Studying the Stars
Notes by Twilight Sparkle on Contents and Speculation Regarding "Golden Disc" Found on Extra-Equistrial Object (EEO), 8th Moon 19, 1003 PLR.
The EEO was located at the edge of the Everfree Forest on 8th Moon, 1003, at approximately 2:24am CET. EEO initially was observed in the western sky, in a fireball, and crash landed at the location given. Upon arrival at the scene, front end of the EEO was destroyed due to its fast impact with the ground, rendering much of this area unsalvageable. At best guess, the EEO is about the size of four ponies in width and height at its central point, with thinner "legs" that stick out from this point.
A disc, about 3-4 hooves in diameter, was located on a relative undamaged end of the craft. The disc is made of gold-plated copper and was covered with a "sleeve" depicting multiple suspected diagrams. Only a few of these could be completely identified, and show the First Element, a suspected star map, and an image showing the first image projection from the flipped side of the record.
Upon playback, speed was adjusted to an approximate three and a half sections per rotation via a troubleshooting spell. The speech is not recognized as any past or current Equistrian civilization, or any dialects of such. Some of the sounds made in the "speech" would be virtually impossible for a pony to make, suggesting a potential difference in mouth and throat structures. This was later confirmed.
A rough approximation of the speech on the record was made using a translation spell, but the results of this are likely inaccurate in many places due to the lack of a recognizable language.
The first language is listed as "English" and has a greeting in this language from a "Leader" of an apparent organization called the "Uniting Nations", which contains 147 nation states among its members. The record was sent by a species called "humans" (first translated simply as "sapients", presenting likelihood that these "humans" may be their planet's only sapiant race). The speaker offers a message of peace, friendship, and a desire to learn. He (?) seems to recognize the universe as much larger than most ponies believe, claiming that their planet is simply a "small part" of the whole.
The next section includes greetings from various humans in over fifty languages, some that the translation spell apparently found similar, but not the same, as others. These included messages offering their friendship, and expressing hope and good will. Even with several cycles of translation, no apparent threats or concerning messages were detected. Several of the greetings contained a request for a return message, or to be visited. A couple referred to us (or other intelligent species not from their planet) as "Great Ones", perhaps indicating a sort of religious or spiritual significance.
Some of these contain other information. One describes the planet Earth as the "third planet from the Sun", implying the existence of at least two others in their planet's "system". This is different than the our system, where the sun and moon revolve only around Equis — although I do not recall of ever learning of any such thing. Another mentioned a "machine programmer", showing that advanced technology, like the crashed EEO appeared to be, may be relatively commonplace on "Earth", perhaps to combat their apparent lack of magic, as no magic, mana, or spell work was detected on the disc or its craft.
What then follows is many more greetings, combined with an unidentified noise, most likely an unknown animal. A loud tone plays, then several identifiable noises, akin to rain, rumbling, bubbles, a heartbeat, trains, and dogs. Also included is something best described as a code made of longer and shorter beeps, though the translation spell wasn't able to give any real interpretation.
The third "section" includes 27 pieces of music of varying styles, tempos, and genres. These range from only 43 seconds to eight minutes, 52 seconds. Many contain sounds that seem to be analogs of Equestrian instruments, like violins. While some have speech, others are either acapella or simply instrumental.
The flipside of the record reads similarly to a projection matrix, though no trace of magic was noticed on either the disc itself or the EEO that held it. It is possible that, with the absence of such powers, the beings who produced the record may have developed technologies that also can transmit and read data. The images are almost certainly more accurate than the audio translations, as none contained much language that would need translated. There were 117 in total, the last being a letter.
The first is an apparent calibration circle, as review of the cover after seeing the image confirms that the same symbol is present there. This is followed by a star map and an image of something akin to a galaxy, though not one that is identifiable. The following three present translations for their space and time definitions, which may be of help later with regards to understanding the rest of the cover. There is something akin to a sun, then an apparent color or visual spectrum, all of which were visible. The following photos are in black and white and color, showing planets, apparently differing ones.
