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Maybe I've read something wrong in the past, but I distinctly remember reading somewhere that there was another immortal who was born during the early period of Earth's history and now travels the galaxy as a loner or something to that affect?
Maybe I'm wrong? or if you could enlighten me that would be awesome because its been bugging me.

Welcome to Dakka Rok.

I think you're referring to the immortals.

There might be some fluff pro's who might correct me - but Oll Persson who's linked in a couple of the Heresy book fought in WWII and other battles so he's definitely very old. But as old as the Emperor?

The Empy was suggested to have been Saint George from the Dark Ages.

There are other 'perpetuals' who are pretty much immortal, but I think the Emperor is the oldest of them and only the Emperor and Anval Thawn are known to still be alive during the time of the main game setting.

From memory, all of the psykers (shamans) on Earth committed sucide and used their powers cumulatively to create the Emperor. Did I imagine that, or have I read it somewhere?

You didn't imagine it, but the HH series has decided to disregard that basically bring some of them back as so-called "perpetuals".

IIRC originally they all committed suicide because the Warp was stirring and eating their souls before they could be reborn.

What, inconsistent fluff?

*drops hat*

 Tigurius wrote:
Welcome to Dakka Rok.

I think you're referring to the immortals.

There might be some fluff pro's who might correct me - but Oll Persson who's linked in a couple of the Heresy book fought in WWII and other battles so he's definitely very old. But as old as the Emperor?

The Empy was suggested to have been Saint George from the Dark Ages.

Oll is also mentioned as having been on the Argo with Jason in ancient Greece, so I am pretty sure he is close to the Emperor's age, though I am not too sure as to how old the Emperor is canonically.

 Tigurius wrote:
From memory, all of the psykers (shamans) on Earth committed sucide and used their powers cumulatively to create the Emperor. Did I imagine that, or have I read it somewhere?

from what I remember the Emperor's origins are very much shrouded in mystery. I've heard many many different "theories" and all are pretty crazy.

There are a number Perpetuals that are from Ancient times, but it doesn't give actual dates.

Srota wrote:

 Tigurius wrote:
Welcome to Dakka Rok.

I think you're referring to the immortals.

There might be some fluff pro's who might correct me - but Oll Persson who's linked in a couple of the Heresy book fought in WWII and other battles so he's definitely very old. But as old as the Emperor?

The Empy was suggested to have been Saint George from the Dark Ages.

Oll is also mentioned as having been on the Argo with Jason in ancient Greece, so I am pretty sure he is close to the Emperor's age, though I am not too sure as to how old the Emperor is canonically.

8,000BC for The Emperor.

No idea for Oll. The Jason and the Argonauts bit is roughly 300BC so no where close.

Mellow wrote:

Srota wrote:
Oll is also mentioned as having been on the Argo with Jason in ancient Greece, so I am pretty sure he is close to the Emperor's age, though I am not too sure as to how old the Emperor is canonically.

8,000BC for The Emperor.

No idea for Oll. The Jason and the Argonauts bit is roughly 300BC so no where close.

The Argonauts were supposedly around just before the Trojan war, so more like 1,200 BC. Still nowhere close to the Emperor's alleged birth-date though.

The Emperor would have been in humanity's first true civilizations at 8000 BC. We're talking way-ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Babylon, etc.

8,000 BC is way earlier than any of those civilizations.

The gap between the Emperor's birth and the building of Stonehenge is larger than the gap between building Stonehenge and today. He's older than metal tools and pottery. Mankind was just figuring out farming crops and domesticating animals around the time he showed up.

Interesting research if anyone feels like reading useless but fun information... around 8000bc there used to be a cult of "vulture shamanism" in central Turkey.

According to 40k fluff this is the time and region the Emperor is from. Also, according to the fluff the Emperors soul was spawned when thousands of shamans commited suicide to create his soul...

Go read up about Vulture Shamanism for some interesting background info...

 Perfect Organism wrote:
8,000 BC is way earlier than any of those civilizations.

The gap between the Emperor's birth and the building of Stonehenge is larger than the gap between building Stonehenge and today. He's older than metal tools and pottery. Mankind was just figuring out farming crops and domesticating animals around the time he showed up.

It's only way earlier than what we know about them. Egypt, for example, is far older than anything we have concrete evidence for. The oldest-known relics we have of Egypt are also amongst their most-advanced accomplishments. We only see, for example, the late-stage developments of their construction feats (like the pyramids) and public works, we don't have evidence of the foundations they used to get to that point.

Of Sumeria, we know even less (though we guess at a lot, too).

Of course 8000BC is the birth of the New Man but the shaman were millions of years old and all of those collective memories gradually manifested as the New Man matured to adulthood, so the Emperor's soul and mind is incredibly ancient.

