Gems in History: Prehistory of Man
Mankind has existed for a long time before the Gem Wars. Humanity really started to show the signs of actual, lasting civilization by the beginning of the Mesolithic period, about 12000 years ago.
I wonder how long the Gems had been on Earth? Their empire was vast and rife throughout the world. They seem to have existed in every biome and across great vast lands. Even with all their power, I imagine it would take a little time to build up the society and population they seemed to claim on the planet.
What if they have a Prime Directive-like standard on planet colonization? For those that don’t know, the Prime Directive is a Star Trek concept, that basically states that the Federation is supposed to not interfere or interact with planets that have not reached a certain level of technology.
I can imagine that the Gems follow a similar system, that they aren’t supposed to colonize and strip-mine a planet that has intelligent races on it. The problem was, those bizarre tribal monkeys that started off using barely fashioned spears learned to create fire… then they started to form culture, and civilization, and even developed writing and counting and suddenly, the Gems were in violation of their own rules.
Can you imagine the struggles, the political conflict, the serious fights over how the Gems either need to ignore the growing signs of intelligent, civilized life on Earth, or they need to leave now? And what about those hundreds of other Gems that were born on Earth along with Amethyst? Were they supposed to abandon their own homeworld, the only place they have ever known?
Look at how many Gems they were able to get out of such a small area of Earth in that one Kindergarten, sure the earth was barren, dusty wastes around the spot, but that place produced so many lives. I wonder if Earth might have been some sort of Eden for the gems, a perfect birthing home for the next ten, fifteen, twenty thousand years… until Humans became a problem.
The armies split between protecting the stupid, barely civilized, but growing indigenous life of Earth, or protecting the coming lives of thousands of future gems, likely to live for millenia longer than any civilization created by these silly native monkeys desperately living short, brutal lives, barely able to write their names in the stone.
Its easy to see how the Crystal Gems are our savior, but at the cost of a lot of lives. I wonder how many lives were really lost, both defending Earthlings, and defending the future generations of Gem progeny.
I do wonder how many human civilizations were destroyed in the skirmishes and battles across Earth as well, as one side strove to destroy the reason that they had to leave Earth at all, and the other struggled to save the helpless humans.