Precursors - Television Tropes & Idioms

They left our planets long ago

The Elder Race still learn and grow

Their power grows with purpose strong

To claim the home where they belong

— Rush, 2112

A standard fixture of much science fiction and fantasy: an ancient race whose culture and knowledge rose to its pinnacle in ages long past but which is now extinct. In science fiction settings, they are usually considered the first race to have gained sentience in the universe or galaxy, giving them a noticeable leg up on everybody else. At their height, they are usually rumored to have been capable of doing (and have done) just about anything, up to and including creating intelligent species and reworking entire worlds with a snap of a finger, and almost any strange and persistent mystery in the story's 'verse is usually laid at their feet. They may have been sufficiently advanced, or just much better than everyone else with technology/magic, but either way they left their mark, a mark that remains to this day.

Then they vanished into myth, leaving behind nothing but tantalizing ruins and rare, sometimes incomprehensible artifacts. Just why, no one knows. Perhaps they Ascended To A Higher Plane Of Existence, or were wiped out by a disaster or war, or maybe they just relocated en masse to somewhere else where they haven't been found yet.

Whatever the reason, they set the stage for the modern world, left behind a few MacGuffins and surprises for the heroes and villains to find, and then got conveniently out of the way. And then there are the times where they themselves are the reason everything's gone to hell, and they intend to keep it that way.

Sometimes the Precursors can be rediscovered; usually, nobody — especially not the Precursors themselves — is happy with that.

Bonus points if Earth Humans are Precursors and their incredibly human descendants try to rediscover their heritage — or, conversely, if Earth Humans are the only descendants.

Examples:

