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The latest of these early civilizations, having risen to power around 150,000 BCE after a series of technological dark ages, eventually reached a level of technological sophistication close to that of the Forerunners. Humanity achieved an advanced state early in its history, well over 1,100,000 BCE, when their earliest, long-forgotten cultures attained space travel and spread across many worlds. Early civilization and Forerunner involvement Main articles: Prehistoric human civilization, Erde-Tyrene civilization After exterminating the Precursors to the point of extinction, the Forerunners claimed the Mantle for themselves, using it not only as the basis of their society but also as justification for securing their own dominance for millions of years. The Forerunners refused to accept this decision and subsequently rebelled against the Precursors. The Precursors intended humanity to inherit the Mantle, their assumed role of guardianship for all life in the galaxy and for countless generations prepared them for this role. Responsible for seeding the galaxy with life, the Precursors genetically engineered early humanity millions of years ago along with many other species in the galaxy, including Forerunners, a would-be rival species to humanity. The origins of humanity lay in the ancient race of beings known as the Precursors. In addition to threats from within in the form of renewed dissidence across the colonies, the UNSC was involved in hostilities with new Covenant factions, some of which allowed humans to join, and other hostilites with the Ur-Didact's reawakened Forerunner Promethean constructs which would later come under the command of the Created. Despite the defeat of the Covenant, humanity engaged in smaller conflicts during the post-war years. However, these developments have not yet elevated them to the Tier 2 of technological advancement held by the Covenant. įollowing the end of the war, humanity began to take on a more active role in the galactic community formed by the Covenant's dissolution, with new technological developments sped up by the discovery of Forerunner relics. With humanity teetering on the brink of extinction, the discovery of a Forerunner artifact known as Halo set in motion a course of events which would lead to the fragmentation and eventual destruction of the Covenant. For nearly three decades, humanity, under the emergency military governance of the United Nations Space Command, was pushed back by the relentless Covenant war machine, until the tide turned in 2552. In 2525, a theocratic alien hegemony known as the Covenant invaded the colony world of Harvest, beginning the apocalyptic Human-Covenant War. The war claimed millions of lives over the next three decades, but a far more dire threat loomed. Īt the end of the 25th century, this age of flourish was coming to an end, and the rising economic and political tensions across the colonies eventually culminated in a series of civil conflicts collectively known as the Insurrection. Over a century later, the invention of the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine heralded a new golden age for humanity: no longer confined to their home system, humans spread across the neighboring stars. Following a series of violent conflicts across the Sol system, contemporary humanity at large was brought under a single banner with the establishment of the Unified Earth Government in 2170. Humanity would not begin to rise from the confines of their homeworld until nearly 100,000 years later, with the re-invention of space travel in the mid-20th century and the beginning of space colonization in the later half of the 21st century. Thanks to the efforts of the Forerunner known as the Librarian, however, humans were later elevated to the role of Reclaimers, intended to inherit the Mantle the Forerunners used to hold. Over 110,000 years ago, ancient humanity ( archeohomina) had achieved a thriving interstellar civilization nearly on par with the Forerunners, although their catastrophic defeat in the human-Forerunner wars would see them reduced to a preindustrial state as hunter-gatherer tribes, forced to achieve technological sophistication again. Members of the species, like some Covenant species, are four-limbed and bipedal, which enables them to walk upright on two legs and use their arms and hands (including opposable thumbs) to hold and manipulate objects such as tools. A part of the primate family, they are the only extant species of a formerly diverse genus of multiple species once classified as human. Humans, taxonomically referred to as Homo sapiens ( Latin for "wise man") and known as ha manune (plural ha manush) in the Forerunner era, are a sentient species native to Earth.