[ColonialMarine]

Pre-History_____________________________________________________
Approximately 3,600 years before the events in the Miniseries, the oracle Pythia recorded her prophecy of the exile and rebirth of the human race. While on Kobol, the thirteen tribes apparently lived in an idyllic utopia with their Gods, but roughly 1,600 years later (2,000 years before the Fall of the Twelve Colonies), this coexistence was ended as Pythia's prophecy came to fruition. The prophecy alludes to a "Blaze" which descended on the thirteen tribes and against which the Lords of Kobol were powerless to intervene. In a scene cut from the episode "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I", Elosha states that the exodus from Kobol was precipitated when "one jealous god began to desire that he be elevated above all the other gods, and the war on Kobol began." In another deleted scene cut from the episode "Fragged," Roslin states that humanity wasn't "exiled" from Kobol, but that the Sacred Scrolls say that "there was some sort of battle among the Gods, and when it was over we chose to leave."

Exodus_________________________________________________________
The Gates of HeraIn despair, Athena threw herself from the Gates of Hera, to her death. The leaders of the tribes were interred with her, and the populace of the tribes were taken in a "Galleon" (a spacecraft) to their places of refuge. Twelve tribes find and occupy a solar system with at least 12 habitable worlds, while a thirteenth tribe locates a world they named Earth. Zeus warned the survivors that any return to Kobol "would exact a price in blood."

Settlement______________________________________________________
After settling on their new homes, another cataclysm befell the twelve tribes (perhaps simply order breaking down amongst the handful of refugee survivors that fled Kobol with only what supplies they could carry). This resulted in the destruction of much of their knowledge base and sent the colonies into a dark age. (On the real-world Earth, similar dark ages occurred after the falls of Rome and Mycenaean Greece, and lasted for centuries). It is possible that much of their technological knowledge of interstellar spaceflight was lost after the escape from Kobol. Over time, they rebuilt their technological base, and travel between the Colonies was commonplace for some time before the Cylon Attack.

After their return to space, the Colonies established many observatories, listening posts, research stations and armories in their system. Inequity and war were common between the Colonies for most of this time period. By the end of the strife, Sagittaron had been exploited for centuries. Various shifting alliances and attempts at unified government came out of these conflicts, which would later form the bedrock of the Articles of Colonization, but it would still be some time before a practical colonies-wide government was established.

The Colonials also created a line of robots, called Cylons, to do work which they found unpleasant, including mining and serving as soldiers in their civil wars.

The Cylon War___________________________________________________
Such was the extent to which the Colonies had invested their military power in the Cylons that when they chose to rebel against their masters, the Colonials found themselves well-matched. With their mastery of Colonial technology, the Cylons were able to infiltrate nearly all networked devices. The Colonials were forced to abandon networked computers and wireless devices in favor of more secure and durable technologies, able to withstand both Cylon infiltration and the powerful nuclear weapons used by the warring parties. Twelve battlestars built in the opening years of the war best exemplified these principles, including Galactica. In response to the great threat posed by the Cylons, the Twelve Colonies formed a unified federal Government for the first time, at the beginning of the war.

At its darkest hour, the Cylon War came very close to wiping out the Colonies. This outcome of the war likely developed, among other practices, the Case Orange contingency government succession protocol as well as the re-buildup of the Colonial Fleet in the Federal Era.

Armistice_______________________________________________________
After the Cylon War ended, a long and bloody struggle of approximately 12 years, an armistice was declared, and the Cylons departed for a world of their own. The Colonials established a neutral meeting place, Armistice Station, and made diplomatic overtures for Cylons and Colonials to meet annually. However, these overtures were continually ignored.

After the war, the military went through a Reduction in Force, resulting in the discharge of many of the war's veterans.

Federal Era_____________________________________________________
While the Cylon War had a lasting effect on the government of the Twelve Colonies, the population as a whole, much of it born after the war, had relegated it to a historical note in textbooks. The now-united government continued to maintain a large standing military, which, forty years after the war, had grown to include 120 battlestars, most apparently more advanced than those of the original battlestar class. This buildup apparently began about twenty years after the war, around the time Saul Tigh and William Adama rejoined the military.

With their military assets now concentrated in a central government under the Articles of Colonization (with Caprica City as the capital), the new government of the Twelve Colonies was able to maintain peace among its members. Now presumably free of the Cylon threat, technologies which could not be used during the war were redeployed throughout the fleet, increasing its effectiveness against more mundane opponents.

This new era of federalism was not without considerable opposition. Dissidents on Sagittaron led by Tom Zarek took arms against the government, supplied by arms dealers like Leoben Conoy. Regardless of these localized attempts at insurrection, on the whole the Twelve Colonies faced no major military threats with the loss of contact with the Cylons. The Colonial Fleet's standing numbers were actually kept disproportionately high relative to their common uses in fear that one day the Cylons might return. Day-to-day work for the Fleet consisted of handling the small-scale brush fire attempts at rebellion such as on Sagittaron, but these were all light peacekeeping actions rather than actual fighting. Prior to the Cylon attack none of Galactica's younger-generation crew had ever seen any real combat.

Fall of the Twelve Colonies_________________________________________
The arrogance of the Colonials in re-equipping their military with technologies vulnerable to Cylon interference proved to be their undoing. Forty years after the first Cylon War Cylon infiltrators subverted Dr. Gaius Baltar's Command Navigation Program, allowing an advanced Cylon armada to destroy the Colonial fleet with impunity.

The attack resulted in the nuclear bombardment and occupation of the Colonies and the enslavement of most of the few isolated survivors in a series of Farms. Altogether, less than one hundred ships (mostly civilian) survived the attack, including only two battlestars - the nearly obsolete Galactica and the Mercury class battlestar Pegasus. The survivors abandoned the Colonies and formed a convoy in search of the thirteenth colony, Earth, where they hope to find refuge.

source: RDM & battlestarwiki.org

[Chris McKeown]

Thanks Colonial Marine, thats is a great run down.