Where did the Vulcans come from?
- Thread starter Arpy
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What blown-up world? Nobody ever said that the Aians were the ancestors of the Vulcans/Romulans. The Romulans found the Aians' message because they were drawn to explore the Eightfold Stars. That's the whole reason the Aians engineered the octonary system -- because no such thing was found in nature (this is technically true -- we've never observed a single star system with more than seven discernible components, and only a couple with more than six) and they knew it would attract visitors who would find the message they left.
From TOS's "Return to Tomorrow" s2e22:
KIRK: That's twice you've referred to us as my children.
SARGON: Because it is possible you are our descendants, Captain Kirk. Six thousand centuries ago, our vessels were colonising this galaxy, just as your own starships have now begun to explore that vastness. As you now leave your own seed on distant planets, so we left our seed behind us. Perhaps your own legends of an Adam and an Eve were two of our travellers.
MULHALL: Our beliefs and our studies indicate that life on our planet, Earth, evolved independently.
SPOCK: That would tend, however, to explain certain elements of Vulcan prehistory.
Earth has evidence of natural human evolution native to it, but Vulcan maybe was seeded.
Still the idea stands. Say they were Rihannsu (or something else) before the Surakians redubbed themselves whatever the Vulcans call themselves now in their own language. Rome is now Italy, yet Romania still exists.
I don’t know that I like the idea, but there’s a way it works.
Yup, and now it doesn’t again.
Unless...the early Vulcans called themselves Romulans (that is, Rihannsu or whatever) but Romulan was a word in the Sargonian language that was found on multiple worlds. No red flag was raised to the Vulcans when the Romulans made themselves known because it could mean simply “Us,” or “Great Ones,” or both in different languages on different worlds.
Again, not that I like the idea. Vulcan/Romulan history is getting too complicated for my tastes.
KIRK: That's twice you've referred to us as my children.
SARGON: Because it is possible you are our descendants, Captain Kirk. Six thousand centuries ago, our vessels were colonising this galaxy, just as your own starships have now begun to explore that vastness. As you now leave your own seed on distant planets, so we left our seed behind us. Perhaps your own legends of an Adam and an Eve were two of our travellers.
MULHALL: Our beliefs and our studies indicate that life on our planet, Earth, evolved independently.
SPOCK: That would tend, however, to explain certain elements of Vulcan prehistory.
Earth has evidence of natural human evolution native to it, but Vulcan maybe was seeded.
The myth matches the events of PIC very closely. I think there’s something to that. The admonition didn’t show (as we’ve seen it) anything like the myth. No sisters or horn, just synths, planets blowing up, etc.
That’s not in question. But this clearly is more than pure allegory or fiction.
Everyone needs to agree that it was a mistake. I don’t know that Chabon (or whoever wrote it) didn’t mean it (he’s primarily a TOS fan: maybe he was thinking Sargon), and I don’t know that it gets treated as a Fourth Wall mistake moving forward. Lithium crystals, sure. But I think time crystals are profoundly idiotic. Yet I don’t think they’re ignorable in the same way.
I don’t think it contradicts. Just complicates.
Can we ignore that? I’d like to.
Still the idea stands. Say they were Rihannsu (or something else) before the Surakians redubbed themselves whatever the Vulcans call themselves now in their own language. Rome is now Italy, yet Romania still exists.
I don’t know that I like the idea, but there’s a way it works.
Yup, and now it doesn’t again.
Unless...the early Vulcans called themselves Romulans (that is, Rihannsu or whatever) but Romulan was a word in the Sargonian language that was found on multiple worlds. No red flag was raised to the Vulcans when the Romulans made themselves known because it could mean simply “Us,” or “Great Ones,” or both in different languages on different worlds.
Again, not that I like the idea. Vulcan/Romulan history is getting too complicated for my tastes.
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I'm done debating this. As far as I'm concerned, it's simply a script or actor error that nobody caught. It's not worth my mental energy to think any further about it.
Pretty much the nature of fandom. We take all characters as though they can never speak untruths or have incomplete information.
