Historical Sequence

There have been about 1200 galactic civilizations, over the last 10 billion years. The existence of civilizations further back than that is controversial; everyone agrees it is possible, but the evidence is disputed.

In the past billion years, new civilizations have arisen every 5 million years, on the average, though this period has a standard deviation of nearly 2 million years. The all-time average is once every 8.3 million years, but the frequency has been steadily increasing as the cosmic abundance of heavy elements builds up and small, rocky worlds rich in water and carbon become commoner. (The current rate of star formation is about 20 stars per year.)

The nature of transcendence is not well-understood. Nor do we understand why transcendent civilizations leave the apparent universe, never to return. Despite occasiona Kaliyugas (see below), records from peri-transcendent cultures generally give no indication of imminent destruction. Rather, they are concerned with issues we do not understand, and seem to be in a state of rising expectation.

i'll send this message down the wire
and hope that someone wise is listening
when i go
— "When I Go," Dave Carter

Galactic archeology also features "Akashics." Sometimes, a civilization decides to leave a total library of all they know, as legacy to the far future. These are termed "Akashic Libraries" or "Akashics" for short, both because of their comprehensive nature and because of their highly ethereal format. (The "akashic records" are the theosophical medium of retrocognition, a term apparently invented by Mme. Blavatsky.)

An Akashic includes:

• Essentially everything about science and technology. Everything.
• Every form of cultural record: literature, music, visual arts, whatever.
• Astrographical and geographical records of everywhere in the galaxy/galaxies.
• Genomes, metabolic formats, and anatomies at all scales, of all species, including intelligent.

Given this, it is theoretically possible to reconstistute vanished races of earlier cycles. This has been done, over the billions of years. Some particularly nifty races have been done several times...

It would seem that, once the first Akashic was found, the current civilization would reach transcendent technology in no more than a couple of centuries. But transcendent technology builds on psionic, and psionic technology often depends on inducing specific psychic experiences, more a matter of initiation than of instruction. As a result, it is extremely difficult or impossible to understand Akashic descriptions of psionic technology, let alone transcendent.

Phenography

Oh, sinner man, where you gonna run to,
All on that Day?
— "Sinner Man," trad.

When great violence attends the transcendence of a civilization, that act of transcendence is called a "Kaliyuga." The Kaliyuga civilizations also become known as "Kaliyugas," for short.

All previous civilizations are often termed "precursors" or "predecessors" or "ancients," but The Precursors is the popular term for the civilization immediately preceding our own, gc1207, which transcended about seven million years ago. Since they are the most recent predecessors, their remains are commonest.

The Precursors were a typical civilization. They originated in the quadrant west of Earth and came occupy the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds, and other Milky Way satellites, but not other parts of the Local Group. So they are neither an Isolate nor an Extensive. They left datastrates but no Akashics; their datastrates have little psychic content and no phenography.

Like any other galactic civilization, the Precursors consisted of thousands of species, with some more prominent than others. The best-known Precursor races are:

• "Bluehounds," "Founders," "Type 1":
  Like pony-sized Russian wolfhounds, pale blue, furless and tailless, with blocky heads endowed with four eyestalks and many fingers around the mouth; believed to be the first starfarers of Precursor civilization.
• "Yetifingers, "Type A":
  Tall, furred, and tailed humanoids with bunches of tendrils for hands.
• "Pinkosaurs," "Type B":
  Shiny pink bipedal sauroids with three eyestalks and no necks.
• "Elepillars," "Type C":
  Horse-sized, scaled, multi-legged and caterpillar-like, with four short trunks.
• "Handsnakes," "Types D1, D2, D3, and D4":
  A clade of serpentines in four size ranges with fingered mouths and six highly extensible eyestalks.
• "Teddycrabs," "Type E":
  Blocky creatures the size of large dogs, with the carapaces and semi-stalked eyes of crabs and furry, four-limbed underbodies. All four limbs can be used as either arms or legs.
• "Beesaurs," "Type F":
  Half-ton bipedal sauroids with large, heart-shaped heads, beaked, bearing a multitude of lenses similar to compound eyes.
• There are also creatures that look like dog-sized animated teabags. It is not clear if these are sapients, domestic animals, or something else, but they appear in many visual records.
• Robot or cyborg versions of all the above.
• Robots in a variety of non-biological shapes.

This timeline lists major events in galactic history, in billions of years ago ("Bya"). Index numbers ("gc####") are from the Third Revised Tipota Chronology.

Note: In 5 billion years, the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy will collide and merge. This should result in a massive burst of star formation.