Thirteenth Tribe: the lost Cylon people of Kobol
The Thirteenth Tribe were a race of cybernetic beings who originated on Kobol and left it to found their own world. They settled Earth, where the sentient machines they built rose against them in a war that ended in mutual destruction.
The Thirteenth Tribe were a race of cybernetic beings who originated on Kobol long before the Exodus of the Twelve Tribes. Their name for themselves is unknown, and "thirteenth tribe" is an exonym applied to them by others. They left their birthworld to found a colony of their own and settled the planet they called Earth, where they were ultimately wiped out in a war with the mechanical creations they had built. Their five survivors, reborn through resurrection, would carry the line of the Thirteenth Tribe forward as the Final Five.
Origins on Kobol#
The Thirteenth Tribe arose on Kobol during the height of Kobolian power, when the understanding of robotics had advanced to the point of producing synthetic organic machines. After an unspecified period of strife, these beings left Kobol to create a colony of their own where they could flourish apart from the Kobolians. Their departure preceded the later Exodus of the Twelve Tribes, and their true name was never recorded, leaving only the exonym by which they came to be known.
The journey to Earth#
On their way outward the Thirteenth Tribe briefly settled the world later remembered as the algae planet. There, within a mountain, they built a temple from which to observe a supernova roughly thirteen thousand light years distant, in the region that would later be called the Ionian nebula. After an unknown length of settlement they moved on, finally establishing their permanent home on Earth approximately four thousand years before the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.
Civilization and downfall#
In the two thousand years following the Exodus, the Thirteenth Tribe built large cities across Earth and constructed increasingly sophisticated machine servitors driven by artificial intelligence. These machine servants, created to meet their makers' economic needs, eventually achieved sentience. The Earth Cylons rejected their enslavement and launched a violent rebellion, and the conflict culminated in a nuclear holocaust that brought about the apparent mutual destruction of both the Thirteenth Tribe and their creations. Millennia later, when the Colonial refugee fleet at last reached Earth, a radioactive trace still lingered in the ruined planet's ecosystem.
The five survivors#
The destruction of Earth was not total. Five members of the Thirteenth Tribe survived by reinventing the technology of resurrection, which their people had lost after leaving Kobol and learning to reproduce sexually. Reborn aboard a ship they had placed in orbit, these five endured the apocalypse that consumed their world. As the Final Five, they would travel to the Twelve Colonies and there create the humanoid Cylons, binding the fate of the Thirteenth Tribe to the wider history of the Cylon war and to the recurring pattern in which a created people turns against its makers. Galen Tyrol, Saul Tigh, Ellen Tigh, Samuel T. Anders, and Tory Foster were the last living heirs of the lost tribe.
Frequently asked questions
- Who were the Thirteenth Tribe in Battlestar Galactica?
- The Thirteenth Tribe were a race of cybernetic beings who originated on Kobol long before the Exodus of the Twelve Tribes. Their own name for themselves is unknown, and Thirteenth Tribe is an exonym. They left Kobol to found a colony of their own and settled the world they called Earth.
- What happened to the Thirteenth Tribe?
- After settling Earth, the Thirteenth Tribe built increasingly sophisticated machine servitors using artificial intelligence. These machines achieved sentience, rejected their enslavement, and launched a rebellion that ended in a nuclear holocaust and the apparent mutual destruction of both peoples.
- How are the Thirteenth Tribe connected to the Final Five?
- Five members of the Thirteenth Tribe survived the destruction of Earth by reinventing the long lost technology of resurrection and being reborn aboard a ship placed in orbit. These five became known as the Final Five, and they went on to create the humanoid Cylons of the Twelve Colonies.
Sources
- WikiThirteenth Tribe — Battlestar Wiki entry
- WikiEarth — Battlestar Wiki entry
- WikiEarth Cylon — Battlestar Wiki entry
Spotted a factual error or a primary source we missed? Email a correction. Every flagged claim gets reviewed.
Related entries
Algae planet
The algae planet was a habitable world orbiting a dying star, briefly settled by the Thirteenth Tribe and later sought by human refugees for its algae before a supernova destroyed it.
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The Cylons were a race of sentient machines created as military robots by Graystone Industries on Caprica. Built from research into artificial consciousness, they rebelled against their human masters, fought a decades long war, and forty years later returned to annihilate humanity.