One of these planets is blue, with green and yellow land masses, and is a near-Equistrian analog.
More scientific data follows, and then there are images of these suspected "humans".
Humans are a sort of great ape or primate, though they lack the heavy body fur and quadrupedal stance expected of of the species. They have manes but no tails, and with oddly shaped legs. They seem to have different sexes, and reproduce sexually as well, shown through imagery and the representation of a human infant.
A culture of medicine is present, as a doctor delivering one of these infants is depicted. Human females (?) have teats on their chest to feed their young, as opposed to the lower teats of a mare.
Humans of varying ages are depicted, including some adults and juvenile. Like pony foals, their children are smaller, though their proportions indicate they might not be able to ambulate on their own after birth, being stubbier than expected.
Several maps show continents on a planet, which match closely to the Equis-analog shown in previous imagery, leading to belief that this is their "Earth".
The final image, perhaps one of exceptional importance, is a letter from the leader one of the human nations. The name isn't fully translatable, suggesting a name not similar to those of any Equistrian tribe or species, but translates the office he holds as "Elected National Leader", with power suggesting something akin to one of Equestria's princesses. The letter is transcribed in full below, and was translated over several times, with edits, to ensure the closest possible message to the original:
"July 29, 1977
This Voyager space ship was constructed by the United States. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation-states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.
We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered, and the surface of the planet may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in this galaxy, some —perhaps many— may have inhabited planets and space-faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand this record, here is our message:
This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our photographs, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."
While the date equivalent of their listed year cannot be determined, magical analysis of the record suggests it is perhaps over one million years old, much, much older than the oldest recorded Equistrian tribes. If the dating is correct, this letter may then be the oldest surviving written record known to Equis — and it's not even made by creatures from this planet.
Given the timeframe and our current understanding of evolution on Equis, the scale only leads to further questioning and concerns. The oldest known ancestor of modern ponies and Saddle Arabian horses is perhaps only fifty thousand years old, if that, and ponies only began writing and recording history in ways we can understand since about eight to ten thousand years. If the humans depicted in the record were from a million years ago, are they still alive? If they are, their species has almost certainly evolved greatly from the time when the EEO was sent out, perhaps to a point where they could well be unrecognizable, even if their species was already around a hundred times longer ponies were. Any current possible humans may not even remember that this message was sent if documentation on it didn't survive. Given the technological level of just this million old EEO, current humans may not even be located in the same star system anymore, or even the same galaxy. After all, there are ponies obsessed with doomsday scenarios of giant asteroids hitting Equis (ignoring the fact that Princess Celestia and Princess Luna would likely be able to stop such a thing). If humans are as advanced as I think, and if they have no magical defenses, such a thing threatening to hit Earth may have led to a planet-wide evacuation to one of their local planets shown in the images — and that's if their technology hasn't advanced to the point where leaving their planet on a "space ship" of sorts isn't as common as ponies pulling carts.
Sending a return message by copying parts of the surviving technology may be possible in a few years, maybe. While ponies have less advanced machinery than what I could see off of the images, EEO, and record itself, we do have magical that humans don't. Further investigation into the how will be required.
(Note to self: Talk to the Mayor in the morning about securing the EEO crash site before curious ponies try and investigate it themselves, and send a letter to the Princess.)
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If it helps Twilight's research , according to Wikipedia, the Domestic Horse (as we know it) evolved from a small four-toed creature called Eohippus some 45-55 million years ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse
11805378
Not sure about Equestrian ponies, though. Celestia + Luna are at least a thousand or so years old, but the oldest history we're given (I think??) is the Hearth's Warming play, which to me seemed not terribly long before C/L came around.
11805390
That timeline would be really useful for a "Equis is Earth post-humans" story, though. Humans get wiped out somehow and (domesticated?) ponies slowly becoming sentient... I'm 99% sure these exist but can't think of titles.
There’s something so captivating about Twilight making observations on the Voyager’s messages and speculating about humanity. It suits her character perfectly!