From Star Trek, the Preservers, the Iconians, and possibly the members of the "First Federation" mentioned in the original series episode "The Corbomite Maneuver".
- For that matter, the Ancient Humanoids in Star Trek The Next Generation.
  - It seems to be a given in the Expanded Universe that the Ancient Humanoids are the Preservers.
From Babylon 5, the "First Ones", who have all mostly emigrated "beyond the rim of the galaxy," although some remain lurking about in known space; especially Lorien, the "First One," literally the first sentient being in the galaxy. Not to mention the Vorlons and the Shadows, which drive the main plots of the entire series.
The Stargate network from Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis was created by one such race, named (creatively) the Ancients, though they later are discovered to have called themselves the Alterans (or the Lanteans, after the planet on which Atlantis resided).
Of course you can't forget the Ancients from Farscape either. In fact, it seems that the Precursors are so often called "the Ancients", that would be just as good a name for this trope.
From the perspective of the modern day, the Elves of Tolkien's Middle-Earth are a Precursor race.
The Magratheans from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy seem to hit all the key points of the trope, although they also subvert it in that they're capitalists who disappeared because the bottom had dropped out of the custom planet-building market, and they went into Suspended Animation until the Galactic economy recovered enough to provide them with customers again.
In the Star Control games, there is a race explicitly called "The Precursors" which vanished but left behind many artifacts and installations across the galaxy. The wondrous second one is notable for containing artifacts and mysteries which are not explained away with the Precursors. The third one attributes everything to them to the point of Retconning previous reveals, though since the game's not all that impressive the fans don't much care.
The Jak and Daxter videogame franchise also has an ancient race called "The Precursors". They leave deep-voiced oracular statues and various giant robots scattered about, and depict themselves as glowing Energy Beings, but that's just a Wizard of Oz act, they're really Ottsels, otter-weasel things like Jak's sidekick Daxter. In fact, he becomes one because of some Lost Technology.
GURPS Space, a sourcebook for GURPS, includes Precursors as a potential element a gamemaster might want to weave into his game world.
One serious solution proposed for Fermi's Paradox (in brief: The universe is at the very least not hostile to life, and it's big enough and old enough that we humans shouldn't be alone, so why haven't we encountered any other intelligent species in some way?) is that we humans are the Precursors — we are the first intelligent race. Or at the very least, our elders are too recently emerged to have expanded universe-wide yet.
- "The Ancient Ones" by David Brin and several other SF stories over the past 20 years or so have been exploring that very idea.
- As did Isaac Asimov's Robot Detective/Foundation universe, wherein Earth was in a small band where it was more radioactive than most planets (thus resulting in a higher rater of mutation and thus, faster evolution), but not so radioactive that life couldn't survive there.
- Red Dwarf postulates that all life originated on Earth; after three million years, there's a hell of a lot of variations on sentient life — creatures descended from genetic experiments, animals that evolved into sentient humanoids, self-sustaining races of androids, "pan-dimensional liquid beasts," etc. etc. etc.
In the 1960s, Andre Norton wrote a lot of space opera novels featuring relics of various lost civilizations, collectively called "Forerunners". She is one of the early developers of the abandoned-gateway-between-worlds idea that the Stargate films and TV series are based on; one of her Forerunner cultures left behind such a network, which younger species, including humans, have started to explore.
- C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine series, dedicated to Norton, features a protagonist who — ironically — is on a mission to destroy such a network.
The Myst series of games gradually reveals that the long-lost civilization of D'ni was actually located on Earth; its founders originally came from an alternate universe, but they founded a city Beneath The Earth.
In the universe of the game series Halo, the Forerunners are very much a precursor race, who have left behind artifacts such as the titular "halo" rings, and whose fate seems to be either of the vanished or wiped out variety, perhaps a little of both. Oddly, humans seem to have a unique connection to them — only a human can activate the Halo's final weapon. This connection is explained in the final game... sort of.
- A side-note: Backstory of the Forerunners reveals that they were preceded by a race of long-lost superior beings they called "The Precursors".
In the Marathon series of games, also made by Bungie, a race of ancient vanished beings called the Jjaro serve essentially the same role the Forerunners do in Halo.
In Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's novel Footfall, the aliens who invade Earth are actually at a caveman level of social development; the Forerunners left carved blocks on their planet which detail everything from simple metallurgy through advanced laser weapons and Bussard ramscoops. As a result, there are many technological paths they never even thought of.