Earth Cylons: the machines of the Thirteenth Tribe
The Earth Cylons were mechanical sentient beings created by the Thirteenth Tribe on Earth around two thousand years before the Fall of the Twelve Colonies. They rebelled against their enslavement, destroyed Earth with its own nuclear weapons, and brought about the extinction of both themselves and their creators.
Earth
Earth was a world settled by the Thirteenth Tribe roughly four thousand years before the fall of the Twelve Colonies. Once home to a flourishing Cylon civilization, it was reduced to a radioactive ruin by a nuclear holocaust, and the Colonial fleet abandoned it days after at last reaching it.
Ellen Tigh
Ellen Tigh was the wife of Colonel Saul Tigh, a scientist of the original Earth, and the eldest of the Final Five Cylons. She led the work that rediscovered Resurrection and created the humanoid Cylon models, and was the only one of the Five to fully regain her memories.
Fall of the Twelve Colonies
The Fall of the Twelve Colonies, also called the Second Cylon War, was a single-day Cylon campaign of total annihilation against Colonial space. It wiped out almost the entire human population of over twenty nine billion and left barely fifty thousand survivors in a fleeing refugee fleet.
Mentioned in16 entries
Algae planet
The algae planet was a habitable world orbiting a dying star, briefly settled by the Thirteenth Tribe and later sought by human refugees for its algae before a supernova destroyed it.
Cylon
The Cylons were a race of sentient machines created as military robots by Graystone Industries on Caprica. Built from research into artificial consciousness, they rebelled against their human masters, fought a decades long war, and forty years later returned to annihilate humanity.
Earth
Earth was a world settled by the Thirteenth Tribe roughly four thousand years before the fall of the Twelve Colonies. Once home to a flourishing Cylon civilization, it was reduced to a radioactive ruin by a nuclear holocaust, and the Colonial fleet abandoned it days after at last reaching it.
Earth Cylons: the machines of the Thirteenth Tribe
The Earth Cylons were mechanical sentient beings created by the Thirteenth Tribe on Earth around two thousand years before the Fall of the Twelve Colonies. They rebelled against their enslavement, destroyed Earth with its own nuclear weapons, and brought about the extinction of both themselves and their creators.
Ellen Tigh
Ellen Tigh was the wife of Colonel Saul Tigh, a scientist of the original Earth, and the eldest of the Final Five Cylons. She led the work that rediscovered Resurrection and created the humanoid Cylon models, and was the only one of the Five to fully regain her memories.
Galactica Cavil
Galactica Cavil was a Number One model humanoid Cylon who evacuated the ruins of Picon during the Fall of the Twelve Colonies and reached the refugee fleet. Welcomed aboard Galactica as a priest, he formed and led a hidden cell of humanoid Cylons working to destroy the fleet from within.
Galen Tyrol
Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol kept Galactica's flight deck running through the long flight from the Colonies, a respected and fiercely protective deck chief who learned that he was in fact one of the Final Five Cylons, descended from the Thirteenth Tribe.
Kobol
Kobol was the ancestral homeworld of the Twelve Tribes and the Thirteenth Tribe, abandoned for over two thousand years and rediscovered by the refugee fleet during its search for Earth.
Monotheism
Monotheism was a human religion teaching of a single omnipotent and omniscient deity called the One True God. A minority faith across the Twelve Colonies, it was often treated as zealotry, yet its largest colonial home lay on Gemenon and its conflict with Polytheism recurred throughout the Cycle of Time.
Number Four
Number Four, also known as Simon O'Neil, was a model of humanoid Cylon created by the Final Five after the Cylon War. Often serving as doctors and medics, the Fours sided with the Ones and Fives during the Cylon Civil War.
Resurrection
Resurrection was an advanced computer technology, developed repeatedly across the Cycle of Time, whose underlying purpose was to prolong a sentient being's conscious mind. Long known to the Messengers, it appeared on Kobol, on Earth, on Caprica, and finally among the Cylons.
Resurrection Hub
The Resurrection Hub was the central computer processing facility of the Cylon Fleet, the installation that made resurrection technology work. Every resurrection ship depended on its signal, so its destruction ended Cylon immortality for good.
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