Why Humans were created? Why they were to be destroyed?

[u]The opening scene shows the lone "Sacrifice Engineer". I've been postulating that due to the nature of the sort of "Religious Ritual" he takes, it makes more sense that the Engineers were more benevolent and was seeding all life on Earth.[/u] Religion does not necessarily bring benevolence. Look at the religions that require human sacrifice. [u] I don't think it's as simple as that humans make the best Aliens, else the Engineers would have been around harvesting us the whole time and not letting us evolve and advance in intelligence and capability.[/u] Well, they presumably took as many as they needed, and didn't expect us to advance in the spurt we did. When they last visited in the 7th century, mankind was still very primitive in it's understanding (it was the Dark Ages in Europe) and religion and superstition still trumped logical thought in the centres of power. It's only recently that we had this huge leap in technology. Consider Orville Wright. When he was born, the telephone had not been invented, and most houses had no electricity supply. Yet he and his brother flew the first powered airplane in 1903, and by the time he died, an aircraft had dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, and Neil Armstrong was already studying aerospace engineering. That's just one human lifetime. Perhaps they underestimated our curiosity.

Maybe the Engineers didn't need a real reason to destroy the human race. They just wanted to clean up the mess left by one of their experiments. You know, when they test a new product on lab rats, regardless of the success of failure of the product, the rats always end up dead. Maybe for the Engineers to wipe out the human race was just a simple precaution, like a human scientist washing a Petri dish after he finished working with it.

I like the premise but I do beleive it is not as simple as that. There is too much going on to reduce this to such a simple "this is what happened" theory. I dont see destruction as noble or as anything that has longevity. If the reason intelligent life exists is to just destroy it...makes no sense.

If the engineers didn't want the humans to become too intellegent then why did they leave "invitations" on earth? to free them from their sleep pods? lol...maybe the pods dont have timers

The movie implies the answer. We were created because they could. They wanted to destroy us because they could.

I believe that humans were created as hosts for the xenomorphs. they created us, then they planned to impregnate us with the xenomorphs to create a race of biological weaponry. but that's just me ;)

Well from the movie one thing is clear. The Engineers create the humans on Earth or start the evolution of life on Earth, and in essence the Engineers are also humans, evolved to a much advanced or later stage then the Earth humans. From the movie it is clear the engineer was going to destroy the humans. But why doesn't he just blow them away with advanced weaponry, instead the destruction on earth was going to be carried out by unleashing the biological liquid in those Barrels. It is also clear the liquid on from those barrels create the so called worms. The end result of unleashing the biological weapon only results to the creation of the Alien race. Hence the saying to create you must destroy meaning destroy the humans to create the Aliens. Intelligent life will destroy anything and everything to survive. Perhaps the Aliens are created for other reasons other then to destroy, this might became evident in the second movie.

V77Mad...very good commenting...enjoyable to ponser thank you..good post too

you cant be sure they are going to drop the liquid on earth, besides to create new life the other must be change, is nothing about destroy is just called Evolution.

Well I will say it if no one else will - maybe the engineers got pissed when earthlings started to praise and honor one being that was born 2000 years ago. People started to rally around that one individual whose message was that there was a higher power and he was his son. The engineers took that as an insult and decided to show humans just who was in charge. Just saying - please be gentle.

Good theory Dopelganger but many religions came and went prior to that in hisotry, also the engineer wasn't all that impressed when he was treated like a god instead tried to kill everyone. Besides its Sci-fi. Like Alex said they were not going to destroy humans lke drop a nuke on them but create the Alien race by letting the Xenomorphs/worms host their eggs in humans to create the Alien race, the real question should be what use had they planned for the Alien race?

You say it is clear that they created us. How is it clear? What part of scene 1 convinced you that the Space Jockey was standing on Planet Earth, and not some distant planet? If there is only assumption, then rather than look for answers, you should reconsider your question. DID they create us? And also, if they didn't, if that's some other planet in the first scene. What does that mean? How do you have to alter all your other assumptions about the film?

And likewise... who told you they were going to wipe us out? Shaw? Where is her proof? She asked David what the mission was. And he said something vague. Go look at how David talks in the film. When he is saying the plain and simple truth, he says it plainly and simply. Anytime he uses vague, double meaning statements, he is deceiving. He knows Shaw is religious. Say something a bit scary to her, and she imagines Armageddon. If the plan was to wipe us out 2000 years ago, why didn't the two visits SINCE then (latest was in the 7th Century in Hawai'i.) finish us off?

- They look human, we (last time I checked) also look human, 99% DNA match. - Big ship carrying tonnes of urns filled with nasty black stuff heading for Earth. I understand asking questions, but why not hypothesize some answers.

They didn't say 99% match. It's a match. If you want my hypothesis, it's simply that they didn't create us. They took some of us, adapted them, made a bunch of obedient slaves who were strong and expendable, and every now again, travel back to earth for more. These Space Jockey slaves can be sacrificed, or used for war (hosts for bio-weapons) or lab work, or rounding up more slaves They didn't say they were going to wipe us out, and the two subsequent missions didn't wipe us out. "to destroy and create" could refer simply to Igor getting more specimens for the lab. Everyone is fixated on the story of Prometheus from Greek mythology and ignoring the whole UFO abduction theory... simply because none of the characters mention it. And yet there is air clean enough for humans, and Space Jockeys who seem to be fine breathing the toxic crap outside. Here's another Prometheus myth worth thinking about. [img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/Frank1818.jpg[/img]

I'm familiar with it, I have it next to Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost. Mary Shelley's story is about the creation of life, the ramifications of the creation and the creations view of its creator... amongst other things. Many parallels to this film. The creation searches for his creator for answers, whom ultimately has none, or as Holloway put it "because we could". They are both stories about creation, yet Prometheus (the myth) itself isn't, it's about punishment for disobedience and the gift of technology given to us by a former God, replaced by a newer, younger God.

Ridley Scott isn't sticking strictly to any myth. He hints at both - the electrical reanimation of the head, and all the ancient mythology lines. Frankenstein didn't create life from nothing. He used other bodies, that's the point I was leaning on. I contend that the reason that Space Jockeys match our genotype, but have 'older' DNA, is because they are from all those older cultures, whose mitochondrial DNA won't have changed as much as the Aztecs, Egyptians etc on Earth, due to the selective breeding, and stasis.

They seeded us, they added their DNA and an evolutionary accelerant to life on Earth and through clever engineering, evolution, and natural selection the Engineers genome becomes dominant creating us. Its the creation myth, the core of all of the major myths - God(s) creating mankind, but with this movie the why isn't going to pleasant.

"The movie implies the answer. We were created because they could. They wanted to destroy us because they could." / / /This!!! or possibly I'm beginning to think that human beings as we are right now were only intended tobe an intermediary species in the evolution of mankind....if you buy int the Ancient Aliens theories we were seeded and at various times given "updates" to our genetic codes and lesser humanoid species wiped out that were co-existing at the same time. Perhaps we were never meant to be the end result but only one more "step" up the evolutionary ladder and they intended to wipe us clean to reboot their experiement....

All our assumptions a based on a belief that the Engineer race had one collective thought, when in reality, they are just like us with many different philosophies. Maybe one rouge sect of the Engineers believe in terra-forming planets and spreading their seed and another sect (as found on LV-223) believes it's a bad idea and aims to clean up the mess.