about that "cultural" thing that I just dont get at all

lol Svanya. True Indeed. But for "film sake".... aaarghhhhh

It's not our place to judge other creatures cultures XDXDXDXD

Maybe you should ask the thousands of Mexica warriors who gave up their hearts so that Huitzilopochtli could get his daily sustenance and move across the sky.

Ah, Outlander, true. But the thing is, If the "first sacrifice" idea is for real, how did humans get to know about it if there were none at that point?

Darkeequation: In another recent thread there is a link to an interview with the dude that plays the SJ in Prometheus where he says it clear enough. But I do like your idea [way more than the "sacrifice" one]. Please elaborate more on it friend.

Well to be fair, it was never established that this was a part of their culture. I still think that the Engineer was sentenced to die by his kind and the earth was supposed to serve as his tomb. His disintegrated body just happened to kickstart life on earth and it was not some kind of noble act of kindness. This would also tie nicely into the notion that when the Engineers discover what happened (because the crew of the Prometheus visit them) they want to send a ship to earth to wipe us out.

I think it could be possible that when one Engineer's time is up he must kill himself to make way for other Engineers. This could be why the Engineer was brought to earth and forced to drink the potion which killed him. The earth can be seen like a giant tomb kind of like how the pyramids were to the Pharaohs. Except that something goes wrong (maybe there was primitive cell life in the water that the Engineers did not know about like moss or algae) and the Engineers DNA goes into the nucleus of those cells (akin to a super advanced form of a retrovirus) and sows the seeds for advanced lifeforms . This could then be a play on the Prometheus myth in that the punishment of a god-like entity is what ignited the fire for the development of advanced life-forms instead of the other way around.

For human's to have obtained the concept of sacrifice from the Space Jockey, maybe its genetically written into our dna?

ah, food for thought... I see your point.

Good one[b] Enginner[/b]

[quote][i]I think it could be possible that when one Engineer's time is up he must kill himself to make way for other Engineers.[/i][/quote] Yes, but he says he is a YOUNG engineer, and there are older ones as well. IF, and I do mean IF the engineers are made by another race with genetic qualities that change other DNA, then maybe this is just their reason to exist. Or, this smart-assed young punk has a theory and the older SJs let him learn the hard way... LOL Whatever the reason may be, I hope THAT is made clear in the film.

David 1: Cheers dude, just thought it kind of made sense, as if they are our creators and they are messed up concerning having a God complex then it makes it understandable for us to have obtained hubris from them as well, almost hereditary from a parent to child in terms of mental compass and ideas.

@ David 1 wheatear you find this concept corny or not I find it very interesting and intriguing as many others have, if not look at all the other post.

The theme of self sacrifice has been a recurring one much trough-out all of mankind's recorded history and quite possibly beyond that.

So is that what the urns are filled with, the disintegrated bodies of engineers and other life forms maybe?

@David1 I mean... it's not practical from Man's view point... (newsflash, they aren't men! For those with difficulty distinguishing between men and engineers, engineers are bluey, men are pinky browny things.) Not every human has the same value on their own life, and there are regular stories of self sacrifice. Don't project your own values onto everything else, it's highly unlikely everything else has your values, even in your own school) And created creatures would not have witnessed it because... there were none at that point [so how could we have learned from a "sacrifce" to begin with]. (firstly,who says there are created creatures witnessing it? secondly, why couldn't they witness it? don't think from one snatched sentence in an interview that you have seen the film. The engineer is most likely to have put something in the water that will alter human dna, not create it from scratch. But plotwise, he could just as easily be creating all life from scratch..... the big bang. from one (singularity) to everything) But that "Sacrifice" thing... man... It just sounds corney as hell. War films are full of cornyness. Especially in American films. They're a byword for corny. Amazed people slag off a movie they haven't seen.

