Some of these questions are dealt with in season 3's "Vengence." For example, an iratus bug passes on human genetic material to their offspring if they lay their eggs soon after feeding, while the human subject dies, much as Nivao attempted to explain:
Also as Nivao said:
Regarding the matter of what primitive Wraith fed on...
I wouldn't assume that humans didn't find a way to survive on the planet that the Wraith evolved on. They may have developed fortified centers that protected their core population while the proto-Wraith picked off farmers and the like. It's not like they wouldn't have had time to prepare since the iratus bugs would've slowly turned into humanoid killing machines over a long period of time. And if humans survived there long enough for the Wraith to become intelligent, the Wraith could have then turned humans into cattle whose population they tightly regulated.
Also, it would've presumably taken some time before the Wraith were locked into only being able to feed on humans. When the proto-Wraith were in a similar state as Michael's beasts from "Vengeance" it's very much conceivable that they, like the iratus bugs, could survive by feeding on a wide range of animal life. The dependency on humans may have come after they escaped that world and gained access to more humans, allowing them to become ever more human as they fed on them.
How the Wraith spread after contact with the Ancients is a matter that can only be speculated on since it was never addressed in the show. Personally, I tend to think that they were advanced enough to learn from observation how to use the Stargate and so Ancient contact allowed them to spread to many worlds. Like the bugs that they are, the Ancients may have wiped them out on one planet, only for populations to pop up elsewhere. This could've gone on for a long time.
In another act of pure speculation on my part, I have wondered if spacegates were an attempt to stop the spread of the Wraith. The Ancients could've been in the process of converting all the gates when the Wraith first developed ships to bypass this tactic, thus resulting in the Ancients abandoning the plan to convert all gates in the galaxy. How they developed technology quickly is easily explained by Wraith worshippers. Some converted human scientists from advanced worlds or converted Ancients could have led to massive leaps forward. Hell, their organic ship designs fit them so perfectly that we think that they developed the technology, but for all we know it could've been lifted completely from a now dead human civilization. Or not. Maybe they infested human ships and converted humans into worshippers who operated those ships for them before they slowly figured out how to design a version of the ships we see today.
The point of all this is simply to say that even though we don't know what happened, there are ways that the writers could've explained their development using what has thus far been revealed.
MICHAEL (voiceover): I allowed the bug to gorge itself, to absorb as much human D.N.A. as possible. This, of course, led to the death of the subject.
MICHAEL (voiceover): The timing of the feeding was critical -- ensuring that the bug laid its next egg quickly, before the genetic material could filter out of its body.
MICHAEL (voiceover): The embryo then contained enough human D.N.A. for me to manipulate.
MICHAEL (voiceover): I accelerated the development, augmenting the complexity of its physiology. There were several adjustments, several mistakes ...
MICHAEL (voiceover): The timing of the feeding was critical -- ensuring that the bug laid its next egg quickly, before the genetic material could filter out of its body.
MICHAEL (voiceover): The embryo then contained enough human D.N.A. for me to manipulate.
MICHAEL (voiceover): I accelerated the development, augmenting the complexity of its physiology. There were several adjustments, several mistakes ...
McKAY: Which is, as we know, exactly how the Wraith evolved. I mean, iratus bug bites human, human D.N.A. mixes with theirs, a thousand years go by, Wraith.
I wouldn't assume that humans didn't find a way to survive on the planet that the Wraith evolved on. They may have developed fortified centers that protected their core population while the proto-Wraith picked off farmers and the like. It's not like they wouldn't have had time to prepare since the iratus bugs would've slowly turned into humanoid killing machines over a long period of time. And if humans survived there long enough for the Wraith to become intelligent, the Wraith could have then turned humans into cattle whose population they tightly regulated.
Also, it would've presumably taken some time before the Wraith were locked into only being able to feed on humans. When the proto-Wraith were in a similar state as Michael's beasts from "Vengeance" it's very much conceivable that they, like the iratus bugs, could survive by feeding on a wide range of animal life. The dependency on humans may have come after they escaped that world and gained access to more humans, allowing them to become ever more human as they fed on them.
How the Wraith spread after contact with the Ancients is a matter that can only be speculated on since it was never addressed in the show. Personally, I tend to think that they were advanced enough to learn from observation how to use the Stargate and so Ancient contact allowed them to spread to many worlds. Like the bugs that they are, the Ancients may have wiped them out on one planet, only for populations to pop up elsewhere. This could've gone on for a long time.
In another act of pure speculation on my part, I have wondered if spacegates were an attempt to stop the spread of the Wraith. The Ancients could've been in the process of converting all the gates when the Wraith first developed ships to bypass this tactic, thus resulting in the Ancients abandoning the plan to convert all gates in the galaxy. How they developed technology quickly is easily explained by Wraith worshippers. Some converted human scientists from advanced worlds or converted Ancients could have led to massive leaps forward. Hell, their organic ship designs fit them so perfectly that we think that they developed the technology, but for all we know it could've been lifted completely from a now dead human civilization. Or not. Maybe they infested human ships and converted humans into worshippers who operated those ships for them before they slowly figured out how to design a version of the ships we see today.
The point of all this is simply to say that even though we don't know what happened, there are ways that the writers could've explained their development using what has thus far been revealed.
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