The Nanoswarms had a very large deletion effect on
available
information within
Solsys,
since so many data banks were destroyed or (worse) corrupted or altered
in the confusion. Though many individual habitats throughout Solsys,
and many individual sites on Old Earth itself, claimed to have survived
unscathed and preserved their data stores intact through the subsequent
"Dark Ages", there is always the suspicion that they too were affected.
However, some colonists had already departed Solsys with very large
fractions of human knowledge, long before the Nanoswarm era began. Many
historians regard these as the best source of knowledge regarding
pre-Nanoswarms history. They include:
- Tau Ceti, Nova Terra
(founded 490 AT)
- Sigma Draconis, Penglai
(founded 578 AT)
- Epsilon
Indi (founded 718 AT)
- Epsilon
Eridani (Interplanetary Age)
- Barnard's
Star, Barnard Belt (Interplanetary Age)
- Wolf
359 (Interplanetary Age)
- Sirius (Interplanetary Age)
- 61 Virginis, Eostronamath
(founded 521 AT)
- Pi-3 Orionis, Daedalus
(founded 599 & 639, later collapsed)
- Delta Pavonis, Darwin
(Interplanetary Age)
- Beamrider
Network colonies at Yang, Yin, Ross 128, and Struve
2398 (founded 361 to 529 AT)
Some individuals who left in GAIA's
"arks" have pre-Nanoswarm knowledge and sometimes even collections of
pre-Nanoswarm information. Few have personally survived to the present
age, however. Many failed arks were intercepted later in history and in
a few cases individuals and/or their data stores have been forensically
reconstructed; they are considered great treasure troves by historians.
The few successful and the many derelict expeditions from the
Backyarder era are similarly valuable to historians. It is believed
that all such refugees and immigrants have now been collected and
accounted for and retrieved, excepting those who beamed themselves out
of Solsys as information.