I would call it a preconception and ideology to potential disappointment rather than slagging the film off. I think people are just worried certain ideas that could potentially be correct they may find disappointing to have put into the film. Personally I think we have more similarities to the Space Jockeys than we realise from what I have surmised, especially concerning overreaching. But thats my opinion

Well, this may be a bit too much, but there are people who have developed theories of human development that center around the sacrificial act. Rene Girard, for example, has suggested that ritual sacrifice, or the violence of the all against the one, is a sociological mechanism designed to reduce mimetic rivalry (long story) and restore order within tribal societies. In fact, it is now being suggested that the old story about human beings developing agriculture, coming together in static communities and then developing ritual sacrifice and religious practice is entirely backwards. The Gobleki Tepi, a site for religious pilgrimage uncovered in Turkey, predates agriculture and fixed communities. As a result, it is now suggested that people first began to gather for the purposes of ritual practice and sacrifice and that agriculture, the arts, and even the domestication of animals took shape around these first sacrifical sites as a way of providing for a stationary "preisthood", their servants and sacrificial victims. Girard even believes that early human governments, kings and chiefs, were sacrificial victims who successfully projected their punishments onto other people or populations. You can find all kinds of evolutionary biological and anthropological texts online with a little probing, but the point is that ritual sacrifice may be the central symbol, the founding sociological mechanism, of all human culture.

I'm not quite sure I get what you mean. But I think the sacrifice and the subsequent "training" of the intelligent species that result from it serve a purpose for the Engineers, one that isn't really benevolent the way that Shaw and Holloway seem to think it is at first. If you want life to evolve along a certain path, you make sure they only have certain building blocks. If you want the dominant intelligent species to be very similar to your own, you make sure that they only use [i]your[/i] building blocks. For some reason, they wanted us to at least be similar to them once we had evolved enough to come find them. It sort of goes back to something that always bothered me about the first film. The xeno's lifecycle is just so well adapted to human biology that it's almost inconceivable that this creature wasn't designed and bred to kill humans. The xeno had to be created with humans (or something very much like them) in mind. Even when we're talking about mutations of crew members and such, an intelligent mutation that doesn't just kill whatever it is you're trying to mutate requires either a very intimate knowledge of that creature's biology, or a "mutation agent" that could adapt to literally any biological code system it encountered. The latter situation is far less likely to provide you with the results you want, no matter how advanced of a species you are, since you're just guessing and have no idea what you might encounter. So it makes sense to me that they would ensure that we are built from the same stuff, and the differences between us simply arise from a slightly different environment and evolutionary path. Hence the sacrifice, it kind of leaves nothing to chance.

[quote][b][i]...But the thing is, If the "first sacrifice" idea is for real, how did humans get to know about it if there were none at that point?[/i][/b][/quote] I'm finding it all pretty straight forward. A young engineer is sent to earth and his sacrifice results in either the creation of humans or possibly all life-forms. Life then evolves, and some time into the 'future' they come and visit to inspect their 'breed'. By then, humans have evolved enough to realise that those are higher beings. Their appearance is a phenomenon they cannot comprehend. Maybe they've even done horrible things to those early humans, abducted them, so they quite naturally felt the urge to worship and satisfy them, instead of fighting, which would have been utterly pointless considering their advanced intellect and technology. Humans then also start engraving those events in stone, those pictograms found by our advanced selves. The thing I'm struggling with is, why would they come to earth again only to wipe us out after having 'seeded' us in the first place? Was there something wrong with their 'elixier', their DNA mixture, so that we evolved further and more advanced than they had initially intended? I hope the film will give answers to those questions...

I am not getting a vibe from the trailers that SJ's/ Blue guys are nobel and do a whole lot of sacrificeing for humans. In several of the featuers Scott mentions that we go looking for an idea of nobility, and find something very different. I think the name of the movie is the key, One of the SJ/blue guys pulled a prometheus, he gave technology to us he should not have, It very well may be the opening scene is the blue guy disintegrating himself, but it may not have been as a sacrifice to his race as much as a personal sacrfice against it. The question then, and it has been posed, who keeps comming back to earth to inject some advancement and make the humans worship them?

Xenophobia: I only say it is corny for "movie sake". And yes, I do read everything that is posted in the forum.

