Before M1: The Age of the Ancients
The C'tan "star gods" come into being with the creation of the galaxy and/or universe. A race known as the Old Ones dominate the galaxy and begin to interfere with evolution and create lesser races, and psykers are seeded throughout them. They also create a proto-warp network to facilitate their space travel. The 'War in Heaven' is fought between the C'tan and the Old Ones, both using lesser races as their pawns, and eventually the Old Ones are vanquished. To avoid the fallout of this war, the C'tan and their Necron followers eventually enter a long hibernation, leaving the orphaned lesser races to develop alone and repopulate the galaxy. The Eldar mature much faster, reaching their peak long before human history - they develop the Old Ones' warp network and create their stable Webway routes between the stars.

M1 - M15: The Age of Terra
Humanity dominates Earth. Civilisations come and go. The solar system is colonised. Mankind lives on Mars and the moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune.
Bear in mind that we are currently just at the beginning of M3, according to the timeline - we have about 12,000 years before the next epoch begins...

M15 - M18: The Age of Technology
Mankind begins to colonise the stars using sub-light spacecraft. At first only nearby systems can be reached and the colonies established on them must survive as independent states since they are separated from Earth by up to ten generations of travel.
Sometime in this era, the human race becomes divided by its own science, and the subservient 'Stone Race' is created by the ruling 'Golden Race'. Initially, only the Stone Men engage in exploratory space travel, using machines and artificial intelligence known as Iron Men, but gradually paving the way for the Golden Men to follow...
Currently, the nearest planet we believe to be suitable for human colonisation is Gliese 581c, which is over twenty light years from Earth - this equates to more than 193,000,000,000,000 kilometres. The most distant man-made object in the universe is currently the Voyager I probe, which in the last 30 years has travelled just 0.0016 light years from us. Voyager I is not heading towards anything in particular, but by the 41st Millennium it will only just be within 1.6 light years of the star AC+79 3888 in the Ophiuchus constellation... put simply, our current space travel methods are laughable compared to those of the Age of Technology!

M18 - M22: The Age of Technology
Invention of warp-drive accelerates the colonising of the galaxy. Federations and empires are founded. First aliens are encountered and the first Alien Wars are fought. First human psykers scientifically proven to exist. Psykers begin to appear throughout human worlds.
The legacy of the Old Ones' meddling with human evolution becomes apparent here.
Sometime in this era, warp-entities become aware of mankind moving through their realm. They are not attracted to the Stone Men, but seek to prey upon unprotected Golden Men as they begin their journeys to the stars.

M22 - M25: The Age of Technology
First Navigators are born allowing human spaceships to make even longer, quicker warp-jumps. Mankind enters a golden age of enlightenment as scientific and technological progress accelerates. Human worlds unite and non-aggression pacts are secured with dozens of alien races.
The majority of the coveted STC templates originate from this era. Very little new technology will ever be developed after this epoch.
Towards the end of this era, the mechanical Iron Men turn on their masters the Stone Men and a bloody uprising sweeps across human space. The Golden Men seem to eventually prevail, and are left with a deep resentment and mistrust of all AI constructs which still remains in M41...

M25 - M26: The Age of Strife
Terrible warp-storms interrupt interstellar travel. Sporadic at first, the storms eventually prevent and warp-jumps being made. The incidence of human mutation increases rapidly. Mankind enters a dark period of anarchy and despair.
This is when the Eldar civilisation began to mess things up, getting all decadent and cocky. Their excesses and atrocities started to interfere with the fabric of reality, creating turbulence throughout the Warp.

M26 - M30: The Age of Strife
Human worlds ripped apart by civil wars, revolts, alien predation and invasion. Human psykers and other mutants dominate some worlds and these rapidly fall prey to warp-creatures. Humanity is on the brink of destruction.
The legendary 'Chronicles of Ursh' are written somewhere in this tumultuous period, clearly describing the presence of summoned warp-entities among humans.

