The Universe of "Life" and the Galaxy of Kuxtal

Appendix A: What marks the dawn of an era?

To some degree, the Historical practice of marking the beginning and end of an era on a timeline is an arbitrary thing, particularly when discussing the history of the Galaxy of Kuxtal. Reality changes in complex and subtle ways, and single events are rarely able to change one planet overnight, let alone the entire Galaxy; so, using a single event to mark the start or end of an era comes with inherent problems. In reality, there is often a gradual change from one day to the next, a slow introduction of some new way of life that won't be common for a very long time.

It is also the case that bias and ideology play an inordinate role in determining the way that Historians structure the past into eras and ages. The process of studying the past to break it down into different eras is important, but it is more of an art and a matter of taste, than it is a perfect science.

Let's take a look at the Galactic Timeline we provided to explore this issue further. The first two ages, the Physical Age and the Biological Age, are commonly accepted to have existed, but no concrete dates are given for when each one begins. The Physical Age lasted approximately 2,315,000,000 [Two Billion, Three Hundred Fifteen Million] years, while the Biological Age lasted approximately 1.315 billion years.

Exact numbers are proposed using various models and theories, but the origin of the Galaxy is still debated, and the models cannot agree on an exact figure for either Age. This is not the fault of the Historians, but a reflection of one of the greatest limitations placed on Historians by the circumstances of their work; they study times and places long gone, and for which the concrete material evidence of their existence is sparse or entirely lacking. It is not the fault of the Historian that much of the information about the past is lost to time. It is not their fault that they cannot work from a position of omniscience in their telling of the past. But ignorance of the past is only one factor that limits the validity of the work they produce.

The Physical Age is so named because it was the time before life emerged, when the physical forces of celestial bodies (stars, planets, etc.) were the only moving and changing beings. It is ended by the emergence of life in the Galaxy, but the date is an estimation, and the exact time and location of the first lifeforms to emerge is still debated, with several locations proposed but none able to produce concrete evidence that would designate them undeniably the first. The lack of evidence is not a Historian's or a Scientist's fault, but there is another problem here that is their fault. The stars and planets continued to form during the Biological Age. The key elements that define the Physical Age are ongoing into the Biological Age and even on to the present. Stars and planets and other celestial bodies are still forming and changing and defining the world around them. The introduction of lifeforms did not suddenly stop this process, even if we have begun to play a more active role in how the stars move. It could be argued that everything that defined the Physical Age is ongoing to this day, and so it never truly ended. It is important to mark the emergence of lifeforms, but it seems to be that we need to spend more time asking ourselves what the nature of the Physical Era truly is; what defines it and sets it apart as a separate Era? Because we seem to define it by the lack of lifeforms, and not by the qualities that actually characterize it.

Meanwhile, the Biological Age begins with the emergence of the first lifeforms in the Galaxy, and goes on until the First Travelers completed their first planetary orbit. The end of the Biological Age is marked with a concrete date on the timeline, but its beginning is only an estimate. As with the Physical Era, this is understandable, as the exact time and location of life emerging is debated. But there is another issue with relying on this system of classification; life did not emerge simultaneously throughout the Galaxy. Many places that were destined to generate life had remained barren rocks until nearly the end of the Biological Era, and there are even several documented instances of early life emerging during the Ages of Exploration. In other words, life did not simply start everywhere all at once. Over a billion years into the Biological Era, there were still countless places capable of generating life that had shown no signs of its emergence. This problem is a recurring theme in telling the History of the Galaxy, because there are so many places spread so far apart that nothing ever happened overnight. Changes which distinguish one era from another almost always took generations to take hold over a significant portion of the Galaxy. 

For example, the Orbital Era begins with the creation of space traveling technology, but for its first 100,000 years there were only 3 species that possessed this ability, and 2 of those would die out within the next 200,000 years. The Orbital Era is talked about as the period of time during which the early technology for spacecraft was being perfected. But by the end of the era, there were only a few dozen species with access to some form of the technology. Compared to the size of the Galaxy, they were almost nonexistent, and covered only a few hundred star systems.

The Solar Era begins with the invention of early Light Speed tech, but only one species had that technology for most of the Era. The Discovery Era refers to a period of time when 99.99% of the Galaxy had already been charted, categorized, and "discovered." The First Collapse of The Galactic Order included a long stretch of time that was a Golden Era for about 30% of the Galaxy. Each of these examples demonstrates the contradictions that arise when you try to characterize something as complex as a Galaxy using something as simple as a timeline and labels. Of course, there are also good reasons for these labels being used as they are. The Solar Era saw the first attempts, if largely unsuccessful, at forming Empires and Governments that could span multiple star systems. And the invention of light speed, though limited to a single species, facilitated an explosion in the rate of interplanetary exchange between different solar systems. The Discovery Era was when the last of the galactic planets were charted, marking the "End of Discovery." The First Collapse of Galactic Order was a period of decline and collapse for most of the galaxy, even if some of it was experiencing golden times.

Ultimately, the designations we place on the past will always be up for debate. What matters is less how we package it today, and more that we stay dedicated to a sincere and honest exploration of what the truth about the past is, and what that means for us.

So let's explore that past together.