Forum: scifi.stackexchange.com
Tags: <story-identification>
Title: Spaceship crash-lands on earth and the surviving members found the human race
Question: I am looking for a sci-fi story in which a spaceship with humans crash-lands on earth in the distant past and the surviving members go an founding the human race. This story is at least 30 years old.

Answers:
sents: text: This is a pretty common trope.
text: However, here is one of the better known examples:
text: According to the The Restaurant at the End of the Universe , Earth was populated by the useless middle class of the planet Golgafrincham, who were sent here on Ark B.
text: The ark was intentionally crashed into the Earth, but the enough of the Golgafrinchans survived to become the dominant species on the planet, wiping out the native hominids.
text: Per the Hitchhikers Wikia The Golgafrinchans are a race of humanoid beings who realised that there were three types of beings on the planet of Golgafrincham.
text: Thinkers, Workers, and the strange Middle Class.
text: The middle class comprised of hair dressers, lawyers, telephone sanitisers, and other such "worthless jobs".
text: The Thinkers built a ship and told the third class that the planet was to be consumed by a "giant space goat".
text: So they built a ship and sent off their third class.
text: Telling them that they would follow soon.
text: The Third class ended up on Earth, "mucking up the program to determine the ultimate question", while the rest of the classes were killed off by a raging disease contracted from public telephones.
text: Golgafrincham itself soon after was consumed by a giant space goat.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/48874/Buzz
score: 5
sents: text: This may be 'Genesis' by H. Beam Piper.
text: The 'humans' are from Mars, and their vehicle goes off-track.
text: The last line is something like
text: 'we are the men from Mars' http://www.loyalbooks.com/book/Genesis-by-H-Beam-Piper
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/17344/sueelleker
score: 5
sents: text: This happens in James Hogan’s “Inherit the Stars”.
text: An ancient skeleton is found on the moon.
text: Scientists try to figure out how it got there.
text: Readers find out in the final chapter that compatriots of the dead alien landed on earth and founded the human race.
text: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/776489.Inherit_the_Stars
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/17317/Michael Stern
score: 3
sents: text: Could also be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutineers%27_Moon .
text: The ship did not crashland.
text: The book begins with a prologue recording a mutiny aboard the planetoid-sized Utu-class starship of the Fourth Imperium (a more-than-55,000-year-old technologically advanced multi-star system empire), the Dahak, led by its Chief of Engineering, the ambitious and psychopathic Captain Anu.
text: Anu's ostensible reason for mutiny is to lead his followers to refuge on some remote planet where presumably the genocidal wrath of the "Achuultani", a mysterious alien race that periodically exterminates all intelligent life it can find, and which has destroyed the previous three Imperiums, will pass over them.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/13670/Bigben59
score: 2
sents: text: Not a perfect match, but it could be The Wailing Asteroid by Murray Leinster.
text: It might also be Moon Wreck , prequel to The Slaver Wars and The Lost Fleet series by Raymond Weil.
text: As Buzz said, this is a pretty common trope.
text: Also, of course, Earth is the Thirteenth Colony of Kobol in Battlestar Galactica universe.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/63196/LSerni
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
The plotline in question appears in a number of different books and is quite a common theme. Books that feature this type of story or variations of it include "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", "Genesis" by H. Beam Piper, "Inherit the Stars" by James Hogan or "The Wailing Asteroid" by Murray Leinster.
Many books take up this idea, including The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, 'Genesis' by H. Beam Piper, The Wailing Asteroid by Murray Leinster or Moon Wreck , prequel to The Slaver Wars and The Lost Fleet series by Raymond Weil.