Prometheus concept and xenomorph origins: stronger emphasis on psychology than w

It seems most plausible to me that if the Engineers are immortal, they do that through a process of ‘reinvention’ of themselves. They leave their ‘essence’ encoded in the gray matter (that moves once stimulated) and it infects intelligent species who are able to travel to their planet (or planets). They DO manipulate life through a hyper-advanced understanding of genetic engineering. The gray matter ‘infects’ visitors and bioforms them into sentient, physical beings of roughly the right size and biology to then operate machines that are left in place to be taken over by these regenerated Engineers. If a Human, Vulcan, Na’vi, etc. shows up (a roughly humanoid species), then the infection produces an Engineer (at least a plausible version of an engineer). That Engineer can then take off and head to whichever world sent the unsuspecting humanoid (or humanoids) in the first place. What does s/he do when s/he gets there? Have a big meal? Make 7 billion more Engineers? Re-institute government-sanctioned slavery...??? Hard to tell. Maybe that's another movie. BUT, What happens if something quite non-humanoid shows up; and gets [i]infected[/i]? Some life-form that the Engineers were not counting on might get re-engineered right there on the premises and go hide in the corner. Or perhaps it would go eat the rest of its original crew first and then lay some eggs, and then hide in the corner (until it died). And a few years later some Vulcans show up and a valid Engineer gets created. On the way to the ship s/he stumbles across a face-hugger. Whoops! But then, a few days layer s/he wakes up feeling better and hops in the cockpit to head off to Vulcan anyway. But dammit! There's a bun in the chest cavity. CRASH!! Baby lays eggs... and repeat (when something else humanoid comes along). The gray matter may be “multi-talented” in that if an intelligent species that is NOT humanoid shows up, the infection will intentionally produce something xeno-like that is very dangerous and in the role of a “guard dog” will intentionally destroy the non-humanoids. Of course, the above scenario could also be supported by this type of mechanism. There is no reason to believe that the Engineers are infallible. Something could always show up that their gray matter might engineer imperfectly. The Engineers don't necessarily just have one planet on which they've left (themselves embedded in) gray matter either... If they have been around as a spacefaring intelligence for (let's say) 1,000,000 years they have a very long term view of things. It would be nothing for them to inseminate resource-rich M-class planets with just enough of their “DNA” and language and wait for for 50K years or so for a fresh new civilization to produce 10 billion new vessels/vassals. Then they just go do with us/them as they will. After all, they grew/cultivated the damn things. Right? If there are 100s of 1,000s of Earth-like planets out there, they may just use them like petri dishes. “Oh, look! This one was fruitful and multiplied.” I feel it's simplistic of us to project our morality (and/or lack of it) on them. The cave paintings (across Earth) might merely be a test of “readiness” for stage 2 and whatever post-cultivation is. If the DNA and language dispersement doesn't “take root” well enough to produce a valuable petri dish result, then they need not spend the time and effort to check up too closely. They may just feel, “We'll know they're ready by their showing up back on our doorstep.” Kind of like prodigals. It may get really boring having one mind that lasts 500,000 years. The Engineers might just hibernate in the form of gray matter for eons and then “wake up” when one of their humanoid projects shows up to give them something interesting to do for another 10k years. And, each “monument” might belong to a different clan or family of Engineers. The speculative permutations are ENDLESS. :•) I doubt very seriously that the events of this film are not 100% physical. David may have something to do with the engineering that produces the xeno of the original film and aftermath, but I doubt it—at least not intentionally. I think it's more likely that he is a catalyst for infection—possibly knowingly; possibly not. If the Engineers’ mindset is fully based in biological systems, they (and their systems) may be more prone to ignore David. They may not find non-organic intelligence threatening (or particularly interesting). (Remember. Bishop was ignored by a xeno in [i]Aliens[/i].) It seems more likely to me that David might somehow activate “other infections” that might produce guard dog creatures like the xeno. There could be all kinds of things hibernating on that planet in that “monument.” The idea of a broad array of biomechanical “conveniences” used by a master race of genetic engineers is not new even to human literature. Japanese author Numa Shohzo in his 1956~ work details the concept of [i]Kachiku-Jin Yapuu[/i] ([i]Yapoo the Manimal[/i]). Warning!: [url=http://homepage2.nifty.com/equus/numa_manimal_01.htm]This content[/url] is partially sexual and even scatological in nature and utterly lacking any shred of modern political correctness. And, do we [u]KNOW[/u] that the entity ‘forming’ by the waterfall is ‘modern man,’ as in “human?” Of course, all of this is just coming from my having seen the trailers. So, who knows!!???

For what it's worth, the idea of evil entities being manifested out of the human psyche, or subconscious, or emotions, goes all the way back to "Forbidden Planet," with the Monster of the ID, and all that. Another film that sort of explored that idea (in a different manner) was David Cronenberg's "The Brood." Nasty little flick, that was.

@rakhasa... The simple answer is that number is what most of the scientific communities agree upon as the rough date "modern man" in roughly our current form first began to appear. I dont mean the much more primitive versions of us with still visibly sharper teeth and much more boney skull structures with pronounced brows, or things like the "Lucy" fossils of a couple million years found in Africa. Here is some good basic info on the topic that appeared in a recent PBS series.... [url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans/humankind/o.html]Evolutions: Origins of Humankind...[/url] I think what RS has suggested is that the "Engineers" visited Earth and tinkered with our much more primitive ape-like form to change our path to what we are now.... and using info that we already know our SCIENCE has determined, that time would be somewhere between 30 to 100,000 years ago. With respect to the location of the scene, they shot it in Iceland, but that is irrelevent. For the purpose of this movie, it could simply be representative of ANY place on Earth 100,000 odd years ago.

I know the real facts, but my question referred to the storyline, not the reality. My English is not so good, i am not a native speaker and maybe i didn't make myself understood. My question was referring to the fiction, to the story told by the movie. What makes you say that the narrative in that scene occurs 100000 years ago, that it takes place on Earth and that is connected to the birth of the human species? I know the movie is generally connected to these issues, but i am not sure of tht peculiar scene...

[quote=Rakshasa][i]What makes you say that the narrative in that scene occurs 100000 years ago, that it takes place on Earth and that is connected to the birth of the human species? I know the movie is generally connected to these issues, but i am not sure of tht peculiar scene...[/i][/quote] This is my question too. How do we know or why should we presume that the opening ‘king’ scene of the trailer references event out of Earth’s (humanity’s) direct history?

Simple deduction.... Everyone seems to have a need to ridiculously complicate this thing. We only have 119 minutes folks, and they have said the story is going to be about OUR ORIGINS and what exactly the "Space Jockeys" were. And in case you missed the topic "The Art of Prometheus" a little while back, it came out that the real premise of the Engineers is that they have been visiting Earth for thousands of years and manipulating and tinkering with us during these visits. They did NOT create this planet. They simply "tinkered" with modern mans evolution to get us to where we are now. Since we already know much about our own history due to fossil records and carbon dating, that was the point I was trying to make... If that is in fact a scene showing the emergence of MODERN MAN, then it is at most 100,000 years in our past.

[quote=CanadaPhil][i]If that is in fact a scene showing the emergence of MODERN MAN, then it is [u]at most[/u] 100,000 years in our past.[/i][/quote] In this I would say your logic is unassailable.