Altairans...

[hungrytrash]

"HARLEN: Ah, now, let's see, Wallas was the last one to go. I miss him. But you all remind me a little of Wallas! (Harlan stops and looks at Sam.) Except for you of course, you are, female. (Then he turns to Teal'c.) And you are, whatever you are. Hubald, he was the creator of all this. But he died very early, too early. Took many secrets with him, so long ago.

O'NEILL: How long, exactly?

HARLEN: Uh, exactly? Ninety-nine million, two hundred seven thousand of your hours.

O'NEILL: That's 11,000 years.

CARTER: How did you know that?

O'NEILL: That's right?

CARTER: Yeah.

JACKSON: Wait, how did YOU know that?"

Ok...eleven thousand years ago humans were more advanced than Earth on a different planet? Can someone explain how the Altairans pulled that one off? They are human right? .

[Helo]

Oh yea the ep with the crazy fat guy? Well anyway I dunno maybe human life was indeginous to milkyway?

[hungrytrash]

For some reason I doubt that. Picture how advanced they would be right now if the freaking radiation didn't kill them. They would make the Tollan and Goa'uld look like...Unas . They'd be somewhat near Asgard technology. Weird though...they evolved on a planet before any Goa'uld knew of human's existance. So what...when humans were hunting for mammoths, some guy stumbles on silicon and says, "Whoa! Silicon...I think I'll make a computer!" And while I'm at it...I'll invent a generator that runs on an element that doesn't exist on this planet! Oo...Generator+Computer=A spaceship! "Hey wife, let's go flying into the sky in this spaceship randomly and somehow land on a planet which we don't know exists other than our own start a race of advanced humans!" "Whoa! Is that trinium? I think I'll make a conscious transferring device! Whoa!

[Avatar28]

Perhaps they developed faster than the humans on earth did. After all, it's entirely conceivable that our development got waylayed a couple of times by ice ages.

And there's a stargate there. They could have been ancients/descended from ancients or they could have discovered ancient technology that was left behind and studied it and thus were able to advance much faster, much like the Tauri have been doing over the last 8 years.

[hungrytrash]

The question is...how did they get there?

[tlfoust]

If you check the Timeline for Stargate Events thread, you'll see what HungryTrash is saying. The River People hadn't even established firm settlements in the Nile Valley 11,000 years ago. The Atlanteans didn't return to Earth until 10,000 years ago. Presumabely, the Goa'uld couldn't dominate human civilization (as described by the show) until it formed around 5,000 years ago. So how did humans from Earth get to that planet?


One explanation might be that the hours on Altairia (?) are shorter than on Earth. Excellent observation, HungryTrash

[oragans]

SPOILERS there is an epidode up and coming episode of SGA where john sheppard is on a planet and he is on it for a year and the rest of the team said the were only gone a minute maybe it was the same thing or may be the ancients didn't originate from earth.

[hungrytrash]

I would agree with the idea of Altairan hours being different, but notice he said "of YOUR hours." He was trying to let them understand how long he'd been there, and telling them how long he'd been there in a unit they'd never heard of before wouldn't make any sense .

[briguy213]

Maybe a more advance race put them in a bubble of accelerated time like the replicators used the asgard technology to do.

[Jarnin]

The ancients seeded more than one planet with life. Not all humans are from Earth.

Altair was a toxic wasteland on the surface, meaning the Altairans were around alot longer than 11,000 years. When Harlan was explaining how long he'd been there, he was using Wallace's departure to estimate 11,000 years. That means they had existed as androids longer than 11,000 years, and before that they were human.
The whole reason for them becoming Androids was so their civilization would survive, which seems to be a common theme throughout Stargate.

The Tollan were almost wiped out by their planets orbit being shifted causing it to break up. Their new home world Tollana was later destroyed by the Goa'uld.

The episode The Gamekeeper established that that planets surface was once toxic, so it's citizens were kept in virtual reality chambers beneath the surface until the atmosphere was repaired.