M30 - present: The Age of the Imperium
Earth is conquered by the Emperor and enters an alliance with the Mechanicum of Mars. Finally the warp-storms abate and interstellar travel is possible again. The Emperor builds the Astronomican and creates the Space Marine legions. Human worlds reunited by the Emperor in a Great Crusade that lasts for two hundred years...
- The beginning of the Unification Wars
~ The alliance with the Mechanicum priests of Mars
~ The creation of the Adeptus Custodes
~ The formal creation of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the adoption of the Imperial Aquila
- The creation and subsequent loss of the twenty Primarchs
- The creation of the Adeptus Astartes
- The birth of Slaanesh and 'The Fall' of the Eldar race, suddenly ending the warp-storms
- The end of the Unification Wars, and the eradication of religion from Terra
- The preparation of a warp-capable Imperial fleet
- The beginning of the Great Crusade, to reconquer the galaxy and find the Primarchs
~ The loss of the II and XI legions and their associated Primarchs
~ The Council of Nikaea and the Chaplain Edict
~ The establishment of illegal warrior lodges within the legions
- The triumph at Ullanor and the naming of Horus as Warmaster
- The retirement of the Emperor from the crusade
~ The reprimand of Magnus the Red and the Thousand Sons for continued use of sorcery
~ The razing of Magnus' homeworld Prospero by the Space Wolves legion
- The destruction of Istvaan III and the purging of the legions
- The 'Flight of the Eisenstein' to warn the Emperor of Horus' betrayal
~ The division of the Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars, resulting in the loyalists retreating to Terra
~ The recall of the Imperial Fists to fortify the Imperial Palace on Terra
- The 'Dropsite Massacre' at Istvaan V and the beginning of the Horus Heresy
- The 'Siege of Terra' which ends with the death of Horus and mortal wounding of the Emperor
- The establishment of the Golden Throne as the dying Emperor's immortal seat of power

Good start man. Couple of queries:

Wouldn't the creation of the Adeptus Astartes and the creation of the Primarchs be the other way around?

Between the The beginning of the Great Crusade, to reconquer the galaxy and find the Primarchs and The triumph at Ullanor and the naming of Horus as Warmaster, would it be worth noting that two legions went missing/were destroyed?

Quite right, my bad! Keep those suggestions and queries coming guys...

I don't want to add conjecture, just facts. I will write a more in-depth article for each of the points within the timeline as I get time.

Well to start off with you have the C'Tan and the Old Ones confused in the first part. The Old Ones interfered with evolution and developed various races (eldar, krork, hrud) to fight for them when they came into contact with the C'Tan and their Necrontyr/Necron servants. So the 'pre-history' part goes more like this:

The Age of the Ancients

The Old Ones, god-like beings with a deep connection with the warp, emerge as the dominant species in the galaxy. They begin to seed thousands of worlds all across the galaxy with life, and tweak the biological and psychic makeup of many existing life forms. They cause the sun above the planet of the already-evolving Necrontyr to become ever more harsh and dangerous. They develop a system of warpgates, a proto-webway that is later developed by the Eldar.

The Necrontyr become deeply resentful of the Old Ones, and become ever more warlike, permanently seeking ways to move against the more advanced Old Ones. Eventually they perceive the vast and ethereal C’tan, and somehow manage to communicate with the star-gods diffuse minds. The C’tan become personified into physical bodies through the efforts of Necrontyr incredible technology. The C’tan consume the entire Necrontyr race and encase their basic thought engrams within the sophisticated neural networks of highly advanced robotic bodies. The Necrons as they are known today are born. Desperate for more lives to consume, the C’tan lead their metallic slaves to ‘harvest’ the other burgeoning races in the galaxy.

The Old Ones mobilise to protect their creations and experiments from the C’tan onslaught. The War in Heaven begins. At first the Old Ones are defeated and pushed back. They create warrior races to fight the C'Tan and their servants, primarily the Eldar (masters of psychic power which is deadly to the C'Tan) and the Krork. Once they have created their warrior races, they take the fight to the C'tan and drive them back. However, eventually the greater power of the C'Tan prevails. The Old Ones are defeated and are either killed or dissapear.

