Cetra The Cetra , also known as the Ancients , are a race of people mentioned frequently in " Final Fantasy VII " , although few Ancients are actually depicted . The Cetra look identical to regular human s , but are deeply spiritual in nature . According to Sephiroth , regular humans were Cetra who forsook their migratory nature to form permanent settlements millennia ago . Story . The migrations of the Cetra were a Planet - reverent pursuit of the fabled Promised Land conducted by traveling and cultivating life . The Cetra could commune with the Planet , an ability regular humans lost once they gave up their close relationship with the Planet in favor of leisure and convenience . The Cetra could guide the flow of the Planet ' s spiritual energy , this being the means by which they cultivated life on the Planet ' s surface . The " Crisis Core Complete Guide " states the Cetra are said to have opened up Lifestream veins to make the land fertile . The Cetra served as the Planet ' s caretakers until their race was nearly reduced to extinction by an extraterrestrial shape - shifting entity . The alien arrived on the Planet some 2 , 000 years before the events of " Final Fantasy VII " , crash - landing on the northern continent within a meteorite . The impact site became a massive crater that would come to be known as the North Crater , a wound to the Planet that would not be healed for thousands of years . Once the alien emerged from the impact site and approached the Cetra settlements , it gleaned their memories and emotions and adopted the forms of their dead relatives to get close to them . The alien released a virus upon the Cetra ( in actuality , its own cellular material ) , a substance that drove the Cetra mad and transformed them into monsters . A small band of unchanged Cetra mounted a final assault on the being they referred to as " the Calamity from the Sky , " sealing its body at the alien ' s point of arrival , the North Crater . Two thousand years later the alien would be excavated by Shinra Electric Power Company scientist Professor Gast Faremis , and be mistakenly identified as a Cetra and would be named Jenova . Ifalna was among the last known living Cetra , and her daughter Aeris is believed to have been the very last ( though she is only half - Cetra , as her father was an ordinary human ) . Because Sephiroth kills Aeris at the Forgotten Capital while she is praying for Holy , the Cetra are believed to be extinct . While the party can find the spiritual manifestations of some Cetra in the Temple of the Ancients , which take the form of creatures with bulbous purple bodies and long beards , Aeris explains they are simply " spirit bodies " left aeons ago to protect the temple , having lost their true forms . They don ' t have minds of their own and lost their ability to speak , but can still communicate with Aeris . Many fans believe the Cetra are an alien race that migrates from planet to planet due to a line Sephiroth says during Cloud ' s flashback in the English version of the game : " This Planet originally belonged to the Cetra . Cetra was a itinerant race . They would migrate in , settle the Planet , then move on . . . " This line may be subject to translation issues and a failure to clarify the interchangeability between " land " and " planet . " Elsewhere , the game ' s script states through Aeris that the Cetra were born on the Planet of " Final Fantasy VII " : " The Cetra were born from the Planet , speak with the Planet , and unlock the Planet " . The act of " returning to the Promised Land , " Aeris also speaks of , is an allusion to the return to the Lifestream , it being the Promised Land of the Cetra . This concept is confirmed by the " Hoshi wo Meguru Otome " . Development . In the early plans for the " Final Fantasy VII " story , Cetra were different from what they ended up in the final version . " Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Omega " reveals that in the early story drafts Cetra , or Ancients , were an extinct race , who were said to have written the Book of Jenova — a book detailing the unknown workings of the human brain — and the race who created Materia . According to legends , Ancients could use magic without Materia , and had an advanced magical civilization . It was believed that the race of regular people also existed at that time , and that there were wide - ranging exchanges between them , or that the non - magical people were made into slaves . Due to the belief that Ancients could use magic inherently , it was rumored that people who harbor supernatural abilities are their descendants . The spirits protecting the Temple of the Ancients have forgotten how to speak , but in an earlier version the spirit in the room where the player can first buy items from it spoke with an accent sounded like from a rural Japanese area , saying " welcome " and " come again . "