Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-34553226-20180202120254/@comment-35274492-20180413130623

To be honest, it's an interesting idea but given the background information we had been given by Qrow with the brother deities and their competition it doesn't actually make sense. We can infer that the brother deities are real because they are confirmed by Ozpin who more than likely cursed him to defeat Salem sometime after the creation of the Maidens. But let's look at the idea of them being an older race than humanity and Faunus.

Before humanity came the Grimm and since the very beginning, humanity was beset by them attempting to send them back into the void, likely due to the humanity's inability to control their emotions which drew the Grimm to them. During that time, humanity discovered Dust and began to more effectively fight back against the Grimm enough that they were able to form kingdoms. That is the base story that we get from Volume One but with the addition of the Maidens, Ozpin and the Silver-Eyed Warriors, it paints a bit of a different picture.

The beginning remains the same, the Grimm were created but were made dormant by the god of darkness when he and his elder brother created humanity. Possibly millennia passed and human culture grew, advanced and evolved beyond that of a primitive state; it was during this time that Ozpin was born with incredible magic but lived in peace before the Grimm appeared yet humanity was likely in conflict with each other. He created the maidens to spread their gifts and sometime afterwards, possibly one of the maiden successors (I'm thinking winter) somehow awakened the Grimm, possibly gaining control of the Relic of creation and accidentally used it.

The essence of the Grimm possessed her, changing this maiden into Salem with the relic in hand, this is when the Gods punished Ozpin for creating the Maidens and charged him with defeating her. During this time, it's likely he still had a pretty fair bit of magic but he realized that Salem was too powerful and with the Grimm awake, they began going after humanity to exterminate them causing the end of human civilization of that time. During this time of panic and uncertainty, either the god light or even Ozpin himself imbued a few humans with magic that would be enough to annihilate the Grimm thus giving birth to the Silver-Eyed Warriors as a race.

With their powers, mankind was given enough time to regroup and begin the effort of creating a new civilization, one that was meant to defend against the threat of the Grimm. It could also be possible that mankind actually created the Faunus during the middle of their civilization's end to act as a secondary food source for the Grimm to feast upon and give mankind more time to find a counter against them. After time, they discovered Dust and found that it was effective against the Grimm enabling them to fight back without the Silver-Eyed Warriors who, despite being incredibly effective, were still small in number and not widely accepted due to their strange abilities.

Sorry for the long explanation and it's all speculation to answer this question. Long story short, it's possible that the Silver-Eyed Warriors are humans but are magically enhanced like Ozpin and the Maidens made for a specific purpose to fight the Grimm. While Ozpin and the Maidens were for a far more generalized purpose ie. Bring Peace to Mankind.