Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Ok, the slann created the eldar and orks basically.

Someone obviously interfered with tau development and may have created them, or maybe just took over their development.

Do any races in 40k just evolve naturally as we imagine humans did? And did humans evolve in 40k as we think they did in the real world? The similiarties between them and eldar are way to close to be accidental, aren't they?

Were humans created or directed by some power in the 40k universe and is there any background on what did it?

I'm beginning to wonder if the slann were the only race in 40k to actually evolve without outside interference or control.

There’s a suggestion that humanity was a project started by The Old Ones/Old Slaan (or, at least, life on Earth was first started off by them), but due to how it turned out, we were left to evolve relatively naturally.

The Necrontyr and C'tan

I think most races in 40k develop naturally, they just have very little time in the spotlight.

Human development in 40k? There are those cryptic tidbits about "men of gold", "men of stone" and "men of iron".

 AuntHerbert wrote:
Human development in 40k? There are those cryptic tidbits about "men of gold", "men of stone" and "men of iron".

Wasn’t that more during the age of technology rather than the origins of humankind as a species?

 Eipi10 wrote:
The Necrontyr and C'tan

Hey good call! I actually forgot to count the C'tan!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Aash wrote:

 AuntHerbert wrote:
Human development in 40k? There are those cryptic tidbits about "men of gold", "men of stone" and "men of iron".

Wasn’t that more during the age of technology rather than the origins of humankind as a species?

Yes it was.

On this thread I wonder if the kroot are a product of natural evolution or not. Did whatever create the tau adapt the kroot to be a useful ally to the tau later on?

There may be a pattern in 40k that naturally evolving races are often wiped out or at least seriously beaten down by races that were given a leg up by more advanced races. How many races have orks wiped out or just crushed? Necrontyr and slann may be rare examples of races climbing the ladder by themselves. Humanity may have gotten a very early start due to the slann, maybe, but largely pulled themselves up, with maybe some subtle interference from chaos.

I doubt Kroot were made to be Tau friends. They don't seem to add much from a genetic perspective compared to things like the Nicassar.

But naturally evolved races are at a disadvantage in 40k. Evolution doesn't particularly go for the absolute best most efficient design so when you're up against things designed to be weapons you're not in a great position.

@Matt Swain
The necrontyr, slann, and c'tan were the first three races, each dominate over one area of the universe/warp. The Necrontyr used science to manipulate reality to get what the wanted, the c'tan ate stars to gain the raw power to brute force their way through any problem (my dad's major professor would often tell students who gave incorrect chemical equations "that might work ... on the surface of the sun"), and the slann used warp magic.

I guess the tau allies are other races the evolved independently, even if the tau themselves didn't. I don't know much about the tau allies, the kroot and vespids are the only ones I can name off the top of my head. But I do know that they are all very minor races who were confined to a single world (more or less) until the tau came along. They're the kind of species that would get wiped out by hundreds each year of the great crusade.

@pm713
Evolutions does tend towards the most efficient, best design. It's just that it tends towards that design for a given niche. It can't handle a suddenly ork invasion or something very well, there is no niche to hide in when a waagh comes to your planet. Unless your the tyrannids with their hyperspeed evolution.

This might explain some of the hate necrons feel towards eldar and (kr)orks.

The necrons clawed their way up from the primordial ooze, they achieved all they had, they made themselves great despite incredible handicaps.

The eldar and the greenskins were literally given civilization, culture, language, technology, etc.

I can see where the necrons might resent them, especially the eldar who think they;re the greatest thing in the current universe. Such arrogance, such entitlement, so unearned.

Feel like there’s a fair amount of Mis-remembering in the answers.

I’ll come back to this tomorrow a) when I’m sober b) on my PC to make typing easier c) ideally with citations.

 Eipi10 wrote:
@pm713
Evolutions does tend towards the most efficient, best design. It's just that it tends towards that design for a given niche. It can't handle a suddenly ork invasion or something very well, there is no niche to hide in when a waagh comes to your planet. Unless your the tyrannids with their hyperspeed evolution.

Bad phrasing on my part. I meant more that there's nobody sitting at a table designing things and removing things that are a waste of energy to create which is why we have vestigial structures.

pm713 wrote:
I doubt Kroot were made to be Tau friends. They don't seem to add much from a genetic perspective compared to things like the Nicassar.

But naturally evolved races are at a disadvantage in 40k. Evolution doesn't particularly go for the absolute best most efficient design so when you're up against things designed to be weapons you're not in a great position.

That's because they're kind of an accident. Proto-prior strains were stuff like krootox and knarlocs. The actual sapient kroot came about as a result on nomming on orks, picking up enough smarts and gene-coded technology to kick-start an actual culture.

