Contents

Introduction

This timeline is part of a larger timeline that covers the over 50-million-year history of the Ancients. To view the entire timeline, visit Timeline of the Ancients, which also includes an overview of the Ancients' evolutionary path and author's notes.

Original home galaxy, often referred to as simply the Ori galaxy because only the Ori remained there.

The Altera and their brethren the Ori were humans on the evolutionary path toward ascension, but it is unknown if there were ascended beings who existed before or during this period, and if they existed, whether or not the humans were aware of them. The Ori greatly outnumbered the Altera and were preparing to wipe them out because of their conflicting philosophical views. By the end of this period, the only Ancients that existed were the Altera, the mountaintop villagers who chose to leave their home aboard a single spaceship rather than engage in a war. The Ori were left behind to continue on their own path.

Primarily in the Milky Way, their new home that they named "Avalon". The Altera became known as the Ancients.

This period includes the establishment of the Stargate network in the Milky Way, the exploration of their new home galaxy and others through the launch of their exploration fleet of Stargate-seeding starships and follow-up exploration vessel Destiny (see Stargate Universe), the formation of alliances, the advancement in weapons and other technology, the development of the means to collect and store their accumulated knowledge, and the continued research into the acceleration of evolution through genetic alteration to achieve ascension. Some of the Ancients had evolved to the point that they could ascend on their own. The defining moment that ends this period is the occurrence of the plague that swept throughout the galaxy that forced the Ancients to ascend, to leave the galaxy, or to die out. Because of the plague and the heightened research into ascension, the Ancients never boarded Destiny, but instead left the exploration fleet to continue on its automated course.

Pegasus. The Ancients were called the Ancestors by the humans of the Pegasus galaxy.

This period opens with the plague sweeping throughout the Milky Way that forced the Ancients to leave the galaxy in one form or another—whether it be by ascending, by leaving the galaxy as humans (in spaceships, for example), or by dying out. The Ancients that ascended joined together in a collective called The Others. The Ori, although not hit by a plague, also ascended and established themselves as the gods of the religion "Origin". This period also includes the creation of the second generation (evolution) of humanity in the three galaxies: the original Altera/Ori home galaxy, the Milky Way, and Pegasus. As they did in the Milky Way, the Ancients in Pegasus built a Stargate network and settled on several planets. By the end of this period, more Ancients had ascended and apparently joined their own ancestors who were with The Others; however, no more ascended beings joined the Ori because the Ori did not wish to share their power and prevented their humanity from evolving to the point where they could ascend on their own or through the use of advanced technology. This period ends when the last of the Lantian survivors of the Wraith-Ancient War abandoned Atlantis and used the Stargate to return to Earth, where they blended into Earth's societies, left the planet through the Stargate, or ascended.

This is when the majority of Ancients are Ascended Beings, and other races use and abuse their legacy. At the beginning of this period, the Lantian Ancients had just returned to Earth after abandoning Pegasus to the Wraith and chose to blend in with Earth's societies, to leave Earth through the Stargate, or to ascend. Proof of the Ancients' blending into the human population of the Milky Way is the natural occurrence of the ATA gene (Ancient Technology Activation gene) that allows the possessor to activate and interface with genetically-keyed Ancient technology, as well as the cultural influences of the world's ancient civilizations. Some Ancients from earlier in this period survived into the modern era in human form via stasis, time travel, or some other form of technological means, while a few Ascended Ancients chose to retake human form. This period includes the reopening of the Stargate in modern times and a near-repeat of history as the humans of Earth assimilate the Ancients' legacy, which not only includes knowledge and technology, but also old rivalries that the Ancients had failed to resolve. It also includes the discovery of Destiny, which opened up the universe to exploration (albeit limited) and to the exposure to new life forms untouched by Ancient hands.

10 Thousand Years Ago

Ten thousand years ago, in 8000 B.C., a Goa'uld discovered humanity on Earth and established himself as the Egyptian god Ra. Other Goa'uld followed suit, using Earth's ancient religions to pose as the physical embodiment of their gods. Humans became the favored vessels, or hosts, for the Goa'uld symbiotes, but Unas were also used concurrently. (Stargate: The Movie, 1.01 "Children of the Gods Part 1", 1.10 "Thor's Hammer", 2.17 "Serpent's Song", 3.08 "Demons")

The Goa'uld Telchak used as a template an Ancient healing device, now called the Telchak Device, to construct the sarcophagus, a healing device that helps the Goa'uld maintain their human host bodies for thousands of years (Ra kept his young male host from 8000 B.C. all the way through to modern times) and prolong their own lives. (Stargate: The Movie, 7.11 "Evolution Part 1")

