Humans are the protagonist species in the Xeelee Sequence. They evolved on the planet Earth, gaining the ability for space travel in the 20th century.
Early Humanity[]
The Vitruvian Man, drawn by Leonardo DaVinci on pre-Qax Earth
Homo sapiens evolved on Earth around 300,000 B.C.E, when they diverged from Homo heidelbergensis. They moved out of the African continent and into the wider planet, causing extinctions of mega-fauna by hunting and out-competing them. They developed complex social communities, pastoralism, writing, and agriculture. This change marked the beginning of history as defined by the humans.
Humans changed the biosphere of the planet significantly - cultivating crops, breeding and herding livestock, and causing extinctions - from the period 10,000 B.C.E - 1500 A.D, but the industrialization of the planet began with the period known as the Enlightenment. Scientific and secular thinking expanded, triggering the industrial revolution. Coal was mined and burned at an exponential rate, and pollutants were dumped into the air and sea in colossal volumes. Large areas of the planet were destroyed and settled by humans, at the expense of countless ecosystems and species. The population exploded between 1800 - 2000 A.D, when the effects of the Anthropocene were felt. The Bottleneck period followed, as the quality of life for humans plummeted. The temperature of the planet rose dramatically, causing the ice at the poles to melt, and sea levels to rise. This was the sixth mass extinction, and nearly resulted in the end of humanity.
Post-Interstellar Travel[]
In the year 4874, humanity was overthrown by the telepathic hive-mind species known as the Squeem, who used humans to perform tasks deemed too dangerous for Squeem, such as raiding Xeelee bases. In the year 4925, a human used a Xeelee Flower to bargain for humanities freedom, overthrowing the Squeem and kick starting the second expansion.
In the year 5088, the species know as the Qax overthrew the human race and enforced a rule based upon humans historically ruling each other, which led to the backward-time escape of the Friends of Wigner, and made a martyr of Michael Poole, who destroyed the wormhole to save humanity. This rebellion by the Friends prompted a more violent Qax rule from thereon out. The Qax attempted to remove humanity's sense of self and history, destroying fossils, cross-breeding humans to remove all genetic markers that could give clue about their past and creating a newspeak, removing all linguistic history. This violent destruction of history fueled the rage behind the coming Third Expansion.
In the year 5406, the Qax sent a the human Jim Bolder to the Great Attractor, the Xeelee's greatest work, which came to be known as Bolder's Ring (a galaxy sized gatway to alternate universes). Bolder used the opportunity of control of the ship to fire a starbreaker at the Qax home-system's star making it go nova, causing them to withdraw from Earth in order to protect and help the Qax on the home-world.
Soon after, humanity was united under the Coalition, led by the ideologies of Hama Druz. The new coalition was extremely xenophobic, wiping out all alien species encountered. It also said that humanity must not be allowed to evolve into different species, but instead remain united as one.
The Coalition begun the third expansion, with humankind moving out and colonizing large areas of the galaxy. In the year 5499 humanity encounters the first real resistance to the expansion in the form of the Silver Ghost species. There was early attempts at diplomacy and cooperation, but in 5802, war broke out, eventually leading to Ghost extinction.
Up until approximately the year 10,000, the third expansion increased exponentially, with humanity assimilating all technology that they came across, and killing all life to make way for humans. At about this time, however, the expansion stalled. Humanity, and the Coalition, possessed most of the galaxy, but the core, controlled by the Xeelee, was known as the Prime Radiant.
Due to the fact that both sides had FTL ships, time travel was common-place, and people often knew how battles would play out before they happened. For about twelve thousand years, humanity and the Xeelee were at a stalemate, with neither side being able to get an advantage over the other (although it is likely that the Xeelee were putting minimal effort into the war). On average, three hundred child-soldiers died every second for twelve thousand years, adding up to trillions altogether.
Eventually, however, a group of humans mounted an attack on the Prime Radiant, the central super-massive black hole, Chandra. The mission, called Exultant, made use of technology from resurrected Silver Ghost scientists and made computations faster that light on CTC computers, essentially taking the answers from the future. When weapons were turned on Chandra, the Xeelee promptly fled the galaxy, leading to speculation that the black hole harbored ancient intelligent life essential to maintaining the existence of the universe.
The Coalition soon collapsed, the war that kept it alive no longer being fought. Over the next few tens of thousands of years, wars were fought among the successor states of the coalition, and the event known as the bifurcation took place, with humans evolving into many sub-species and categories.
At approximately 90,000 AD, humanity was reunified, with the goal of attacking the Xeelee across the super cluster and universe. The war with the Xeelee slowly became a species imperative, the most important thing to everyone. Assaults on Bolder's Ring caused some ships to be stranded in alternate universes. Earth's own moon, Luna, was sacrificed to a failed attack on the Ring.
At approximately 500,000 AD, the Transcendents - a group of immortal super-humans - attempted to make up for the crimes of the Coalition by travelling back in time to the year 2047, but failed. At around this time, the Xeelee returned to the galaxy, effortlessly building Dyson spheres around all the stars of the galaxy, forcing humanity back into its home Solar System.
Decline of Humans[]
By the year 700,000 AD, the effect of the Photino Birds on stellar evolution made itself apparent. They had aged the stars artificially, forcing them through life at a rate a thousand time the normal. Finally, by the year 1,000,000 AD, humanity was defeated by the Xeelee, and confined to the worlds of the now red-giant Sun. This was the virtual end of humanity, but small groups survived on.
Luru Parz, a million year old woman from Qax occupation times, trapped Earth in a bubble of modified space-time, making a few hundred years on the surface equivalent to billions outside.
The Xeelee also protected humans (along with every other life-form) inside a pocket universe, the Shell. These humans lived in an almost stone-age civilization, but were forced to leave due to the dying sun inside. These humans traveled in a Xeelee ship to Bolder's Ring, and escaped into another universe. The Xeelee ship created a planet for the group, and left them to live, and advance.