History Main / RecursivePrecursors

Naturally, this is a SubTrope of {{Precursors}}. When CreatingLife is involved, this trope is highly compatible with RecursiveCreators, but is otherwise not related to other "Recursive Tropes" such as RecursiveReality and RecursiveFanfiction.

* Throughout the ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'' series, several different precursors have had an influence on the modern world, including [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy the ancient Echidnas]], and [[AncientAstronauts the Babylonians]]. However, The Ancients, mysterious beings introduced in ''VideoGame/SonicFrontiers'', are the oldest of them by far. [[spoiler: They were the ones who originally brought the Chaos Emeralds – the plot MacGuffin that most of those precursors sought and used for their own purposes – to Earth in the first place, and one of their distant descendants eventually wiped out the ancient Echidnas.]]

* In ''[[Literature/TheHistoryOfMiddleEarth The Book of Lost Tales]]'', the pagan Anglo-Saxon mariner Eriol knows of 'the gods' (the Valar) but an Elf has to tell him about [[{{God}} Ilúvatar]], "who was not of the Gods, but ''made'' them."
* In Creator/CarlSagan's novel ''Literature/{{Contact}}'', when the humans make FirstContact the {{Sufficiently Advanced Alien}}s who sent them the blueprints for the device used to access the setting's PortalNetwork, they reveal that they were not the original creators of said PortalNetwork. It is also revealed that whatever being(s) did create the PortalNetwork had ''their own'' Precursor(s) [[spoiler: the creator(s) of the universe - who may be {{God}}]] and left a message in the form of [[spoiler: the numerical sequence of ''pi''.]]

* Robert E. Howard's ''Literature/{{Kull}}'' series, set in an age long before his ''Literature/ConanTheBarbarian'' tales, occurs in the "fading, degenerate" land of Valusia, a place "living mostly in dreams of bygone glory, but still a mighty land and the greatest of the Seven Empires", and considered so ancient that the "hills of {{Atlantis}} and Mu were isles of the sea when Valusia was young."

--> "Your race and ours are, perhaps, no more than each other's reproductive mechanisms."

* In ''Series/RedDwarf'' all known life in the universe originated on Earth, with humans acting as precursors to countless other races, who in turn acted as this to even more sentient creatures.

* Throughout the VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog series, several different precursors have had an influence on the modern world, including [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy the ancient Echidnas]], and [[AncientAstronauts the Babylonians]]. However, The Ancients, mysterious beings introduced in VideoGame/SonicFrontiers, are the oldest of them by far. [[spoiler: They were the ones who originally brought the Chaos Emeralds – the plot MacGuffin that most of those precursors sought and used for their own purposes – to Earth in the first place, and one of their distant descendants eventually wiped out the ancient Echidnas.]]

*** In the Extended Cut, one of the options at the end is Refusal -- revolted by [[spoiler:the Catalyst and its options for ending the war]], Shepard refuses to fire the Crucible. The united fleets of the galaxy are vanquished by the Reapers and [[TheBadGuyWins all sapient, spacefaring life in the galaxy is harvested]] (again). However, the epilogue shows one of [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture Liara's time capsules]] (which she [[ChekhovsGun mentioned compiling]] earlier in the game) being discovered and explaining to an unknown species the cycle of extinction, the Reapers, the Crucible, and the story of Shepard's war. In the final scene, an alien speaker explains to a child how, through [[BenevolentPrecursors the help of those who came before them]], they were able to defeat the threat of the Reapers.

* Myth/IrishMythology doesn't have a real "creation myth" per se, instead it recalls how the first Gaels came to Ireland and won the land from the Tuatha De Danann gods. The gods in turn took control of Ireland from the Fir Bolg and the Fomorians. But even before that, Ireland was ruled by the people of Nemed, who were the ancestors of the Tuatha De, the Fir Bolg, and possibly even humans. The precursors of the Nemedians were the people of Partholon, who shaped the land itself with their magic. [[UpToEleven And some sources even have a race that preceded THEM!]]

* In the ''VideoGame/StarControl'' series, the first {{Precursors}} we know of is the race that left behind the massive battleship that the Ur-Quan use, who themselves [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters Turned Against]] their Dnyarri slavemasters, who themselves had killed their own precursors, the Sentient Milieu. The reason for the original {{Precursors}} not being around anymore was eventually revealed in [[FanonDiscontinuity (the often-ignored)]] ''Star Control III'' ; [[spoiler: they were wiped out by an [[UpToEleven Even More Advanced]] race, possibly their own Recursive Precursors.]]