Learning from the carnage caused by the psychic races in the War in Heaven, the Deciever, one of the 4 remaining C'Tan, engineers a specific gene sequence and puts it in the biological makeup of life on many planets. This will develop into the Pariah gene. Then the Enslaver plague begins, caused by the termoil in the Warp that resulted from the War in Heaven. The remaining C'Tan go into hibernation with their Necron servants to avoid the prevelence of warp energy caused by the enslaver plague and wait for their 'prey' species to recover and repopulate the galaxy.

There's a bit more detail you could put in but that is pretty much the gist of it.

You definitely need to have something about the Iron Men/Stone men in the Age of Technology/Age of Strife sections as well. Pretty vital to the background as it explains humanities aversion to genuine AI.

Too wordy. :D

The stuff in bold is canonical quotation, from the books. I'm not likely to change that, but I may put editorial comments in italics below them.

Please expand on the aversion to AI - I've not read the factual material on that, and yes it would be great to include.

Don't forget that the Unification Wars were fought over all the inhabited worlds of the Solar System, and that most, if not all, had undergone some form of Terraforming, even the moon was supposed to have an atmosphere at this point in time.

Also there are indications that the Alliance between the Cult Mechanicus and the Emperor was initially formed as early as the Terran campaign of the Unification Wars. False Gods infers as much by having an Aquila on the door of the lab where the Primarchs are in their tanks when the adult Horus is brought there.

Though the piece where Garro talks about the Dusk Raiders does obviously take place in a planets atmosphere, if it's a UW recollection it doesn't necessarily mean it happened on Terra.

Splendid work guys, keep those revision ideas coming!

Anyone know if the alliance with Mars happened before or after the establishment of the Custodes?

Your taking that section completely out of context Gagoc, as it is a Chaos influenced and distorted dream/vision that Horus suffers whilst near the brink of death. Therefore it cannot and should not be taken as fact. The use of an aquila on therfore infers nothing at all, as the whole episode was not real.

Shroudfilm:

According to Horus Heresy: Collected Visions, the Custodes were the first genetic warriors to be created by the Emperor. Afterwards/or at a similar time the Space Marines were created. The Space Marines fought from the very begining of the Wars of Unification. It was their presence in the Emperor's army which was fundamental in forcing the Tech-Priests of Mars to sue for peace.

So the Custodes were created a long time prior to the Unification of Terra itself, and prior to alliance with Mars.

Hmm, so are the "~" approximations correct above?

Luna and then Mars were the first bodies to be conquered after Terra, correct?

Is it possible that No 2 were A Librarian Legion and No 11 was a Chaplain
legion,they do seem coincidental to the council of Nikea?Since one was banned
and the other was enforced!So is it possible they were destroyed by accident
or erased? ;) <_<

All we know for certain is that it happened after all 20 Primarchs were found, and that their downfall mirrored the Heresy which was to come...

My money is on them having turned on each other, probably because of something to do with sorcery or religion.

Didn't Horus destroy one of the Primarchs as an infant during its creation when he was taken into the past in his experience at Davin? Or is that not considered to have been an actuality?

The fact that it was a dream leads me to believe that it didn't happen in a physical sense...

In The Lightning Tower, during his encounter with Malcador at the palace Rogal Dorn muses on the fate of the two Primarchs. I'm inclined to believe that is more likely to be truth than a warp-dream where Horus was being manipulated by Erebus, but as yet we are still only using sketchy information.

OK, the Age of Ancients stuff was pretty fullsome! Like the revised summary, certainly gets across the basic points without succumbing to the 'too much information' syndrome.

As for the Stone Men/Iron Menstuff, I think it was in the 3rd Edition rulebook. It has always been presented as distant legend without exact details, but if I can remember, it went along these lines. There was first a society of the 'Golden Men' and the 'Stone Men' on Earth prior to the Age of Technology. The Stone Men seem to have been the artificiers and craftsmen, whereas originally the Golden Men seem to have been the dominant faction. Eventually the 'Golden Age' ends around M21, as the Golden Men became too reliant on the Stone Men and their machines and seem to dissapear as a notable force. The Stone Men begin the colonisation of the Galaxy at this point, heralding the Age of Technology. They build the 'Iron Men' to help them create a galactic empire... these are usually assumed to be some form of robots with Artificial Intelligence. Eventually the Stone Men and the Iron men come into conflict, and the Stone Men destroy the Iron Men, including those that remained loyal, as an act of self preservation. This conflict seems to occur around the beginning or just prior to the Age of Strife,so was likely to be (along with increasing psychic mutation and warp storms cutting off worlds from each other) one of the prime causes of the collapse of the first of humanity's Galactic Empires.

