There is scant info on Humanity’s Golden Age. Partially because it was followed by an event that nearly ended us, and partially, I suspect, because Bungie wants us to uncover it for ourselves next year. That doesn’t mean they haven’t dropped hints for us along the way. Come with me if you want to live as I present The Facts, make some Informed Suppositions and engage in a tad of Rampant Speculation.

The Facts:

Everything changed with the arrival of the Traveler. Long ago, it breathed new life into our system and began our Golden Age.

“The stories tell of a golden age long ago when our civilization spanned the system. It was a bright and hopeful time...

Old Russia:
They say this was where mankind first reached beyond the confines of Earth. Whatever promise this place once offered is long gone -- now it just holds the bones of that long-forgotten time.

“The City wants us to recover a piece of Charlemagne, one of the great Warminds of the Golden Age—a vast machine intelligence built by the ancient Powers of Mars.”

Exotics are the legendary weapons of yesterday, hand-crafted by our ancestors and left strewn about the system.

Informed Supposition:

Humanity’s Golden age seems to have been a time of great exploration and expansion, but interestingly, also one with some amount of war and conflict. When The Traveler came it brought about the Golden Age, seemingly through the terraforming of the worlds and moon of our solar system, perhaps even in the restoration of Earth itself. What came next was certainly a massive colony building effort, one who's remnants we’ve been shown in the abandoned colony ships still standing in Old Russia. But it may have also been one of extreme nationalism and even conflict, again as shown in Old Russia with the large intimidating wall surrounding those colony ships. It seems unlikely that the Russians were the only ones on Earth with intense fortifications. Our expansion was a huge success. We’ve seen evidence of massive cities on Mars, on icy moons, on the once deadly surface of Venus, and even on the sun blasted face of Mercury. How one even begins to terraform Mercury just boggles the mind!

I imagine the Golden Age of Humanity as not too dissimilar to what we have today. Relatively widespread peace and large pockets of prosperity. There would have been great feats of exploration and breakthroughs in science, but there would have also been conflict. From what’s left of the Fall we see that Humanity still knew how to build tanks and aircraft carriers. Are we to think that the Charlemagne a Warmind machine intelligence (aka AI) built on Mars was the only one of its kind? We hadn’t come together as one people and rejected our warlike ways, that much seems as certain as our expansion into the solar system.

Looking at the ruined remains of the cities on Mars, Venus, and Mercury it seems obvious that the Golden age was just that, an age. Unless we mastered Star Trek like replication on building sized scales the cities we’ve seen on other worlds would have taken decades if not centuries to build, not even counting the time to transport enough colonists there to build them. Maybe there was conflict and overly intense nationalism, but it also seems that it wasn’t so bad that it stopped us from expanding and from living our lives. After all, if you're in an intense state of constant warfare you'd build bunkers, not skyscrapers. What was it like during the Golden Age? We have so little to go on, but thats never stopped us from guessing!

Rampant Speculation:

- While we have pretty good proof that The Traveler was responsible for making the rest of our solar system livable, but I think maybe that’s not enough to launch Humanity into a 200+ year age of expansion. If The Traveler terraformed our worlds today in 2013 would we have the technology and resources to expand? Not really. Sure we might send a few astronauts, but city building, on moons of Saturn and Jupiter? Nah, that would be hugely, prohibitively expensive. We don’t have the lift capacity to get big equipment into space, and we don’t have the speed to make trips to anything past Mars even remotely manageable. Because of this I posit that The Traveler also brought the gift of faster than light travel. Journeys that would have taken months (to Mars) or years ( to pretty much anywhere else) would have been cut down to minutes, hours, or days. Terraforming is great, but FTL is how you kick start a Golden Age!

- What was our civilization like during the Golden Age? Was Earth a sole authority over dozens of colonies? Did each planet and moon get to govern itself? Were planets carved into sections controlled by competing countries back on Earth or rebellions that had broken away? Did all of the above try to occur at the same time? The Powers of Mars seems to have been a thing, and it sounds pretty serious. Was it a government or a megacorp or just a rural province with an awesome name?

