Idas about how Eywa could feasibly have come into existence

[Muzer]

I assume it's more than just me who was initially sceptical about the whole Eywa thing - being an atheist, I originally thought it messed up the otherwise feasibility of the film. After watching it a few more times though, I've realised that they never specifically refer to Eywa as a creator or any of the aspects that would make a God as we know them very very unlikely (if not impossible). So, last night I had a think about how Eywa could have come into existence, as well as related topics like why everything has a queue, etc..

I am no biologist, these are simply my ideas - if any of these are infeasible, don't think I'll be angry or anything - I'm open to new ideas. They also rely on quite a bit of guesswork, but this is the only way I personally could think of about how things would go. If anyone else has any ideas, contradictions or questions feel free to post. I have also not really had chance to read the 2007 script or the original scripture (I only became *very* interested in Avatar quite recently), so if anyone who has read those finds they have some more information, whether it confirms or denies what I say, again feel free to post.

One final thing - I don't want to turn this into an argument about whether any human God exists. If you don't agree that God doesn't exist (as I stated in my first paragraph) and wish to discuss with me further, don't do so in this thread - PM me or start one in Spam. I also recommend if you are of this opinion that you first read Richard Dawkins's book The God Delusion.

I will refer to whatever method of cell reproduction there is on Pandora as DNA here - presumably this is correct judging by the line in the movie, but if not, let's not split hairs


OK, so, the easiest thing when thinking about things like evolutionary paths is to work backwards. So firstly we need to find out which aspects of Eywa and Pandoran life in general need explaining. I came up with the following which I think are most important:

• All animals have queues
• Most/every tree(s) are interconnected
• This interconnected mass of trees can store information
• Na'vi link up to the trees with the queues to do so
• The interconnected trees make up a being called Eywa who has intelligence and quite probably a consciousness
• Some trees are incredibly tall, much taller than one might expect trees to become even at low gravity (0.8G was it?)

OK, firstly I'll deal with the queues:

As someone mentioned in another thread, it is likely that organisms have had queues since the micro-organism stage, as such a thing is unlikely (though not impossible) to evolve more than once. So, there must have been an advantage for the queue even on this level. Although I bet people who study this kind of thing can think of many possibilities, the only idea that came to me is that they were originally used for a form of sexual reproduction. Everyone knows the advantages of sexual reproduction - organisms are less likely to develop genetic diseases and mutations if there is a regular mixture of DNA. So, I believe small quantities of DNA could have been transmitted through the miniature queues right as the cells were splitting, so that some new DNA as well as some old DNA bonds together to create the new organism. This is probably the bit I'm most biologically "iffy" on, so take this with a pinch of salt.

OK, so once animals developed, queues would not have been enough for reproduction as not enough material would have been able to pass through. So, presumably at this time the "standard" sex organs evolved and the queues might have for a short time fallen out of use. However, there must have been a use for queues on a large scale in non-intelligent life. So, my guess is they were (and possibly still are - we never learn in the movie) used as a rudimentary form of communication. Animals could link queues and pass on information directly. It would obviously be a great advantage if animals could pass on basic information such as "such-and-such-a-place is dangerous" without them having to have a first-hand experience of it. This, I believe, could also explain why most animals have two queues - a number of animals could link in a chain and pass information to each other without having to link to each animal individually. So, the queues evolved to be longer so that linking was easier and could more easily be done when time was tight.


I will put queues on hold for now and talk about plants and trees. I will come back to them later on, specifically Na'vi ones.

So, plants started to appear in the world. Presumably originally they started to evolve like regular plants. However, as they grew taller, the minerals from the soil were not quite adequate to supply them with energy. So, these trees started leeching onto other smaller plants that could obtain a surplus of energy. The very start of a network was forming. But after a while, even energy from other trees was not enough to sustain these absolutely huge trees. Although I don't believe a measurement was given, I believe some trees (hometree possibly?) might be a substantial amount taller than the 110m-ish of Earth's tallest redwood pine - and Na'vi soil could well be less fertile than ours. So, these trees need more energy - so evolution causes them to branch out (pun not intended) into the realm of animals - to take back some spare energy that animals would originally have taken from them. At this point, animals were probably still not all too intelligent, but were probably more intelligent than they were. All this information sharing is all well and good, but wouldn't it be useful to store thoughts some place so that the memory did not have to be burdened with everything at once? And wouldn't it be interesting if you could transmit things over a longer distance, and without the inconvenience of all having to stand in close proximity to each other and at the same time? So, to cater for this niche, trees started to evolve the ability to store information sent to them. Certain trees evolved queue-like structures (as seen in the Tree of Voices and the Tree of Souls in the film) that animals could link up to, and gradually animals started to use them to store information. It would still have been quite useful if only one tree could store this information, or perhaps if you could transmit across the network but not store, but gradually the trees evolved the ability to store information redundantly so if one tree was destroyed, the information could still be obtained - from any other tree. So, at this stage every animal with a queue would have been using it.

Now, I'll go back to queues for a bit and the Na'vi

As the Na'vi evolved consciousness and intelligence, the ability to communicate with voice would have superseded linking queues in order to communicate as you could much more easily and quickly talk to more people over longer distances, so one of them was now made redundant - Na'vi would only have to link to trees or one single person for a more intimate feeling when doing what they love (). So that this did not get in the way, one of the queues gradually shrank and then disappeared, leaving one left which moved into the middle for convenience. It is probably around now they evolved the ability to link with animals - the mutual benefits of this are quite easy to figure out, the animal is kept by the Na'vi who look after it well, and the Na'vi get a mode of transport but never overwork it (or they would also feel the pain).

