Society of the Ancients

"I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

- Isaac Newton

The Society of the Ancients is a human organization dedicated to compiling information related to the hypothesis regarding alien visitors on planet Earth, referred to as "Ancients", who helped humanity construct technology. Among the evidence is an image of the Forerunner symbol etched in rock by N'chala in 100,000 BC.

Background
The organization was created by Dave George after he spent a memorable evening at a barbecue with his neighbor, Aaron Elliot. The conversation turned to a book series Elliot was into that dealt with unsolved ancient mysteries. Intrigued by the subject, George began researching it heavily and shortly became obsessed. After SOTA's creation, they attracted 510 members by 2007.

Out-of-place handprint
The Society of the Ancients claimed that the artifact is a 110 million-year-old human handprint found in limestone. It is used as evidence for their hypothesis of ancient alien visitors to Earth.

Stonehenge
The Society of the Ancients suggested Forerunner involvement in the creation of Stonehenge. In addition to suspicion of an ancient people's interest in investing such effort into its construction, the circular shape was used as evidence to support their claim. Many of their proposed artifacts that were affected by alien interventions consists of items with the familiar circular pattern used in Forerunner glyphs.

Antikythera mechanism
The Society of the Ancients questioned if its creation was influenced by Forerunner visitors in Earth's ancient history.

Crop cicles
Despite evidence crop circles are man-made hoaxes, the Society of the Ancients suggested a crop circle made in Ambertshire, England in 1985 was the result of alien visitation, citing its similarity to patterns seen in ancient artifacts thought to have been influenced by visitors that would later be identified as Forerunner.

Trivia
The Society of the Ancients is part of Halo 3 's marketing campaign, Iris.