- The Fallen, the Vex, the Cabal, The Hive, Race 5 (the black pyramid people) are all out there now, but what if they were also out there then, during the Golden Age? Did they all stream to the Sol system somehow knowing that The Traveler had scarified itself? Or could they have been with us since the start? Each world now seems to “belong to” each of the enemy races. What if each race was there during the Golden Age, not as enemies but as friends or benign competitors that followed The Traveler from the previous systems it might have helped? Or what if Humanity’s exotic weapons and Warminds of the Golden Age were built to hold off increasingly numerous and hostile invaders from far beyond our solar system? One can have a Golden Age and still have plenty of war at the same time can’t they?

- Destiny seems to take place entirely in our solar system, but there were some hints early on that it wouldn’t stay there forever. It’s likely that our enemies came from beyond on solar system, but maybe we too traveled farther afield than we’ve been told. At the height of our power maybe we invited our own destruction through jealousy of our prosperity, or through wars we started who’s tide eventually turned against us. It may have been a bright and hopeful time, but that doesn’t preclude Humanity being bright and hopeful expansionist aggressors who the rest of the races finally had enough of and stomped out.

- What about the Exo and Awoken? Did they exist during the Golden Age? I’ve always thought of Exo as proof of widespread AI and perhaps even AI citizenship. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for one to be able to play as a robot if one doesn’t have all the rights and access of a regular ole Human. And the Awoken? What about them?

- And finally, The Traveler eventually saved us, but why did it help us in the first place? Was our Golden Age a gracious gift? Or could it have been a secret bargain that eventually brought both us and The Traveler a world of hurt? I fully expect a twist with the Traveler, who’s to say it was a force for good at all? Or that we were?

I know I can’t be the only one with ideas about humanity’s Golden Age. What do you think was going on back then? Are there any hints or clues that I missed? What’s the craziest idea you’ve have about this bright and hopeful time? Speak up! I’d love to hear from ya!

Next Saturday: The Fall

It’s very hard to talk about the Golden Age without talking about The Fall. So we won’t… at least not for long. I hope you’ll join me again next week for more Facts, Informed Supposition, and Rampant Speculation. Until then:

All Speculation Saturdays:
Speculation Saturday #1: The Golden Age
Speculation Saturday #2: The Fall
Speculation Saturday #3: The Fallen
Speculation Saturday #4: The City
Speculation Saturday #5: The Gameplay
Speculation Saturday #6: What's New?
Speculation Saturday #7: The Hive
Speculation Saturday #8: The Vex
Speculation Saturday #9: The Cabal

Very interesting stuff. I have my own (wild) speculation on some of the AI in Destiny. It has probably been brought up before, but it wouldn't surprised me if AIs are based on seriously injured or killed humans from the past, so we put their consciousness in a robotic body. To me this would fit nicely with the two other races we already have, since they are both just variations on humans. Also could explain where Ghosts come from as well as maybe how we can be revived?

Neat idea. Are you thinking along the lines of a Ghost holding a Guardian's mind / neural patters / whatever in stasis or (again) whatever until they can be revived… or whatever? Seems very plausible!

Neat idea. Are you thinking along the lines of a Ghost holding a Guardian's mind / neural patters / whatever in stasis or (again) whatever until they can be revived… or whatever? Seems very plausible!

I am thinking Ghosts are more along the lines of a very old Guardian whose mind was perserved, while Exos are basically artificial bodies for Guardians who were seriously injured or possibly died.

Neat idea. Are you thinking along the lines of a Ghost holding a Guardian's mind / neural patters / whatever in stasis or (again) whatever until they can be revived… or whatever? Seems very plausible!

I am thinking Ghosts are more along the lines of a very old Guardian whose mind was perserved, while Exos are basically artificial bodies for Guardians who were seriously injured or possibly died.

Interesting. How about this to boost it (further?) into Rampant Speculation. Ghosts aren't Guardians exactly… they're Golden Age humans who were alive during the Fall.

Personally I don't put them that far along the spectrum to being ancient humans or anything. I think of them as AI made by the FOTC or whoever. But, Bungie has said that they can provide history and assistance in ruins. Your explanation works better than mine at that point, because how would The City know about Golden Age Saturn or wherever where as someone who was there back then just might.