OK, now here's where all the pieces link together and Eywa as we know her appears

So now Na'vi and animals can store and retrive information, Na'vi can link to animals and each other, animals can link to each other, and the trees are a network. We are almost there, but for possibly the most unlikely part - Eywa's intelligence. Eywa must have had intelligence in order to hear and understand Jake's prayer and send the animals to attack.

So, what is the main advantage of intelligence if you're a tree or group of trees? As Neytiri rightly says, you can preserve the balance of life. A group of a few trees would have evolved the beginnings of a mutual brain, and implanted thoughts or instructions into the animals via the neural network. So, they could get insects to pollinate their flowers, and larger beasts to eat only fruit that is ready (the seeds are ready) - this would reduce the need for there to be a mechanism to make it only taste nice when ready. They could also get animals to move elsewhere if there are too many of them, or possibly get other animals to kill them, if there is a threat to the balance of life. Over time, trees with the ability for intelligence would have thrived, and trees without would have died. As more trees were added to the network, the "brain" would gain more intelligence and finally consciousness. This consciousness came to be known as Eywa. So the Na'vi could inform Eywa about problems relating to the balance of life and Eywa in a bid to protect herself (in other words, the whole forest) could act on these warnings. Eywa could also provide compassion in order to encourage more Na'vi to connect and share their energy. In all, I believe we are now here in the "present".



Hope you enjoyed the read! And again, if you have any comments whether positive or negative please do not hesitate to post! This may be utter crap, or I may actually be onto something, but I would like to know which!

[Duma Vadamee {Aungia Tsawkeyä}]

honestlly...im not cristain, but i think god created her.

i mean, when he created the universe, if he made a alien race dont you think that he would make and alien jesus crist to watch over them?

just a therory

[Muzer]

But is that ever explicitly mentioned? Again, I haven't fully read the 2007 script nor the scripture, but I believe in the film the only definite thing we get is that she is "made up of all living things, everything they know" (Norm). This would certainly fit my description.

[Kìte'eyä Aungia]

Stand clear, I'm activating the Wall of Text 9000!:

Spoiler

I assume it's more than just me who was initially sceptical about the whole Eywa thing - being an atheist, I originally thought it messed up the otherwise feasibility of the film. After watching it a few more times though, I've realised that they never specifically refer to Eywa as a creator or any of the aspects that would make a God as we know them very very unlikely (if not impossible).

Agreed. Cameron is a vocal celebrity atheist too, so I doubt Eywa is supposed to be interpreted as a god or any events in the movie as supernatural.

I will refer to whatever method of cell reproduction there is on Pandora as DNA here - presumably this is correct judging by the line in the movie, but if not, let's not split hairs

ASG also says Pandoran life is DNA based, but who knows how much of that thing is canon.

OK, so, the easiest thing when thinking about things like evolutionary paths is to work backwards. So firstly we need to find out which aspects of Eywa and Pandoran life in general need explaining. I came up with the following which I think are most important:

• All animals have queues
• Most/every tree(s) are interconnected
• This interconnected mass of trees can store information
• Na'vi link up to the trees with the queues to do so
• The interconnected trees make up a being called Eywa who has intelligence and quite probably a consciousness
• Some trees are incredibly tall, much taller than one might expect trees to become even at low gravity (0.8G was it?)

Going to have to contest the size of the trees as an issue in need of explanation. ASG says the size is understood to be a result of a thicker atmosphere with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide and weaker gravity.

Also, do we know that all animals have queues? The lizards and a few other animals don't appear to.

OK, firstly I'll deal with the queues:

As someone mentioned in another thread, it is likely that organisms have had queues since the micro-organism stage, as such a thing is unlikely (though not impossible) to evolve more than once. So, there must have been an advantage for the queue even on this level. Although I bet people who study this kind of thing can think of many possibilities, the only idea that came to me is that they were originally used for a form of sexual reproduction. Everyone knows the advantages of sexual reproduction - organisms are less likely to develop genetic diseases and mutations if there is a regular mixture of DNA. So, I believe small quantities of DNA could have been transmitted through the miniature queues right as the cells were splitting, so that some new DNA as well as some old DNA bonds together to create the new organism. This is probably the bit I'm most biologically "iffy" on, so take this with a pinch of salt.

Obviously, the common ancestor of all animals that have queues would itself have had a queue, but we don't necessarily have to go back to the micro-organism stage, especially if not all animals have queues. Micro-organisms don't have brains or nervous systems like larger animals do, so at best the micro-organism would have had the structure that would eventually become a queue, but it wouldn't function as a queue so we wouldn't call it a queue.

OK, so once animals developed, queues would not have been enough for reproduction as not enough material would have been able to pass through. So, presumably at this time the "standard" sex organs evolved and the queues might have for a short time fallen out of use. However, there must have been a use for queues on a large scale in non-intelligent life. So, my guess is they were (and possibly still are - we never learn in the movie) used as a rudimentary form of communication. Animals could link queues and pass on information directly. It would obviously be a great advantage if animals could pass on basic information such as "such-and-such-a-place is dangerous" without them having to have a first-hand experience of it. This, I believe, could also explain why most animals have two queues - a number of animals could link in a chain and pass information to each other without having to link to each animal individually. So, the queues evolved to be longer so that linking was easier and could more easily be done when time was tight.

Firstly, you've gone from micro-organisms using queues to exchange genetic material to larger animals using queues to communicate complex information to each other in one step. I guess this transition is plausible, we're all just speculating after all.

Secondly, for two animals to connect their queues they'd have to get them to touch. Have we ever seen an animal actually move its queue around? If they can't control the queue (the Na'vi can't), would one of them have to, like, turn around and walk backwards to get the queues to touch?

