Some thoughts on the Four Great Civilizations

[Ivo-goji]

These excerpts are related to the content of the other essay I posted and may also be of interest to some users here.

Edited from a post I made on Chao Island on March 25, 2017

The story of Sonic Adventure pre-supposes that there are at least three strata of ancient civilizations behind the events of the game:
1-The civilization who built the Master Emerald shrine.  They had the Master Emerald and the seven.
2-Pachacamac's empire.  They knew about, but did not have the Emeralds.
3-The successors to Pachacamac that left behind records depicting the wrath of Perfect Chaos.  They would have had the seven Chaos Emeralds but not the Master.

The fact that later games refer to group three as the Fourth Great Civilization or the Nocturnus is of secondary importance; SA pre-supposes this group exists.  We know it to be the case years before Sonic Battle or Sonic Chronicles were released.

Same goes for group one.  Nobody in Tikal's time period knows where the Emeralds came from, what the water spirit that guards them is supposed to be, or anything else about the nature of the shrine.

What happened to them?  Chaos is Guardian of the Emerald Shrine when Pachacamac rose to power.  We know Chaos is a Chao mutated by exposure to the Emeralds.  That could have been a completely random occurrence with no intelligent force behind it.  A pair of wandering Chao make their home in the pool beside the Master Emerald, one of their babies turns out funny, the end.  Or Chaos might have been created on purpose by the shrine builders to be their watchdog (maybe Gerald Robotnik's quest for an Ultimate Lifeform wasn't a new idea...), and -he- is what happened to his creators. 

That's speculation we might draw from Sonic Adventure.  The earlier games also provide food for thought, but they don't really tell us anything about the ancient civilization we wouldn't conclude after playing SA.

Later games however build on SA's foundation and give us more clues to work with.
In SA2 we see ruins of an Echidna civilization that depicts figures of Echidnas alongside those of Chao and gems that are obviously Chaos Emeralds.  These ruins are in a desert, which could easily be located right next to the Mystic Ruins given that the latter are within walking distance of Sand Hill.  Pachacamac's civilization?  Or their ancestors?
Sonic Battle gives us the Fourth Great Civilization.  They were advanced enough to build the Gizoid, who absorbed the Emeralds and wrecked all their stuff. Nobody calls them Echidnas, but at this point it goes without saying.
Sonic Chronicles provides a huge info dump by revealing that the Fourth Great Civilization were the enemies of Pachacamac's people, the Nocturnus Imperium.
The Riders games introduce an entirely new faction of ancients, the Babylonians, who aren't connected to the overarching mythos of the Chaos Emeralds, but never the less had some sort of contact with gems before the Hanging Gardens fell; I'm just not sure when they come in.

Posted on October 29, 2018

In the last post I mentioned the break between the era when the Echidnas built the Master Emerald Shrine and Pachacamac's time period.  The Knuckles Clan tribesmen mention that they can't approach the altar and that they're unfamiliar with the Chao.
Amy's story:
"Chao? Sacred power?
No way! I don't buy it.
We're goin' in to get
those special stones!"

"These strange creatures seem
to be living near the altar.
They're small and...
well, it's hard to describe...
My grandma called
them "Chao.""

"We made a lotta money
with our power.
But whenever we tried to
get the Emeralds,
some strange force always
stopped us.
I can't imagine those
little creatures
have that much power..."

Knuckles' story:
"We don't care about the Chao.
We need to get past that
mysterious barrier
to get the Emeralds."

"Our Chief is Pachacamac.
He's awesome!
He controls everything
around here,
except the altar...
The Chao live there
and have built
a little world of their own."

Gamma's story:
"The Chief's daughter
always seems to be hanging
around the altar.
Perhaps she knows how to
break
through the sacred barrier?"
In SA2 we see the ruins of an old Echidna civilization around Eggman's pyramid.  There are depictions of Echidnas worshipping Chao and kneeling around one of the Emeralds. 

For the reasons outlined above, these can't be depictions of the Knuckles Clan at the time seen in Sonic Adventure.  The characters' dialogue indicate the Chao and the Emeralds were once considered sacred, but by Pachacamac's day these traditions were no longer believed in (replaced perhaps by the tribe's snake worship).  This means the ruins seen in SA2 must be placed in an earlier time period, before Pachacamac's culture rose to power.  This agrees with the three stage development of the Echidna civilizations I suggested before.

The culture that built the Pyramid is obviously based on real world ancient Egypt, just as the Knuckles Clan are based on the Mayans and the Nocturnus are based on the Roman Empire.  From this we can surmise that the same Egyptian like society that built the Wild Canyon and Dry Lagoon ruins built the Sandopolis Zone from S&K, as well as Regal Ruin from Sonic R and other Egyptian themed locations in the series.  By a similar token we might conclude the Nocturnus are responsible for the Greco-Roman style architecture like the Marble Zone, Aquatic Ruin Zone, and Rusty Ruin Zone. 

With this in mind we can break down the technological development of the Echidna civilizations.

