So, I'm looking over my long list of Lost questions and near the top is: "Where do the Others really come from? What is the origin of the ruins on the island?". 'Happily Ever After' aired two days ago. The first half of my question has, apparently, already been answered. The history of the Others begins when Richard and Jacob talk on the beach, and Richard reminds Jacob that if he (Jacob) refuses to interfere in the lives of those he brings to the island, than the Man in Black most certainly will. Before this conversation, Jacob brought people to the island, and he brought them for the same reasons he did after the conversation: to prove the Man in Black wrong. But with Richard there to guide the new arrivals, and to act as an eternal source of guidance, the new arrivals coalesced around him to form a group.
Perhaps we'll not see any more footage of life among the Others, detailing the creation of Others culture: How the 'very specific' process for choosing their leadership came about, Why Latin became their private language, if they have always had no regard for the lives of those newcomers not on Jacob's lists? In fact, I think that's an awesome idea for a Lost spin-off. Life on the island during the first years of Richard's reign as Jacob's consligiere: it'll have swordfights, heavy duty 'Ab Aeterno' style religion, and center around the unsure progress of Richard's band of proto-others from raw Conradian gone-native in the jungle madmen to a strange and powerful culture bound by ritual and spiritual insight. At the edge of the action, taking a much larger role than they did in 'Lost' will be Jacob and the Man in Black: scheming, murdering, converting, and otherwise manipulating the puny humans who have wandered into their eternal battle. Titles? How about 'Heart and Darkness',or 'The Cork', or 'Cetera' (latin for 'the others' ;) ?
If the first part of my question has already been answered during Season 6, the second part remains a mystery. The statue of Tawaret, and thus all of the other ruins on the island (though not the well John Locke lowered himself into) were there prior to the Black Rock's arrival. So, before the Others existed, and given the Egyptian iconography, before even Jesus Christ existed, a decent sized population lived on the island and spent their time building stone structures, large and small. In the 2000 plus intervening Earth-historical years, the only other group of Island inhabitants who were interested in building structures of any sort were the Dharma Initiative. So what made the statue-builders different? To what end did they direct there labors, and why hasn't anybody since built as much as a log cabin? I have two hunches.
First, though millenia has passed on earth since the statue builders time, it hasn't been that long on the island. Following a yet unseen 'Incident' the island moved through time, from the Egyptian era, until closer to Ab Aeterno times.
Second, the culture of the Statue Builders was not devoted to either Jacob or the Man in Black. Both Jacob and Man in Black arose from this culture. Man in Black has already confessed that he was once a man, and because this information gives him no ability to manipulate the Lostaways, I believe him. We have no idea if Jacob was once a man. I'm guessing (with no evidence whatsoever) that he was. Both Jacob and the Man in Black became more than men during the time of the statue builders.
THE OTHERS DOSSIER: QUESTIONS
1. Where did the Others come from? What is their real origin? Answered, I believe, as of 'Ab Aeterno'
2. What is the origin of the Statue and the Ruins on the Island?
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