** The Yuht Empire died out six million years ago. The Yuht became technologically and culturally stagnant after achieving space travel and never developed FasterThanLightTravel and instead depended on sleeper ships for their entire two million year reign and never encountered any aliens for nearly their entire history and dismissed what artifacts they found of their own precursors as hoaxes. They attempted to exterminate the first alien species they met, the Jabbardeeni, who advanced rapidly and wiped out the Yuht within ten years.

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]
* TabletopGame/{{Eberron}} has a long history of being ruled by demons, then dragons, then giants, then goblinoids (in Khorvaire), then finally the common races. Some of them are still around to some extent, from the [[NeglectfulPrecursors Dragons of Argonessen]] to the [[SealedEvilInACan Demon Wastes]] to whatever is happening in [[DugTooDeep the depths of Khyber]].
* TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms elves dominated Faerun before they torn both continent and their civilizations apart in Crown Wars, which left them weakened and gradually displaced by human expansion, all the while Dwarven and Giant kingdoms still fought each other. But the Elves in turn took the world from Dragons' claws. That's where we switch from merely mythical era to the TimeAbyss of [[http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Creator_race Creator Races]] about whom little is known: Dragons [[http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/drrl/20071107a fought giants]] after knocking birdlike Aearee out of Toril's sky... Aearee in turn spread when Batrachi got themselves extinct, before ''their'' time there were [[LizardFolk Sarrukh]] and [[TheFairFolk Fey]], and so on. And before that was "[[http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=15988&whichpage=24#385780 Time of the Rauth]]" -- prehistorical era when something was going on too, but ''what'' is completely lost by now.
* TabletopGame/{{Traveller}} Gurps ''Alien Races 3'' discusses this as an optional alternative for lore about The Ancients. However the normal canon does not discuss this much.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', [[SpaceElves Eldar]] are a borderline example of a Precursor Race, in which case their creators, the Old Ones, would qualify as well, alongside the [[AbusivePrecursors Necrontyr/Necrons]], and the [[EldritchAbomination C'tan Star Gods.]]

* The ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion'' series has this in its backstory. An ancient precursor civilisation sent out various groups through an unstable wormhole when its star was found to be close to going supernova. The descendants of some of those became the eponymous Orions, the main precursors for the first two games. By the third game the Antarans, originally enemies of the Orions who returned in the events of the second game and canonically won, have accidentally wiped out most of their civilisation and effectively become a third tier of precursors.

** The Vultaum Star Assembly was a race of four-meter long worms who existed 12 million years ago. [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall They believed the universe was a vast virtual reality simulation]] and attempted to escape by committing mass suicide. The few who refused weren't enough to form a self-sustaining society and they died out.
** The Baol Organism, Grunur, and Zroni all existed more or less contemporaneously about 7 million years ago.

** The Yuht Empire died out 6 million years ago. The Yuht became technologically and culturally stagnant after achieving space travel and never developed FasterThanLightTravel and instead depended on sleeper ships for their entire two million year reign and never encountered any aliens for nearly their entire history and dismissed what artifacts they found of their own precursors as hoaxes. They attempted to exterminate the first alien species they met, the Jabbardeeni, who advanced rapidly and wiped out the Yuht within ten years.
** The First League existed about 2 million years ago. The First League was a multi-species republic that eventually fell apart due to rising inter-species tensions.

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* This trope becomes important in the later arcs of ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary''. The 'current' galactic civilization has a recorded history about 100,000 years old, but given that the Milky Way is about 13 billion years old this leaves a ''lot'' of space for earlier civilizations. In the later arcs the protagonists begin slowly unpacking exactly why this is, and discover that the Milky Way's history is littered with cycles of civilization. During each cycle, a number of trigger events (many of whom have already occurred in their cycle) tends to lead to all-out war and what few survivors are left [[HiddenElfVillage retreating from galactic civilization and concealing their presence]]. Each cycle can be millions of years apart, and still last for thousands, sometimes millions, of years, and still leave little trace of its existence. This has been going on for so long that the characters eventually calculate that surviving precursors in their own isolated refuges collectively outnumber galactic civilization by fifteen entire orders of magnitude.