We’ve seen evidence of massive cities on Mars, on icy moons, on the once deadly surface of Venus, and even on the sun blasted face of Mercury. How one even begins to terraform Mercury just boggles the mind!

I think you're right, but I think it's not so much its closeness to the Sun as its small size that makes it a bad candidate for terraforming (at least in the relatively short term; if and when the Sun gets close to the end of its life and expands to humongous proportions, Mercury will be the first to go-- followed by Venus and possibly Earth).

I imagine the Golden Age of Humanity as not too dissimilar to what we have today. Relatively widespread peace and large pockets of prosperity. There would have been great feats of exploration and breakthroughs in science, but there would have also been conflict. From what’s left of the Fall we see that Humanity still knew how to build tanks and aircraft carriers. Are we to think that the Charlemagne a Warmind machine intelligence (aka AI) built on Mars was the only one of its kind? We hadn’t come together as one people and rejected our warlike ways, that much seems as certain as our expansion into the solar system.

Of course not, it said that was one of the great Warminds of the Golden Age.

Looking at the ruined remains of the cities on Mars, Venus, and Mercury it seems obvious that the Golden age was just that, an age. Unless we mastered Star Trek like replication on building sized scales the cities we’ve seen on other worlds would have taken decades if not centuries to build, not even counting the time to transport enough colonists there to build them.

eh, maybe
I would think building techniques and technologies would grow right along with travel, weaponry, etc., so I think it would at least be not much more than today (i.e. a few years, up to a decade for a particularly large building).

- While we have pretty good proof that The Traveler was responsible for making the rest of our solar system livable, but I think maybe that’s not enough to launch Humanity into a 200+ year age of expansion. If The Traveler terraformed our worlds today in 2013 would we have the technology and resources to expand? Not really. Sure we might send a few astronauts, but city building, on moons of Saturn and Jupiter? Nah, that would be hugely, prohibitively expensive. We don’t have the lift capacity to get big equipment into space, and we don’t have the speed to make trips to anything past Mars even remotely manageable. Because of this I posit that The Traveler also brought the gift of faster than light travel. Journeys that would have taken months (to Mars) or years (to pretty much anywhere else) would have been cut down to minutes, hours, or days. Terraforming is great, but FTL is how you kick start a Golden Age!

I would like for FTL to be present or at least exist, but I don't think it would be needed for this. If the planet or moon is already livable, we could just send a large enough group of people there with some food and resources. They could, depending on the place, mine, build, farm, and make whatever else they might need, grow their population safely, and communicate with (most of) the rest of humanity with a maximum of... I had "a few days' delay" here and went to look stuff up and do math and it would actually be a maximum of about 4 hours and 15 minutes provided you stay near the major planets (that's Neptune to Earth at their farthest points from each other), but our travel speed at present is pretty abysmal, more than I thought, although it depends what you take as the fastest we've made something go, whether you want to include the gravity slingshot move, and how slowly you'd have to build up and lose speed for humans to survive the acceleration. Anyway here's a handy table of travel times around our solar system and here's something to give us hope for FTL.
Also, where did you get the "200+ years" figure?

- What was our civilization like during the Golden Age? Was Earth a sole authority over dozens of colonies? Did each planet and moon get to govern itself? Were planets carved into sections controlled by competing countries back on Earth or rebellions that had broken away? Did all of the above try to occur at the same time? The Powers of Mars seems to have been a thing, and it sounds pretty serious. Was it a government or a megacorp or just a rural province with an awesome name?

I don't know, but now I'm more curious about what it was.

- What about the Exo and Awoken? Did they exist during the Golden Age? I’ve always thought of Exo as proof of widespread AI and perhaps even AI citizenship. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for one to be able to play as a robot if one doesn’t have all the rights and access of a regular ole Human. And the Awoken? What about them?

I don't know, and I'm just as curious as I was before (which is to say, very).

- And finally, The Traveler eventually saved us, but why did it help us in the first place? Was our Golden Age a gracious gift? Or could it have been a secret bargain that eventually brought both us and The Traveler a world of hurt? I fully expect a twist with the Traveler, who’s to say it was a force for good at all? Or that we were?