The Goa'uld genetically engineered the Jaffa from humans so that they could increase the odds that Goa'uld symbiotes would survive the blending with their future human hosts by giving them a period of incubation in the Jaffa's abdominal pouches. Jaffa were given long and healthy lives as a benefit, and the male Jaffa were appointed as the Goa'uld's soldiers. The first Jaffa was created in a ceremony of implantation held in the temple on Dakara, which is also where it is said that Anubis first rose from the dead (the means of this resurrection is currently unknown). (1.02 "Children of the Gods Part 2", 1.03 "The Enemy Within", 6.10 "Cure", 8.16 "Reckoning Part 1")

The Wraith sieged Atlantis for many years, reducing the Ancients' numbers to only those who were inside the city itself. After their last transport ship that was headed for the city for evacuation was destroyed by the Wraith, the city-dwellers abandoned Atlantis through the Stargate back to Earth. The High Council of Atlantis, however, was aware that their city would be rediscovered by the Atlantis Expedition 10,000 years into the future because an alternate version of Dr. Elizabeth Weir, the Expedition leader, used a timeship to travel to their time and told them of the city's discovery. The final recording that the Ancients left to explain their time in Pegasus alludes to their knowledge of future events by explaining what happened to those who returned to Earth and by mentioning "their kind" returning to the city. (Stargate Atlantis: 1.01 "Rising Part 1", 1.15 "Before I Sleep") The bulk of the message is as follows:

...exchange knowledge and friendship. In time, a thousand worlds bore the fruit of life in this form. Then one day, our people set foot upon a dark world where a terrible enemy slept. Never before had we encountered beings with powers that rivaled our own. In our over-confidence, we were unprepared and outnumbered. The enemy fed upon the defenseless human worlds like a great scourge, until finally, only Atlantis remained. This city's great shield was powerful enough to withstand their terrible weapons, but here we were besieged for many years. In an effort to save the last of our kind we submerged our great city into the ocean. The Atlantis Stargate was the one and only link back to Earth from this galaxy, and those who remained used it to return to that world that was once home. There, the last survivors of Atlantis lived out the remainder of their lives. This city was left to slumber, in the hope that our kind would one day return.

The Ancient warship Tria was removed from a battle with Wraith cruisers and started back to Atlantis until the crew heard that Atlantis was being evacuated for Earth. They decided to set their course for Earth and started on their way. (Stargate Atlantis: 3.10 "The Return Part 1")

From information he had gathered from a time traveling Dr. Elizabeth Weir, the Atlantian Janus programmed the city's failsafes to kick in when the Expedition was detected coming through the Stargate (10,000 years into the future) so that the city-ship would rise from the ocean and lighten its energy requirements. The time traveling Weir, however, had to stay in the abandoned city for the 10,000 years necessary for her to manually rotate the three ZPMs. She stayed in a stasis chamber and only came out when she had to switch the power. Only Janus was aware that Weir stayed behind as the rest of the Lantians abandoned the sunken city. (Stargate Atlantis: 1.15 "Before I Sleep")

Knowing how precious ZPMs would be in the future, Janus gave the time traveling Weir the Stargate addresses of five places where he knew there to be ZPMs, including Dagan and a planet later designated as M7G-677. (Stargate Atlantis: 1.06 "Childhood's End", 1.15 "Before I Sleep", 1.16 "The Brotherhood")

The Pegasus planets that had Lantian "Oracles" were left to fend for themselves. Some were wiped out by the Wraith, but others continued on their own with varying degrees of success. (Stargate Atlantis: 3.15 "The Game")

The cruiser commanded by the Wraith Queen who was leading the siege on Atlantis crashed into Lantia's ocean, but there were survivors who were trapped inside. A Wraith supply ship carrying human cargo crashed on a planet near the Lagrange Point Satellite, possibly having been downed by the weapons platform. This crash also left survivors. (Stargate Atlantis: 1.12 "The Defiant One", 3.18 "Submersion")

Those Ancients who returned to Earth saw that Earth was harsh and its people were too primitive by comparison to their advanced society. They had no hope of living among them as Lantians nor of rebuilding their great society, so they spread themselves out to many lands, planting a few small seeds of civilization among the first tribes of man. Others left through the Antarctic Stargate, and the remainder chose to live their lives in seclusion and meditation to achieve ascension. (10.03 "The Pegasus Project")