This entire idea sounds a bit iffy to me. The majority of animals on Earth are incredibly stupid and don't have the ability or desire to understand complex information, let alone know when to pass it on and to who, so I don't know if queue communication would be more efficient for most animals than the various sounds and body language animals typically use to communicate. Speed is also worth considering. To communicate information by bond, you have to physically find and go up to other animals. Compare that to communication by vocalization where all you have to do is make a noise and every member of your group is instantly alerted over a large distance.

I will put queues on hold for now and talk about plants and trees. I will come back to them later on, specifically Na'vi ones.

So, plants started to appear in the world. Presumably originally they started to evolve like regular plants. However, as they grew taller, the minerals from the soil were not quite adequate to supply them with energy. So, these trees started leeching onto other smaller plants that could obtain a surplus of energy. The very start of a network was forming.

This would be a really interesting evolutionary turn. Gotta point out that as trees grow, the energy coming in is always not quite adequate to make the tree larger or taller or whatever. Trees, like all competitive life, are ruthlessly efficient.

But after a while, even energy from other trees was not enough to sustain these absolutely huge trees. Although I don't believe a measurement was given, I believe some trees (hometree possibly?) might be a substantial amount taller than the 110m-ish of Earth's tallest redwood pine - and Na'vi soil could well be less fertile than ours. So, these trees need more energy - so evolution causes them to branch out (pun not intended) into the realm of animals - to take back some spare energy that animals would originally have taken from them. At this point, animals were probably still not all too intelligent, but were probably more intelligent than they were.

This I don't like. How would this even work? I guess I can imagine some sort of specialized animal-catching tree, but we never see anything like this in the movie or the ASG.

Yes, presumably any big animals worth catching for energy would be more intelligent than the trees, which completely lack a brain.

All this information sharing is all well and good, but wouldn't it be useful to store thoughts some place so that the memory did not have to be burdened with everything at once? And wouldn't it be interesting if you could transmit things over a longer distance, and without the inconvenience of all having to stand in close proximity to each other and at the same time?

Maybe, but I still don't understand what information would be so important to these animals that it would be worth growing an entire system to let them communicate it. Monkeys, which are very smart and very social, get along fine with just a handful of "words" to communicate, which implies that there are only a handful of concepts that are even worth communicating from one monkey to another. I think it's similar for most animals.

So, to cater for this niche, trees started to evolve the ability to store information sent to them. Certain trees evolved queue-like structures (as seen in the Tree of Voices and the Tree of Souls in the film) that animals could link up to, and gradually animals started to use them to store information . . .

Why would the trees do that? What would the trees gain from storing information for animals at this stage? If the trees evolved queue-like structures at this point, wouldn't that be an example of extremely implausible parallel evolution of the type you mentioned earlier.

Now, I'll go back to queues for a bit and the Na'vi

As the Na'vi evolved consciousness and intelligence, the ability to communicate with voice would have superseded linking queues in order to communicate as you could much more easily and quickly talk to more people over longer distances, so one of them was now made redundant - Na'vi would only have to link to trees or one single person for a more intimate feeling when doing what they love (). So that this did not get in the way, one of the queues gradually shrank and then disappeared, leaving one left which moved into the middle for convenience. It is probably around now they evolved the ability to link with animals - the mutual benefits of this are quite easy to figure out, the animal is kept by the Na'vi who look after it well, and the Na'vi get a mode of transport but never overwork it (or they would also feel the pain).

Domesticated animals without traditional domestication! 

At this point the unique relationship with the Ikran wherein the rider must fight the Ikran that chooses them would have developed as well.

OK, now here's where all the pieces link together and Eywa as we know her appears

So now Na'vi and animals can store and retrive information, Na'vi can link to animals and each other, animals can link to each other, and the trees are a network. We are almost there, but for possibly the most unlikely part - Eywa's intelligence. Eywa must have had intelligence in order to hear and understand Jake's prayer and send the animals to attack.

So, what is the main advantage of intelligence if you're a tree or group of trees? As Neytiri rightly says, you can preserve the balance of life. A group of a few trees would have evolved the beginnings of a mutual brain, and implanted thoughts or instructions into the animals via the neural network. So, they could get insects to pollinate their flowers, and larger beasts to eat only fruit that is ready (the seeds are ready) - this would reduce the need for there to be a mechanism to make it only taste nice when ready. They could also get animals to move elsewhere if there are too many of them, or possibly get other animals to kill them, if there is a threat to the balance of life.

Wouldn't it also be in the best interests of these trees to kill off most other animals? Leave just the animals that plants want (pollinators, for example) and get rid of the rest of them?

Hope you enjoyed the read! And again, if you have any comments whether positive or negative please do not hesitate to post! This may be utter crap, or I may actually be onto something, but I would like to know which!

Not sure how critical I came across as, but I think your ideas here are solid enough, or could be solidified if we mess around with the specifics a bit. Personally, though, I'm calling one of the following scenarios:

1) Eywa developed intelligence and consciousness way, way earlier than in your scenario and directed the development of life on Pandora.

2) The Na'vi are actually an incredibly advanced post-singularity species who bio-engineered themselves and their moon and then disregarded their former knowledge.

I like #2. You'd rig everything up for your own benefit. You know, give yourselves the ability to connect with and control various animals, create a hive-mind of connected trees to store the minds of the dead and let you live forever, that kind of thing. Hunter-gatherers worked a hell of a lot less than most people in the modern world, and Pandora seems to almost perfectly maximize the benefits of that lifestyle while minimizing the detriments.

