10 Most Mysterious Ancient Alien Civilisations In Star Trek

Modern science predicts the universe is over thirteen billion years old, yet humanity has only existed in its modern form for roughly 200,000 years. Before we came along, there has been a lot of time for other interstellar empires to emerge.

Star Trek has introduced us to many alien societies that predate the Federation by eons. Many of these ancient civilisations have disappeared, gone extinct, or ascended to a higher plane of existence, and a few have even managed to survive into modern times and beyond.

Here, we're going to look back at the ancient galactic history of Trek and uncover the most mysterious alien societies that existed in the Milky Way before us. These aren't necessarily the oldest ancient civilisations (which could very well be its own list), these are just the ones that we're most curious about. If your favourite ancient aliens don't turn up here, fear not - there's enough worlds that have been decimated by the passage of time that there's always room for a sequel list. With that cheerful thought in your mind, let's dive in.

In the 14th century the Klingon home world was pillaged by alien invaders from the Gamma Quadrant who came to be known as the Hur'q—a Klingon word meaning ‘outsider’. They were chased off Qo’noS by a Klingon rebellion, but not before making off with the Sword of Kahless and hiding it in their home quadrant. It remained there until it was rediscovered in the 24th century, by which point the Hur'q were nowhere to be found and thus presumed extinct.

Given the name ‘outsider’, it's sometimes assumed that the Hur'q were the first aliens that Klingons came into contact with. A number of sources outside of alpha canon (such as the manual for the video game Star Trek: Klingon Academy) state that the Klingons acquired warp drive and other technology by reverse engineering ships seized by the Hur'q during their rebellion. If true, this could explain how the Klingons got such advanced technology earlier than humanity, despite their society largely looking down on science and scientists. Canonically, we've gotten a lot of conflicting information regarding when Klingons first began trekking across the stars.

In Star Trek Online, it's eventually revealed that the Hur'q were one of the earliest servitor species of the Dominion thousands of years ago. The Founders weren't able to control them, and eventually replaced them with the Jem'Hadar.