Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-25555436-20141108175849/@comment-24891101-20141108203950

Believe it or not, a theory involving alien intervention is actually fairly plausible. If you credit the Short Timeline Hypothesis, then humans did not evolve on Remnant, but were either created, perhaps accidentally, by an agency long past "remnants, byproducts", or originated on another planet and found their new home unexpectedly inhospitable on account of the Grimm.

This explains the early tenuous survival aspects, as even modern man took a very long time to go from genetically modern H. sapiens sapiens to a society which could even have a prayer against the truly boggling numbers of Grimm which exist. And if one is more generous with the soul, a position which is supported by the existence of H. sapiens faunus, who likewise have souls (I classify them as a subspecies because we know they can viably interbreed; I am open to debate on this point), so it is not necessarily down to modern humans as a species which attracts the Grimm. Therefore, depending how far back you want to go with a sufficiently-complex neural net to generate a Grimm-attracting soul, then one runs into the problem of having small, isolated groups of early humans, not having formed a society, which are so trivial of prey for the Grimm that they all ought have been eliminated, as we know "small" villages (keeping in mind the scaling; given that Vale et al. are megaregions, "small" is relative) with all the advantages of modern technology routinely disappear.

The Faunus Problem, too, can be rectified by invoking alien intervention. The subspecies exhibits a staggering degree of polymorphism, with non-human organs, while being able to interbreed, and therefore being at bare minimum in the same genus. Whence then do the animal parts originate? Alien genetic engineering would explain this, because the faunus traits look very deliberate.

Long-departed aliens also can explain the Grimm. Clearly, there are two possible origins for such entities: either natural or artificial. If natural, then they represent a form of obviously non-biological "life", which somehow arose naturally, prior to the development of their preferred prey, or, alternatively, immediately afterward, in which case their population expansion and diversification is absurdly fast, given their lifespan and notional generational time. Admittedly, they can cheat, because they don't seem to have a carrying capacity, but we actually have no idea how they reproduce; if it's anything like the normal, biological methods, then they managed to arise from first principles, grow in complexity, and speciate at a truly ludricous rate, a feat which would take millions of years minimum, given anything like a realistic reproduction rate. If, however, their means of reproduction is not based in heredity, then their diversification would be even slower. Moreover, their sheer diversity is problematic: they very clearly ape existing animals, yet behave little like them, in the important respects. It cannot be convergent evolution, because animal evolution is driven by survival, including ability to get food, attract a mate, evade predators, and many, many other factors. The Grimm, in contrast, do not eat, nor do they necessarily reproduce sexually, nor do they have significant natural predators. In short, in terms of evolutionary pressures, they are entirely unlike the animals they resemble. If they are merely an emergent property of the universe, and did not arise as a new form of life, then that means the universe has an animus against human souls built into it, and is 'deliberately" involved in man's attempted eradication. However, if one allows for the Grimm to be artificial, then they can merely be Clarkean superweapons left over by creators long dead, and only accidentally troubling man.

The very name of the planet, as well as the condition of the moon, and various statements made in the prologue and in songs also can be interpreted as suggesting intervention. The prologue, as already alluded to, suggests that man is a byproduct of something. In addition, in "This Will Be the Day", certain lines reminded me, from the first, of the Miller-Urey experiment, which, combined with the prologue, suggest this tantalizing possibility. The condition of the moon also suggests a massive cataclysm in the geologically-recent past, as on geological timescales, the moon would have pulverized. What thing could be so powerful as to do that, without utterly devastating the local biosphere? Perhaps, again, aliens.

While I myself do not necessarily cleave to the Intervention hypothesis, a case can certainly be made for it, and I would not be surprised if it turned out ot be true.