![]() ![]() The Firstborn left behind three Monoliths to observe and enact their plan to encourage hominids to pursue technology and space travel.Īs described in Clarke's novel, the Firstborn discovered later how to transfer their consciousness onto computers, and thus they became thinking machines. The decaying ecology of Mars was also visited, but passed over in favour of more fruitful locations like Earth. ![]() They also observed Jupiter and its watery moon, Europa. One such planet, encountered when it was still quite young, was Earth. When they encountered a living world that had features in favour of the evolution of intelligent life, they left behind the Monoliths as remote observers that were also capable of taking a variety of actions according to the wishes of their creators. Therefore, the aliens created increasingly complex automated machines to oversee and carry out their projects over the eons. However, the evolutionary development projects they began would by their nature require very long time-spans to complete, far longer than the lives of their creators. Though not at all morphologically similar to humans, the Firstborn were nonetheless creatures of "flesh and blood", and like humans, were originally mortal. ![]() While these early explorers discovered that life was quite common, they observed that intelligent life was often stunted in its development, or else died out prematurely. Members of this species explored the universe in the search of knowledge, especially knowledge about other intelligent species. ![]() In the novels, Clarke refers to them as the "Firstborn", since they were quite possibly the first sapient species to possess a significant capability of interstellar travel. The species that built the Monoliths developed interstellar travel millions or perhaps billions of years before the present time. The existence of this species is only hypothesized by the rest of humanity, but it is obvious because the Monolith was immediately identified as an artefact of non-human origin. The species that built the Monoliths is never described in detail, but some knowledge of its existence is given to Dave Bowman after he is transported by the star-gate to the "cosmic zoo", as detailed in the 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey and its 1982 sequel, 2010: Odyssey Two. ( February 2022) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. It is later revealed that thousands of other Monoliths exist elsewhere in the galaxy. It is discovered by a group of australopithecines and triggers a shift in evolution, starting with the ability to use tools and weaponry. The first Monolith appears at the beginning of the story, set four million years before the present era. It also influences the fictional history of the series, particularly by encouraging humanity to progress with technological development. The response of the characters to their discovery drives the plot of the series. In the series of novels (and the films based on these), three Monoliths are discovered in the Solar System by australopithecines and their human descendants. Clarke's Space Odyssey series, Monoliths are machines in black cuboids whose sides extend in the precise ratio of 1 : 4 : 9 (1 2 : 2 2 : 3 2) built by an unseen extraterrestrial species whom Clarke dubbed the Firstborn and who he suggests are the earliest highly intelligent species to evolve in the Milky Way. Deals with themes of existentialism, human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial intelligence ![]()
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