I have a feeling the game, maybe the whole series, will hinge on the answer to that question, assuming we don't find out until the game's released. Then again, I also have a feeling it'll be one of those things that will have a few clues but no real answer present and won't matter to the story so it'll basically be there for people to make theories about.

I think you're right, but I think it's not so much its closeness to the Sun as its small size that makes it a bad candidate for terraforming (at least in the relatively short term; if and when the Sun gets close to the end of its life and expands to humongous proportions, Mercury will be the first to go-- followed by Venus and possibly Earth).

Yeah. I think it’s just a bad place to be in general.

eh, maybe
I would think building techniques and technologies would grow right along with travel, weaponry, etc., so I think it would at least be not much more than today (i.e. a few years, up to a decade for a particularly large building).

I would like for FTL to be present or at least exist, but I don't think it would be needed for this. If the planet or moon is already livable, we could just send a large enough group of people there with some food and resources. They could, depending on the place, mine, build, farm, and make whatever else they might need, grow their population safely, and communicate with (most of) the rest of humanity with a maximum of... I had "a few days' delay" here and went to look stuff up and do math and it would actually be a maximum of about 4 hours and 15 minutes provided you stay near the major planets (that's Neptune to Earth at their farthest points from each other), but our travel speed at present is pretty abysmal, more than I thought, although it depends what you take as the fastest we've made something go, whether you want to include the gravity slingshot move, and how slowly you'd have to build up and lose speed for humans to survive the acceleration. Anyway here's a handy table of travel times around our solar system and here's something to give us hope for FTL.

Perhaps. Still I figure we can build large buildings within a decade or whatever today because things like the roads, water systems, machinery, electric grids, trucks, tool, and the factories to build all of that stuff are in place already. Building a fully functional city from nothing is going to take a while. And to do that on multiple planets, even with FTL, is going to take longer still. From what we’ve seen Humanity had major cities on Mercury, Venus, Mars, and at least settlements on moons of Jupiter and or Saturn. That's a lot of places undertaking huge construction jobs.

Also, where did you get the "200+ years" figure?

200 years was just a very rough estimate based on the above with a whole lot of gut instinct added to the equation in place of actual numbers.

I have a feeling the game, maybe the whole series, will hinge on the answer to that question, assuming we don't find out until the game's released. Then again, I also have a feeling it'll be one of those things that will have a few clues but no real answer present and won't matter to the story so it'll basically be there for people to make theories about.

Could be. For all it’s stunning visuals and its saving of Humanity I kinda get the sense that The Traveler is a bit secondary to the story that’ll be unfolding. Sure, it’ll be up there protecting The City, but there won’t be a ton of revelations and plot beats coming from it too often. Not that there won't be amazing things to discover in the mean time. Of course that’s just a wild guess!

On the same token, are Fallen actually fallen humans who abandoned the rest for reincarnation? If Exo's and Ghosts could be AI based on humans or the encoded humans themselves, there are other applications of the technology.

In one of the Bungie demo's they confirmed that you can see the Fallen's "souls" when you kill them. Perhaps they threw in with some outside power that allows them to reincarnate when killed, granting immortality. I mean they start out with only two arms, and think Earth is theirs after all. Perhaps such immortality was outlawed or frowned upon, or it requires a patron much like the Traveler in order to function. If so the Fallen may have pledged themselves to another extrasolar entity in order to obtain it, and they may have been very resentful about being forced to do so.

I think the martin AI is indicative of higher levels of technology humans once possessed. There may have been a large automated workforce, centrally controlled by AIs based on Mars. This would also lead the Martians to have a large amount of AI war material and directors. That would explain how humanity could build so extensively in a short time, large amounts of automation, and Bungie has a thing about Mars, rebellions and AIs.

That would explain how humanity could build so extensively in a short time, large amounts of automation, and Bungie has a thing about Mars, rebellions and AIs.

Psh, what would you know about Mars, rebellions, and AIs, DURANDAL?