Anyway, the Adeptus Mechanicus seem to be the spiritual successors of the Stone Men, and have seen 'genuine' AI as technoheresy since their foundation as a result of the rebellion of the Iron Men. Hence their use of organic components in half-robotic cyborgs, and limiting any robotic device's capacity for independent thought.

^ I think the above is essentially correct. :) To my knowledge it was first presented in the Realm of Chaos sourcebooks, though, so predates 3rd Edition by a long way. (Though it was largely absent through 2nd edition).

The only thing I know of the Stone & Steel/Iron Men comes from 'First & Only' and this from the story 'Ancient History' found in the Dark Imperium anthology book.

I've always taken it as the Stonemen were AI Super-computers and the Steel or Iron Men were the AI robots they created for jobs such as Terraforming. Something similar to the situation with the Overseers Loken mentions in Horus Rising.

I would definitely see the Stone Men as humans, just slightly divergent from the 'Golden Men'. I managed found a copy of Keeper Cripias' journal online (so I can't be 100% certain it is an exact reproduction, anyone with the relevant original care to substantiate this?) which is if I remember correctly the source from the old Rulebook. I have quoted the parts which refer to the nature of the Stone Men, and it certainly seems to refer to them as the Humans who were mainly responsible for the original colonisation of the galaxy:

That second quote does seem to say that they are men (maybe genetically modified for space travel and/or tehcnological advancement), though it could quite easily be that they ARE AI (

)

The problem with that take on the Stone Men is that it means the first galactic empire was settled by AI and not men. Given that the planets brought back into the fold by the great crusade are populated by men, this seems unlikely. Also, the account stipulates that the Iron Men have no soul, impying that the stone men do. Which would mean they couldn't be AI. And saying the Stone Men are 'physically inferior' to the Golden Men also implies they are human.

I see it as more of a philosophical distinction than anything else, with the Stone Men representing the 'scientist' and the Golden Men representing the 'philosopher', although it is possible that the Stone Men were also genetically engineered in some way to make them more suited for space travel/physical labour.

I have to say, the impression I got from all that material is that the Stone Men were a genetically-enhanced subordinate human race... maybe even just a social distinction like the Epsilons and Deltas in Huxley's Brave New World?

Whatever they were, they were certainly created and they are now no more. I think that gives us a good start on something approaching canonicity! :D

Or the distinction between the two is no more...

I don't think we can say with any certainly that the Stone Men were 'created' to be honest. They may have been,but they may just have easily evolved naturally... the limited material we have doesn't give us enough information to say for sure one way or the other.

I don't think we can say for certain that they 'are no more' either. Seeing as the original conquest and settlement of the galaxy during the Dark Age of Technology was done by the Stone Men, it follows that the planets inhabited by mankind in the 41st millenium are inhabited by the descendants of the Stone Men. The 'Golden Men' seem to have disappeared by the begginning of the Age of Strife... at least they are not mentioned in Keeper Cripias' account following the rise to predominance of the Stone Men. Perhaps the men of the 41st millenium are no longer 'true' Stone Men as they have evolved into a more psychic race, but I still think the background suggests that they are their descendants rather than the descendants of the Golden Men.

It would seem that way, though I think that without further details, the distinction between gold and stone is a bit of a moot point...

My thought on the issue is that it could be a worker/labor v. commercial/financial type split a la Marxist/true communist type ideas and ideals. The "Stone Men" being those who labor, sweat, and are more solidly built. The ones who toil with the land and who work with products of the land, whether it be metal, foodstuffs, or other such items. The "Gold Men" are those connected with money, the making of it and distributing of it. They are the financiers of the "Stone Men's" projects, the overseers, the investors, the capitalists and high tech researchers. They don't toil with the products of the land, they are "above" such things and utilize and are associated with those non-inherently valuable resources and advanced "labor"/jobs. They are represented by gold as it is something which has no actual value other than for it's perceived worth, it's value as a method of trade, and ornamentation purposes, as compared to the inherent usefulness of items such as steel, stone, bronze, plastics, or other metals and materials.