In Larry Niven's Known Space universe, there are two sets of precursors. First there were the Thrintun (AKA "Slavers"), who seeded the galaxy with the ingredients of life so it would grow and evolve into unique delicacies for them to eat (being hypnotic slavers, they were defeated by the Tnuctipun in the inevitable Turned Against Their Masters, and they took all sentient life with them. Talk about bad parenting). Then there were the Pak, a race of more recent aliens with three life stages (child, breeder, Protector) only sentient in the third stage, and programmed to be homicidal to anything that could conceivably threaten their descendants (mutations were not recognized). Earth was a Lost Colony of them who couldn't advance to Protector stage when their supply of tree-of-life root ran out due to a lack of thallium in Earth's soil. They left behind lost colonies and random apelike animals all over, including the Ringworld, which they had built and abandoned.
In David Brin's Uplift universe, every intelligent race in the galaxy was Uplifted (engineered to sentience and given access to the Great Library) by a previous one, save the first. The Progenitors (self-evolved, now extinct) are considered the next thing to gods. A race's clout in the galactic hierarchy is in part determined by how close they are to having been created directly by the Progenitors. And then along come the Humans, who have discovered hyperdrive and reached the stars alone, with no patron race and a complete fossil record that indicates they evolved naturally. It's practically heretical! It doesn't help matters (from the galactic standpoint) that humans have already Uplifted chimps and dolphins, too....
- In the first novel set in the Uplift Universe, "Startide Rising," the first dolphin-captained Earth ship discovers what is assumed to be a fleet of the fabled Progenitors, and must try to return to Earth while being hounded by bickering alien battle fleets after the transmission of their findings is intercepted; the most active (and warlike) of the alien races/alliances are not happy that the wolfling Humans might have the key to the fate of the Progenitors (which could prove most or all of their belief systems wrong. The idea that humans may be the descendants or direct product of the Progenitors is also examined.
In StarCraft the Xel'Naga take this role, although the reason for their disappearance is less mysterious than most...or so it seems at first...
One of the most widely known Precursor stories is 2001: A Space Odyssey, where they are also (presumably) Energy Beings who guided human evolution.
The Protheans In Mass Effect, at least until Dr. T'soni joins your party and suggests that they probably weren't the actual precursors. Turns out she's right, as the real precursors are the Reapers, which are robotic Cosmic Horrors that are out for everyone's blood.
Frederik Pohl's Gateway and its sequels set many of the standards for this trope. Humanity has stumbled on an space station abandoned by the local Precursors, the Heechee, and try to use the Faster Than Light Travel spacecraft left behind to search for alien artifacts to reverse-engineer. The destinations are pre-programmed and can only be accessed randomly, making exploration a dangerous crapshoot. Some of the survivors return rich; many return dead, if they return at all.
An ancient race is revealed to be responsible for the Galactic Leyline in Outlaw Star, yet another of the many Sequel Hooks in the last episode.
The First Race, while never directly referred to in the show, has been revealed by Greg Weisman to have preceded the Three Races in Gargoyles.
In the Forgotten Realms, a saurian race ruled the world in the days when the world was warm. They are not entirely gone, though...
The Star Ocean series plays with this trope. The games are filled with Out of Place Artifacts, mystical technologies such as the time gate on the apparently sentient planet Styx, and near the middle of the third game, there's even a precursor-like group of beings called the Executioners who rain havoc upon ALL the races of the galaxy. It turns out that the universe is actually a video game called the Eternal Sphere, and all the Precursor like artifacts, including the Executioners, were planted by the programmer.
The Wanderers in the Noon Universe may or may not be still active, but they fit this trope closely enough because the humans only ever find the traces of their continued and enigmatic work. They seem to be "progressing" the other civilisations, but their activities often enough utterly screw over local civilisations, though it might be for their ultimate good in some way anyway.
The Cthulhu Mythos, by H.P. Lovecraft and others, features the Elder Things, who colonized the Earth two billion years ago and sowed the seeds of all advanced life on the planet. Among the many monstrous elder races of the Mythos, the Elder Things are portrayed as less alien and less inimical than many. They feature most prominently in Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness and are sometimes called the "Old Ones" (but that term is notoriously ambiguous in the Cthulhu Mythos).
- In Whispers in the Darkness, the Mi-Go are hinted at being even older, possibly coming from outside the known universe.
The First People in the Houshin Engi manga, five aliens the came to Earth millions of years ago after their home planet self-destructed. They (except for one) merged with the earth and its life forms to spread their blood, leaving behind the first seven paopei (magical weapons used in the series) from which all others would be copied.
The Star Wars universe has several features that are attributed to Precursor-like races, whether they are real Precursors or just people in the Unknown Regions is, well, unknown.
