Weapon of mass destruction or something more sinister?

The Egyptians believed that they could store their souls in ceramic objects. Did Ridley/Lindelof take inspiration from this?

The only problem with that is the ancient Egyptians never believed that they could harness a soul and place it within a canopic jar. The concept of the canopic jar is for your body parts that would magically be restored in the afterlife. Its not a place for your Ka an/or Ba spirit, so maybe Ridleys plan wasnt for a creature for a resurrection but just DNA and the mutagen together with our genes. So maybe we're parts for something.

I never said canopic jar anu. i'm sure i read somewhere that the ancient egyptians stored a part of their soul in a ceramic object, but knowing me, i've probably got slightly mixed up. I might have been thinking of the ancient egyptian "Sheut," which they would store in a "Shadow box."

So i do apologise if i got it confused with something else. :)

However, you can't deny the fact that Holloway says, "It's just another tomb," and the fact that the urns are very similar to the urns we use to store the remains of our dead.

The canopic jars are also very interesting, in that they were used to store the internal organs of the dead.

I think that maybe the urns in Prometheus are used to store the DNA of the Giger monster, which is depicted in the mural. It's in a cruciform pose which suggests that it was sacrificed.

I kind of answered this in other post but will repost here...

Well there is a unlimited number of explanations and a lot will all depend on ONE THING.....

Does the Goo on LV 223 and LV 223 outpost, predate the Xeno Egg or Xeno Origins... or does the Xeno Egg or Origins come from LV 223?

Once thats known then we can rule out a few explanations for what the Urns are.

I have the idea that the Goo is not a Bio Weapon.... nope...

The Goo is simply a chemical that breaks down DNA and mixes with the Goo Accelerant to produce a chemical that when it contacts life, it then evolves life by creating a hybrid and passing on the DNA and Traits of what ever Organism was broken down by the Original stuff.

This broken down Organism gets its DNA and Traits passed onto what ever living Organism it comes into contact with, it recodes the Organisms DNA and passes on traits to it (from seeded Organism) and  at same time it evolves and keeps the best traits of the Organism the Goo contacts with only it also evolves these traits.

This is what the Sacrificial Scene seems to show, and it is logical that they wait many years and then futher uses the substance again to futher upgrade and alter the DNA on the World they seed.  They would pick what Organism traits they like that have developed and maybe use these to re-seed and maybe then mix Engineer DNA with this... Bit like a Dog Breeding program.

Remember all Dogs come from at some point a few kinds of Dogs that are related to Wolves.

I think at some point they either came across the Xeno or its ancestor, or they accidently spilled the Goo onto a World and it created from its life allready on that World some Organism that then made some of the Engineers go like... WOW look at this, how interesting and what a perfect Organism.

They then carried out tests on that Organism to create a whole manner of other Organisms.

And i guess once Mankind offended them to many times, a fraction was like ok lets Evolve their DNA with this Organism.

Maybe the Xeno was a intended Weapon created/used or found to use on a rogue fraction  of Engineers, these Engineers may have created us without the consent of their creators and so their creators had a War with them and the Xeno was intended to wipe out our Engineers.

Instead it backfired on the Elders etc, and the Engineers then started to worship and experiment on this Weapon to their own ends...

End of the day there is so so many potential explanations as to how and why.

So yes i also think the Mural shows that something was Sacrificed to create what we have in the Urns.

I think that the clues to the connection between Mankind and David 8, and Mankind and Engineers are key... And that rebelion of creation against creator is the answers.

We need look at why Weyland so baddly wanted the Xeno in the movies, surely we think Bio Weapon, but after failing so many times is it still worth it?

Well Alien R gives us a better clue and this is the Xeno has more applications than simply to use the Organism to infest a place.... surely a Nuke is better or some kind of Bio-Weapon Disease...

But the Urns as a Weapon is much better than the Eggs, unless they eventually lead to the Eggs.

Nope the Xeno its self could be used for many things once Advanced Science, can manipulate its Genes/DNA and try to borrow certain aspects of the Organism.

Science is now finding ways to get Spider Silk, they even can make Cows produce it in their milk i kid you not, by giving the Spider Silk creation Gene and apply it to how Cows make Milk.