Even now the "Gold Men" are generally seen as more important and hold a position of higher esteem and supposed "worth" in society. They are the elites, making the most money, having the most influence with the masses, and having more control of the direction and course of learning, progress, science, and what is deemed important and valued in society. If one continues along this line of progress which the capitalist/buisness sector has made since the Middle Ages on a timeline, it would stand to figure the potential for their further growth in power and prestige would maintain till a dramatic occurance which would/could unseat them. This being their supposed over indulgence and wasting away of their means of power and it's subsequent retaking by the "Stone Men".

That's the basic part of my understanding of it anyway. :lol:

That's a very good analysis man. I have to say you have me mostly convinced... Modern day aristocracy...

Less 'aristocracy', more 'bourgeoisie' - 40K pre-history as a marxist historical progression including the eventual triumph of the proletariat certainly has a kind of ironic appeal, to me at least. I too would interpret the gold men/stone men divide in a similar way, although this being 40K there is also the chance that genetic engineering is involved in some way.

I think that is pretty implicit in the quotes used above...

As an alternative to the GM theory, how about if they're Cyborgs.
It might go some way to better defining the difference between stone men and gold men.
Gold Men are a genetically engineered elite, whilst the Stone Men are mainly Cybernetically altered humans.

Either way if the stone men are some form of human, then they must have principally been altered to allow them to pass through the warp in the time before Navigators and warp technology common to later era's.

Why would the daemons not be interested in the souls of Stone Men if they are only culturally removed from Golden Men? I think we have to assume some kind of spiritual/physiological/mental distinction...

Hmm, not convinced by the stone men being cyborgs. Again, I see them as a race of humans, even if they are genetically divergent from men before and after them... no other accout seems to suggest or support the idea that the settlement of the galaxy during the Dark Age of Technology was done by cyborgs, or under the command of cyborgs.

As for the lack of daemonic interest in the Stone Men, a couple of explanations.

First, the account quoted by Gagoc seems to be a form of folk tale, passed down through the generations and told, in this instance, by Kron. Important to note is that it seems to be a form of parable, highlighted by the part at the end: "This path was forged from neither stone nor steel but simple faith. Faith guarded Man from the beasts of the void as steel or stone could never do." Here the tale is highlighting that the Emperor brought faith to humanity, which was the only true protection from 'the beasts of the void', and seems to contrast the Emperor's attempt at uniting humanity with the flawed version of the Dark Age of Technology, which relied on the Men of Stone (lacking in faith and therefore suspect) and the Men of Steel (Artificial Intelligence that was not mankind at all).

Gagoc, could you confirm the context of the tale? If it is presented as a folk tale or similar, I think Keeper Kripias' account has to be given more credence seeing as it as presented more as an actual historical account written by a researcher or record keeper of some sort based in the Terran system. The full account mentions "Our calculations, from the most distant and archaic records, and through constellar comparison, have dated the end of the Golden Age at 20.000 years previous to our present time" and "Little can be determined from the Dark Age of Technology, for the majority of existing records concerning that period are gathered in the Librarius Omnis of Mars, and none outside the highest ranks of the Adeptus Mechanicus can gain access past its most determined Guardians - Keeper Malrubius tried once, but to no avail." This implies genuine 'historical' research (and access to ancient records) of a kind that appears to be absent from Kron's account, so I think we have to give it more credence, including the fact this version does not seem to mention the Golden Men following their decline and implies that the colonisation of the Galaxy was done entirely by the Men of Stone helped by their Iron Man servants/allies.

The other explanation for lack of daemonic/Warp intrest in the Stone Men is that psychic races are clearly of more interest to them. The background certainly suggests that the incidence of Human psykers was far, far lower prior to the increasing rates of mutation that occured during the Age of Strife (barring the essentially stable navigator gene). As a result it seems likely that the Warp Powers had far less influence on/interest in the race of Man at this point.

