NOTE1: Holy hell! I really did not expect this kind of success so fast with The Lost Civilization. Well, I thank you all for your feedback and your interest and subscription to my new story. Since I'm dealing with writer's block for two important scenes for The Iron Heart of Man, I'll be working some more on the third chapter for this one.

NOTE2: Questions! I've been asked questions in the reviews. Mainly about how and when the UNSC will join. What of the Systems Alliance? These two were the most prevalent. My answer: I shall not say a thing! I'd be giving spoilers if I did. Plus, I've put the year to 2130 CE (Citadel Era). That's plenty of time to maneuver around, eh? No telling what galaxies each faction originates from either. Let us enjoy the discoveries made by Liara and worry about the OP factions later on.

NOTE3: I don't plan to leave you out with no Shepard POV. There will be a full POV chapter. Maybe in two or three chapters. It has to blend in the story. AND PLEASE! I did a little research on biology. Can't get everything right for those of you who study to become medics or anatomy in general. Please don't roast me alive in the comments when I'll inevitably get something wrong.

Chapter 3: A Common Ancestor I

Thessia, Cradle Valley

2130 CE

Liara paced frantically around the burial chamber. This was the fourth day of the expedition and they were unearthing the tombs. She called in lots of equipment and safes to store the artifacts. They had hundreds of primitive Asari artifacts already. Then there was the firearm she found in the crashed aircraft. And the metallic case. It contained something inside, but they would open it inside a laboratory.

Going toe to toe with Liara's anger, her subordinates had her sit a day out due to how little she took care of herself in the past days. She barely rested, barely ate, barely hydrated herself. Her focus was on the discovery of the millennia. She neglected herself because of how hyped she was. But she wouldn't miss this moment in a lifetime. Nyxeris was slowly brushing the dirt from the bone of what was shaping out to be a skull. The eye sockets and teeth were revealed, the face bones.

"We have something!" she shouted. Liara immediately walked to her side and, not so gently, pushed aside a student that was acting as Nyxeris' aide to have the best possible view. The two eye sockets were remarkably Asari like. In fact, the whole face was like an Asari's. Perhaps this was actually a very important matriarch of times ancient, a person lost in the sands of time.

"Be careful," she said. Nyxeris simply dug out more and more dirt and revealed more and more of the skull. She was struggling to gently dig around the skull with a minuscule trowel. She was slowly but surely revealing the skull. It was when they were midway through that Liara noticed something completely out of place.

"It's too smooth!" she said while using a small brush to clean it a bit. "The skull has no ridges specific to an Asari skull. It's too smooth!"

An Asari skull has subtle ridges that extend from the upper part of the frontal bone up to the middle of the parietal bone. Those ridges follow the pattern of the head crests specific to their race. Small muscles attachments can be found here too, but those muscles became inactive – probably because the primitive Asari no longer needed their crests in their day to day lives so much, thus they remained as a decorative physiological feature rather than a sensory one.

Was this a new species of the genus Asari? One that lacked head crests? Had there been an advanced ancient civilization in the distant past? Was this a vestige of it? If so, what was it doing here, in a cave, and why not in a buried ancient city? Liara was bewildered.

Then her eyes drifted down to the maxilla and mandibles. They were broader, better defined, looked sturdier than usual. The chin had sharper angles to it. The jaw muscles were more powerful as well, further suggested by the more pronounced muscle lines . Or, at least, should have been. The sizes of the face overall suggested the individual was at least a head taller than the average Asari. Very tall by Asari standards. Perhaps as tall as a Turian young man.

Liara observed other subtle differences that an uneducated person wouldn't even notice. Contrary to any other Asari skull, this one's brow ridges were much more pronounced than normal. And its forehead had a visible sloping to it, instead of a more vertical climb than the normal frontal bone. The orbital margins were squarish, not the usual rounded style one might expect.