Why?  Well Spider Silk is strong, very strong once we can replicate that material and make it as thick as a shoe lace well we could hang Cars and Trucks from it it with ease....

So surely if Science sees Spider Silk as something that could benefit construction etc, just how do we extract or replicate the Spider Silk on Larger Scale....

Surely these Engineers dable with creating and Evolving many Organisms, and if they came across the Xeno or its Ancestor then surely they would see a Organism which has many such applications.

This is where i feel the Engineers Bio-Tech and Construction Materials came from, they borrowed it off some Organism related to the Xeno, as the Sacrifical Engineers seemed to lack any such Giger Matter Bio-Tech.

Could be wrong but thats just my hunch...

Here is Spider Silk Video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktgACq4zcAU

Yep my bets always been on the black goo coming from the God like being. And I've lent on the side that it probably was something other than destruction as of course it's a very stupid way of destroying a race when they probably have mega powerful weapons that could do it far more efficiently. Far more likely to be yes something like to enlighten us evolve us or this being or just take evolution in a new direction etc etc....

Double post :s

BigDave, wasn't it stated in Spaihts or Lindelof's script that the black stuff contained DNA? Can somebody confirm this as i don't trust my own memory? 

Spaights draft just indicates the nano scarabs are unleshed on a sacrifice in there hundreds of thousands and each consumes the Engineer peice by peice but in doing so they some how store the Genetical Code of the Engineer.

They then go onto bite a victim (which was a early primate) and then injected the Engineers cargo of DNA into the Primate who then starts to evolve.... this leads to us.

Thats the only mention of the DNA is with the Scarabs... i am sure in Lindeloffs the only DNA mention is that the Engineers DNA matched ours.

Necronom, your theory about the urns is something new and it please me a lot !
Very dark but also very plausible...
"just another tomb"
Yes the ampule room could simply be the graveyard of a specie that dissappeared a long time ago. Each urn were used to collect and contain broke down DNA of the past beings (elders?) in the hope to ressurect them later. This is the purpose of the engineers : They are androids who tries to find a science to bring their masters back to life. Exactly the same mission that Weyland gave to David... And LV233 is the outpost of this dangerous experiment. The "croissant ship" or Juggernaut could be a kind of Noah's arc full of dead species DNA.
"sometimes to create, one must first destroy"
Quite a strange way to say that humans were choose to serve as "vessels" to restore the elders civilisation !

I like the way you're thinking too.  And something occured to me, what if they are urns and the temples/LV223 are storage for species the Engineers have vanquished or collected?  There were other temples, therefore there could be other species stored in them.  And what if the juggernaut was not carrying weapons but rather storage devices (urns) for the collection of the human race.  And of course something went wrong.

To take it a little further, the engineers seed planets.  Eventually they come back to collect the fruit for storage and maybe later seeding.  The murals on Earth show the Engineers telling humankind this.

And just to go way down another path, a religious one, this could be where the idea of the Rapture comes from in Christianity or in other religions, ascension.

@granolaboy

This could be one of many explanations. We can not rule out for sure that the Engineers are trying to bring back there masters, some have speculated that the Engineers are created by some other more Giger Looking Race or indeed the LV 223 outpost was  way of them trying to recreate their master/god hense the Mural.

This could be the case, but then there is so many other explanations and maybe we have to take into account the Prometheus Myth and maybe apply it to the Engineers/Elders.   If we instead look at the explanations above that they was creating something they worshiped as in their creator, and thus Mankind would be a vessal for the creation of their Gods.  Well that shows the Engineers as being a subservent race.

I however think that the patern of rebelion is key, and that as Mankind had grown to not worship or obey the Engineers, and just as we see seeds that show David is starting to rebel against Mankind, i think maybe this tree goes futher back and the Engineers rebelled against their creators.

@rich78

Yes indeed the Juggernaughts could be some kind of Noahs Ark, and at the end of the day storing DNA in Vials and Eggs and Sperm is a lot easier way to create a real life Noahs Ark rather than the take two of every kind approach.

However we need to look at what we see that occurs with the Urns, we see that for some reason the stuff in the Urns seems to Evolve what ever life it comes into contact with and passes on traits of what ever DNA is stored inside onto what ever it comes into contact with while also keeping the best traits of the Organism it infects and Evolves them (Worms Regrowing Heads etc). So i would assume that unleashing the Goo on its own does not create a Xeno, it instead acts as a substance that creates hybrids out of what ever lifeform it comes into contact with. Passing on the Xeno DNA.

