Ancestors

Long before the Flood's rape of the Milky Way galaxy, humanity had left their homeworld (then known as "Erde-Tyrene") and had founded a vast intersteller empire along the Orion arm. After some forty-thousand years of expansion, the collective human genus waged war with the biologically-similar Forerunner species, loosing humiliatingly. After the last of the surviving humans were brought back to their homeworld by The Librarian, their advanced technology was removed.

Forced to start again, they managed to build large cities with wood and design ocean-vessels that were powered by steam. However, their attempt at re-civilisation would collapse, and they would regress further into the Tier-7 tribes encountered by the Forerunners during the construction of the portal in east Africa.