For those who dare to read this long wall of text: I'm gonna go out on a wild stretch here so bear with me. We have to wonder about the Neolithic origins in the Halo Universe, and how and why the Forerunner and/or the Precursors fit into this picture. Let's look back at our past. How is it that our species acquired such a great amount of intelligence in such a short amount of time? According to a man famous for rather wild and interesting theories, Terence McKenna mentions in one of his lectures that the human neo cortex is "the most dramatic transformation of a major organ of a higher animal in the entire fossil record." Now I know mushrooms aren't really mentioned in the Halo Universe and I don't want you guys to think of me as a hippie or anything but check out his theory: "McKenna hypothesized that as the North African jungles receded and gave way to savannas and grasslands near the end of the most recent ice age, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the forest canopy and began to live in the open areas outside of the forest. There they experimented with new varieties of foods as they adapted, physically and mentally, to their new environment. Among the new food items found in this new environment were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing near the dung of ungulate herds that occupied the savannas and grasslands at that time. McKenna, referencing the research of Roland L. Fisher, claimed that enhancement of visual acuity was an effect of psilocybin at low doses, and supposed that this would have conferred an adaptive advantage. He also argued that the effects of slightly larger doses, including -blam!- arousal, and in still larger doses, ecstatic hallucinations and glossolalia gave selective evolutionary advantages to members of those tribes who partook of it. There were many changes caused by the introduction of this psychoactive mushroom to the primate diet. McKenna hypothesizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds. About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed psilocybin-containing mushrooms from the human diet. McKenna argued that this event resulted in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to the previous brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin." -Wikipedia.org This man believed that these mushrooms were essentially some kind of universal teaching device, and let's be fair here, quite a few different cultures integrated them into their society, such as the Mayans, Indians (no not the Native Americans though some are included), and several African cultures, but to expand on this theory here's basically what he had to say about the mushrooms' purpose: "I am old, older than thought in your species, which is itself fifty times older than your history. Though I have been on earth for ages I am from the stars. My home is no one planet, for many worlds scattered through the shining disc of the galaxy have conditions which allow my spores an opportunity for life. The mushroom which you see is the part of my body given to sex thrills and sun bathing, my true body is a fine network of fibers growing through the soil. These networks may cover acres and may have far more connections that the number in a human brain. My mycelial network is nearly immortal, only the sudden toxification of a planet or the explosion of its parent star can wipe me out. By means impossible to explain because of certain misconceptions in your model of reality all my mycelial networks in the galaxy are in hyperlight communication across space and time. The mycelial body is as fragile as a spider's web but the collective hypermind and memory is a vast historical archive of the career of evolving intelligence on many worlds in our spiral star swarm. Space, you see, is a vast ocean to those hardy life forms that have the ability to reproduce from spores, for spores are covered with the hardest organic substance known. Across the aeons of time and space drift many spore-forming life-forms in suspended animation for millions of years until contact is made with a suitable environment. Few such species are minded, only myself and my recently evolved near relatives have achieved the hyper-communication mode and memory capacity that makes us leading members in the community of galactic intelligence. How the hypercommunication mode operates is a secret which will not be lightly given to man. But the means should be obvious: it is the occurrence of psilocybin and psilocin in the biosynthetic pathways of my living body that opens for me and my symbiots the vision screens to many worlds. You as an individual and man as a species are on the brink of the formation of a symbiotic relationship with my genetic material that will eventually carry humanity and earth into the galactic mainstream of the higher civilizations. Since it is not easy for you to recognize other varieties of intelligence around you, your most advanced theories of politics and society have advanced only as far as the notion of collectivism. But beyond the cohesion of the members of a species into a single social organism there lie richer and even more baroque evolutionary possibilities. Symbiosis is one of these. Symbiosis is a relation of mutual dependence and positive benefits for both of the species involved. Symbiotic relationships between myself and civilized forms of higher animals have been established many times and in many places throughout the long ages of my development. These relationships have been mutually useful; within my memory is the knowledge of hyperlight drive ships and how to build them. I will trade this knowledge for a free ticket to new worlds around suns younger and more stable than your own. To secure an eternal existence down the long river of cosmic time I again and again offer this agreement to higher beings and thereby have spread throughout the galaxy over the long millennia. A mycelial network has no organs to move the world, no hands; but higher animals with manipulative abilities can become partners with the star knowledge within me and if they act in good faith, return both themselves and their humble mushroom teacher to the million worlds all citizens of our starswarm are heir to." So what if the Precursors essentially seeded the galaxies with their inner workings, and several species with their DNA. There is a possibility of essentially sending their way of life this way to other places... Because in such a short amount of time on seperate parts of the globe the entire human species were able to come up with strikingly similar forms of society and architecture etc. I mean just look at the video game Assassin's Creed 2 for an anology with all the glyphs you have to search for. The fact that some of the Mayan glyphs in Central America and the glyphs from Angkor Wat in the East Pacific bear a striking resemblance to Forerunner and Precursors glyphs. We also have Easter Island, the Nazca Lines, Stone Henge, etc. Many of these cultures also had a fascination with the stars. The Gravemind and the Flood fits into this theory as well, the idea of spores latching on to other lifeforms and what not, although the Flood would be of the more poisonous or parasitic variety of course, not to mention they feed off their intelligence. There's a type of parasitic fungus which does the same thing to ants, it's called Cordyceps, here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80uSaxHXdk8 Here's some examples of human ruins and glyphs compared to the Forerunner: Mayan glyphs: [url]http://www.2012awareness.com/mayan_glyphs.jpg[/url] [url]http://emergent-culture.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/parts-of-the-mayan-calendar.jpg][/url] Angkor Wat: [url]http://www.images-photography-pictures.net/Angkor-Wat-Cambodia-Siem-Reap-Hrtfried-Schmid.jpg[/url] [url]http://comps.fotosearch.com/comp/UNZ/UNZ898/angkor-wat-_~u11865089.jpg[/url] Forerunner glyphs: [url]http://www.ascendantjustice.com/files/cocop/The%20Covenant/The%20Covenant%20Large/HologramGlyphs-large.jpg[/url] [url]http://www.ascendantjustice.com/files/cocop/The%20Covenant/The%20Covenant%20Small/Halo1Glyphs.PNG[/url] [url]http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff274/MyzticStrike/Glyph2.png[/url] And here's a 6 minute lecture on the idea of spores as an alien probe: [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljy3TH1T0jk[/url] Tell me what you guys think.