Human (Earth-2124)

"Now, after seven human years, I have finally come to understand your role, your place in the universe and how you came to be here. The eons of human evolution, invention, aspiration...and war. Always war. The oldest, most enduring of human practices."

- - Cortana Humans (Latin Homo sapiens sapiens, meaning "man who knows of his knowledge"), also known as Hamanune (plural Hamanush) by the forerunners, are a sapient race of mammals native to Earth. They are some of the newest species to join the larger galactic community, and the only able to access important orokin installations.

Pre-History
Despite their exact origin being contested in paleontological debates, humanity can trace their origins back to the ancient humanoid species only known as the forerunners, who were responsible for their creation. In 3.2 Billion BCE, a lone orokin ingested a black liquid and sacrificed his own life to seed life on Earth for unknown reasons, leading to the birth of the hominid genus called Australopithecus. Homo sapiens was not the only human race to evolve on Earth, with many other branches of the Homo genus appearing. However, all were still collectively known as humanity. Homo erectus, neanderthalensis and floresiensis coexisted with Homo sapiens, sharing many cultural and genetic traits between each other, as well as interbreeding, with 1-4% of the DNA in European and East Asian humans is Neanderthal, while Melanesian people have 4% of Denisovan blood.

Humans became one of the few races to survive the xenomorph onslaught on the galaxy, and so were indexed in the Ark by the Librarian as per the Conservation Measure. Despite most of their population being composed by the Ur-Didact on Omega Halo, the Librarian was able to save enough individuals to revitalize humanity. After the activation of the Halo Array, humans were returned to Earth through a keyships, and the first race to be reintroduced by the orokin.

Rebuilding
The development of current human civilization started with the ability to harness the growth cycle of planets, allowing the production of edible food-energy in systemic fashion. This period of time was referred as the Neolithic Revolution, which occurred on Earth 10,000 years in the past, and then spread through diasporal human groups. Coming stability originated from systemic agriculture, which allowed the settling of permanent homes and development of complex tools to benefit humans. Innovative toolmaking and domestication of animals only served to advance human populations, allowing them to expand even more and trade goods with one another.

These populations led to the formation of the first formal civilizations 8,500 years in the past. These cultures have sites believed to have formed in Southwest Asia and Asia Minor, appearing in other locations not long after. Their civilizations and infrastructure continued to develop, expanding in complexity with the discovery of innovative technologies and the growth of large populations, which ultimately allowed for the increasing food-energy availability to thrive. Advancements in economics, society, politics and science lingered on, granting the race the power to automate once manual labor in the Industrial Revolution.

18th-20th centuries
The 18th through the 20th centuries saw enormous changes for the countries where the Industrial Revolution took place. In the aftermath of the unintended political and economic shifts through the refinery of capitalist resource management techniques led to the development of the automobile, the radio, the television, aircraft, among many others which were unheard or previously though impossible. Revolutionary progress was made into the development of medicine and chemistry, such as the discovery of anesthesia and penicillin, forever altering all following surgical and medical practices. Before these breakthroughs, humans' average lifespans reached 45 years, but thanks to the discovery of antibiotics and other forms of medication, the lifespan severely increased to 80 and beyond.

Humans virtually grew in efficiency and power in three centuries more than they did in the last millennium. Arts, science, and military forces also followed soon, with armed conflicts soon taking over, discarding the ancient and primitive weaponry in favor of advanced weapons of war. Following both World War I and World War II, the latter which saw the death of 3% of the world population at the time (est. 2.3 billion), both within the first 50 years of the 20th century, humans saw the creation of superior and automatic weapons, radar, missiles, tanks, and at last the atomic bomb, the most powerful human weapon in existence at the time.