[Kerame Pxel Nume]

I'm an atheist, too, but I have no problem with the "Eywa" concept. There are two things on fictional Pandora, which make such a thing plausible:

* Plants capable of forming neurological connections
* Individuals, capable of connecting with the planetwide network

From a evolutionary POV this is not far fetched, thinking about symbiosis of plants and animals, being able to connect would add some benefit for both sides, so no objection there. So this "Eywa" could be some kind of hive mind. And connections between plants or funghi are not unheared of, although the communication in the cases we know about is governed by chemical diffusion of messenger substances instead of electrochemical impulse transmission, and thus quite slow.

Also keep in mind this very important sentence, Norm Spellman is drops as response to Jake's question about Eywa.

Norm: "Who's Eywa? Only their deity, their godess, made up of all living things!"

So the Na'vi may be well aware about the nature of Eywa, and only we humans made the all-to-common mistake of applying out wording and concepts onto a foreign culture. Not to forget, that Eywa never is depicted as a omniscient or omnipotent being. Jake even had to give it a heads up on the "Sky People", and even that may have benn futile, if it hadn't have had full access to the memories of a human (Grace).

[Muzer]

Thanks for the long reply! Your criticism is fine - I didn't put too much thought into this, it all sort of came flooding out of my brain in a short space of time, so it probably does have gaps and errors.

Stand clear, I'm activating the Wall of Text 9000!:

I assume it's more than just me who was initially sceptical about the whole Eywa thing - being an atheist, I originally thought it messed up the otherwise feasibility of the film. After watching it a few more times though, I've realised that they never specifically refer to Eywa as a creator or any of the aspects that would make a God as we know them very very unlikely (if not impossible).

Agreed. Cameron is a vocal celebrity atheist too, so I doubt Eywa is supposed to be interpreted as a god or any events in the movie as supernatural.

I will refer to whatever method of cell reproduction there is on Pandora as DNA here - presumably this is correct judging by the line in the movie, but if not, let's not split hairs

ASG also says Pandoran life is DNA based, but who knows how much of that thing is canon.

OK, so, the easiest thing when thinking about things like evolutionary paths is to work backwards. So firstly we need to find out which aspects of Eywa and Pandoran life in general need explaining. I came up with the following which I think are most important:

• All animals have queues
• Most/every tree(s) are interconnected
• This interconnected mass of trees can store information
• Na'vi link up to the trees with the queues to do so
• The interconnected trees make up a being called Eywa who has intelligence and quite probably a consciousness
• Some trees are incredibly tall, much taller than one might expect trees to become even at low gravity (0.8G was it?)

Going to have to contest the size of the trees as an issue in need of explanation. ASG says the size is understood to be a result of a thicker atmosphere with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide and weaker gravity.

Also, do we know that all animals have queues? The lizards and a few other animals don't appear to.

OK, firstly I'll deal with the queues:

As someone mentioned in another thread, it is likely that organisms have had queues since the micro-organism stage, as such a thing is unlikely (though not impossible) to evolve more than once. So, there must have been an advantage for the queue even on this level. Although I bet people who study this kind of thing can think of many possibilities, the only idea that came to me is that they were originally used for a form of sexual reproduction. Everyone knows the advantages of sexual reproduction - organisms are less likely to develop genetic diseases and mutations if there is a regular mixture of DNA. So, I believe small quantities of DNA could have been transmitted through the miniature queues right as the cells were splitting, so that some new DNA as well as some old DNA bonds together to create the new organism. This is probably the bit I'm most biologically "iffy" on, so take this with a pinch of salt.

Obviously, the common ancestor of all animals that have queues would itself have had a queue, but we don't necessarily have to go back to the micro-organism stage, especially if not all animals have queues. Micro-organisms don't have brains or nervous systems like larger animals do, so at best the micro-organism would have had the structure that would eventually become a queue, but it wouldn't function as a queue so we wouldn't call it a queue.

Good point, agreed.

OK, so once animals developed, queues would not have been enough for reproduction as not enough material would have been able to pass through. So, presumably at this time the "standard" sex organs evolved and the queues might have for a short time fallen out of use. However, there must have been a use for queues on a large scale in non-intelligent life. So, my guess is they were (and possibly still are - we never learn in the movie) used as a rudimentary form of communication. Animals could link queues and pass on information directly. It would obviously be a great advantage if animals could pass on basic information such as "such-and-such-a-place is dangerous" without them having to have a first-hand experience of it. This, I believe, could also explain why most animals have two queues - a number of animals could link in a chain and pass information to each other without having to link to each animal individually. So, the queues evolved to be longer so that linking was easier and could more easily be done when time was tight.

Firstly, you've gone from micro-organisms using queues to exchange genetic material to larger animals using queues to communicate complex information to each other in one step. I guess this transition is plausible, we're all just speculating after all.

Secondly, for two animals to connect their queues they'd have to get them to touch. Have we ever seen an animal actually move its queue around? If they can't control the queue (the Na'vi can't), would one of them have to, like, turn around and walk backwards to get the queues to touch?

I believe animals do have control - watch the very beginning of the first scene where Jake is trying to ride a direhorse and if memory serves me well its queues are forwards by its mouth.

This entire idea sounds a bit iffy to me. The majority of animals on Earth are incredibly stupid and don't have the ability or desire to understand complex information, let alone know when to pass it on and to who, so I don't know if queue communication would be more efficient for most animals than the various sounds and body language animals typically use to communicate. Speed is also worth considering. To communicate information by bond, you have to physically find and go up to other animals. Compare that to communication by vocalization where all you have to do is make a noise and every member of your group is instantly alerted over a large distance.

