Cainites

The "**Cainites**" or "**Children of Cain**" are the dominant race of humans in the movie "Noah". They were a powerful, industrial civilization that collapsed due to environmental destruction and loss of resources.

The Cainites were ruled by Tubal-cain, their supreme leader and king.

## History

Cain, son of Adam, and the first murderer was the presumable founder of the Cainite civilization and race, With the murder of Abel, he and his descendants became more violent and warlike. In spite of his sins, he and his descendants were sheltered and gifted with knowledge of creation by the Watchers, a band of fallen angels.

With the Watcher's assistance and tutelage they built a great city, and grew strong and mighty. The Cainites spread throughout the world, establishing more cities, forging a world-spanning industrial empire that spread with their cities. But quickly they turned on their tutors. The Cainites began to enslave the Watchers, even killing the benevolent fallen angels to mine their valuable tzohar bodies that contained their celestial immaterial forms. After the Watchers were saved from extinction by Methuselah of the Sethites at the hands of the Cainites, the corrupted humans withdrew and continued their society for centuries , in the process they built upon the knowledge base of their tutors expanding their information and understanding beyond what they were taught but perverted their gifts for violence and shortsighted gain. Incessantly warring with each other, further expanding their civilization, and consuming whatever resources that they found in the process, until they were near famine.

## Society

Cainite society involved industry, mining, smithing, and warfare. Meat was a major part of the Cainite diet, based on the cultural belief in superiority over animals and the weak.

As their society ran out of land to grow crops and animals to eat, the desperate Cainites resorted to cannibalism, killing and eating other Cainites to survive. This resulted in many ruins scattered throughout the now-barren lands.

When Tubal-cain was surveying a meat market, his guards dragged away some hungry beggars; behind them were more Cainites begging for food. Noah sneaked into Tubal-cain's camp to find a wife for his sons, and he was horrified by the sight of Cainite warriors dragging children to a fence, where they were most likely traded for meat, and then killed and eaten.

The last Cainites were led by Tubal-cain to wage war and claim Noah's ark, but were drowned by a great flood. Some Cainites climbed on a mountaintop, only to be swept by a great wave and drowned into the oceans.

## Knowledge and Technology

The Cainites have a high level of knowledge of creation, a knowledge base initially gifted to them by the band of fallen angels known as the Watchers and later on which they improved and expanded upon. The Watchers taught them "magic and science, knowledge of plants and stars, metals and fire."  Most prominent of these fields of knowledge developed after the Watchers initial teachings included those of smithing, mining, architecture, and industry. Some of their cities are highly developed with advanced feats of architecture and appear to feature skyscrapers, but ones which seem to be made of both stone and wood scaffolding. Such skyscrapers made of natural materials were an achievement forever lost in the deluge and were not recreated by any postdiluvian culture, no matter how advanced they became. The Cainites mined and used tzohar in their industry, (as seen from the smokestacks in Cainite cities), a coal-like glowing combustible mineral and fossil fuel based power source, all supplies of which presumably were lost in the flood. Later tzohar was used as propellant for rocket-launcher-like pipe guns for the battle to take the Ark and escape the Flood. These firearms were noted by Tubal-Cain to be a recent creation of his chief armorer before the climactic battle. Their level of technological development is further reinforced by the fact that the secrets of metalworking have apparently existed and, presumably built upon, for centuries, since Methuselah, who lived to 969, is shown facing an army as a young man, one equipped with metal tools and and weapons, Methuselah himself wore segmented plate armor and wielded a metal sword when confronting the Cainite soldiers.

Overall, the Cainites were a civilization with advanced knowledge, they were in many ways willfully apathetic of certain areas, despite the watchers educating them in these fields. As their desire to dominate the world led them to deliberately ignore sustainability in their society even though, as stated, the Watchers had given them the necessary cultural expertise to live in harmony with nature and each other. Illustrative of this was that while the Cainites undoubtably had knowledge of agriculture their apathy towards sustainable forms of civilizational development led them to over-farm the soil and plants and excessively harvest their animals. As a consequence this in turn led to their society running out of land to grow crops and animals to eat, causing them to resort to cannibalizing the weaker members of their society for food. However, one area of cultural expertise the Cainites did value and further develop from the Watchers' initial teachings was knowledge of warfare . This is shown by them being able to create an army out of mostly untrained (and probably half-starved) refugees and a few professionally trained soldiers as instructors, and later, in their last stand, as force multipliers, to almost successfully save themselves by hijacking Noah's Ark. Tubai-cain himself, alongside his subordinate warlords, proved shrewd tacticians and leaders in the final battle, showing the Cainites had knowledge of generalship as well as mere personal combat.

## Gallery

A Cainite city.A drying river in an abandoned Cainite mine.An army of Cainites coming to kill Noah and his father.Cainite butcher.Warriors dragging beggars away from a market.A Cainite village.
## Trivia

* The helmets worn by Cainites resemble welding masks.