After World War II, and for the next 60 years, both the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (which succeeded by the Commonwealth of Independent States) started to compete for power and influence against each other in a period of time known as the Cold War, a non-declared war that led to an arms race and the continuous evolution of human weaponry and destructive potential, both in technology and military tactics and doctrines. One of these developments came to be during the Space Race, with the USSR launching the first satellite and sending the first human, Yuri Gagarin, to space, officially propelling humans as spacefaring, rising to Tier 5 in the scale of Technological Achievement Tiers. The U.S. launched the first human, Neil Armstrong, to the Moon, surpassing the Soviet Union's capabilities, which, after its downfall, effectively made the United States the biggest worldwide influence, something that shaped human society forever.

Consequently, with the creation of the Internet lately in the 20th century, the achievements of this particular era forever revolutionized data processing and communications for humanity. World politics also saw change, with the creation of the United Nations. Once heavy and dominant, religious dogmas saw large decrease in the decision-making of nations around the world with the neutral nature of the new constitutions, as science and logical reasoning and explanations for natural phenomena and methodology rising in popularity and importance. Despite religion still being important to humanity, it only ever lingered on personal ethical codes.

Space colonization
With the new space technology, humans were able to immediately explore the space that surrounded their planet in the 20th century, through the advance in population that went beyond the natural capacity to sustain civilization. This culminated into numerous conflicts over resources, economics, politics and religion on Earth, leading to numerous conflicts. These eventual tensions heavily pressured the species for the centuries to come, with the rise of the Unified Earth Government, which took over the space colonization, exploration, and the representation of the human race. The subsequent Interplanetary War in the 2160s saw a major change in direction for the governance of humanity, with a vicious conflict which spanned through the solar system, leading the UEG to fully develop in a true governing body to lead majority of Earth's nations. Despite the growing threat of overpopulation on the planet, the colonization on Jupiter, Mercury and Venus led to the launch of the Ares One mission in an attempt to discover inhabitable areas through the planets. On Mars, the team, led by Mateus Silva, discovered the Element zero in the Deseado Crater. After decades of study, the rare material aided in the discovery and development of dark energy in 2287 and slipspace travel in 2291, helping the UEG and its UNSC to explore and colonize planets beyond the solar system, which put an end into the population worries on Earth.

This expansion, which would be named Domus Diaspora, or the "Golden Age", ushered a new era for mankind, with many of their new colonies, such as Reach, becoming mainstains and offering not only new homes but also deposits to many goods, such as titanium. The expensive implementation of technology, such as construction and development of ships and vessels ensured interstellar travel, communication, and trade, as well as the creation and introduction of synthetics in the market through large conglomerates such as the Concordance Extraction Corporation, who took over many of the manual labor and fields complicated for a normal human to operate.

Secession
After centuries of colonization, animosity grew between the Outer Colonies, those afar from the Sol system and that provided goods and supplies to the UEG, and the Inner Colonies, where the mega-rich populations lived. As predicted by sociologist Elias Carver, the building of discontent and uneasiness led to an onset of conflicts through the Outer Colonies, which eventually came to encompass the entirety of human space in the event which became known as the Secession, in 2438, through the formation of the Sovereign Colonies, an union of colonies who sought independence from the UEG. Despite the separatists' best efforts and heavy damage, the UEG came as a strategic victor at the onset of the Battle of Tau Volantis, duo to the Sovereign Colonies' dwindling warfare resources and public supports, although the latter was able to form the Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces, which was able to take control of multiple territories in human space. The Outer Colonies were largely fragmented during this time, with many of them experiencing rise of fascist and populist movements, while the planets still allied and under the UEG belt experienced oppression in the dire need of resources. Many rebel cells started to emerge, such as the United Liberation Front, which not only wanted to move away from the already established government, but dismantle it to form anarchistic societies led by its citizens, which only continued what was once thought to have ended with the Sovereign Colonies, seeing the destabilization and the peril of the collapse of human expansionism. In order to defeat the Insurrectionist threat, both superpowers joined for a limited amount of time to quell the rebellion, pioneering the creation of human augmentation through the ORION Project and the SPARTAN-II Program.