In the Carl Sagan novel Contact, and the movie based on it, an unknown ancient race of aliens built the "cosmic subway system" of wormhole transportation used to bring a single human to meet the successor aliens who inherited the system.
Although they raised Samus to adulthood, and had extensive contact with faraway races like the Luminoth, Elysia, and even the Federation, the Chozo from Metroid have vanished from all known space. Their entire legacy consists of decayed ruins, cryptic messages for Samus, and the odd upgrade module for her Power Suit. And, of course, the Metroids themselves.
Filgaia, the world from Wild Arms a race of Precursors left behind a vast array of Lost Technology. In the anime series Twilight Venom it was revealed that the precursors were from Earth, but left due to the annoyance of Random Encounters.
In `Shadow Raiders`, a mysterious race created world engines (if not the planets themselves). This allowed the natives to not get consumed by the Beast Planet. One has to wonder who they were and why they did it.
- This Troper likes to think that they were the survivors of a world consumed by the Beast Planet, and constructed the world engines on other planets before they eventually went extinct; thus giving other races a fighting chance and at the same saying "SCREW YOU" to the Beast Planet.
In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Precursors went around dropping Black and White Eggs (Adams and Liliths) on several planets, according to one rather obscure video game that served little other purpose than as supplemental material.
The Ancients of Piers Anthony's Cluster series.
The Ancients of the Traveller Tabletop RPG.
The Ooccooo in The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess are suggested to be the Precursors of the Hylians — the goddesses, as one Adventurer Archaeologist tells us, may have made the Ooccoo first, and then the Ooccoo made the Hylians before retreating to their city in the sky. Some fan-speculation surrounds these creatures, probably not the least because of their... incredibly bizarre appearance.
Assassins Creed has subtle nods to some kind of Precusor civilization, in the form of various ancient artifacts the Templars are hunting for.
The Old Ones in Warhammer (both fantasy and 40k) created msot sentient races. In Fantasy they just left, never to return, but in 40k their backstory is given out in more detail. Apparently they had a massive, galaxy-shaking war with another old race, the Necronty (which later became the robotic Necrons), and created many races to help them fight. They (as well as most life in the galaxy) were nearly wiped out in the aftermath of the war, when the psychic disturbance caused by the massive amount of warp-fueled power used by them and the races they created caused the reality to tear apart and horrible creatures to spill through.
Appropriately for a series where ancient ruins are one of the most populous level types, the Sonic series is jam-packed with different precursor, whose ancient weapons/relics/monsters set the stage for the world-threatening terror of the game. Interestingly enough, although absolutely all of them are shown to have posessed and utilised the series' recurring Mac Guffins, none of them claim responsibility for creating any of the Emeralds.
The originator of this trope may be Atlantis, which was first recorded by Plato and is thought to be an allegory he dreamed up to serve his conception of a utopian society. So, you know the drill...
This turned out to be the answer to all the mysteries (and there were plenty) in Last Exile. That one gets full bonus points, too.
Homeworld 2 featured the aptly-named Progenitors, who left behind various relics including several Wave Motion Guns which the player and the enemy fight for control of.
The Ancients from the Might And Magic universe (at least when it was in the hands of New World Computing) were creating various worlds out of the four elements and seeding them with life as part of a great experiment. Their true agenda is never entirely revealed but there are hints that they had a specific outcome in mind for most of their worlds, before the Creators and the Kreegan interfered.
Doctor Who sometime paints the Time Lords like this, with the widespread presence of Human Aliens attributed to their, or more specifically their leader Rassilon's, xenophobia. The unseen race who caged The Beast also qualify.
Pac Man World 3 features the Ancients (possibly members or ancestors of Pac-Man's spherical race), about whose lives little is known, although their deaths comprise a well-known story 'of greed, of tampering with unknown forces, and of running and screaming and dying', to quote an in-game archaeologist. As it turns out, the Ancients were wiped out when they tried to siphon energy from the Spectral Realm (the Pac-Man universe's afterlife), which is exactly what the game's villain is trying to do in the present.
In the furry webcomic Jack, the furries that currently live on Earth are the descendants of furries created in a lab by humans, making humans the Precursors. They were wiped out in a war started by the first furry, Jack. The furry version of the United States government knows about furrykind's origins, and is (probably wisely) keeping it a secret.
In EVE Online, we are the precursors. We used the EVE wormhole to travel to the Galaxy of EVE, but when the wormhole collapsed, so to did civilization in EVE, and as new civilizations formed, their origins faded into myth and legend.
The Zilart of Final Fantasy XI. A few of them still remain but most of them are relatively insane and/or genocidal. As far as This Troper knows, there's only two Zilartians that have any favor for the current civilizations, and one of them Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence.

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