We see the start of the movie the Engineers DNA is seeded, but we have to assume this scene does not show us that Mankind was created after this point but rather Evolution started and thus the Engineers would have had to come back and select some of the Organisms and then evolve them futher, so that it may had needed many such experiments and mixing of Engineer DNA with certain Organisms on Earth before eventually Mankind is created.

As far as the other temples go, well again yes we could see each one has a totally different Organism DNA stored inside them.

Maybe the one the crew went to has just Xeno DNA, or its Ancestor, maybe other temples could have completely different DNA.  Or maybe each Temple just contains different variants of a Xeno/Giger Organism they was trying to recreate or sacrifice.

The thing with the whole route Prometheus has led us is there really is a near endless possible reasons and outcomes to what is going on.

With no real clues not solid ones, the door is open for near anything...

Like such simple answers that are then shown as FACT! will allow us to discount certain explanations...

For example if we know the Urns are not created in the room they was found and that they was created somewhere else and placed here that would take us down a different route to if they are created and stored into that room and then transported into a different place i.e Cargo holds of th Juggernaughts.

The Juggernaughts Cargo did not get compremised, they was all stacked up very close together and maybe that has something to do with the way to secure them.  The Weyland file did seem to indicate this and its one part of it that made sense.

Thus the storage of them in the ampoule room was not the recommended way to store them in which case this means they was left there on purpose so that they would be activated upon certain conditions...

Thus the Star Maps being a Trap or Warning could hold some weight.

If they have the same DNA as us. Now..heres a thought...What if the Engineers came from Earth? What if they were just telling us that they are going to move to LV223? We have the same DNA as them. So it kind of makes sense. You could say that maybe the Engineers are somehow related to the Stories of Atlantis or Lemuria. Of course this is just conjecture but a thought nonetheless. They could have been on Earth with us just like primates are with us. Its plausible I think. Also if they visted us a bunch of times before...why would we stop him from going again?? I dont think anything changed really. Nothing really states they wanted us dead..aside from the Sjs mood.. When David unlcoks the hologram of the four SJs planning a trip they dont look like they are rushing around..they dont look angry.. just look like they are taking a routine trip back to Earth. 

I havent seen anyone post this...but here are some things to consider

Flamethrower- its almost the year 2100...yet they bring a flamethrower across the glaxy??

Lone SJ...ok heres what is weird...his whole crew is dead yet hes not? did he sabotage the crew? Just like David and Ash?? Of course this refutes part of my theory mentioned above...but its just one of my therories...ive watched this movie a lot.. :) Also no on seems to mention this in the posts i have read..

the hologram of the running SJs - the one that gets decapitated, his head is in a room where a giant head is found?? ironic? or since it was a tomb did the other SJs think he sacrificed himself? Was this a memory/dream of the SJ in cryo or a ship log?? Similar to Shaw in cryo? Also when the hologram starts you hear the scream/roar of a Deacon. I think its similar to the one at the end anyway. 

Deacon/Squid face hugger thingy - ok so apparently a woman needs to give birth to this thing for the deacon to come to life? IF there was no female on the ship or insallation...then how the hell did a Deacon come about and the other SJs chests burst open? The SJs still had their suits on so this had to happen before they placed these on..So how did it get created? Also the chest burst looked smaller than the one at the end of the film...more akin to the Alien movies. 

@WhatThaEff; Quote "Now..heres a thought...What if the Engineers came from Earth? What if they were just telling us that they are going to move to LV223? We have the same DNA as them." - WhatThaEff.

That as crossed my mind also. Prometheus is so ambiguous that it forces us to speculate. It's no wonder that some theories are out there.

I also had a thought that maybe the elders created the engineers (the ones on LV223,) in the same way they created us. Maybe the opening scene depicts the creation of the LV223 engineers? Maybe they were created way before we were created on a different planet? Maybe the elders wiped out most of their civilization using an ancient bio-weapon (facehuggers,) forcing a group of survivors to seek out another world (LV223) where they plotted their revenge against the elders newest creation (us.)

I know, alot of maybe's.