[b]Windood:[/b] Quoting you friend: [i](newsflash, they aren't men! For those with difficulty distinguishing between men and engineers, engineers are bluey, men are pinky browny things.) Not every human has the same value on their own life, and there are regular stories of self sacrifice. Don't project your own values onto everything else, it's highly unlikely everything else has your values, even in your own school)[/i] I was talking about the first MEN ever. Not saying that Sjs and Humans are one and the same. As for Values, thank god we have different opinions and values and different takes on life and the Universe. Otherwise it would be pretty boring/tiresome. [i](firstly,who says there are created creatures witnessing it? secondly, why couldn't they witness it? don't think from one snatched sentence in an interview that you have seen the film. The engineer is most likely to have put something in the water that will alter human dna, not create it from scratch. But plotwise, he could just as easily be creating all life from scratch.....the big bang. from one (singularity) to everything)[/i] Friend, I think you didn't pay attention to what I wrote. I asked how could we know about the "SJs sacrifice that made human life possible" if there were no humans there to witness that event. Simple. As for the "don't think from one snatched sentence in an interview that you have seen the film" i ask you if isn't that what speculation is all about [even more so, since [b]it was said by the guy who plays the SJ him self[/b] in an interview]. And again: [i]Amazed people slag off a movie they haven't seen.[/i] To wich I answer: I'm not slaging off the movie, I'm stating the somewhat ridiculous "sacrifice" Idea. I do believe I'm entitled to an opinion, kudos

[b]Hal 9000:[/b] Kudos, mate. Indeed, How could Men know if they weren't told how things came about. Did they Visit us? Did they abducted us and in turn we prayed for them as gods? Those questions are very well put.

Aintnozeno: LOL. I laughed when you said this: [i]Or, this smart-assed young punk has a theory and the older SJs let him learn the hard way... LOL[/i] [i]Whatever the reason may be, I hope THAT is made clear in the film.[/i] I hope so to friend.

funkopotamus: Hi friend. And thank you for mentioning Girard. A great reading if anyone is interested.

[b]Mostly:[/b] Same here, friend. Maybe the SJs pay us a little visit afterall [and after having created us, one way or the other]. That would pretty much explain the pictograms found. cheers.

I dont think they are going back to wipe us out. I think the ship has a human pilot and David is helping him get back to Earth. We hear Shaw say "them" when talking about the ship going back to Earth. I do not think these beings look at us as all that advanced even as we show up at the temple. I am confident that they dont like us messing around in it. Just like we dont like children playing around on a stove. The missing piece is what happened to them? They went from being active in our development to nothing. I think the film clips have shown Holograms showing a mass exit or problem with the SJ and I hope this will explain why they died out.

You are slagging off a film you haven't seen, which is ridiculous. You state you believe it has certain plot themes which are corney, and haven't seen it yet. So, you're slagging it off without having seen it. Do you think there has to be a human witness for every scene? Is that just in this film, or is it in all films? Do you not understand that the film is a story, a fictional one too. No need to keep calling me friend, we aren't quakers :-) When you see the film, you can give it a good honest review, it might well be total pants, or merely average. But to critique based on "surmises" is ridiculous. It takes a half second of new footage for people to re-evaluate the whole film on here..... ...because.....we still don't know what it's really about. thank god.

The film clip only shows three Sjs running, it doesn't show any problem, exodus,extinction,attack of xeno's, or anything other than SJs running. Absolutely nothing whatsoever is known about the context of that scene, so no conclusions can be drawn about what it means tbh. there seems to be a transference here of human values and expectations onto an alien culture... these might be the normal timescales under which they start life. I imagine they've started loads. Imagine if they had kept a day to day eye on us, how boring would that have been? And what would it tell them? I imagine the idea of the invitation is so that they don't have to do that. If we wipe ourselves out, big deal. i imagine the sacrifice is just the way these experiments start. It wouldn't have to mean the Sj is dead as an individual, it also wouldn't mean he was an individual (in our sense, in having an identity he believed made him distinct from all other objects in the universe). we don't know. And tbh this film would suck arse if it followed half of the fanboy ideas.