He was talking about myths at the time. Myths that he believed to be actual history. So I wouldn't take any of what he said as hard facts.
(No one needs to participate in the discussion if they're not interested in it. We're probably not going to get any solid answers, but I would like to hear from others what would make sense. And I'm okay with this being just me for another post or two to figure things out for myself if that's the way it goes. That said, I kind of like the way this opens up the distant past to us where before there was nothing. It's one of the reasons I like Christopher's work specifically – anyone who hasn't, should read The Buried Age. It’s one of the best Trek books ever.)
I. So, the Sargonians maybe seed Vulcan maybe around 600,000 yrs ago.
II. They then die out around 500,000 years ago.
III. The Aians create the Admonition around 300,000 to 200,000 years ago.
_______________________________________
1. Are the Aians related to the Sargonians? Are they a seeded world not mentioned or forgotten by Sargon?
2. Whether or not they are related, could the myth have come before the Admonition?
I. So, the Sargonians maybe seed Vulcan maybe around 600,000 yrs ago.
- Alternatively, Vulcans came to their world 600k yrs ago from someplace else? The Debrune homeworld?
- This is especially confusing as I though the existence of the Mintakans suggested that Vulcanoid could evolve independently on different worlds. But, okay, maybe it’s both — the Protohumanoids’ seeding might have made that possible.
III. The Aians create the Admonition around 300,000 to 200,000 years ago.
- Unless it was earlier somehow. How did we get this number? I wonder if there’s a way to sync these numbers. Did Sargon say Earth years or his own? Is the Admonition’s exact age from the Romulans who discovered it, or the good guys estimating? If it’s from the Romulans, is it Earth years, Romulan years, or Admonition planet’s years?
1. Are the Aians related to the Sargonians? Are they a seeded world not mentioned or forgotten by Sargon?
2. Whether or not they are related, could the myth have come before the Admonition?
- Could it have been an End of the World myth that later incorporated new (accurate) details?
- Or could it have been a repeating scenario in which AI’s out-evolve their organic creators and then join an extragalactic synth alliance? Previous peoples (like the Protohumanoids or Iconians or whomever) may have been destroyed or abandoned by their synth creations, or overcome the danger of being so.
- If so, could only the Aians have been the most recent members and the only ones to bother with an Adminition?
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That is not evidence.
Mythology not history.
It's what ever the folks in charge what it to be. No one in "power" has ever said they were anglicized alien names
Rihannsu js probably derived from Rhiannon from Celtic myth with a touch of Japanese.
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True, but everything we see is filtered through the universal translator.
Not on my TV,
The AI that tried to chainsaw its way out of that space hole DID NOT LOOK FRIENDLY!!!!!!!!
It was all a trick.
The were going to murder everyone.
It was all a trick.
The were going to murder everyone.
There's been a handful of episodes where the universal translator is turned off, or broken.
DS9 Babel, DS9 Sanctuary, DS9 Little Green Men, VOY Gravity, VOY The Swarm, and TNG Darmok comes to mind.
Yeah, still not on my TV.
Once you accept the Holographic lip sync, it's really a question of wtf is real anyways.
No, and thanks to ENT: "Minefield" we're forced to conclude that, in-universe, "Romulan" is their indigenous name. But I was talking about the real-life intent of Paul Schneider when he wrote "Balance of Terror." It's obvious that when he named the twin planets named Romulus and Remus, he was basing those names on Roman mythology and probably intended that they were ascribed by humans to the twin planets, the same way that Europeans have traditionally ascribed their own names to foreign countries rather than using the indigenous ones. The fact that the makers of Enterprise evidently didn't realize that just shows how badly the state of classical education has deteriorated in the United States since the generation of TOS's writers.
Archer (??) mispronuced the word "ROMULAN" the first time he said it.
T'Pol corrected him.
T'Pol corrected him.
I remember it being Hoshi who mispronounced it.
That makes more sense since in the last episode of season one Archers sees a book about the Earth Romulan War in a 31st century library, and he said the word perfectly.
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