word "Romulan".

Of course, it doesn't mean there couldn't be unvoiced reasons for both that have nothing to do with ancient Vulcan/Romulan joint history.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nyotarules]

The Romulans are supposedly an "off-shoot" of the Vulcan race. They rejected Surak's teachings and headed out into space to find a new home.

Anyway, one has to wonder why they would have colonized Romulus, which seems to be an Earth-like planet that has very little in common with Vulcan's dry, hot deserts. It seems unusual that a species would chose to colonize a world that is so unlike their home.

Thoughts?

Who would deliberately live on a desert planet over a water rich world?

 

[The_Baroness]

We know that the Vulcans were extremely violent pre-Surak.
Maybe Vulcan was a lush green world but is desert now because of fallout from those wars.

 

[Vger23]

Who would deliberately live on a desert planet over a water rich world?

But Vulcan was a desert world. That's what their species was used to. Wouldn't they gravitate more toward what their homeworks was like?

Don't forget, they're aliens...so it's all relative.

 

[MAGolding]

The Romulans are supposedly an "off-shoot" of the Vulcan race. They rejected Surak's teachings and headed out into space to find a new home.

Anyway, one has to wonder why they would have colonized Romulus, which seems to be an Earth-like planet that has very little in common with Vulcan's dry, hot deserts. It seems unusual that a species would chose to colonize a world that is so unlike their home.

Thoughts?

Your question makes two assumptions:

1) That Vulcan is a desert planet.

2) That Romulus is a lusher, greener more Earth like planet.

Thus you believe that Romulus was different from Vulcan in the time when Romulus was settled.

But planet Earth has many deserts and many other arid regions as well as lush, green regions, as well as being mostly ocean. Maybe both Vulcan and Romulus have many deserts and many other arid regions as well as lush, green regions, as well as being mostly ocean.

And maybe Romulus was different from Vulcan in ways that the original Vulcan colonists liked.

Or maybe Romulus was different from Vulcan in ways that the original Vulcan colonists didn't like, but they settled on Romulus because it was similar to Vulcan in ways that were absolutely vital for Vulcan biology.

Spock says that Romulans are probably descended from ancient Vulcans who had a warlike colonizing era. Presumably Spock is talking about a warlike period of colonizing other planets around other stars. Otherwise there wouldn't be any way for the ancestors of the Romulans to colonize Romulus.

Since Vulcan is only 16 light years from Earth, all Vulcan habitable planets orbiting the stars near Earth should be inhabited by Vulcans, coexisting with any native intelligent species - unless the savage warlike Vulcans exterminated the native intelligent beings.

But planet after planet habitable for Humans in the Star Trek universe either has no native intelligent life, or has colonies of Earth Humans who settled there after Cochrane discovered warp drive, or has intelligent life different from either Vulcans or Earth Humans, or has native intelligent life that looks like Earth Humans but was living there long before Zefram Cochrane discovered warp drive. But no native Vulcan like people.

Either the Vulcans settled those planets many thousands of years ago but their Vulcan colonists died out or were exterminated long ago, or else the Vulcans never settled on those planets, although they did settle Romulus and some other planets.

Maybe the Vulcans settled only a tiny minority of the planets that are habitable for Earth Humans, because only a tiny minority of those planets are also habitable for Vulcans.

Amok Time:

KIRK: It's lovely. I wish the breeze were cooler.
MCCOY: Yeah. Hot as Vulcan. Now I understand what that phrase means.
KIRK: The atmosphere is thinner than Earth.

MCCOY: In this climate? If the heat doesn't get you, the thin air will. You can't do it!

MCCOY: Is this Vulcan chivalry? The air's too hot and thin for Kirk. He's not used to it.

In "The Deadly Years" when Spock is weakened by accelerated aging:

SPOCK: I have a question for the doctor. (Kirk leaves) Doctor, the ship's temperature is increasingly uncomfortable for me. I've adjusted the environment in my quarters to one hundred twenty five degrees, which is at least tolerable. However, I
MCCOY: Well, I see I'm not going to be making any house calls on you.
SPOCK: I wondered if perhaps there was something which could lower my sensitivity to cold.
MCCOY: I'm not a magician, Spock, just an old country doctor.
SPOCK: Yes. As I always suspected. (leaves)

This certainly indicates that Vulcans are comfortable at temperatures that are uncomfortably and dangerously hot for Humans and rather rare in most regions of Earth.

Humans whose ancestor adapted to living in the high plateaus of South America and Tibet find the denser air at lower altitudes distressing. It is quite possible that Vulcans can't live for long in the dense air of most regions of Earth. Healthy Vulcans can tolerate Earthly temperatures and air pressures but sick, weak, elderly or young Vulcans would be killed by prolonged exposure to them and so Vulcans can not settle on planets with temperatures and pressures that are too much like Earth's.

So the ancient Vulcans skipped over many planets like Earth and only settled on the rare planets with the right conditions for Vulcans, including Romulus, no matter how different Romulus was in other ways from Vulcan.

 

[fireproof78]

Who would deliberately live on a desert planet over a water rich world?

Perhaps it was due to the war that result in changing climate? I don't know Vulcan history as well.

 

[Nyotarules]

Perhaps it was due to the war that result in changing climate? I don't know Vulcan history as well.

According to Spock's World it was a natural disaster of some sort that caused the desert like planet.

 

[Timo]

Vulcans have biological adaptations to living in a desert. For these to emerge naturally, the postulated climate change would have to be in fairly distant past, certainly far earlier than the days of Surak - we're talking about hundreds of thousands of years, and preferably millions.

On the other hand, if the adaptations are unnatural, there's no limit. Vulcan during Surak may have been capable of bioengineering its citizens to be radiationproof and whatnot, and the inner eyelid could have been added at that time. Or then Sargon's folks added those things when dropping off these former inhabitants of lush, Romulus-type worlds to the already hot sands of Vulcan, at an unknown date...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[2takesfrakes]

I'm just throwing this "out there" of my own accord. I have no evidence that anyone involved in STAR TREK was thinking this, but Romulas may well have started out Vulcan-y, but may have been terraformed later, for any number of reasons. Romulas might've been like Mars, in having all of its ice locked up, just beneath the surface and when the Romulans terraformed it to make it hotter, all of that water melted out to form seas and all that. Though it's never been stated, I've always assumed water to be quite the commodity on Vulcan. When the Romulans took flight, this life-giving resource may have been under Vulcanian control ... there may have even been "status" relating to this, an attitude the Romulans held onto. Romulas may also be strategically placed, from a Romulan perspective. Claiming this specific planet may have been ideal as a hub to branch out from, as they conquered other territory.