Lit Human origins in the Star Wars EU

For a while now, I've entertained the idea that, despite being set "a long time ago", within the context of the SW universe, there could well be a connection between the events in the saga and the existence of our Earth, i.e. the humans of the SW galaxy are in some way related to us. Some years ago, I was extremely interested to learn that a SW novel series was at one time in full development that would provide definite links between Earth and the SW galaxy. The story, Alien Exodus, showed that sometime in the late 21st/early 22nd century AD, large numbers of refugees fled Earth to escape the totalitarian regime that had taken the planet over; the refugee ships got caught in a spatial anomaly and were deposited, along with everyone on board, to a distant galaxy in the distant past. The refugees eventually settled first on Corellia, and then on other worlds, becoming the human population of the SW galaxy. Pretty interesting, eh?

But there are some snags to this idea. For one thing, Galactic Basic Standard is shown to be virtually identical to modern English. While, to some, this might support the notion of a link with Earth, the EU shows that Basic evolved gradually over the course of tens of thousands of years, originating as a jargon made up of early human languages, Bothese and Durese. The Old Corellian language, known to ancient Corellians as Olys Corellisi, includes words such as "contemplanys", which are later merged with other languages to form the more familiar "contemplate", rather than the other way around. If there was any truth in the theory of an origin on future Earth for SW humans, the human language would have been identical to English from its earliest days.

I'm fully aware that Alien Exodus was ultimately never published, and so therefore doesn't really count, but it's too interesting to ignore outright, and even Nathan Butler included it in his Star Wars Timeline Gold as a historical curiosity.

 

I don't think that would ever happen or work/make sense

it just doesn't fit

 

Why do you think it wouldn't work?

And how else would we go about rationalizing not only how humans exist in a distant galaxy at some point in the distant past, but how Basic is virtually identical to modern English?

 

It would take not only unrealistic and unbelieveable retcons, but also a ridiculous amount.

The way humans are set up in Star Wars, with the history and everything, it's simply not practical to link it to Earth.

Plus one of the main basic features of Star Wars by George Lucas as it was originally made, was that it was basically a completely different reality, "a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away"
the example retcon that you mentioned as a possibilty is too far-fetched for me, personally, to take seriously, and it would go against what Star Wars is

 

i agree having earth exist in the star wars universe is just stupid. alderaan was sopposed to represent earth in star wars. or as close to earth as they had.

 

Would a connection to the real world be all that devastating to Star Wars though? Look at Lord of the Rings: When J.R.R. Tolkien stated that his Middle-Earth was our own world in the distant past, with Frodo Baggins' adventure taking place around six thousand years before the present time, it didn't particularly hurt the legendarium. If it was done in a certain way, and not made too big a thing of, it might just fit in nicely enough.

 

Actually one draft (I forget which one) opened the crawl with a line saying that it was the thirty-third century (or some similarly removed, but still related-to-earth, time). True, this was changed, and I personally enjoy how the past in the SW universe is sometimes lost to the sands of time. However, the Alien Exodus proposal does a cool job of tying everything together for me. The language issues will probably never make much sense; perhaps the "modern" version of basic was rediscovered, or perhaps the characters are actually speaking some other language in the films, but for the audience's convenience it's translated into english.

 

SW characters visit Earth in two EU stories, the comic strip "Into the Great Unknown" in Star Wars Tales, and in the Soul Calibur IV game and prequel comic. Granted, those particular stories are designated non-canon, but the Earth connection there isn't damaging; in fact it makes it fun, IMO.

 

sure it might be fun to have some non-canon references to earth, but as long as it isn't made into a serious plotline.

It's all down to personal opinion though. For me those retcons would just be too outlandish to be believable.

 

I

Into the great unknown was a joke comic designed to make a story with indiana jones and han solo. and soul caliber isn't star wars it just had star wars characters in it.

 

oh how I love ALIEN EXODUS... nobody can take it out of MY canon! Even if other stuff has to be tweaked.

 

One other theory I've heard from fans is that the humans of SW are descended from proto-hominids transplanted from Earth millions of years ago. This sounds good, but then we still have the language issue...

 

Or as someone else pointed out...Basic is whatever language the movies/books are in. In Germany, Basic is German, in France its French, in America/Britain/other English speaking nations...its English.

Look at Aurebesh, the written language...nothing like what we have on Earth is it? So is it that far-fetched that Basic is a language none of us would understand? Just a suggestion

 

Wasn't the OP's essential hypothesis named Battlestar Galactica? Twice?

Also, what about the "A long time ago..." part?

Thirdly, no. Just...no.

 

What about all the puns and stuff that only work in English, e.g. Night Hammer/Knighthammer? How do those work in other languages?

 

One would assume they work the same, maybe with slight variations. Being as I only have a little German, I couldn't tell you.

 

I've always enjoyed the hypothesis put forth by KotOR, i.e. Tatooine as the birthplace of humanity. Despite the increasing unlikelihood of that.

 

I don't mind when epic fiction, like Star Wars, has always been set in our galaxy. But finding that out after the fact, as sort of a big reveal, doesn't work. As Manisphere said, they already did that in BSG. The appeal of Star Wars is that it's in a separate galaxy, its own universe. Earth rules not apply.

 

I would like to see them formally make the connection between Earth and the SW galaxy, as long as it is done well of course.

I could buy future space faring refuges from Earth going trough time and space and ending up in the Galaxy. I would just hope they got there hundreds of thousands or millions of years before the events of the original trilogy. I have always thought that maybe they could have become an advanced civilization and left the Galaxy to search for Earth, maybe even make them the Celestials. Those that stayed behind for some reason or another, fell back into a more primitive state and eventually become the human civilization we see in the movies. Just a crazy thought.

Plus then you could officially tie ET, aka the Children of the Green Planet, into the SW-verse

 

If humans settled, or were transplanted by another race, to many worlds in the SW galaxy, perhaps the language they initially all spoke did become forgotten, with only some communities retaining some remnants of it, such as the terms clearly derived from English in Old Corellian. As humans encountered alien and divergent races, the language was reconstituted into something a lot closer to what their remote ancestors used.

Then again, both versions of Battlestar Galactica have humans who've never been to modern Earth speaking perfect contemporary English (in the case of the latter, even down to modern English personal names. i.e. Laura Roslin), so perhaps the situation in SW isn't so unusual after all.

 

For reference:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Alien_Exodus

 

What-the-what?

 

In this case, they added a "Translator's note" footnote.

 

I wish they would have in german editions... where they translate even names and other stupidity. heck some translators translate names, others do not... so we got same planet with different names in different sources even. those guys suck and are not even fans knowing the universe.

 

It's exactly the same as English. It just uses a different alphabet.

Hell, High Galactic (or whatever) uses the exact same alphabet as us.

This is Leia's actual, in continuity, fully part of the canon signature: