Rocket picked up the ball and ran with it - and pretty impressively, too (emphasis mine):

So many questions left hanging as the backdrop of the series. Who were the 12 Lords that the Colonials now worship? Why did the Colonials flee? Why did a 13th Colony separate from the rest and head for Earth? Why Earth?

Damned good question.

I don’t think the Lords of Kobol are an advanced alien race that liked to muck about with the Colonial’s lives. I think the Lords of Kobol were human colonists from our Earth. Life out there, began here. Far in our future they colonized Kobol using technology so advanced that to us it seems like magic. Still twelve people for one planet is a big job, so they had the help of … wait for it … their artificial humanoid servants. The Lords created the Colonial race. In time, their servants rebelled - perhaps with the help of some sympathetic humans perhaps, or as part of the machinations of one egotistical human who would set himself up above the others. The servants killed their masters (we know at least that Athena threw herself down from the mountain in despair) but Kobol was destroyed and left barren. The artificial humans left for a new star system, except for a small group of them that stayed loyal to their masters and attempted to return to their true home, Earth. All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

A jealous personal God alone in the dark of space, obsessed with tormenting the Colonials.

Oh my.

I’ll admit, I didn’t care for the “advanced alien race” thing, myself - it smacks of deus ex machina to me (or at least potentially so), and the last thing we need is another sci-fi series revolving around ancient-aliens-as-Gods ala the First Ones or the Prophets. But Rocket’s solution is so simple, I’m embarrassed to admit that it hadn’t even crossed my mind. Brilliant. Nice job, Rocket.

And he’s right - why Earth? We’re left with two basic scenarios:

1. Humans from our Earth struck out into space, eventually settling on Kobol and creating what would go on to become the Colonial race. They consciously used Greco-Roman mythology to build a religion for their servants, most likely as a general means of social control. (At first I had to ask, why Greco-Roman and not another religious tradition? But no, GR makes sense. A polytheistic pantheon of Gods who from the start have acted like humans, stemming from the classical age of human history. If I needed to create a religion fast that distributed power among a group of “Lords”, I certainly could do a lot worse than Olympus.)

2. The origins of the Lords remains a mystery - aliens, older humans, who knows - and for some reason, one of the colony ships evacuating Kobol 3600 years ago decided to go off hunting for a planet that they had no reason to imagine even existed. They eventually found a habitable world, called it Earth, and founded Greco-Roman religion (and hence, our civilization). When someone among the other colonies sat down to write The Book of Pythia (because it obviously wasn’t written by anyone in the 13th colony), “Earth” was a wishful daydream - sort of a land of Canaan thing.

Right offhand, I have to admit that the evidence tends to support option #1. Huh. Rocket mentions Dan Simmons, but I’m getting old vibes from Asimov’s Foundation books as well.

I’ve got a few thought rattling around in my head, looking for homes. I’ll post more once they’ve settled.

Posted by Rob on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 7:44 am.