It totally wasn't me. It was some Traxus guy :)

Martian AI's sound like T-R-O-U-B-L-E to me. ;)

In some ways I want the alien races to actually be aliens. But it would be a cool twist if we never left our solar system and nobody but The Traveler entered it. That would pretty much make The Traveler the one who tried to stamp us out I guess.

My only thing to add would be this:

We see fields of rusty, wrecked equipment - cars and planes in particular - in several sources. Above all, I'm thinking of this bit of concept art:

The planes here look very old. The one up close looks almost like Korean War technology (think F-86 Sabre), and the one in the background (mostly covered up by the foreground) looks like World War II technology (sort of like a P-38 Lightning)! When on earth were these even made?

Those cars don't look futuristic. Rather, they look quite similar to cars from today, or even from a few decades earlier! Again, when were these made?

Any ideas?

Vale,
Perseus

Good points on both.

Other views of the cars, such as the bus below, feel closer to modern day or somewhat futuristic. Also the cars you see are just what's left of the frame. I'm no car expert, but is it really that easy to tell modern day cars from cars made 20+ years ago just looking at the barest possible bit of framework?

On the planes, I too found that one interesting. One one end of the explanation spectrum it could just be that the artist that did that piece liked older planes. On the other end there's always time traveling robots to bring in outdated technology. Another possible suggestion could be that the people of Earth were trying to fight or flee with any thing available. We already have a huge mass of Russians attempting to board a clearly insufficient number of colony ships. Who to say that old planes weren't pulled out and used in desperation?

Good points on both.

Other views of the cars, such as the bus below, feel closer to modern day or somewhat futuristic. Also the cars you see are just what's left of the frame. I'm no car expert, but is it really that easy to tell modern day cars from cars made 20+ years ago just looking at the barest possible bit of framework?

Not really easy, but somewhat easy. Trending frameworks have changed quite a bit on the last 20 years, but I can easily forgive Bungie for skipping that detail.

On the planes, I too found that one interesting. One one end of the explanation spectrum it could just be that the artist that did that piece liked older planes. On the other end there's always time traveling robots to bring in outdated technology. Another possible suggestion could be that the people of Earth were trying to fight or flee with any thing available. We already have a huge mass of Russians attempting to board a clearly insufficient number of colony ships. Who to say that old planes weren't pulled out and used in desperation?

Very good call. Had not thought of that. Maybe that also applies to the cars?

What if The Traveler was meant to help Planets or entire Solar Systems but with its help it brought with it harm? Maybe it would help a Planet in distress and raise them to great heights but it would be followed by the Civilization(s) it had rescued before and had promised great things (like the Fallen, who feel entitled to Earth). They would follow the Traveler seeking the things it had promised before it left them and maybe when the Traveler touched a new Solar System the previous Civilization(s) all felt entitled to it and would fight to get it.

Derp. I made this before I finished reading the whole thread, and this is almost exactly what he said. XD

What if The Traveler was meant to help Planets or entire Solar Systems but with its help it brought with it harm? Maybe it would help a Planet in distress and raise them to great heights but it would be followed by the Civilization(s) it had rescued before and had promised great things (like the Fallen, who feel entitled to Earth). They would follow the Traveler seeking the things it had promised before it left them and maybe when the Traveler touched a new Solar System the previous Civilization(s) all felt entitled to it and would fight to get it.

What would it have promised them? Why would it not fufill its promises?

I suspect there may be some truth to the various races fighting over the Sol system because The Traveler is here. Maybe because they hate it, or maybe because they want to obtain its power to defeat their enemies.

Having seen quite a few autobodies without the trim and interior, I can say the ones in the photo are too angular even for current production vehicles. If you look at vehicles built in the last two to three years, they are very rounded and smooth. The photos here have small rear windows with very boxy or hard angles that seem much more in line with the late 90s automotive style.

Now, there is nothing stoping future automotive styles to go retro and return to the boxy setup, but it seems unlikely. I'm also going to discount the russian based automotive makers since they currently do build in that style, but I don't see that trend continuing if the Russian economy picks up and they get money for a new design. I expect they will ape European trends just like the Indians and Chinese did when they revamped their markets.