Of course, having a long series of precursor races carries some [[FridgeHorror disturbing implications]]. Beyond the fact that precursors existed in the time before the setting's present civilizations, another important aspect of precursors is that they are no longer around. Perhaps it is [[InYourNatureToDestroyYourselves In Life's Nature to Destroy Itself]]. Perhaps they were [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters wiped out by their creations]]. Bonus points if those creations went on to become precursors to another young civilization. Maybe they were wiped out by an unrelated group of PrecursorKillers. Or maybe they were {{Sealed|EvilInACan}} [[SealedBadassInACan In Some Sort Of]] [[SealedGoodInACan Can]]. Less pessimistically, it's possible they've just [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence ascended to a higher plane of existence]], died out for mundane reasons, or simply left the immediate area for whatever reason.

Recursive Precursors occur when the concept of precursors is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin applied recursively]]; such beings served a similar role to precursors as they do to contemporary civilizations. The odds are surprisingly high that precursors to these precursors had even had ''another'' race that served as their own precursors, and so on, forming a long line of ancient civilizations.

** The first set of precursors was the Centaur Empire, the greatest empire of it's day and was on it's way to being BenevolentPrecursors. [[spoiler:They were also rather nice to the ponies before they were uplifted and became sapient]]. Unfortunately, Lord Tirek is the SoleSurvivor of their species [[spoiler:because [[PrecursorKillers killed them all]]]] and is most certainly an example of AbusivePrecursors.
** The G1 ponies were this to the Golden Age civilization (depicted in Tales), and [[BenevolentPrecursors where the ones to wipe out the monsters, witches, and other horrors]] reeking havoc on the world. The Paradise Ponies continued to safeguard the Golden Age civilizations due to the Rainbow of Light making them immortal [[spoiler:until Discord damaged it and they eventually passed on of natural causes]].

* In the ''Literature/{{Perry Rhodan}}'' series, a million years ago the Barkonids settled the galaxy as their planet was shot out of it. New colonies weren't given a lot of technology to prevent them from becoming decadent, which let most of them to become low tech. Over 50,000 years age the 'First Mankind', the Lemurians, settled the galaxy again, but they were wiped away in an interstellar war and fled to Andromeda galaxy. Then at least 20,000 thousand years ago we get the Akonids, who spread out but become really isolationist after a colonial war of independence with the Arkonids, who are currently becoming decadent, the next step will probably be humanity.

* ''{{Franchise/Halo}}'s'' Forerunners had the preceding species precursors, who were rumored to have exceeded technology and [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence become transentient]]. By the time of the Flood invasion, many believed the precursors were legend, [[spoiler:unaware that they had defeated the precursors millennia before and the Flood was their revenge. Literally, as a number of precursors broke themselves down into a dust that, millions of years later, would become the Flood.]]
* In ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'', the ancient Hiigarans left their hyperspace core to be discovered by their descendents 3000 years later. But the Ancient Hiigarans never built the core, they found it. It was made by a still older race known only as the Progenitors, who, according to legend, are said to have originated from beyond the galaxy.

** [[spoiler:Javik reveals that the precursors to the Protheans were the Issuanon, whose ruins on Ilos were where the Prothean first discovered mass effect technology, much like humans had from the Prothean ruins on Mars.]]

->''The Protheans were not the first. They did not create the Citadel. They did not forge the Mass Relays. They merely found them, the legacy of my kind.''

*** The Zroni were the first known psionic species and gained access to, and shaped, the Shroud. The Zroni split into two factions, the Divine who sought to consume the whole galaxy to conquer the Shroud, and the Saviors who opposed this. The Saviors eventually won by telepathically erasing all Zroni of both factions. [[spoiler: With the Nemesis expansion, the player may attempt to follow the Divine Zroni's path by becoming the ceisis, building up Menace, feeding an Aetherophasic Engine, and destroying the entire galaxy.]]

** The Yuht Empire died out 6 million years ago. The Yuht became technologically and culturally stagnant after achieving space travel and never developed FasterThanLightTravel and instead depended on sleeper ships for their entire two million year reign and never encountered any aliens for nearly their entire history. They attempted to exterminate the first alien species they met, the Jabbardeeni, who advanced rapidly and wiped out the Yuht within ten years.

*** The Grunur waged a campaign of genocide against the Baol that either killed or reduced to pre-sapience the entire species. [[spoiler: A lone Baol still lives, but joins the rest of its species soon after learning their fate.]]