Entertainment
 

Lantean

From SGCommand

Lantean
Melia and Moros of the Ancient Council in Atlantis
Species

Genetically evolved humans

Distinctions

ATA gene, heightened intellect, advanced mental abilities (mortal)
Energy-based lifeform (ascended)

Homeworld

Lantea, later returned to Earth (mortal)
Higher plane of existence (ascended)

Language

Lantean

Form of government

Lantean Council (mortal)
The Others (ascended)

Alliances

None (present), Four Great Races (past)

Status

Ascended

First appearance

The Torment of Tantalus (language first shown)
Rising (first mentioned)
Before I Sleep (first appearance)

[Source]
"Why'd they leave? Um, who knows? We know the Ancients on Earth were suffering from a plague. Uh, maybe some of them were trying to start over, seeding life in a new galaxy."
—Daniel Jackson

The Lanteans, also known as the Atlanteans and the Ancestors, were those Ancients who left Earth in the city-ship Atlantis and settled in the Pegasus galaxy. They were directly responsible for the emergence of the Asurans and the Wraith.

More generally, the term, "Lantean," is normally used to describe Ancients who are encountered in physical form, or who chose to remain so, as opposed to the ascended group, the Alterans, which in Latin translates to, "the Others."

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Arrival

"... in the hope of spreading new life in a galaxy where there appeared to be none. Soon the new life grew, prospered...In time, a thousand worlds bore the fruit of life in this form."
—Melia

After leaving the Milky Way and arriving in the Pegasus galaxy, the Ancients settled on a planet named Lantea, and came to be known as the Lanteans. Finding Pegasus devoid of sentient life, the Lanteans seeded Pegasus with baseline humans, who would come to call them the Ancestors. (ATL: "Rising")

[edit] The Great Scourge

"The Lanteans were powerful but careless"
—Todd
Main article: Lantean-Wraith war

However, one of the planets seeded held a creature called the Iratus bug, which began feeding off the humans seeded there. Eventually, the Iratus bugs began to mutate, taking on advantageous human characteristics. This resulted in a hybrid species, the Wraith. For over a century, the Lanteans and the Wraith warred with each other.

While at first the Lanteans had the advantage of technological superiority and were close to defeating the Wraith, their carelessness allowed the Wraith to capture ZPMs from several of their warships at great cost themselves, which they then used to power a cloning facility and their numbers grew a hundred fold. The Lanteans' near-indestructable ships allowed them to win almost every battle they fought, but the Wraith just kept coming. The tables were turned and the Lanteans began to lose both warships and territory. Desperate, they turned to extreme measures, such as Project Arcturus, an attempt to extract zero-point energy from their own universe, and created the Asurans, nanites designed to destroy the Wraith from within. Both attempts failed, with disastrous and far reaching consequences. By then, the Lanteans were losing the war, and they knew it, so they sunk their capital city, Atlantis, into the ocean.

In a final act of achieving some measure of peace, the Lanteans sent a delegation to meet with the Wraith to negotiate a truce. The Lantean delegation was protected by their most powerful warships, but they were ambushed by the Wraith's massive fleet. Seeing no way to win, and every moral solution exausted, the few remaining Lanteans returned to Earth via Stargate hoping to one day return, leaving Pegasus and her denizens at the mercy of the Wraith until they did. (ATL: "Rising", "Before I Sleep", "The Gift", "The Siege", "Trinity", "Progeny")

[edit] Twilight

"When we first abandoned Atlantis all those millennia ago, the Earth was so harsh, its people so primitive by comparison, there was no hope of living among them as Lanteans or rebuilding our society. So instead we spread out to many lands, some of us planting a few small seeds of civilization among the first tribes of man, others making their way to the Stargate at your southern pole. Still others choosing to live the remainder of our lives in seclusion and meditation."
—Ganos Lal

Upon arriving at Earth, they quickly realized that there was no hope of rebuilding their society, as Earth was too harsh and the humans there too primitive. Some chose to go to other worlds, others ascended, and some chose to join the native humans, where they integrated into human society (which is how several humans came to possess a specific gene required to use Ancient technology. (SG1: "The Pegasus Project") (ATL: "Rising")

The Ancients that left Earth were later part of the Alliance of Four Great Races, with the Asgard, the Furlings, and the Nox. It was after their return to Earth that they developed some of their most advanced technology, including: beam transporters with the ability to beam entire structures through a Stargate, molecular construction devices (used to build anything at the molecular level using one's mind), and solid holograms (which could physically interact with matter). (SG1: "The Fifth Race", "Avalon, Part 2", "The Quest, Part 2")

[edit] Legacy

The Lanteans were worshiped as gods by the people of the galaxy and some of their technology was left behind to be found and used by people who understood it. Atlantis was among the many wonders left behind and was ultimately discovered by the Atlantis Expedition who moved into the abandoned city and used it as their base of operations in the Pegasus Galaxy. A lot of technology was left behind in the city itself. Also several outposts still existed along with at least a few ZPMs. Also, the enemy they inadvertently created, the Wraith, still existed as well as the Asurans who the Lanteans had previously attempted to destroy. The Asurans replicated themselves into the billions and later became a major threat to the galaxy after their base code was altered, before finally being destroyed by the Atlantis Expedition, the Wraith and the Travelers.

[edit] Architecture

After traveling to the Pegasus Galaxy, the Ancients built structures of metal, and they were quite large. Atlantis, the centerpiece of their society, was a massive city-ship capable of space travel. They built many city-ships, but most were destroyed during the war with the Wraith. Their technology also appeared more advanced, made of metal instead of stone; it was also digitalized, like the symbols on the Stargates in the Pegasus Galaxy, and utilized crystals in their consoles instead of stone tablets. They also kept their archives in computers instead of downloading the knowledge directly into a person's mind.

[edit] Known Lantean outposts

[edit] Known Lanteans

Melia and Moros, two Lanteans in human form

[edit] Mortal

[edit] Ascended

The first evolution of humanity
Alterans · Ancients · Lanteans · Ori
Retrieved from "http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Lantean"