The content of this thread is half theory and half fan fiction (on an amateur level, I'm afraid
) based on ideas that I have read on websites like AVPGalaxy and Scified plus my own take of the things. And btw, forgive me for my bad English
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
Somewhere in Paradise (or somewhere else), the Engineers found the source of infinite wisdom: "The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil". Partly a creature, plant, machine and even an interdimensional portal of some kind; the thing is a truly spacetime singularity.
The Engineers ate of the forbidden fruit in order "to be godlike", and this forbidden fruit is the genetic accelerant popularly known as black goo. According to their findings, the dark virus works like a biochemical algorithm. Pluss they discovered that they could reach a temporary altered state of consciousness induced by the small amounts of the dark liquid. However,they began to see very bizarre things through this psychedelic experience, and everything evolved from being an experiment to an authentic shamanic ritual in order to interact with the "world of the deads", so to speak.
The Path to Paradise Begins in Hell
The world tree is a cultural archetype present in many religions and mythologies and is represented as a colossal tree which supports the heavens, connecting the heavens, the terrestrial world, and, through its roots, the underworld.
So they found a powerful source of knowledge and a portal to another world in this ancestral tree, and they started traveling and seeing things they had never seen before.
"Once the Engineers expressed themselves as humans do, taking pleasure in music, colour and story, but they've long learned to see in more dimensions than we do. Their art and ornament exist on planes imperceptible to human senses. Their constructions look dark and grim to us; but the Engineers' eyes see far more than our own."But such trips were not pure hallucinations. Their minds and consciences began to interpret the cosmos in the same way that the biological algorithm does, traveling through all the strings, vibrations, tones and melodies that make up an epic symphony. It was like traveling through the Universe's DNA, and an unlimited library of information at the same time.
So...Why this race of ancient humans had the habit of dressing like biomechanical beasts to pilot their equally bizarre space ships?
Well, the answer could be found it in the film Prometheus and real-life archaeological artifacts. In the aforementioned movie, there is a fictional version of Pakal's sarcophagus lid (the tomb of an ancient Mayan king).
I know Scott and the writers were inspired by the Erich von Däniken's hypothesis and that this iconography represents an Engineer in his iconic telescopic chair. But then I started paying attention to what the true archeologists say about this ancient artifact:
"The iconography is a representation of World Tree, which the Maya believed had its roots in the underworld, trunk on the earthly plane, and branches high in paradise, and Pacal's travel through this metaphisical wolrd after his death".So, when the Engineers were performing they psychedelic astral trips, they started with hell. which like a Pandora's box, releasing a whole dimension of the most horrible and bizarre nightmare visions.
Meeting the Designer
In the underworld, the Engineers began to change into terrifying monstrosities similar to the demons that surrounded them. Along with the transformation, the madness began to surface with eerie thoughts and notions.
They mutilated their bodies in order to recover their original human form, but when they looked between their wounds they could not see anything. There was no blood, muscles, organs or bones. Everything was a dark and infinite emptiness. Between the terror and the agony, strange questions began to emerge:
"What if there is nothing? Maybe our feelings and our memories were designed and we aren't real at all. Our Eden is just an illusion created 7 days ago and we are nothing more than characters, only a handful of pathetic pawns being controlled by cruel-indifferent players."
However, and through millennia of experience, they improve their skills. From there, astral travel ceased to be a nightmare and began to become a pleasant experience and an art in itself. They learned how to use the path of hell to reach paradise and enlightenment. It's was a scary but necessary path, as they learned a lot about conscientiousness and cosmos.
Eventually they began to see the true beauty of existence, and just like in the physical universe where astronomical events from millions of years ago can be seen in the present through telescopes, the Engineers witnessed one of the oldest and most primordial events in the universe: they met the Designer (or at least a manifestation of his/her consciousness). And like the philosophical God of the Pantheism, the designer sacrificed himself to become the universe in which the Engineers are living.