All these observations added more questions to Liara's already huge pile of unknowns. Could it be another Asari species unknown until now? There have been at least two species of Asari that lived at the same time in parallel some three hundred thousand years ago: Asari Sagax (intelligent, cunning, shrewd) which is the modern Asari, and Asari Rudis (named so after their more sturdy build, and their simpler and inferior tools). It was two hundred thousand years ago that the Rudis became extinct and only Sagax survived to this day. Other representatives of the genus Asari came before, but they all followed a pattern. This individual didn't obey the theory of Asari evolution, it didn't fit with the pattern.

Could very well be an alien as they believed since they found the aircraft and the technologic artifacts. But what alien could resemble an Asari to this extent? The chances for evolution to play out like this, to produce two species so similar to each other on two different planets… they must be one to a billion!

'Who are you? What are you?'

We immediately mobilized to analyze the burial chamber before unearthing the skeletons. Our preliminary analysis was very promising, so… I was very excited to work on it. We had to call in more gear from the University. Had to pull some strings to get that gear… I… wasn't really taken seriously when I was a maiden.

We've carefully collected the ancient items left in the burial chamber first. The various Asari made artifacts were taken out first. Then we carefully sent the… alien artifacts to the surface. For something so old, to have been preserved in such a good condition… it's a miracle and extreme luck. Especially the banner, the material is a textile. Normally, it should have degraded. But whoever sealed the chamber did a good job to keep the elements out. We were extra careful with the banner, it was showing signs of decay. The helmet was still holding quite well, but I didn't want to take any chances. We put it in a special crate that used Mass Effect fields to keep the helmet in a state of levitation. Then… we sent the small… case, if you will, the one with the inscriptions UNSC on it.

Then, we get to the paintings on the walls. They told a big story! After lighting up the whole chamber with flashlights, we could see that these were much more than burial decoration paintings. It was the story of these two aliens and the Asari tribe they lived with when they arrived. It was painted on every wall of the Star Chamber, as we've come to nickname it.

It was meant to be read from left to right. The first scene depicted primitive Asari and what we first thought to be a comet. It was no comet, of course, it was the ship that crashed in the valley some ninety millennia ago. The second scene showed us a group of what we presume to be huntresses of the tribe make contact with the survivors. I imagine it wasn't as perfect as one might imagine. The aliens are depicted in their armor and they were armed. Our ancestors depicted them engulfed in a celestial, holy light. Must have thought of them as gods. Goddess, I would too if I were a primitive and see a bunch of aliens fly down and greet me with fancy technology. We did expect the buried to be individuals of a bipedal, upright walking species as shown by the paintings.

The third scene shows… something spectacular, but also expected: the aliens living with the tribe. What does that tell us? They were stranded on Thessia for good, a fact further supported by the find of fossils and equipment. They taught the tribe the beginnings of agriculture and shared ideas. It's very possible that the matriarch of the tribe mind melded with them to obtain and share those ideas, language… It's seen in the fourth mural that they had such an effect as to attract multiple tribes and unite them. This could have given birth to the first Asari settlement in history.

The fifth mural shows what we believe to be an offspring, presumably of the two aliens. That has tremendous implications. Couple in the Asari's unique method of reproduction and you're looking at something truly astonishing. All that we needed next was a DNA sample to test our theory.

(Doctor Liara T'Soni in the documentary The Lost Civilization: Dawn of Homo Sapiens)

NOTE4: Hey folks! Thank you for reading the latest chapter. I know, it's a short one. But I want to update one more time in the next 7 days. This arc should end within ten chapters at most. After that… we get more into what happened with the UNSC, with Humanity.

NOTE5: Special thanks to Gabenator5 for giving my story extra exposure with a shout out. Now I'm not normally doing this (shout outs to other stories, I mean), but if you're into mystery like stories then give his Halo x ME crossover a shot. Hell, I'd recommend you all every story I have on my favorite list with all my heart.

A STORY BROUGHT TO YOU BY Apollonir