Apocrypha

Society of the Ancients (website)

From Halopedia, the Halo wiki

A Screenshot of the Iris website www.societyoftheancients.com
SOTA home page, featuring the Antikythera mechanism.

The Society of the Ancients website was a website in June 2007 tied to the conspiracy group Society of the Ancients.[1]

Overview[edit]

Summary[edit]

The website contained six pages, with each page quoting Isaac Newton. The site covered the Society of the Ancients conspiracy theory on the "ancients" and how they visited earth thousands of years ago and nudged humanity forward.[1] The Mission page covered how the Society believed they were collecting information to gain a unique viewpoint.[2] The Evidence page contained a table of supposed evidence to the "ancients" with it ending with an "update" regarding a rock painting in Tanzania and the discovery of a website that contained the symbol.[3] The Members page covered information about the society's members, such as its founder and member count as of 2007, it also covered a personal note from the founder David George.[4] The Member Sign-In page was under construction, and was never finished, urging readers to refer questions to their local contact or the national headquarter P.O. Box.[5] The final page Links contained several links to other groups or information that members or readers might find interest in.[6]

Archived pages[edit]

Halopedia maintains a text archive of many of the pages of the now-defunct website. To view this archive, see this page.

IRIS connections[edit]

During the first episode of Iris "The Unknown Helper, on June 15 and 16, 2007, people taking part in the Iris alternate reality game realised people could find this website after seeing Society of the Ancient rallies across various locations.[7] While searching on the website on the "Evidence" page contained an update tied to a symbol painted in Tanzania. Below this update contained the same link "206.16.223.65" people found on in the Halo 3: The Cradle of Life webcomic, saying the website contained the symbol. (The symbol didn't make an appearance until the first server was unlocked.)[3] This link could be seen as an alternate route to get people into the Transmission Log, Bounce Path Control, and the first Server.[8]

Following this, Society of the Ancients got mentioned a handful of times in the fourth episode of Iris "The Great Connection".

Trivia[edit]

  • This website appears to be inspired by old websites such as the the various ones hosted on GeoCities between 1994 and 2009.
  • The Members page had hidden text that lead to "SOTA_membership.pdf". This was never used during the ARG or while the website was active.

Gallery[edit]

Assets and graphics[edit]

Sources[edit]

  1. ^ a b Society of the Ancient: Home (Retrieved on Jun 16, 2007) [local archive] [external archive]
  2. ^ Society of the Ancient: Mission (Retrieved on Jun 16, 2007) [local archive] [external archive]
  3. ^ a b Society of the Ancient: Evidence (Retrieved on Jun 16, 2007) [local archive] [external archive]
  4. ^ Society of the Ancient: Members (Retrieved on Jun 16, 2007) [local archive] [external archive]
  5. ^ Society of the Ancient: Members Sign-In (Retrieved on Jun 16, 2007) [local archive] [external archive]
  6. ^ flickr: Keeper_of_flame (Retrieved on Oct 12, 2014) [archive]
  7. ^ Transmission Log: June 15 (Retrieved on Jun 16, 2007) [local archive] [external archive]