Though i agree up to a point, there is still some information that can be useful and quite basic. For example, as I said before you could convey a sense of fear in relation to a specific landmark if, for example, one animal escapes from a predator's hunting htound.

I will put queues on hold for now and talk about plants and trees. I will come back to them later on, specifically Na'vi ones.

So, plants started to appear in the world. Presumably originally they started to evolve like regular plants. However, as they grew taller, the minerals from the soil were not quite adequate to supply them with energy. So, these trees started leeching onto other smaller plants that could obtain a surplus of energy. The very start of a network was forming.

This would be a really interesting evolutionary turn. Gotta point out that as trees grow, the energy coming in is always not quite adequate to make the tree larger or taller or whatever. Trees, like all competitive life, are ruthlessly efficient.

But after a while, even energy from other trees was not enough to sustain these absolutely huge trees. Although I don't believe a measurement was given, I believe some trees (hometree possibly?) might be a substantial amount taller than the 110m-ish of Earth's tallest redwood pine - and Na'vi soil could well be less fertile than ours. So, these trees need more energy - so evolution causes them to branch out (pun not intended) into the realm of animals - to take back some spare energy that animals would originally have taken from them. At this point, animals were probably still not all too intelligent, but were probably more intelligent than they were.

This I don't like. How would this even work? I guess I can imagine some sort of specialized animal-catching tree, but we never see anything like this in the movie or the ASG.

Yes, presumably any big animals worth catching for energy would be more intelligent than the trees, which completely lack a brain.

I probably didn't make myself clear - you wouldn't catch an animal,  but give it an incentive to connect to you in return for energy. I didn't particularly like this either, it's probably one of the weakest links.

All this information sharing is all well and good, but wouldn't it be useful to store thoughts some place so that the memory did not have to be burdened with everything at once? And wouldn't it be interesting if you could transmit things over a longer distance, and without the inconvenience of all having to stand in close proximity to each other and at the same time?

Maybe, but I still don't understand what information would be so important to these animals that it would be worth growing an entire system to let them communicate it. Monkeys, which are very smart and very social, get along fine with just a handful of "words" to communicate, which implies that there are only a handful of concepts that are even worth communicating from one monkey to another. I think it's similar for most animals.

Well at this stage I'm probably talking about the precursors to the Na'vi who are going to be quite intelligent. And even less intelligent animals might have a use, for example, back to fear again, an animal could connect to a tree after narrowly escaping a predator and getting lost, and warn them not to go near the place (by associating fear with a landmark) but maybe also "broadcasting" lamdmarks currently in sight and asking which direction to head to find home in case anyone else recognised the place. Maybe a bit far-fetched, depending on the intelligence level.

So, to cater for this niche, trees started to evolve the ability to store information sent to them. Certain trees evolved queue-like structures (as seen in the Tree of Voices and the Tree of Souls in the film) that animals could link up to, and gradually animals started to use them to store information . . .

Why would the trees do that? What would the trees gain from storing information for animals at this stage? If the trees evolved queue-like structures at this point, wouldn't that be an example of extremely implausible parallel evolution of the type you mentioned earlier.

It would not need to be nearly as complicated as the animal queue - for one thing, it doesn't need to attach to any particular place.

The point in these would be that the trees would be able to take a bit of energy from the animal in return for the communication service. I don't know what form, possibly electrical energy?

Now, I'll go back to queues for a bit and the Na'vi

As the Na'vi evolved consciousness and intelligence, the ability to communicate with voice would have superseded linking queues in order to communicate as you could much more easily and quickly talk to more people over longer distances, so one of them was now made redundant - Na'vi would only have to link to trees or one single person for a more intimate feeling when doing what they love (). So that this did not get in the way, one of the queues gradually shrank and then disappeared, leaving one left which moved into the middle for convenience. It is probably around now they evolved the ability to link with animals - the mutual benefits of this are quite easy to figure out, the animal is kept by the Na'vi who look after it well, and the Na'vi get a mode of transport but never overwork it (or they would also feel the pain).

Domesticated animals without traditional domestication! 

At this point the unique relationship with the Ikran wherein the rider must fight the Ikran that chooses them would have developed as well.

OK, now here's where all the pieces link together and Eywa as we know her appears

So now Na'vi and animals can store and retrive information, Na'vi can link to animals and each other, animals can link to each other, and the trees are a network. We are almost there, but for possibly the most unlikely part - Eywa's intelligence. Eywa must have had intelligence in order to hear and understand Jake's prayer and send the animals to attack.

So, what is the main advantage of intelligence if you're a tree or group of trees? As Neytiri rightly says, you can preserve the balance of life. A group of a few trees would have evolved the beginnings of a mutual brain, and implanted thoughts or instructions into the animals via the neural network. So, they could get insects to pollinate their flowers, and larger beasts to eat only fruit that is ready (the seeds are ready) - this would reduce the need for there to be a mechanism to make it only taste nice when ready. They could also get animals to move elsewhere if there are too many of them, or possibly get other animals to kill them, if there is a threat to the balance of life.

Wouldn't it also be in the best interests of these trees to kill off most other animals? Leave just the animals that plants want (pollinators, for example) and get rid of the rest of them?

It would no longer have any animals to take energy from as I talked about above.

Hope you enjoyed the read! And again, if you have any comments whether positive or negative please do not hesitate to post! This may be utter crap, or I may actually be onto something, but I would like to know which!

Not sure how critical I came across as, but I think your ideas here are solid enough, or could be solidified if we mess around with the specifics a bit. Personally, though, I'm calling one of the following scenarios:

1) Eywa developed intelligence and consciousness way, way earlier than in your scenario and directed the development of life on Pandora.