The planes make sense to have a mishmash of types. The last days must have been desperate, and I can see even the US restoring the old planes at the western bone yards in a last ditch effort just to get something in the air to contest air superiorty. Prop driven aircraft are also still used in the modern era for ground support, ECM, recon and transport, so the crashed planes could be more contemporary turboprop aircraft.

Prop driven aircraft are also still used in the modern era for ground support, ECM, recon and transport, so the crashed planes could be more contemporary turboprop aircraft.

And 'air superiority' in many 3rd-world country, like mine.

That fits in line with my own pet theory that the word "Exo" is derived from the term "Exomorphic"; literally: "Outside of its previous form".

As for the "Awoken", my theory there is that they were humans that were modified in vitro, having had certain genomic sequences activated or, if you will, "awoken"...

That fits in line with my own pet theory that the word "Exo" is derived from the term "Exomorphic"; lieterally: "Outside of its previous form".

And even if you took it from Exoskeleton, it still implies there is another form than what you can see from the outside.

What if it isn't the various races themselves that followed the Traveler, but the 5th Race? What if the Traveler wrought a similar "Golden Age" upon the Cabal & the Fallen in the distant past & the mysterious Flying Pyramid Builders appeared & secretly co-opted each of them in turn, promising the Cabal new worlds to conquer & the Fallen a chance to regain their former glory, turning them each into lackeys of a sort? Perhaps the Vex came from a race that has yet to be encountered, but is destined to be wiped out in the future & who sent them back to our time, a pivotal time in history, to effect a change drastic enough to preserve their creators own timeline?

And the Hive? well, the short answer would be "Because Space Zombies"...

Honestly, these pieces are too scattered to provide much info in and of themselves... We still need a few crucial missing bits to link them all together.

I think what I'm most curious about as far as this stuff right now is whether or not the facility we were shown was the Baikonur Cosmodrome (or part of it or connected to it or built on top of it or built from it).
Also, I noticed in the concept art and game screenshots all the tires are gone; I forgot how long that takes but it gives us a minimum for the length of time between the collapse of civilization and the point we (the player characters) enter the story.

Dry rot can set in in just a few years, with the elements taking the remnants away in short order... Then again, whatever it was that killed all of the people throughout the Russian countryside could have melted all the tires off of the cars.

Dry rot can set in in just a few years, with the elements taking the remnants away in short order... Then again, whatever it was that killed all of the people throughout the Russian countryside could have melted all the tires off of the cars.

Or the tires may have been all harvested to make Velveeta Cheese. The stuff will surely be traded in the underground blackmarkets like gold in ANY post apocalyptic scenario.

Dry rot can set in in just a few years, with the elements taking the remnants away in short order... Then again, whatever it was that killed all of the people throughout the Russian countryside could have melted all the tires off of the cars.

Or the tires may have been all harvested to make Velveeta Cheese. The stuff will surely be traded in the underground blackmarkets like gold in ANY post apocalyptic scenario.

That's what I was thinking.

Certainly Race 5 is extra double mysterious. Just by process of elimination I place them as the race that caused Humanity's fall. I caution against heading towards a Covenant style grouping of the enemy races though. Why? Uh... because with no evidence whatsoever I feel that Bungie won't want to go with that approach again. I think, eh... hope, that these various races all have individual motivations.

Certainly Race 5 is extra double mysterious. Just by process of elimination I place them as the race that caused Humanity's fall. I caution against heading towards a Covenant style grouping of the enemy races though. Why? Uh... because with no evidence whatsoever I feel that Bungie won't want to go with that approach again. I think, eh... hope, that these various races all have individual motivations.

They have mentioned in the past that the races are not friendly towards each other. If I can find the article I'll link it.

Dry rot can set in in just a few years, with the elements taking the remnants away in short order... Then again, whatever it was that killed all of the people throughout the Russian countryside could have melted all the tires off of the cars.

Or the tires may have been all harvested to make Velveeta Cheese. The stuff will surely be traded in the underground blackmarkets like gold in ANY post apocalyptic scenario.

That's what I was thinking.

Well, I guess that pretty much ends any speculation about what happened to all the tires during the Collapse. One mystery down, 8,134,213 to go...