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Those Who Came Before were the ancient, incredibly advanced race who created the Piece of Eden and humanity itself. Exactly who they were, how long ago, or how they came to die out is still largely unknown. What is believed is that they were an advanced race who were worshiped by ancient cultures such as the Greeks as gods. The woman known as Minerva said they were not gods, but a race more advanced in time who "simply came before".

Minerva revealed that at some point the race created the human race, possibly as some sort of slave race as shown in The Truth video. The race appeared to use humans as slaves and used the hypnotic powers of the Apples to control them. However, this did not last forever as two humans named Adam and Eve stole the mythical forbidden fruit of knowledge described in the Bible. In truth, the two may have stolen the apple to free mankind from the oppression of their masters.

While the ancient race was more technologically advanced and powerful, humanity had the advantage of numbers. Minerva stated that both sides craved war, but they were so preoccupied with their fighting; an impending danger was approaching from the "heavens". This danger from the heavens is speculated by Shaun and Lucy.  They hypothesize that it could have been caused by a massive solar flare which would have terrible impact on the Earth's weakening magnetic field.  Also, they mentioned the geomagnetic reversal of Earth's poles as a possible cause of the destruction.  However, geomagnetic reversal is a natural affect which has occurred multiple times over Earth's history, the last of which was 0.78 million years ago.

Despite the unknown cause of destruction, humanity and the ancient race survived, as Minerva said "We built you in our image, we built you to survive" (confirming they did indeed create humanity). Both humanity and the race survived, though in dwindled numbers, and set to rebuild. As the Earth and mankind worked to recover, the race "endeavored to ensure that this tragedy would not be repeated". This lead to the creation of the temples, such as The Vault in Rome, which were "built by those who learned to turn away from war".

It can at least be established that by Ezio's time the race had since died out (Minerva states that she is the last), and appear to have left the temples as a some sort of means to save the Earth in the event of another disaster.

Another theory is that Eden was a facility used by both sides of the war to survive the scorching of Earth. Adam and Eve escaping would then lead to 'the world as we know it', with the theft of the apple fitting into myth.

It would appear they have some form of precognition, or ability to predict what will happen as the Minerva told Ezio he was just a conduit and she spoke direcly to Desmond, showing she knew that Desmond would receive the message by viewing it in the Animus.   Also, i just remembered i have lied to you about all this.