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Edited on Wed Dec-20-06 03:40 PM by TechBear_Seattle
For those unfamiliar with the series:
More than a billion years ago, the first sentient oxygen breathing race evolved and took to the stars. In a need for companionship, this race -- now known as the Progenitors -- sought other sentient species but found none. Undaunted, they took promising pre-sentient species, tinkered with their genes and taught them language and civilization. After a few million years, the Progenitors "moved on" and left behind a culture that spanned 14 galaxies held together by a mandate to seek out and Uplift other species. In all that billion years, no race other than the Progenitors has made the jump from pre-sentience to space-faring sentience. Except, perhaps, humans, who come to the attention of a thriving galactic culture with client races of their own, neo-chimpanzees and neo-dolphins, and thus with the exalted status of a Patron Race.
One of the central tenets of Brin's Uplift culture is an extreme attention to ecological preservation. Wiping out a species of plant or animal may deny a promising client race the opportunity to be adopted and Uplifted. Planets are "leased" by the Institute of Migration for a period of standard years, typically several thousand. Afterwards, a planet, stellar system or group of stars lays fallow to recover and allow the spark of pre-sentience to evolve. (That is why Earth was overlooked for some 500,000 years.) When a species has a lease-hold on a planet, they can build what they like (within the conservative strictures of environmentalism.) Before they leave, however, everything must be dismantled and either taken off-planet or placed within the subduction zone of continental plates, there to be sucked down into the mantle. It is essentially a religious doctrine that new species can not evolve pre-sapience if the planet is "tainted" by the relics of previous inhabitants.
There is some question as to whether Earth was ever inhabited by an alien race. Our entire galactic arm had been declared fallow just before pressure of the expanding universe ruptured the connection between what was once a community of seven galaxies into a community of five galaxies. As when this happened in the past, this rupture caused vast social unrest and violent warfare; the records of the Institute of Migration are sketchy before this "Time of Troubles", which is why our galactic arm was untravelled for much longer than the usual fallow period. But if it had been, then all trace would have been cleaned up before the previous tenants left.
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