Engineers/God

Perhaps all animal life, -wasn't there grass and plants in the opening scene? I don't recall trees, but I think it was shot in Iceland, and I think they have no trees there. As for why leave a map to a death trap there's many possibilites, which may or may not be addressed in the next installment. a) the engineer in scene one, who sacrifices himself to seed Earth was doing it against the wishes of the rulers of his planet. Perhaps the others on his ship are the ones who are depicted later as showing the way to LV233, which perhaps at that time was a more hospitable place to visit. The ship in scene one is a different shape and less menacing than the horse shoe shaped ones which seem designed deliver death. One could speculate that LV233 has hardened bunkers and has endured war, so it wasn't meant to be a trap for humans, and perhaps the Engineers on LV233 had no idea that other members of their species had given humans a map. b) Perhaps, like jealous gods, they were happy enough to create life and toy with it, but didn't want it getting to full of itself (eg. Tower of Babel in Christianity or the tale of Prometheus in Greek mythology). This race clearly has the technology to colonise space, and probably doesn't like competition, so if their creations get out of hand, lure them to certain death - end of problem. Except these gods are not as competent as controlling as they think, - I think the green crystal was mean to be their safety device from their little dark monsters. But of course, we know since 1979 that Space Jockeys fell victim to Xenomorph infestation. We're not meant to know the answer to this from this film, of course, hence Shaw is off to find out ("stay tuned to this series" being the hopeful message from the studio execs).

one of those times where you just have to wait and see!

no no no no no, it couldn't have been on a proto-Earth because accretion happened 250 million to 1.5 billion years ago. Are we saying, rather, that what the ENGINEERS do is 'seed' this earth in a Garden of Eden fashion i.e. relatively recently? And we're back to God/Engineer's son (Jesus), "Burying dinosaur fossil heads, dad, to 'screw with their minds'"? Really? :)

Why does everyone assume that the Engineers "left" a map for humans to find? All the pictograms depicting the star system and the giant being pointing to one planet that Shaw and Holloway discovered were created by HUMANS.. The Engineers didn't carve those pictograms, the humans who witnessed them and/or worshiped them carved the pictograms. I think the Engineers revisited Earth to monitor the progression of the life they created. Maybe humans were given glimpses of the Engineers' star maps or the Engineers shared information as to where they came from. It's common knowledge that ancient humans had ways of studying the stars that rival even modern methods. Either way, I don't think the Engineers left a treasure map for humans to find, the humans figured it out for themselves - they just didn't know the real truth about the purpose of the planet in question. they were so wrong... (as Shaw put it) I haven't seen the movie yet, but the scene showing the hologram with the Engineers running from something....does that take place inside the temple mound or the juggernaut/derelict ship?.....anyone?

Good insights, SleepJumper. I see it that the SpaceJockey that disintegrates at the beginning of the film was a Prometheus defying his brethen. Later, as in Greek mythology, the gods continue to engage with our species, hence the cave wall paintings. Our appearance on Mount Olympus (LV..) is sacrilege that is met with immediate anger from the god. The xenomorph that the god falls prey to at the end is a Leviathan created as all the other Greek monsters--by the gods toying with creation. Anyone agree? As for the Jesus plot line, I think that was abandoned when they made the conscience choice to choose to call the project Prometheus instead of Paradise.