2) The Na'vi are actually an incredibly advanced post-singularity species who bio-engineered themselves and their moon and then disregarded their former knowledge.

I like #2. You'd rig everything up for your own benefit. You know, give yourselves the ability to connect with and control various animals, create a hive-mind of connected trees to store the minds of the dead and let you live forever, that kind of thing. Hunter-gatherers worked a hell of a lot less than most people in the modern world, and Pandora seems to almost perfectly maximize the benefits of that lifestyle while minimizing the detriments.

#2 does seem plausible but I just don't see it happening. I wouldn't give up the wonders of technology, even if it means a simple life. Also, why manufacture the moon with unobtanium inside if you're not going to use it and it might attract unwanted attention - which it did.

[Kìte'eyä Aungia]

I believe animals do have control - watch the very beginning of the first scene where Jake is trying to ride a direhorse and if memory serves me well its queues are forwards by its mouth.

Could be, yes, I'll have to pay attention for that next time I see it. It's a minor point anyway.

Though i agree up to a point, there is still some information that can be useful and quite basic. For example, as I said before you could convey a sense of fear in relation to a specific landmark if, for example, one animal escapes from a predator's hunting htound.

Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines. It could replace a chunk of the child rearing that social animals have to do as well. And speaking of which, non-social animals wouldn't have any use for the queue for communication purposes, would they?

I probably didn't make myself clear - you wouldn't catch an animal,  but give it an incentive to connect to you in return for energy. I didn't particularly like this either, it's probably one of the weakest links.
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The point in these would be that the trees would be able to take a bit of energy from the animal in return for the communication service. I don't know what form, possibly electrical energy?

Ah, alright.

I think the biggest issue would indeed be the form of energy. Trees don't really need anything that animals have, unless we're going to assume that plants, animals, or both function very differently on Pandora against all appearances.

But influence over animals through the queue, even slight influence, probably would be worthwhile. Perhaps push back the development of the tree network to this point. Animals accept influence from the trees in exchange for information storage the trees are doing for them. Or even better. Push back the development of intelligence in the tree network to this point. If the trees are intelligent enough, they would keep the animals "working" for them alive better than they could alone.

It would no longer have any animals to take energy from as I talked about above.

It would if it kept enough of the right animals alive. I'm saying why keep predators around that will kill the animals that the trees manipulate when the trees could just kill off all the predators and control the populations of the prey animals directly? This may be a straight-up hole in the writing. The trees interact with the Na'vi so completely that the Na'vi basically do whatever the trees say. The trees also control the predators that kill Na'vi, as we see in the final battle in the movie. So, why not just stop all predators from killing Na'vi and control Na'vi populations directly by telling them when to have children, or how it would be best to organize to use resources efficiently?

#2 does seem plausible but I just don't see it happening. I wouldn't give up the wonders of technology, even if it means a simple life.

I would. I think if you did it right you could nab all of the benefits and almost none of the detriments.

Also, why manufacture the moon with unobtanium inside if you're not going to use it and it might attract unwanted attention - which it did.

I recall Cameron or the ASG saying that anatomically modern Na'vi had been around for longer than anatomically modern humans. Maybe they figured there wouldn't be life on planets close enough to notice the unobtainium? Also, I thought the unobtainium had something to do with the tree network. Strongest concentrations at the Tree of Souls, right?

[Mithcoriel]

It's interesting to discuss Eywa's origins.

Lemme just drop my speculations in: I always imagined all animals had structures for communicating (what today is the queue) since they first evolved, (before plants and animals branched off from each other) so a very primitive collective consciousness (which later became eywa) would have existed since there is life on pandora. And the more animals developed, and the more intelligent they became, the more intelligent Eywa became. I don't know if she was intelligent enough to babysit the animals ("keep the balance of life") in those first million years, but she sure is now.

About your theories:
One thing I don't quite agree with is that you suggest animals and plants evolved the queue separately. Like I said, that seems hugely unlikely, and I don't really see the need for them being separate when they could have come from a common ancestor.

Also it seems unlikely that the queue was first used as a sexual organ, and then it suddenly wasn't enough anymore, so nature just said "screw the queue, I'm growing a completely new feature". That's also very un-evolution-like. Evolution usually modifies what's already there. ^^ And evolution definitely wouldn't let the queue "fall out of use for a short time". An organ either disappears or is in use.

Also, a lot of your ideas about how they evolved are a bit Lamarckian. You know -- "They needed this, so they just evolved it". That's not really how evolution works. We humans die when we fall off high places, we had that problem for millions of years, yet we don't just grow wings. (In order to grow wings, there would have to be an advantage for someone's arms to be slightly more winglike, then slightly more, then slightly more...a very very long process inbetween which you can't fly yet.) So, I don't see how plants could just evolve this ability to store information, something really complex, simply cause it serves a purpose. It's quite a leap, and Evolution isn't purpose-driven.

honestlly...im not cristain, but i think god created her.

i mean, when he created the universe, if he made a alien race dont you think that he would make and alien jesus crist to watch over them?

just a therory

(You're not christian, but the first god that comes to your mind is Jesus? Why didn't you suggest Zeus made Eywa?)
But okay, nevermind, that's off-topic. Anyway, people mentioned it: There's no reason to assume the universe in "Avatar" was made by a God at all. It seems to work quite well on science, and the whole universe, life, and Eywa, are portrayed in a way that they probably could have come into existence quite happily without a supernatural creator. Even if the Avatar-Universe does have a supernatural creator, he's pretty irrelevant for the story.

Hey isn't Eywa God/Mother Nature? If so then, she wasn't created and has always existed. Well anyway, no one will ever know...

