User blog comment:Subject 9/Who was Juno talking about/@comment-3261543-20101219075036
From what I gathered it was TIME. It was a subtle metaphor. Here is the transcript:
"We did not build them to be wise. And now they are our final, faulted hope. You are they. You possess the potential for understanding. But you broke our tools. Or turned them against one another. We have destroyed what we could. Sealed away what we could not. Most. Not all. And it does not take many to unwind the world. Here is a safe place. Eternal. To store objects. Words. Wisdom. But not life. Almost did we have the means. But time... time erodes us. We can distract him. We can see past him. Feint left when he strikes right. But his reach is so very long. His stamina unending. We cannot evade his grasp. Not forever.
This ties into "The Sixth," or the sixth sense she talks about, of which I believe is the non-linear viewing of Time. Those Who Came Before can see Time as one string (think Tralfamadorians from "Slaughterhouse-Five" or The Observers from Fringe) and tried to pass it through the blood through the hybridization between them and humans, which created the Assassin's who can see Eagle Vision, or, "the Blue Shimmer."
Even the way she and Minerva speak lend credence to the theory that they see Time as one. Here:
"A hundred years I might speak and still you would not know us. You with five senses. Us with six. The one we kept from you. To be safe. Now, you can never know. Only try. Grasp. You can SEE. SMELL. TASTE. TOUCH. HEAR. Knowledge has been blocked away. After, when the world became undone, we tried to pass it through the blood. Tried to join you with us. You see the blue shimmer. You hear the words. But you do not know. WE SHOULD HAVE LEFT YOU AS YOU WERE. It is hard to stay contained. Knowing as we do. We wait for you, Desmond. You will come here. You will activate it. You will know only when it is too late."
Don't be confused that she switches to "Knowledge" instead of Time.
I'm not sure what finding Eve or her DNA has to do with saving the world, but perhaps this gives us some clues. Perhaps since they are both hybrids, that when they mate it would create a new member of Those Who Came Before, one who could see Time as one and pass the knowledge off to Desmond? Who knows.