11805400
Thanks. I haven't actually watched MLP regularly for yeeeears. From S5 onwards it was only sporadic. I wasn't entirely sure if "just" facts or that + speculation was more in character, so glad this was okay!
I see no problem with the speculative nature of your tale. It is entirely believable that Twilight would have a fair difficulty understanding the record disc, even with advanced magic. Part of any fiction is speculative in nature, even if such turned out to be either impossible or quite true and realistic.
The entire chapter's perspective, being Twilight's clinical observations are in character enough, imo.
I appreciate you updating this story...
11805396
There was a comic a few years ago called Birth of Equestria. The general idea is that ponies were developed by accident by a eccentric college professor. The artist developed a time-line that included Discord's reign and the extinction of humanity.
https://www.deviantart.com/shieltar/art/Birth-of-Equestria-p00-colour-259677687
On the other extreme there WAS a youtuber who developed a series that treated Equestrian history as a real life documentary via an OC who works in the Canterlot Archives. They did a remarkable job with a huge amount of research as far as I can tell. Sadly like a lot of the earlier fans, she vanished into the æther so to speak with the latest unrelated video dating February 2018.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMdfq1crE1ouWq5s2kU3wmTGdFFvxj58u&feature=shared
11805390
In my own personal preference I tend to view the Hearth's Warming pageant as a very simplified retelling of Equestria's founding with a fair amount of romanticism and the issue of legends supplanting fact over the hundreds of years via the "telephone game" . The other possibility is it is heavily allegorical and not a 1:1 history.
As to the dates, I'd guesstimate at least 1500 or 2000 years given the fact that Princess Luna was banished 1000 years ago and a lot of the other seasonal villains were purportedly 1000 years ago as well. In one of the official IDW pony comics Spike makes the observation that either the dates are dubious or flat out wrong or 1000 years ago was an incredibly busy year
11805443
100% agreed. I'm actually pretty surprised that Twilight was able to translate so much of the record so well. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, though:
I'll be fascinated to see what, if anything, is left of humanity after a full million years.
Just gonna point out that Equestria using the Gregorian Calendar and having a month called August (named after the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar) breaks the narrative when you're trying to present basic Human culture and even language as something completely alien.
It's a minor and easily corrected issue though, not a big deal.
Love it. Great analysis by Twilight, I enjoyed it a lot.
Excited for more.
Twilight's scientific attitude towards the Golden Disc fits her perfectly.
I think your timeline on human/pony societal development is believable. H. habilis arrived about 2.8M years ago, but looked like a mutant human-ape lovechild. Physically and behaviorally modern humans, Homo sapiens, are only about 100K years old (give or take a few ten thousand years), and we first settled down and decided to have a go at this society thing about 13K years ago. So your timeline for pony evolution matches that reasonably well.
Interested to see where this goes next. Always had a weakness for first-contact, ponies-discover-humanity scenarios.
This is getting better with every chapter! Love the fact that Twilight approaches this in an entirely scientific manner!
I wonder how Megatron will feel about ponies getting the Golden Disc before him.
11805647
That's fair enough, but wasn't sure what else to call them. Ponies use terms like "week" and "tomorrow" in the show, but also use "moons" to describe time in some cases. I don't remember if their names for Months/chunks of the year are ever referenced in-Universe or not, and didn't want to say some random thing and make it more confusing.
11805647
Went and edited Months to "Moons" and August to the "Eighth Moon", since I know moons are 100% canon in the show as a timeframe (not sure if one moon = one month exactly, but think it helps the issue you mentioned?).
11806050
Oh, i was referring mostly to the use of "August" in the calendar because of it's historical origin/significance than using months as a measurement of time, because as you say, it could be potentially confusing to change units.
Though it's still cooler that you've decided to use moons from in-universe references and now that you mention it, iirc funny enough a month's etymology comes from the moon and how long it takes for it to orbit around the planet, so yeah! A Moon is most likely a Month in the show! I hadn't realized that before, that's a quite fitting detail.