It's never mentioned that Eywa is God. Humans call her that cause that's the concept they can most clearly compare her to, but it's just as likely she's a biological construct, and not a "real god" at all.

The trees interact with the Na'vi so completely that the Na'vi basically do whatever the trees say. The trees also control the predators that kill Na'vi, as we see in the final battle in the movie. So, why not just stop all predators from killing Na'vi and control Na'vi populations directly by telling them when to have children, or how it would be best to organize to use resources efficiently?

Cause the trees don't favour the Na'vi over other animals. They care about the predators just as much.

[Kìte'eyä Aungia]

It's interesting to discuss Eywa's origins.

Lemme just drop my speculations in: I always imagined all animals had structures for communicating (what today is the queue) since they first evolved, (before plants and animals branched off from each other)

But then you have the issue, which I mentioned above, of coming up with a use for the queue. Simple life, the kind that existed before plants and animals branched off, lack brains and nervous systems (Unless they don't on Pandora???), so how could the queue have developed at this point? At the very least we'd have to posit a long-term symbiotic relationship between plants and animals, but what would be the benefit to either of growing an appendage that connects the two?

so a very primitive collective consciousness (which later became eywa) would have existed since there is life on pandora. And the more animals developed, and the more intelligent they became, the more intelligent Eywa became. I don't know if she was intelligent enough to babysit the animals ("keep the balance of life") in those first million years, but she sure is now.

Again, the common ancestor of plants and animals was single-celled (unless it wasn't on Pandora???). To have a collective consciousness, these single-celled life forms would have had to develop queues to connect and transmit information, and then arrange themselves into the right patterns to result in a conscious system. Why would these single-celled life forms do that? What would they get from it for the millions and millions of years before life developed to the point where brains and nervous systems were complex enough to make the queue useful.

Also it seems unlikely that the queue was first used as a sexual organ, and then it suddenly wasn't enough anymore, so nature just said "screw the queue, I'm growing a completely new feature". That's also very un-evolution-like. Evolution usually modifies what's already there. ^^ And evolution definitely wouldn't let the queue "fall out of use for a short time". An organ either disappears or is in use.

Agreed, though if you reread the section you're talking about, Muzer said the exact opposite, that the queue couldn't have just fallen out of use and so must have changed purposes.

Also, a lot of your ideas about how they evolved are a bit Lamarckian. You know -- "They needed this, so they just evolved it". That's not really how evolution works.

I think it just seems that way because of the language being used. I could do the same thing with actual evolutionary history: Indohyus needed a survival strategy to avoid predators, so it evolved adaptations to aquatic life which allowed it to dive into water and hide beneath the surface.

This kind of language is somewhat more justified when looking at things backwards, no?

The trees interact with the Na'vi so completely that the Na'vi basically do whatever the trees say. The trees also control the predators that kill Na'vi, as we see in the final battle in the movie. So, why not just stop all predators from killing Na'vi and control Na'vi populations directly by telling them when to have children, or how it would be best to organize to use resources efficiently?

Cause the trees don't favour the Na'vi over other animals. They care about the predators just as much.

Well then the trees are idiots. What kind of moon do they think they're running? 

[Nìwotxkrr Tìyawn]

All this talk of moons is tempting me to use starwars quotes...must...resist. 

Just a stray thought I had on why a single-celled organism would use a 'queue', well not so much a queue as something like an antennae strand or something of the like. It could have possibly been something that reacted to nearby nutrients, sending out a signal driving others of it kind to the area. Not saying this completely answers the question of why, but it's at least plausible.

To have a collective consciousness, these single-celled life forms would have had to develop queues to connect and transmit information, and then arrange themselves into the right patterns to result in a conscious system. Why would these single-celled life forms do that?

It's not necessarily a question of why, it could just be a matter of chance. There's no particular reason lifeless amino acids, fats and such formed to create the first life, it was probably just blind luck.

[Kìte'eyä Aungia]

To have a collective consciousness, these single-celled life forms would have had to develop queues to connect and transmit information, and then arrange themselves into the right patterns to result in a conscious system. Why would these single-celled life forms do that?

It's not necessarily a question of why, it could just be a matter of chance. There's no particular reason lifeless amino acids, fats and such formed to create the first life, it was probably just blind luck.

That's not what I'm saying. Here:

Group A is a group of single-celled life forms that spend time and energy growing queues and transmitting information between each other in a pattern that generates a rudimentary consciousness.

Group B is a group of single-celled life forms that don't and instead spend the saved time and energy to reproduce at a faster rate or become more successful at finding food or whatever.

Why does Group B not out-compete Group A? What advantage do the life forms in Group A gain from spending so much time and energy organizing themselves this way?

[Elektrolurch]

I just write down my own opinion.

Eywa is no god.

A god is someone you believe in.

And we know about her, or Mother Nature's existence. Sooo what?

It is no thinking individual or collevtive, but the incarnation of all life ...

[Kìte'eyä Aungia]

And we know about her, or Mother Nature's existence. Sooo what?

It is no thinking individual or collevtive, but the incarnation of all life ...

Is Eywa not described in the movie as the intelligence that emerges from a forest of interconnected trees which stores and has access to the minds of Na'vi who die on Pandora?

[Elektrolurch]

Sure it is. A non-thinking collective.

[Mithcoriel]

It's interesting to discuss Eywa's origins.

Lemme just drop my speculations in: I always imagined all animals had structures for communicating (what today is the queue) since they first evolved, (before plants and animals branched off from each other)

But then you have the issue, which I mentioned above, of coming up with a use for the queue. Simple life, the kind that existed before plants and animals branched off, lack brains and nervous systems (Unless they don't on Pandora???), so how could the queue have developed at this point? At the very least we'd have to posit a long-term symbiotic relationship between plants and animals, but what would be the benefit to either of growing an appendage that connects the two?