-The Sandopolitans created technical marvels like the moving stone Guardian of Sandopolis, the similar automaton Eggman converted into the Egg Golem, and the complex clockwork machinery of the pyramids in S&K and SA2.  They possessed and understood how to harness the power of the Emeralds.  They most likely built the Master Emerald Shrine, which means their technology is the original basis for the Eclipse Cannon.  They also appear to be the ones who placed the Mystic Melody devices around the world; meaning they possessed a form of teleportation.
-The Knuckles Clan in Pachacamac's time seem at first to be less advanced, but they were no slouches, having constructed the transforming stone structures in and around the Mystic Ruins Temple, as well as the giant robotic snakes, artificial gravity platforms, and water channeling system beneath it.  Later on Angel Island they built the Sky Sanctuary Zone, Hydrocity, the hovercraft devices in Marble Garden, and the teleporters seen throughout the island.  They're probably responsible for the machinery in Lava Reef (unless this was built by Eggman), and for digging the Endless Mine.  Despite their primitive style of dress they clearly possessed things like electric lighting, plumbing, fans, and vehicles of transportation.
-The Nocturnus Clan were the most advanced of the Echidna race.  Before their banishment to the Twilight Cage they already had sophisticated robots with artificial intelligence and incredible weapons technology.  In construction they replicated and improved upon many of the inventions of their predecessors.  The Gizoid was their most impressive achievement, but after entering the Twilight Cage they developed spacecraft and armed themselves with Leech Blade weapons that absorb life energy, laser cannons, and high tech armored suits.  In these respects they may have been superior to the Sandopolis civilization, but the older culture seems to have possessed a deeper understanding of the secrets of the Emeralds.

Certainly the Sandopolis Echidnas were the source of Tikal's stanza ("the servers are the seven Chaos, Chaos is power enriched by the heart, the Controller serves to unify the Chaos") which encapsulates the reverence for the Emeralds that was lost by their descendants.

Posted on November 9th, 2018

Now that my thoughts have started to crystalize about the Four Great Civs, I think I can tackle the Babylon Rogues' chronology and see how they fit in.

We know from Sonic Riders that the Babylonians had access to the Chaos Emeralds just before they fell, as they used them to create the Control Box.  According to legend they plundered the ancient world for treasures with their advanced technology, incurring the wrath of the gods, which brought about the destruction of their civilization.  So advanced was their technology that a single gift they gave to a boy, "the wing of an angel", allowed that boy to rule the world.

Zero Gravity reveals the existence of the Arks of the Cosmos (also called "the plumes of the divine wings"), devices that could control gravity, one of which was stored in the Babylonian ruin of Gigan Rocks.  When Sonic and his friends investigate Gigan Rocks, Knuckles is able to read the inscriptions the Babylonians left behind.

This last detail may allow us to date the history of the Babylon Rogues.  Knuckles of course has spent his entire life on Angel Island, with minimal contact with the outside world; it is very curious that he would know this ancient language.  The Knuckles Clan was isolated after Angel Island rose into the air- if they knew the Babylonians' language, and passed this information on to their present day descendant, then they must have had contact with the Babylon Garden before the Perfect Chaos disaster.

This would give the Babylonians the terminus ad quem of 4000 years ago, before Pachacamac's time period.

If they lived before Pachacamac's time and had access to the Chaos Emeralds, then we can deduce that they were contemporaries of the Second Great Civilization.  The Master Emerald Shrine was constructed in that time period, and it was as the Second Great Civilization came to an end that Chaos became Guardian of the Emeralds.  The Sandopolis/Wild Canyon Echidna race watched over the Chao and the Emeralds themselves for most of their history.

From here I think we can reconstruct the real history of the Babylon civilization and their relationship to the Echidna clans.

Shipwrecked on Earth, the Babylonians longed for a means to return to their homeworld.  The Arks of the Cosmos were locked in orbit around the Earth after being jettisoned from their starship, and they observed for an opportunity to reclaim them.  I believe the "angel's wing" mentioned in Eggman's diary is the Ark of the Cosmos sealed away in Gigan Device.  The Babylonians' gift represents their first contact with surface dwellers, and the beginning of their interbreeding with terrestrial birdfolk; the boy in the legend may be the first hybrid offspring the aliens conceived.  For a time they reigned supreme with their power over gravity, and other cultures were instructed in their language and arts.  Before long however the Babylonians decided the Arks of the Cosmos were too dangerous to use and had the ones that fell out of orbit sealed away deep underground.  One and twelve generations after arriving on Earth the Babylonian scientist Stolen created an alternative means of defying gravity without the Arks: the first Extreme Gear.  This gave them greater mobility on the surface world, which they took advantage of to plunder the surface dwellers for riches and resources absent on Babylon Garden.  One of the treasures they set out to steal were the Chaos Emeralds- powerful relics that could reactivate the machinery of Astral Babylon and potentially take them back to the stars.  My hypothesis is that what Tails described as the judgement of the gods which scattered the Babylon Rogues was actually a counterattack by the Echidnas in retaliation for the theft of the Chaos Emeralds.  The Echidna clans seiged Babylon Garden, causing it to collapse into the desert, and reclaimed the Emeralds for the altar.  While the Second Great Civilization continued to prosper in the light of the Emeralds, the Babylon Rogues were left as wandering exiles in the desert sands, memories of their illustrious heritage fading with the passage of time.

It is interesting that the Babylonians could reproduce with terrestrial life forms.  True aliens should be too different genetically to interbreed with Earthlings.  It is possible however that the Babylonians were in fact a colony of another spacefairing civilization that found its way back to Earth after generations of separation.  I think the Babylonians were a remnant of the First Great Civilization (who may have dwelled on the Little Planet).  After communications broke down between the Little Planet and other First Great Civilization colonies, the crew of the Astral Babylon attempted to locate the other remnants on Earth, ending up stranded there.  After failing to return to space with the Arks, they attempted to rob the Echidnas in desperation, only to totally lose their starship in the process.  With the last of the First Great Civilization out of their way, the Echidna clans became the dominant power in the world, eventually leading to the events depicted in Sonic Adventure.

[Sonic Fan J]

An interesting read, but it makes me wonder how the ancient civilization that built the Gaia Temples in Unleashed would fit in. Care to share your thoughts?

[Ivo-goji]

Since they witnessed Dark Gaia's previous awakening 10,000 years ago, they would be older than the other civilizations.  That would make them the First Great Civilization, who I've also speculated were the original inhabitants of the Little Planet.