[b]Windood:[/b] well friend, [and I'm not wanting to sound a "quaker" since I'm not religious, but merelly because I'm talking to you in a "friendly manner", expressing "frendliness", so don't feel bad about someone calling you "friend"... it's a good thing you know?] If you feel I'm ranting upon something I didn't yet see... that really is your opinion. But since I'm not ranting about the movie at all, but about what I think [and feel] is a somewhat corney idea [i.e. the all heroic SJ that comes to Earth to kill him self and thus generate Humanity] for movie sake, with all the impractability of it all and a somewhat "predator-ish" concept of Honour in Death [and I'm not even going to discuss that Idea in human History or in animal behaviour]... all is good. kudos friend [And I say "friend" as in "I'm talking to you the way I talk to a friend"... and that is a good thing, trust me... there are people who don't feel the need to be impolite towards perfect strangers, and so happens that I'm one of them].

How to kill a thread, See Windood: Boooo.

A few of you have touched on what we can infer from voice overs and the Weyland "viral" aspects this seems the most likely... A young engineer rebels against what the past process of creation has been. If we imply the "reign is over" concept then this young and different thinking being carries these "building blocks" "black goo" inside his body to primordial Earth. Maybe that is the only way he could get them. The sacrifice is his personal choice to create a new world, possibly in defiance of the old rule. My 2c

Progeny, Yes I see that point, I think the sacrifice by the engineer must be sanctioned or they would just wipe us out as life would begin. I think we can conclude with what we have seen, that some being has visited the earth over periods of time and made enough of an impression that these civilizations created murals about them. So, as I mentioned in a prior post, what happened? why did they stop? I think the trailers show a SJ body and SJ's running so i am trying to piece it toghther in thought, It looks to me something went wrong, they went dormant.

there is more than 3 engineers in the hologram, 6 at least

@ Mostly The rest of it [b]MY FRIEND[/b] <=== see what I did there? Is the kind of thing I can't / won't postulate on. Since the concept seems too vast and most likely the answer to why the "young one" made the sacrifice. 16 days to go crazier.... tic tic tic

If you feel I'm ranting upon something I didn't yet see... that really is your opinion. -nope, that's a fact, you haven't seen it yet, maybe it's not intended as a rant, but that is how i perceived it. You are slagging off a film you haven't even sen, another fact. But since I'm not ranting about the movie at all, but about what I think [and feel] is a somewhat corney idea -you now at least admit ranting, but seem to have some kind of disconnect where you don't think the ideas in the film, and major themes, constitute the film. Odd. if you aren't talking about the film prometheus, what are you talking about then? i'm all ears. strapped in, listening :-) that comes to Earth to kill him self and thus generate Humanity] for movie sake, with all the impractability of it all and a somewhat "predator-ish" concept of Honour in Death [and I'm not even going to discuss that Idea in human History or in animal behaviour]... all is good. - this is you ranting about a film you've not seen, again. Do you not see that you are ranting about your own ideas (not the film, because you haven't seen it). You've come up with a couple of poorly conceived ideas, and got upset about them. -stop thinking my friend,it's obviously not good for you. stick to looking at stuff. Foil is good. shiny shiny :-) i say this with al doo respect, nemesis. Arch nemesis. glove thee, consider yourself glovied. (i am kidding)

[b]Progeny:[/b] LOL. good one [b]Windood:[/b] Well, I'm no ones nemesis, since I have no enemies at all. lol but I enjoyed your ranting about my ranting of the "sacrifice" idea. And I do rant [never said I didn't]. But I'm ranting ABOUT THE SACRIFICE IDEA... not THE MOVIE! There's a difference there... kudos friend and thank you for your intervention [though misled].

@ Mostly: You're gonna laugh, but I actually AM a quaker. :)

What bothers me most about these various theories is that they don't jive with facts. Fact 1: Live existed on this planet hundreds of millions of years before Man evolved. Fact 2: Man was around for hundreds of thousand of years before he showed any sense of real intelligence. Then suddenly Man's intelligence soars. Fact 3: Sometime after Man's intellectual explosion, someone or something resembling a large man suddenly appears in records from around the world. This man-figure was pointing at this star cluster. Fact 4: Shaw thinks these are the engineers of man, and this is where to find them. Fact 5: Shaw was very, very wrong. Whatever the resulting truth is about this movie, it can't override the first 2 Facts. Think about it, David 8