Time of the Ancients Era

The **Time of the Ancients Era** was the time period where the Forerunners, Chozo, and other highly advanced races dominated the galaxy.

## Timeline

### 16th Megaanum BC

**C. 15 million BC**

The Forerunners are created by the Precursors, and seeded on Ghibalb.

Hominidae/the Great Apes evolve

### 13th Megaanum BC

**C. 12 million BC**

Quintessons colonize Cybertron and enslave its people. Eventually, the Cybertronians revolt.

### 11th Megaanum BC

**C. 10 million BC**

Forerunners nearly wipe out the Precursors when they apparently failed the Precursors’s test to hold the Mantle of Responsibility. The Precursors did not fight back, due to their philosophy of the Mantle.

### 10th Megaanum BC

**C. 9 million BC**

Cybertronian Golden Age, followed by the Age of Rust, followed by the Great Cybertronian War. Autobots and Decepticons continue to wage war for five million years.

### 5th Megaanum BC

**C. 4 million BC**

The Fall of Cybertron. With Cybertron’s energon resources drastically drained, a desperate few last battles are fought, and the Great Exodus begins. With the leadership of both factions in stasis on Earth, the war mostly grinds to a halt for several million years, though skirmishes still occur throughout the galaxy.

### 4th Megaanum BC

**C. 3.4 million BC**

Beginning of the Stone Age. *Kenyanthropus* utilizes the first stone tools.

### 3rd Megaanum BC

**C. 2.8 million BC**

Genus *Homo*, humanity, evolves on Earth.

The majority of extant sapient species’ genera evolve on their respective homeworlds

**C. 2.5 million BC**

A vibranium meteorite impacts east Africa, affecting the plant life around it, and becomes the Great Mound.

### 2nd Megaanum BC

**C. 1.1 million BC**

Ancient humans achieve spaceflight, and colonize numerous worlds, but suffer several dark ages resulting in the loss of most of their historical records and knowledge before eventually encountering the Forerunners. Note that the ancient humans did not belong to one species, but actually several genera, including *Homo* and *Gigantopithecus*.

### 1st Megaanum BC

**C. 250,000 BC**

*Homo* *sapiens* evolves.

**C. 200,000 BC**

Anatomically modern humans evolve

**C. 190,000 BC**

Maximals and Predacons arrive on Earth from the future via Transwarp. The Beast Wars are waged.

**C. 160,000 BC**

Humans learn to control fire

**C. 150,000 BC**

The Forerunners are believed to have risen as the dominant species in the Milky Way Galaxy by advancing technological discoveries gathered from the remnants left by prior ancient races. Believing themselves responsible for the lives of all those less advanced than they, the Forerunners adopt the ideology of the Mantle of Responsibility.

**107,445 BC**

The Flood appears and begins infesting Ancient Human space, causing humanity to invade a sector of Forerunner space to escape. This would spark the Human-Forerunner Wars.

**106,498 BC**

End of the Human-Forerunner Wars. Nearly all traces of humanity’s interstellar civilization is erased, and they revert back into hunter-gatherer societies.

**97,745 BC**

The Forerunner-Reaper-Flood War begins. Already fighting the Reapers, with the appearance of the Flood, the Forerunner Ecumene starts its slow collapse. Their time is lengthened, however, as the Flood and Reapers primarily focus on fighting each other.

**97,495 BC**

With the last of the Protheans gone, the Reapers turn their attention to the rest of the galaxy. Martians, Isu, Engineers, and numerous other species all disappear in the time approaching the conflict’s end, either from destruction by Reapers, or absorption by the Flood.

The first test-fire of a Halo Installation is conducted. Installation 07 is fired on solar system setting, destroying life in the Charum Hakkor system.

Members of species throughout the galaxy begin to be taken to the Ark for preservation, as a precaution for what would await ahead.

**97,445 BC**

The Forerunner-Flood War reaches its conclusion with the firing of the Halo Array, annihilating nearly all organic life in the galaxy. Most life-forms are returned to their homeworlds, reseeded by Forerunner Keyships.

Some errors by the Keyships occur, such as one crashing on Janjur Qom, and others crashing onto a number of other worlds, explaining the presence of plants and animals on worlds other than those that have fossil record evidence of them evolving on.

Cybertronians, immune to the Halo Array due to being mechanical life forms, survive effortlessly, though they recorded this event as a great tragedy for the galaxy. Their records are the primary basis for knowledge of the time period in the modern era.

The Chozo manage to shield themselves from the effects of the Halos, possibly within a Shield World. Some speculate that these events are what caused the race to universally become pacifists, or at least contributed to their decision.