Ahhh, could it be then that the Golden Men were those who had some sort of faith or vision for the future, whereas the Stone Men were those who were more interested in technology and science?

It makes the obvious outward differences between the Imperium and the Mechanicum a lot easier to understand in M31...

Hmm, maybe. Though, as Sorceror points out, it could just be a distorted folk tale...

I suppose the question should really be: What did the author of that excerpt want to convey to the audience? Was he just seeking to confuse us, or trying to impart some sort of message other than the fact that we built robots then destroyed them?

There are 3 important points in the folk tale, whether it is allegorical or not -

1) The human race was divided or stratified into Golden and Stone
2) The Stone Men were somehow deemed less spiritually wholesome
3) True AI machines were used extensively by the Stone Men

I do feel that one way or another, the Golden Men were responsible for the existence of the Stone Men in some way, and they in turn created the Iron Men.

4) Eventually, after the failures of the previous races of men, the Emperor came to save us from the beasts of the void and the treachery of the machines. The Emperor protects. Put your faith in him and you will be saved etc etc :P

Is the Emperor considered to be one of the Golden Men?

As in, were the Golden Men all super-psychic monstrosities? Maybe... It would explain why they weren't very good with warp travel...

My views generally agree with Benedict Arnold and The Red Sorceror's views – that the 'Stone Men' label is a poetic phrase used to describe ancient near-myths.

Terms such as 'stone men' and 'gold men' are rich in cultural impact – nearly all human groups have some mythology involving the creation of beings from base materials – Amerindian creationsim; Adam from the Bible is made from clay etc. We also have examples of beings created by man (or at least not gods)from earth: the Jewish Golem is a good example, but there's more from Assyrian(?) and anicent Greek myths and legends.

Similarly, gold is symbolic of things or beings that are better than earth.

My interpretation would be that the Gold men are humans as we know them – beings that to the inhabitants of 40k seem to have incredible amounts of knowledge that has been lost – a bit like how people in the Dark Ages venerated the Ancient Greeks.

Stone men are clearly different in some way; and it is implied that they are created by the Gold men. Various theories have been brought forward:
1) Stone men are a caste of humans, but still humans
2) Stone men are cyborgs
3) Stone men are genetically modified
4) Stone men are artificial intelligences (robots, essentially)

My personal view is that the Stone men are genetically modified humans. It's been established throughout the 40k universe that messing with genetics gets you in trouble with the warp – the best example is the pariah gene; purposefully planted by the C'tan in humankind to produce humans with no souls.

We know that at some point, humans created special castes of nominally human beings – navigators, astropaths – in order to communicate and travel between worlds. I believe that it is mentioned (or at least heavily implied) in the navigator entry in Rogue Trader that navigators are the result of stable genetic manipulation that is impossible in the 41st Millennium. This would tie in to M22–M25 Age of Technology – the Gold men used their (now long lost) hyper-technology to create stable mutant strains (Stone men) of the emerging psykers (gold/stone men*) to allow them to travel the warp.

Given that Gold men by implication are better than Stone men; and given that the idea of the soul is extremely important throughout 40k, I believe that the Stone men were specialists created by humankind (i.e. Gold men) to perform certain tasks that coupled with the warp – being able to see and travel through it (Navigators), being able to transmit and communicate through it (Astropaths), and who knows what else? This could have caused potential problems with the 'soul' (Navigators and Astropaths are frequently referred to as other-worldly or weird).

Given this (admittedly fairly tenuous) evidence, it's possible that other Stone men castes were more grievously affected, and were destroyed in the war with the Iron men/died out in the time since/culled by the Gold men for becoming dangerous or unstable. This could also tie in to the massive rise in possessions and psychic development of the human race that led to the Age of Strife – which happens immediately afterwards...

+++
So, in short; I reckon Gold men are humans of the Age of Technology – identical to us (and 40k inhabitants) but separated culturally by a massive knowledge of pretty much everything!

Stone men are humans that are artificially altered to make use of spontaneous psychic development – the gold men used their technology to speed up/amplify the benefits of humankind's psychic development. This caused some problems with the soul.

Iron men are entirely artificial beings (robots).
+++

I think the Emperor's just the Emperor – in a nice little class of his own!

