May 23, 2012[url=http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/5698&page=3]Interview[/url]
[b]
"You've talked about the idea of these post-apocalyptic films having been done to death. Is Prometheus your way of going in the opposite direction and wondering about the beginning of life?"
[/b]
[i]Ridley: "It is, and I've got to check [for spoilers] very carefully here, but it is about the beginning of life and 'what if'. It's a giant 'what if'. Has this ball that we're sitting on right now been around here for three billion years or one billion? Either way, it's a long f---ing time. It's only our kind of arrogance that says "We're the first ones."[/i]
[i]
Are we the first hominids? I really, really, really doubt it. In recent memory or legend we keep talking about wonderful, weird things such as Atlantis - what is that? Where does that come from? Is that real, was it real, is it a memory, did it exist? And if that did exist, did it exist three quarters of a billion years ago? There'd be nothing left now. How was that created and who was it? "[/i]
This is from an interview a while back. I think it's very important to what's really going on. It could be that this is our explanation for how a certain mythological culture showed up on Earth from the ocean, and then inevitably died out, and mysteriously fell back into the ocean. I'm thinking this is not the creation of humanity, but the instant creation of an ancient race of hominids who will be revealed to have once lived on the Earth. I think this potion/disintegration gives rise to an alien astronaut colony; an earlier line of hominids who were extremely advanced.
A mythological culture of tall beings that the Greeks and Egyptians spoke of; a culture who mingled with the gods and were running an island empire/kingdom, doing genetic experiments, creating mermaids and fish-man hybrids, and had contact with our earliest settlements and cultures all over the world before the myths say they mysteriously vanish (sank, destroy themselves with science, destroyed from above etc.).
I think their kingdom eventually vanished despite their long life spans, and they were forced to interbreed with some of the ancients to produce the early God-kings of world mythologies. As well, they helped the cultures along and showed them where they really came from, and where they got their amazing technology. Ridley's misdirecting us, I think.
They are ancient astronauts, however in this film I think Ridley's trying to say they were also another group. Holloway believes this as well... and thinks they're not gods because of some of the similarities he notices between our cultures.
Interaction had to have taken place for the cultural transference when we see that they're using Sumerian-like writing and Sarcophagi. At the very least, if this is the creation of all humanity they would have had to stick around and wait for those cultures to come about for a very long time. I think it'll turn out to be how a myterious race of beings suddenly showed up on Earth and made their way into many cultures' myths. I also think many ancient myths will turn out to be true, and Shaw starts to realize what the myths are really telling us.
There's actually more references to a hypothetical Atlantean island empire once existing in many ancient cultures than there are references to the flying crafts and beings coming down from the sky. Even though both stories are prevalent in many ancient legends. The thing many more early cultures have in common was a belief in a race of advanced beings who lived on an Island, controlled the oceans, and would occasionally show up on or above land. The legends tell of how they destroyed themselves or were somehow punished during the flood as they disappear into the ocean just as suddenly and mysteriously as they showed up in the myths.
In India and the middle-east this group was said to have built an ark, or submarine type vessel with the Noah-like characters. They piloted flying crafts called Vimanas in India along with the Gods, and were considered to be on the same level as their gods; even though they lived on the oceans and interacted with the humans and other mythological lost lands. They were described as human-like, except for being abnormally tall. However they came to war with the blue skinned Gods of India. Then, the great war ended with their kingdom being destroyed, and they move to what the Indian text the [i]Vedas[/i] called "flying islands".
Some of the survivors left earth to challenge the true gods, but many were killed in the destruction of their kingdom. They'd been going too far with their science, with the gift from the true gods. So the true gods destroyed their Eden/Paradise, but didn't manage to erase their impact on us. Some survive and become the early god- kings of Sumer and Egypt and get recorded into myth as the Atlanteans and ancient astronauts when really they're the same thing. They begin to challenge the true gods again, and to resume their life creating and hybrid experiments. Leaving us clues as to where they mysteriously vanished to, and where they got that technology from.
In the Greek myths Poseidon is king of Atlantis and the son of a Titan. He's half Titan- half God. I guess he really could be in either class, but identifies more with the God class, because Zeus is his brother and he has dealings with Olympus. Some characters like Proteus and Prometheus were actually on Atlantis for a time. Poseidon even tries his hand at creating a race of humans before Prometheus gets to, but some of his "people" turned out to be monsters and had to be washed away from above like a similar story in the bible. They created mermaids, and some believed the centaurs, and the minotaur from the Minoan civilizations myths. They were genetic experimenters who went too far. It's not clear who punished them, because most myths say they sank themselves, but it is implied they were warring with another faction whose colony was sometimes called Lemuria. I think a Titan tried to help humans along in the past, but Zeus thought we'd misuse the fire like the Atlanteans did so he punished Prometheus for sharing the high technology with early civilizations...
I think Weyland discovered something at some point in the timeline that's highly classified and knows more about this culture than the others. Holloway too. Possibly bits of ancient tech that Holloway was briefly working to find for him underwater before he met Shaw. Before they find the cave paintings. Back when he was doing underwater archaeology in an area that holds significance that Weyland discovered at a much earlier time. Holloway's already convinced they're not actually Gods and is hiding his true thesis from Shaw.
David laughs at this thesis at first, because he's programmed to believe it was only a myth, and has his own take. Holloway's only partially correct because he doesn't believe they came from space originally. Weyland just needed Shaw and Holloway to find out where they left to. He's already recovered some of their technology, benefits from something washed ashore, and wants more.
