The following morning Lyra woke up with a smile on her face as she knew that she could finally learn everything about humans. As she opened the first volume she read about the human theories about how they evolved from apes in Africa. She was fascinated by this as she had always believed that the world was far, far older than anypony else did. She continued to read the book and she began to read about how Cro-Magnons had caused Neanderthals to go extinct. Lyra smiled and said, "Yep, I was right! Survival of the fittest is how the world works!"
Everything she read in the first volume involved the era that the humans of the time of the book called prehistory. She smiled and said, "Well, everything theorized about early humans was right!"
After reading the first volume Lyra was ecstatic and the events of her fight and breakup with Bon Bon were a distant memory. She opened up the second volume and it began to discuss the events of the great empires, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. As she began to read this she began to read about things that she never knew about humans before, war. She began to breathe more heavily as she read about the wars between waring ancient powers and things became even more disturbing when she read about how religious persecution would cause governments to kill those in the minority using horrifically brutal torture methods.
Tears began to run down her cheeks as she continued to read on through the second volume. As it moved into the topic of dark ages Europe and the increased religious persecution and worsening punishments, she began to cry loudly and screamed, "NO! HOW COULD THEY BE LIKE THIS?"
One part of her just wanted to stop reading right there and forget she ever came across the chest but another part of her wanted to continue reading, and that is exactly what she did. She wanted to discover what finally wiped out the creatures that she thought so highly of. As she read onwards through the second volume the history continued to involve more and more war, more hate and hostility and the eventual discovery and conquering of lands known as the "new world."
After she finished the second volume she just sat there with tears running down her cheeks. She was hoping that in the third volume that humanity would change into what she had learned from books written by ponies, that they were peaceful, loving beings who would never harm anyone. She then opened the third volume and began to read about how the nations of Europe began to conquer lands around the world and treated their new subjects horribly. As she continued reading she read about how nations around the world would win their independence from their imperial oppressors, which gave her a sense of hope that her beloved humans would eventually become what she had initially learned about them during her studies of mythology.
Finally she reached the second half of the third volume and the issues it discussed only became worse and worse. She read about the first world war, the global economic depression and the horrific events of the second world war and what terrified her the most was how the war in the pacific was won with the detonation of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. After she read this she almost slammed the book down and was ready to take it back out to the cave but her curious side kept her reading. She read on about the corruption, further wars, jihad, increasing prevalence of viruses and finally, she got to the final part of the book which described the final few years of humanity.
She continued to read on about increased violence and hatred in a land called "The Middle East," global overpopulation and super viruses that would periodically emerge from southeast Asia. When she got to the final couple pages of the book she read about how an accidental missile launch caused two global powers, the United States and Russia, who were once allies declared total nuclear war upon one another. In days this would cause every nation in the world to join one side or another. After three years of global war both sides were diminished to the point where the war finally stopped but the radiation that existed continued to cause suffering. On the final page it described how the global population had dropped to under 10,000 and that it was theorized that humanity would die within a year.
Lyra's views on humans had changed dramatically and suddenly she went into a trance, she saw visions from the past. She actually saw herself standing in a leveled city where everything had a radioactive green glow to it. She stood over an ill human, the final human. In this trance she began to cry uncontrollably as this human started choking for air as a green snow began to fall and finally, she saw the human pass. Everything felt so real to her, as if she truly was there. She began to cry and scream uncontrollably, "No! Please Celestia no! Let her live, please!"
Finally she snapped out of her trance and caught her breath. She wiped the tears from her eyes and realized two things. She realized that she was indeed right about the existence of humans yet she also realized that her views on them had been incredibly flawed. She realized that they were not these sweet, peaceful beings who were simply killed off by illnesses, that instead they were responsible for their extinction. She then realized that had it not been for their violent nature, that ponykind would have never inherited the earth and that she would not even exist. She smiled and said, "I guess their extinction was a good thing after all."