Essentially, the Emperor is one of the Golden Men, but the phrase 'Golden Men' is just a label put on humans in the age of technology in hindsight by the inhabitants of the 41st Millennium – exactly as nineteenth century Europeans referred to the Greeks as 'The Ancients', and invested them with a lot of respect and credited them with all knowledge.

In this manner, the Emperor is also 'just a man'.

+++


*Note that I believe psychic development is a natural (at least in 40k terms!) development of humankind, not artificially induced.

I like your interpretation of this. One prblem I have though is that it says the warp had no interest in the Stone Men, but Astropaths and Navigators seem to be very vulnerable to the warp in the 30/40k setting (ref: Flight of the Eisenstein).

I think that Stone Men were not actually Navigators/Astropaths as we know them now, but much more refined 'artificial' versions, created or bred by the Golden Race.

Also, this smacks heavily of Frank Herbert-ism... selective family inter-marriage and breeding programs can be considered 'manipulation', which is what I suspect happened more recently to make Navigators so very different from normal psykers, rather than laboratory-style alterations.

Considering that daemons are very interested in the souls of M41 humans, I would be inclined to believe that they are actually what was once the Golden Race, in the same way that modern Greeks were once the Ancient Greeks - they may bear no similarity whatsoever, but they are indisputably descended from them.

I can also wholly believe that the Mechanicum adopted the ways of the Stone Men, which is why they are so very different in their outlook. I also find it interesting that someone else has brought up the Pariah gene, when we are discussing the soulless Stone Men and the Mechanicum C'tan-worshippers... :D Coincidence? I personally think NOT!

Ahhh, I do like discussions of the Gold/Stone/Iron men, always interesting. Anyway, I did quote parts of Keeper Kripias' account earlier, but only the parts regarding the Stone Men. Seeing as the conversation has taken in other parts of the period as well, I figure its probably worth quoting the whole of it now:

So, the Golden Race emerges before Earth has been fully settled, and certainly do not seem to be 'gifted' in the same way the Emperor is. I think the Golden Men are effectively mankind as we would consider them today, at least as far as their physical nature.

The Stone Race emerges some time before Mankind 'looks to the stars', which to me argues against them being genetically engineered to facilitate warp travel. In fact, their 'less philosophical temprement' and focus on 'marvels of technology' seems to present them as being very similar to the Adeptus Mechanicus, with greater knowledge of their creations and without the religious aspect. This is supported by the fact that the AM was founded towards the end of the Dark Age of Technology, presumably by the Stone Men (it is certainly heavily implied at least.) It also implies that by the end of the Golden Age the Golden Men are a spent force... they dwindle in influence due to their dependence on the Stone Men, and it is the Stone Men that go on to colonise the galaxy. 'For the next 5.000 years, the Stone Race lives through the Dark Age of Technology' certainly implies this is not a joint project of Gold and Stone, or that the Stone Men are tools to enable the Golden Men to conquer the stars, as would be the case if they were engineered astropaths, navigators and the like. In addition, that would mean their numbers would be limited and the Gold Men would make up the majority of humanity, which would surely mean they would get some mention in this part of the tale. This is again supported both by the fact that the GM were reliant on the technology and artifices of the SM (which argues against them genetically engineering the SM themselves) and that it is some time after the arrival of the SM and the decline of the GM that the Navigators appear, during the Dark Age of Technology. The Navigators, astropaths and so on may have emerged from the Stone Men, but the Stone Men as a whole seem to be something else.

@Wiess - I agree, if the Warp had less interest in the Stone Men it does seem to argue against them being psychic creations... although that particular nugget is from Kron's more 'folklore-y' account which seems to differ in several significant ways from the account by Kripias.

@ShroudFilm - The Stone Men are clearly not entirely soulless. Even Kron says they have 'half-life', and Kripias also implies they have a soul by contrasting them with the Iron Men, who 'are possessed of no Soul, an anathema to any true Man', when they come into conflict.

Anyway, it is effectively largely up to personal interpretation due to the lack of complete records... that is, unless we can get into the Librarius Omnis of Mars! Perhaps Magos Apologist could pop in and do a bit of research for us... :D