The presence of the pariah gene strongly suggests the human genome was fettled by the necrons at some point.

There was a throw away line in the article that listed krork and eldar as old one creations implying that something had been started on earth.

But given we're talking 60 million years ago, we're talking about Darwinius masillae ancestors, squirrel sized proto-primates.

That's not really much to work with.

I'd prefer to think that humanity evolved naturally and the old ones simply protected the planet, rather than actively created us. Too much chosen one junk wrapped up in being created by the old ones.

Howver I've often thought that you could argue humanity are a lost colony of necrontyr, evolving longer lives on a planet not as sucky as their original one. Humans and necrons do look physically very similar.

Between the pariah gene being in the human genome, and both a Ctan shard and bits of a dolmen gate being found here, there's a pretty good chance it was a necron world at some point.

They could have just started the process of life growing on Earth or just inserted the Pariah gene into a bunch of species and leave it to it. There could be a Null Cat somewhere. Hint hint GW.

pm713 wrote:

 Eipi10 wrote:
@pm713
Evolutions does tend towards the most efficient, best design. It's just that it tends towards that design for a given niche. It can't handle a suddenly ork invasion or something very well, there is no niche to hide in when a waagh comes to your planet. Unless your the tyrannids with their hyperspeed evolution.

Bad phrasing on my part. I meant more that there's nobody sitting at a table designing things and removing things that are a waste of energy to create which is why we have vestigial structures.

Real evolution is not a neat process. For example, I am absolutely perplexed by how tree sloths survive. I honestly cannot iimagine how that species wasn't killed off eons ago... How does it survive?

it's a bit misleading that evolution tends towards the best or most efficient design.

It is a probabilistic system that tends towards superior relative to others in its species and environment, but that doesn't mean superior or better in an objective or holistic sense.

There are a range of go-to examples of sub optimal structures in animals, like the upside down reflection in the mammalian eye they requires everything to be flipped right way up in the brain. Or that the laryngeal nerves in mammals descend from the vagus nerve down and under the aortic arch and back up to the larynx, resulting in a nerve about 4x longer than it needs to be in order reach the area it's supposed to.

In extreme examples like the giraffe, this nerve is almost 5 metres longer than it needs to be - seriously, look this one up it's absolutely phenomenal how ridiculously and needlessly long this nerve is.

The point is that unless a gene is deleterious to your survival, it will stick around. It can have no positive or negative affect.

We're sitting on a scales where a mutation can tip us slightly closer to death or improved life and the probability of the environment determines whether you die as a result.

Something like a sloth only has to be neutrally survivable, or slightly positive in the environment it is in. Unless predators can get to it, unless it can't find food, it will survive along just fine until a new gene or environmental change upsets its survival equilibrium.

Each individual organism in the population has its own slightly different survival curve based on its genes and environment. Individually they may be more or less likely to survive but on a population level all this does is strengthen the likelyhood that high survival genes are increased and propagated, keeping the species going.

I at times wonder if sloths just smell so ghawdawful even a hungry carnivore won't eat one...

 Matt Swain wrote:
I at times wonder if sloths just smell so ghawdawful even a hungry carnivore won't eat one...

I believe that is actually it. They aren't worth killing nutritionally speaking and are generally unpleasant so they get ignored. Check with actual sources to confirm.

As far as I know, even the Krork and Brainboys Ork origin story has never been presented as more than a legend.
We don't have, and shouldn't have, objective facts about the 40K universe and it's origins. The mystery and misinformation about events leaves room for creativity and interpretation :-D

I thought the suggestion was that the old ones seeded a large number of races, perhaps those that now exist, and took advantage of those that were successful in to developing into a race that could fight the ctan and necrontyr. Humans maybe didn’t evolve quick enough or develop enough special attributes to make them capable of joining in the fight. And many races were wiped out during that war. The necrontyr absolutely hammered the galaxy at one point and this is 40k so xenocide is a theme. The eldar probably survived in the webway which I don’t think necrontyr even managed to access.

This maybe just my head fluff.

I also thought that there was something in the fact that having genes that make your race warp sensitive probably means that you were made by the old ones because they were masters of warp energy. Thus the old ones created the chaos gods by adding all of these species to the universe that were connected to the warp. Also stand to reason that as most humans can’t manifest warp powers, like the Orks and eldar, they weren’t much use to the old ones.

Eldar were the old ones teachers pets and inherited what was left of the old ones Empire. Old editions of 40k suggested that there were higher evolved Orks and they weren’t necessarily As chaotic as they are now. I’m remembering a reference to brain boyz.

You could look at a lot of species and argue they would be so useful in a war that they must have been made for it, Megarachnids anyone? Jokero......