Among those Ancients who returned to Earth were Janus, who built the time machine out of a puddle jumper (a small shuttle craft that can fit through a Stargate) that a future version of Weir used; Moros, who was the last High Councilor of Atlantis; and Ganos Lal, who was a teacher. It is believed that Janus built a new timeship on another planet in the Milky Way. Both Moros and Ganos achieved ascension through seclusion and meditation. (8.13 "It's Good To Be King", 10.03 "The Pegasus Project"; Stargate Atlantis: 1.15 "Before I Sleep")

The legend of the Lost City of Atlantis was spread among the Greeks on Earth (recorded in the writings of Plato) and was written about in the Ancient language on a stone tablet that was discovered by Ra, who stored it on one of his planets called Abydos. (6.22 "Full Circle"; Stargate Atlantis: 1.01 "Rising Part 1")

The Ancients who returned to Earth from Atlantis also influenced the Romans (as the "ancient ones" who were the "builders of the roads"), established Latin as an Earth language (Ancient and Latin are very similar), and infused their DNA into the populace (there are descendants of these Ancients who are able to activate Ancient technology that is keyed to Ancient genetic imprints). (2.16 "The Fifth Race", 7.22 "Lost City Part 2", 8.13 "It's Good to Be King"; Stargate Atlantis: 1.01 "Rising Part 1")

Daniel speculated that some of the Ancients might have influenced the religions of the world by making fire an evil or demonic symbol as a way to warn Earthlings of the nature of the Ori. Fire was the icon of the religion "Origin" and symbolized warmth, energy, and light. The Ascended Ori, who were the "gods" of the religion, manifested themselves in a wall of fire and called it "The Flames of Enlightenment". (9.03 "Origin Part 3")

Daniel has also speculated that Oma Desala, or an Ancient who knew of her teachings, influenced the Buddhists, who have "The Eightfold Path to Enlightenment". Oma Desala's name means "Mother Nature" in an African tribal language, so it also possible that she influenced the worship of nature or some forms of the occult, as she was able to manipulate such things as the weather and fire with her ascended powers. (3.20 "Maternal Instinct", 9.02 "Avalon Part 2")

The Asurans reached their height once again and resumed their programming of going after the Wraith in Pegasus, but the Wraith figured out how to reprogram them to stop their attacks. Both the Wraith and the Asurans developed on their own after that: The Wraith dominated the galaxy while the Asurans thrived in isolation. (Stargate Atlantis: 4.03 "Reunion")

Ra planted a Stargate in Giza, Egypt, and used it to spread humanity to other planets, including Abydos, where he used them as slaves. By this time, the Ancients' Stargate in Antarctica was most likely inaccessible due to being buried in the ice. (Stargate: The Movie, 1.18 "Solitudes")

2 to 5 Thousand Years Ago

The Goa'uld reach the height of their power while the Ascended Ancients observe; Kheb and ascension become part of the Jaffa's belief system:

Five thousand years ago, the Goa'uld reached the height of their power in a feudal system headed by the oldest and most powerful among them who were called "System Lords". Ra recorded the Stargate addresses of the planets in the Goa'uld's domain in a cartouche room on Abydos. Not all of the planets in the Stargate network were included, however, as it was later discovered when Jack O'Neill obtained a download from an Ancient Repository of Knowledge that included all of the Stargate addresses that the Ancients originally had before the Goa'uld rose to power. (1.01 "Children of the Gods Part 1", 2.16 "The Fifth Race", 3.03 "Fair Game", 9.01 "Avalon Part 1")

By this time, the Great Pyramid and Sphinx existed in Egypt. The Great Pyramid was used as a landing platform for Ra's mothership, as was the pyramid on Abydos. (Stargate: The Movie, 8.19 "Moebius Part 1", 8.20 "Moebius Part 2")

Ra's place as the most powerful System Lord was tested when the humans of Earth revolted and buried the Stargate in 2995 B.C. After this revolt, Ra outlawed writing, but not before the news of the revolt was recorded on cave walls on the planet Abydos. The current timeline that includes this revolt was impacted by time travelers who prevented Ra from taking the Stargate from Earth after he discovered the plans for the rebellion. (Stargate: The Movie, 8.19 "Moebius Part 1", 8.20 "Moebius Part 2")

The Goa'uld's slaves built large starships called ha'tak that used naquadah, the same material used by the Ancients to build the Stargates. The Goa'uld used the ring transporters as a primary means of appearing like gods by traveling on a beam of light into their temples. (Stargate: The Movie, 5.08 "The Tomb")