A corny film called 'A Man From Earth' is an interesting watch for anyone interested in the Emperor.

Millions? Uh... human beings... as in homo sapiens are not even a million years old. There's no way the shamans that gave rise to the Emperor are that old, unless we have some Hyborean Age stuff going on here.

This site has homo-sapiens as emerging from Africa 250,000 years ago.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_history

The controlled use of fire 800,000 years ago and homo-erectus at 1.8 million years ago.

Truly amazing time spans to even IMAGINE for an average person.

Perpetuals would truly be disjointed from the world in if any were to exist in those era's through to 30k AD.

Another site I looked into stated that the genetic expression of modern humanity separated from the Neanderthals about 500,000 years ago... but in either event, humans (as we would recognize them) are not even one million years old.

The shaman originated with the very earliest of human creatures, their souls reborn into new bodies over and over. Realm of Chaos, The Lost and The Damned page 175, 'Having survived so long, for millions of years...'.

Then GW has no idea what they are talking about. We did not have shamans prior to having homo sapiens.

 Tigurius wrote:


The Empy was suggested to have been Saint George from the Dark Ages.

I'd say it's a little stronger then a suggestion. the scene in Mechanium where it describes him defeating and sealing away the void dragon was pratically a word by word retelling of the story of george and the dragon I grew up with

If i remember correctly Ollanius Pius was retconned (stupidly in my eyes) as being part of a group of perpetuals like the emperor, but horus turned him insideout when he saved the emps. So maybe.

Oll Persson was the name! GORK knows that's been bugging me for ages.
Also if this is what the forum boards are like, then I am home.
finally, while the homo sapien species as it is genetically today, this since we are talking about many thousands of year and the future so I wouldn't be surprised after all the genetic melting pot scenarios and environmental adaptions picked up through galactic settlements, humanity in 40k as a whole could probably be classified as a different species from us.
as for the millions of years thing, we don't know the old ones impact on us as a species. We know that the eldar us come from the same genetic ancestor possibly, we know that the old ones had toyed with us a little before deciding to leave us alone instead of advanced evolution and conscription against the ctan. I'd like to think humanity simply didn't have the same potential as the eldar, think ancient ancestor as alpha model, human and other derivatives beta, eldar the production model. but the old ones weren't about just throwing species away, so we were allowed to propagate and evolve on our own, thus allowing for potentially millions of year of the laws of nature to takeover in the meantime that allowed us to become more relevant on a galactic scale in terms of intelligent and psychic abilities. Thus shaman from any primitive societies in the meantime could reincarnate for the entire period after old ones contact.

The only strange thing for me is that shamans (homo superior) were "better" than homo sapiens so why would they fall off the evolutionary ladder and then after thousands of years reappear.

 Psienesis wrote:
Then GW has no idea what they are talking about. We did not have shamans prior to having homo sapiens.

Shaman in this context was a generic term to refer to psykers who, via their powers, guided ordinary humans, taking up positions of authority within their tribe/family group/et cetera. Besides which, I'm pretty sure we don't and haven't ever had any psykers and the New Man is not wandering around the planet at this very moment so, what does it matter if GW chose the term 'shaman' to refer to the early psykers?

Rok1099 wrote:
as for the millions of years thing...

All that guff about the Old Ones in the Necron Codex... I am not a fan of that background. They took the old Slann background from Rogue Trader and shoehorned in it for no good reason.

Even using that material we know that the Old Ones had no direct connection to humanity, the War in Heaven was sixty million years ago so there weren't even that many mammals around. The energies unleashed by the Old Ones indirectly affected the Earth but that's about it.

As that background was based on the Slann background which predates the background from both Realm of Chaos books, it completely breaks all the background contained in almost half a dozen books in just a few scant paragraphs.

The reason why the shaman could no-longer reincarnate as they had always done previously, was that, according to the RoC background, the rise of humanity was feeding the Chaos Powers to such an extent that daemons were devouring the shaman's souls before they could reincarnate. They didn't lose the ability, it simply became so hazardous as to be impossible and hence why they decided to commit mass suicide and reincarnate one last time and become the New Man.

It's also worth noting that in the journal of Keeper Cripias, those humans which spread across Earth are known as the First Men or Golden Race, those humans which came later are the Second Men or Stone Race whose technologies allow both Gold and Stone Races to leave Earth and expand into the galaxy but since the Golden Race are dependent on the Stone Race's technology they dwindle away until only the Stone Race remains, sometime in the twentieth millennium. This suggests that those humans of the Imperium are not the same as modern day humans who it would seem ceased to exist many thousands of years before the Age of the Imperium.