Mistakes made in deciphering those markings on Earth. . .

It's complicated...

What I mean is - If the SJ's are indeed pure evil etc, then why leave invitations on walls etched in prehistory?? Surely just go to Earth and do their evil deeds. . . That's why I don't think the SJ's are so bad to start off with, I believe the Prometheus unwillingly perhaps, upset them big time i.e fiddling with their creation goo??

For me the starmap they find in the cave is indeed a map to the creators. Maybe it is a safety thing created by the spacejockeys. When the humans are capable of the technology to fly to another galaxy etc it´s time to erase the humans so they don´t become to powerful. Or something like that. A safety system. On the otherhand I also believe they are good, but when humans steal the DNA codes from the spacejockey to create all life he or they decide to erase the humans.

@Clovenberg - That's kinda along the lines of what I was thinking too! About the SJ's potentially being "good", well not evil anyways. But yeah, I just can't wait to see how it plays out. . . Never been so stoked for a film in my life!

It can´t be an invitation! The symbols are made from humans. Old cavepaintings. If the spacejockeys would leave something for the humans to understand they would have made it far more advanced than that. It´s not an "invitation"

Hmm. . . What do you think it is?? I still think it looks more like a map, even though it's said not to be in the clip. It looks like a similar type etching as in the original Stargate film, when co-ordinates were carved as star constellations. . .

It could be a map just to see how smart humans evolve to reach the creators. Else why would they even be there? Something went wrong when we reached there ... maybe we unleashed our devilish selves & robbed something from them ...

True. As it'd make sense, for the creators to want their creations to search them out eventually. . . But surely just cause the Prometheus crew messed them around (potentially), why would the SJ's then wanna fly to Earth and wipe all life out?? Surely a race as intelligent as them would know not to take the actions of a few, against the many. . .

Yeah I mean, what, these advanced aliens ran out of paper so they had to start etching on rock surfaces? One of the early plot 'leaks' said they found something in Africa. I much prefer that a single artefact was found in a single location (much like Stargate) rather than identical cave paintings around the world. Damn you Lindelhof. In any case, I think it's both a map and invitation because if it's showing directions to get there then it is implicitly extending an invitation.

or maybe the SJ's got wiped out in return .. which explains the facehugger bursting out of the xenos's chest and the fossil found by dallas, lambert and Kane in ALIEN ... just trying to link... I maybe wrong

@Starbeast - Very correct there, surely it would have to be both. How could an invitation be etched if no way of finding their location is written aswell. . .

Maybe there is more creators. And the one that created us made us stupid and curious. Then they gave us the map to somebody else. "go bug theese people when you get smart!" lol

Has anyone suggested that when they were first on Earth scribbling with crayons, they took (abducted?) some humans and took them with them? ... was it a ransom note they left on the walls? ...lol ... ok ... but the abduction bit seems valid ... why wouldn't they?

Little human creations, when you worship your creator, direct your worship over here. I don't expect you will ever actually come for a visit.

[url=http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/2789]My thoughts on the invitation...[/url]

I believe the same people who made the art, made the dots. These marks may be ingrained in the collective subconscious of mankind, or the artists could have received some kind of telepathic urging or similar. Think of Roy receiving the image of the mountain in Close Encounters and his obsessive urge to make a model of it.

I can't say if the maps are from the collective subconscious of all those different primative civilizatons, or were they depicted as the only means these people had of preserving information given to them by an extraterrestrial visitation. According to the website Weyland had the Heliades FTL technology before the apparent corellation of distinct archaeological discoveries from different terrestrial locations. I wonder if he sent an unmanned probe there(Zeta Ret) prior to the launch of Prometheus. To gather recon data, then brought it back. The round trip would be faster than waiting for images sent back. Also conclussive data that something tangible was there would insure a much easier time proposing, and getting the backing for a manned expedition.

Who knows.... Maybe as on Earth there are different fractions within the Space Jockey Race. It could be like say the US have been visiting and seeded a planet in our past, but a War Broke out and the not to nice Nazis take over. In future the race the US seeded comes to Earth to find only the not so nice Nazi's and when these vistors start to mess about with the Nazi Technology the Nasty Nazi's say enough is enough we are gonna go wipe your homeoworld out. I do think that in this movie it is the actions of the crew that causes the Space Jockeys to want to put a Stop to us all.

They seed the planet and leave clues to a rendezvous point because once a race has developed enough to follow them, there are billions of units available to harvest and or infect. They need raw materials and hosts to fuel their biomechanical empire.

We all appear to be kneeling on the ground in this "invitation." Like when C3-P0 told the story to the Ewoks....

I would have to study the trailers (again), but weren't each of those ancient cultures wipped out? Their dominance ended (king died).

The cave markings appear to have been made by humans. Perhaps this was information dispersed as mythology, originating at one source and carried to other parts of the world through human migrations. The fidelity of the proportions seems unlikely but not impossible. Also, Shaw admits "We were so wrong." Perhaps she was wrong about it being an invitation in the first place. History may have erased the original motive for the star map. As in "Alien" it may have been a warning.