At least 5,000 years ago, the Ascended Ancient Oma Desala built her temple on Kheb and started offering to help those who sought the Path to Enlightenment to ascend. These people weren't evolved far enough to ascend on their own, so Oma used a person's level of enlightenment, or truth of spirit, as a measure, focusing on only helping "good" people. Her doing this was against the rules of non-interference The Others had established, so she was banished, yet she still continued to do her work. The Goa'uld learned of Kheb and so did their Jaffa. Oma used her great powers as an ascended being to scare off the Goa'uld, but the Jaffa embraced the thought of the afterlife through the Path to Enlightenment, or ascension. (3.20 "Maternal Instinct", 9.08 "Babylon")

A group of Jaffa warriors called the Sodan sought to find Kheb 5,000 years ago, but they ended up on another Ancient planet where they began to live in freedom and to worship the Ancients as gods, something the Ancients strictly denied because they knew that the power of worshipers could corrupt them like the Ori had been corrupted. (3.20 "Maternal Instinct", 9.08 "Babylon", 9.10 "The Fourth Horseman Part 1")

Four thousand years ago, the Oannes being named Nem began missing his mate Omoroca. He knew that she had gone to Earth—to Babylon—to help free humans from the Goa'uld Belus, but he didn't know what had become of her. He did assume from her absence, though, that Earth fell completely into the hands of the Goa'uld. Apparently having nothing else to do, he waited and waited for a messenger to come through the Stargate to tell him "what fate Omoroca." (1.13 "Fire and Water")

Possibly three thousand years ago, the Goa'uld Marduk was imprisoned and punished by his own priests for his particularly brutal ways. The priests confined him in his sarcophagus and placed a flesh-eating creature in there with him to torment him indefinitely. (5.08 "The Tomb")

Two thousand years ago, the Goa'uld Queen Egeria started a movement against Ra called "Tok'Ra". She believed in a symbiotic relationship between human host and symbiote, rather than the symbiote's taking a human host by force and using the body against the human's will. All of Egeria's offspring were called Tok'ra, and they waged their own war against the Goa'uld System Lords by infiltration. Ra banished Egeria by extracting her from her host and putting the symbiote in a canopic jar with a special lining and sedative that kept her alive. The jar was then built into a wall of a temple on the planet Pangar. Egeria's offspring assumed she was dead, and no more Tok'ra could be added to their ranks without her. (4.04 "Crossroads", 6.10 "Cure")

Sometime during their stay on Earth, the Goa'ulds Osiris, Isis, Seth, Hathor, and Sekhmet were also banished. Osiris and Isis were placed in canopic jars similar to the one in which Egeria was banished. They were thought to have been in these jars for several thousand years (possibly 3000 years, based on an estimate made by archaeologists who studied the jars in modern times). Several of the artifacts found with the jars in a small pyramid temple in Egypt were dated to be over 10,000 years old. Seth had tried to overthrow Ra and had to flee. He went into hiding among various tribes of man on Earth, taking new hosts every four hundred years or so because he didn't have access to a sarcophagus (it's also possible that the Stargate had been buried by this time as well). Written record of his cults go as far back as 1000 B.C. (including in the legends of the Greeks as the god Typhon). Hathor, Ra's daughter and queen, was locked inside a sarcophagus and placed in a Mayan tomb in Mexico where she stayed for almost two thousand years. Sekhmet was one of Ra's enforcers on Earth, but was banished and preserved in a jar that was later discovered by Napoleon in Egypt. (1.14 "Hathor", 3.02 "Seth", 4.14 "The Curse", 7.19 "Resurrection")

A race known as the Sekkari had evolved over millions of years (presumably solely in the Pegasus galaxy), but tens of thousands of years ago, they foresaw that they would be the cause of their own destruction, so they created and launched over fifty "seed carriers" to start over. Each of these devices was programmed for a different destination that would provide them with the chemical compounds necessary to produce, sustain, and develop life. All units were connected through subspace communications, included sophisticated artificial intelligence to guide their missions, and carried repositories containing the history of the Sekkari people—their struggles, their achievements, and the mistakes that ultimately led to their own destruction. One of the units suffered a navigation failure and ended up on a planet that was not suitable for bringing the Sekkari back. Instead, the unit was destined to sit at the bottom of the ocean for two thousand years waiting for a signal to reawaken it. (Stargate Atlantis: 5.15 "Remnants")

Articles on the Ancients

This series of articles covers the history, language, writings, knowledge, and technology of the Ancients.