Well for single-celled organisms, it wouldn't be an actual queue, or even actual nerve strands. Just some connection for them to transmit information, which at this stage might just be chemicals that induce the other organism to do something. The purpose for it could be similar to the modern-day purpose, some form of information exchange about food. The cells of our body work together and communicate with each other, after all, so there must be some kind of advantage.

Again, the common ancestor of plants and animals was single-celled (unless it wasn't on Pandora???). To have a collective consciousness, these single-celled life forms would have had to develop queues to connect and transmit information, and then arrange themselves into the right patterns to result in a conscious system. Why would these single-celled life forms do that?

Okay, maybe a collective of single-celled organisms isn't enough to develop a consciousness yet. So that came a bit later, but developed out of the connection the organisms had eventually.

Also, a lot of your ideas about how they evolved are a bit Lamarckian. You know -- "They needed this, so they just evolved it". That's not really how evolution works.

I think it just seems that way because of the language being used. I could do the same thing with actual evolutionary history: Indohyus needed a survival strategy to avoid predators, so it evolved adaptations to aquatic life which allowed it to dive into water and hide beneath the surface.

This kind of language is somewhat more justified when looking at things backwards, no?

Well ok, but the problem is that what the original poster suggested was rather complex, like the plants just developed this complicated information-processing-and-storing system overnight. You first need an immediate advantage for the plants to grow the first part of the system, then the next part, etc. I don't think this could be developed all at once.

The trees interact with the Na'vi so completely that the Na'vi basically do whatever the trees say. The trees also control the predators that kill Na'vi, as we see in the final battle in the movie. So, why not just stop all predators from killing Na'vi and control Na'vi populations directly by telling them when to have children, or how it would be best to organize to use resources efficiently?

Cause the trees don't favour the Na'vi over other animals. They care about the predators just as much.

Well then the trees are idiots. What kind of moon do they think they're running? 

Why? What's wrong with favouring all creatures alike? Why do you think they should favour the Na'vi over their predators, but not the Yeriks over their predators the Na'vi?
I mean if a predator is destructive to the eco-system cause it just eats too many and can't adapt to fit the balance, it's a different story. But that's unlikely to be the case.

[Kìte'eyä Aungia]

The cells of our body work together and communicate with each other, after all, so there must be some kind of advantage.

The cells in the body are part of a larger organism. Any individual cells in the body that stop working with the rest of them die or are killed by the body's defenses, and any large group of cells that stopped working would likely kill the larger organism as a result, which would in turn kill all the cells that make up that organism.

Why? What's wrong with favouring all creatures alike? Why do you think they should favour the Na'vi over their predators, but not the Yeriks over their predators the Na'vi?

As us humans have gained greater control over the environment, we've used that control to domesticate useful species and wipe out ones that are detrimental to us or to our domesticates. Why wouldn't the trees do the same thing? Gain control over the animals that are useful to them and wipe out the animals that hurt them directly or eat the animals in the first group.

[Kìte'eyä Aungia]

Sure it is. A non-thinking collective.

If it's non-thinking, how did it manage to listen to a message from Jake at the end of the movie and act on it in an intelligent manner?

[Elektrolurch]

Sure it is. A non-thinking collective.

If it's non-thinking, how did it manage to listen to a message from Jake at the end of the movie and act on it in an intelligent manner?

That's true, sorry for my misunderstanding. MOther Nature here on Earth is non-thinking.... I don't know if Eywa is or not, but please don't imagine her as a person or something.

[Nìwotxkrr Tìyawn]

Sure it is. A non-thinking collective.

If it's non-thinking, how did it manage to listen to a message from Jake at the end of the movie and act on it in an intelligent manner?

Eywa might not have necessarily listened to Jake's message, it could have worked more like a relay where jake's emotions of impending danger got transmitted to other creatures that linked up with eywa. Something I noticed is that the only creatures to come help fight the rda were the big dangerous ones that would confront danger rather than run, no fan lizards in sight.

[Kìte'eyä Aungia]

MOther Nature here on Earth is non-thinking

And Mother Nature is what exactly?

I don't know if Eywa is or not, but please don't imagine her as a person or something.

Why not?

Eywa might not have necessarily listened to Jake's message, it could have worked more like a relay where jake's emotions of impending danger got transmitted to other creatures that linked up with eywa.

It could have, but that is a much more complicated explanation. How would the animals know where to go and which side specifically to attack? There isn't really an emotion that can be translated easily into "there's going to be big trouble unless all animals show up to this battle and team up with the Na'vi against the humans".

Or how about the scenes near the beginning where the atokirina' practically follow Jake around causing the Na'vi to take him in instead of killing him? They obviously weren't following him around by chance, and neither Jake nor anyone who knew Jake had connected to Eywa at that point, so Eywa couldn't have been acting on transmitted emotion. The best explanation is that Eywa is intelligent and directed the seeds to protect Jake to further her own goals. It is also heavily implied that not just anybody can jump on Toruk and get to fly him, so again, everything that happens to turn Jake into Toruk Makto seems to be part of a plan Eywa is orchestrating from behind the curtain.

Something I noticed is that the only creatures to come help fight the rda were the big dangerous ones that would confront danger rather than run, no fan lizards in sight.

If I was organizing animals to fight a firing line of marines and robotic suit artillery, I'd send the wolves in to take out the marines and the big hammerhead guys to take out the artillery. Lizards wouldn't be high on my list of potential conscripts.