In Message In A Bottle the civilization saved themselves in the Orb in viral form, so that they could survive their planet losing it's Atmosphere.

In Bane the civilization was wiped out by bugs.

Aris Boch's people were wiped out because they're unsuitable for Gou'uld hosts.

On Euronda in The Other Side, the people were fighting a civil war that forced them to live underground due to them poisoning their atmosphere.

The people on P3R-118 lived in a dome on a world in the middle of an ice age.

In Point of No Return, Martin discovers that he was an alien (not from Earth) and that he and a few others deserted his people in the middle of a war with the Goa'uld. His civilization was wiped out.

In Entity the civilization was totally based on technology; the question is who built it?

Reece, the creator of the Replicators, was created by a human civilization, which was destroyed by the Replicators.

In Revisions, the civilization lived in a dome to protect them from a toxic atmosphere.

In Lifeboat the people had fled their world which had been destroyed by solar storms.

Many of the worlds the ancients seeded with life would have not survived natural disasters like asteroid impacts or destroying their atmospheres via industry or war. Those that do survive might not survive the Goa'uld.
It's natural selection on a galactic scale. The stargates give people some options to be able to migrate between planets, but if they didn't exist, humans would have to wait until they have the technology to save themselves, in which case they have to survive themselves having powerful technology, like nuclear and biological weapons.

The point is, apparently Earth has been lucky. We haven't blown ourselves up, and Earth is just getting to the point where natural disasters might be able to be diverted or controlled.

[tlfoust]

You make excellent points with the various episodes using the destroyed-planet theme. An additional one that comes to mind is the aliens who created the quantum mirror in There but for the Grace of God were (presumably) wiped out by the Goa'uld.

I think we've hit a discrepancy in the show that can't be resolved by canon: Did the Ancients seed more than one planet with humans? The SG teams have always been operating as if they have. In fact, instead of the Altairans, all the other more advanced human species can be explained by faster growth in technology/no Dark Age. This, again, goes into the mess of humans and ancients in Pegasus.

Personally, I think that humans didn't evolve in parallel anywhere else. The existence of humanoid species throughout the galaxy suggests that every species could have evolved separately. I don't think it's been explicitly mentioned, but I'm always happy to be proven wrong!

[KorbenDirewolf]

The Altairans could have pulled the same trick as the Tollan, who were human (at least, according to Fraiser they were).

[Mr Prophet]

If humans on Earth are a re-evolution of the Ancients, the same thing could happen anywhere that they seeded. Being biologically human would therefore not imply descent from the Tau'ri. The Altairans could also have been a less advanced offshoot of the Ancients.

Additionally, Ra was on Earth 10,000 years ago, steering Earth civilisation, which is older than conventionally accepted; at least according to the movie. Of course, according to the movie he actually left 10,000 years ago, because that's how old the cover stones were.

[oragans]

What was the trick that the tollans pulled - they were only more advanced than us because they most probably did not go through the Dark Ages.

[MarshAngel]

I definitely agree that the Ancients seeded several other worlds besides Earth.

Another possibility for their high level of advancement is the unique history of each planet. Due to our gate having been buried so long, as well as the absorption of the system lords in their own petty squabbles, and plain old luck/ill fortune Earth has been mostly ignored by other advanced civilizations.

The same is not likely for all those other planets including the Altairans. Interactions between different cultures stimulate new ideas and speed the growth of technology. Any one of those civilizations may have had contact with other advanced species that sped their own growth.

Several civilizations on Earth (that ended badly) showed advanced knowledge.. although in the show it seems all that credit was given to the Goa'uld. We'd probably be about a thousand years ahead if Egyptian and Greco-Roman civilizations had remained dominant, or at the very least alive and the dark ages never happened.

Geography also plays a role. On our planet populations were separated by vast oceans. But imagine if human civilization rose on only one continent. Maybe we'd have less wars resulting from perceived differences. That alone could prevent the destruction of knowledge gained when a generation dies out from war and takes their knowledge with them.