"Pandeism is a theological doctrine first delineated in the 18th century which combines aspects of pantheism with aspects of deism. It holds that the creator deity became the universe (pantheism) and ceased to exist as a separate and conscious entity (deism holding that God does not interfere with the universe after its creation). Pandeism is proposed to explain, as it relates to deism, why God would create a universe and then abandon it, and as to pantheism, the origin and purpose of the universe."Engineers Civilization - Caste System
The prolonged use of tiny amounts of black goo began to mutate the DNA of the Engineers; their skin became albino, their eyes became black, their strength, intelligence and physical resistance improved exponentially. At this point, they devised ingenious electromagnetic mechanisms to cover the vast distances of space and great progress in bioengineering. And with all the knowledge learned during millennia of astral interdimensional travel, the Engineers became a caste civilization.
Space seeders: So just like their Creator made the universe by becoming the universe, the sacrificial Engineer created the primordial life on Earth by becoming the primordial life itself.
They create life through death
("sometimes to create, one must first destroy") by performing a symbolic ritual as a cult to the Designer of the universe and a symbol of their trip from hell to paradise through the World Tree to reach the infinite wisdom and the transcendence of consciousness.
Emissaries: They were wise mentors of the stars, who came to Earth in order to share wisdom in all fields of knowledge. Sometimes, they were misinterpreted as divine beings and inspired the foundation of religions and other kinds of belief systems. They have lived for a very long time, and yet they were afraid to disappear. Humans could have inherited the legacy of their creators and the infinite wisdom of the whole Universe. Or at least that was the first plan.
The last emissary was killed 2000 years ago by humans. This particular event became the kick-start of an extermination plan of biblical proportions.
Dark angels: After the last Emissary was killed, Engineers were angry and disappointed. As a result of the above, the caste of the Space Seeders was divided into two, forming a new caste; the riders of death (dark angels). They decided to make spacecraft with a design and aesthetic different from the ancient flying saucers. The interior designs symbolize and evoke the hell that the Engineers saw and lived when they traveled to other dimensions through altered states of consciousness.
Their flight suits are not only a protection against their warlike configuration of the forbidden fruit. In fact, the biomechanical suits evoke their avatars of demons during their travels in the underworld, because mankind deserves to agonize in hell and become a biological and physical materialization of interdimensional demons from the underworld, with their souls trapped forever in this nightmare in the shape of a monster. The telescopic chair is not just a navigation device, it is a representation of the Engineer climbing, and from a certain point of view riding, the tree of the world during his epic odyssey from hell to divine paradise.
However, these vehicles were not necessarily warships. The flying machines had no weapons to fight a battle because the plan was to send a fleet to bomb the planet Earth in ancient times when humans were primitive, but something went wrong in LV-223.
"I've managed to work out the broad strips, it's fairly evident they were in the process of leaving, before things went to pot." David in PrometheusCivilians: Average Joe Engineers found on Planet 4. They live with a lifestyle of ancient Greece with some eccentricities such as: solar panels, lamps that levitate (I imagine that with magnetism) and a large docking station in the shape of a monolithic and gigeresque scorpion tail (though I wonder if evokes a Xenomorph tail). However, it is quite possible that there were juggernauts in the hangars under the Plaza.
A remarkable place in the Engineers necropolis is the "Hall of Heads". These big heads could be representing the wise pioneers of their civilization (like my psychedelic astronauts from my fanfiction) or even the emissaries.
"If you ask me, they were a people who were superior. These were probably the ten apostles, the wise men." Ridley ScottDavid; or, The Modern Lucifer
David becomes a Sci Fi incarnation of Lucifer when the aforementioned synthetic man revealed himself against his human creators. He wants to create the perfect organism through the destruction of the Mandkind. Moreover, David claimed to have learned in the Engineers ways. Now, this claim can be interpreted in more than one way, but maybe the android managed to see what only the most wise Engineers could see and perceive. All this knowledge and experiences achieved during the extradimensional odysseys combined with his repressed sexuality led him to create the final Demon.
