Let me begin by prefacing this series of theories and observations by saying that this is not meant to be an end-all-be-all theory. This is simply an attempt to explain what we already know and what we should expect to learn given what we already know. Possibilities will be explored in an objective manner in an attempt to help others come to their own conclusions, though I may throw in my own personal preferences for which possibilties I favor. This series of three "theories" will hopefully allow us to explore the island a little deeper and in a much grander scope than would be possible (or feasible) in just one theory alone. And with that, we come to our first question:
What is the island?
If I'm just using evidence we have right now, however, and I'm not making any giant conclusive leaps that may be no where near the truth, I have to ask, "Can't it just be an island?" Obviously there are many things that make this island special, but could it be that this is just an island that happens to feature unique geologic phenomena that others have manipulated for their own reasons?
Let's look at what we know. The island features a number of unique properties. It has an extensive underground cave system which includes an ice cave that houses a pocket of "negatively charged exotic matter". It has a volcano (that may or may not be dormant). It produces an unusual amount of electromagnetic energy. How do these things add up? How do a volcano and ice cave fit together? What (if anything) does negatively charged exotic matter have to do with electromagnetic energy?"
A little research shows that ice caves can often form in extinct lava tubes. If you're not familiar with lava tubes, they are long cave-like channels through which lava used to flow but long ago cooled leaving the cave-like formation behind. Through various means such as cold traps, evaporative cooling, and others (wikipedia is definitely your friend here if you wish to research these more fully), these ancient lava tubes can transform into ice caves. If this is what we are being shown on the island, this must mean that the island's volcano went extinct a LONG time ago, giving at least one underground cave the time to freeze over into an ice cave. That seems to indicate that the volcano was largely responsible for the creation of the island. It erupted, building up the landmass that the Losties would crash on, the lava cooled leaving a labyrinthine system of caves below the island's surface, and at least one of these caves (one of the deepest ones) froze over.
So what does this cave that froze over have to do with exotic matter? If it wasn't for the Orchid Station orientation video, this would be a very hard question to answer. According to Edgar Halliwax, however, the island's properties created a "kind of Casimir effect". The actual Casimir effect has to do with uncharged magnetic plated being placed micrometers apart from each other in a vacuum which creates an attractive force. This region of "pseudo-negative pressure" is the exotic matter that is tapped into by DHARMA at a later time, but that's to be saved for the next entry in this series. However, Halliwax says that the island produces a "kind of" Casimir effect. This means that the effect produced by the island is similar in some way to the Casimir effect, but it doesn't match it exactly. Since we have seen that the area where the exotic matter is housed is behind a wall that has a thin, flat opening just wide enough for a wheel to be pushed through, I think it's likely t! hat this is our Casimir effect state. The two metal plates placed micrometers apart could very well be these two level slabs of rock placed so many centimeters apart. According to Halliwax, "the electromagnetic energy within the island can be highly volatile and unpredictable." Since Halliwax says this in the Orchid Orientation video, we have to assume that the electromagnetic energy must have something to do with the exotic matter. We have learned that the electromagnetic energy within the island is so powerful that it can bend the light all the way around the island in order to make it look invisible to anyone who is too far away from it (taking in mind Faraday's comment about how the light doesn't bend right on the island, and the real-life Michael Faraday who discovered that magnetism could bend and rotate rays of light), the island must be exuding a tremendous amount of electromagnetic energy. Since Halliwax seems to suggest that this energy is tied to the exotic matte! r, the only thing I can think of right now is that it is the s! heer vol ume of electromagnetic energy that is expanding the exotic matter and even causing it to project outwards around the island.
As we probably all know by now, exotic matter is what is theoretically needed to stabilize a wormhole to allow faster-than-light travel (which allows time travel). Because of the giant mass of electromagnetic energy multiplying the effects and range of the exotic matter, it appears that the island has accidentally created a time barrier around itself. Because of the nature of this barrier, entering from certain bearings will either send you forward in time, backwards in time, or not distort time at all. This would become very important when people began to come and go from the island often, but not so much at the point we are now. But then where did all of this electromagnetic energy come from to be able to project the effects of the exotic matter? There is certainly no clear answer for this just yet. However, we do have something to at least think about. Isaac of Uluru is a faith healer that uses "energy" from the earth to heal people. We have seen the island heal people as! well. It is likely that the source that Isaac gets his "power" from is somehow connected to where the island gets its from. According to Isaac, "There are certain places with great energy -- spots on the Earth like the one we're above now. Perhaps this energy is geological -- magnetic. Or perhaps it's something else." Yes, a little vague, but still food for thought. Is the island home to electromagnetism because of some geologic phenomena and no other reason? Since we know the island has moved in the past, did it somehow stick with the island despite its displacement from where it was originally formed? Still that phrase, "Or perhaps it's something else," leaves the door open to other possibilities. Was it simply destiny that made sure that the island would form over an area where it would have a large amount of electromagnetic energy within it? Did God put it there? Regardless of whether the answer has more to do with science or faith, we know that the source of all of th! is electromagnetic energy is somewhere underground. The writer! s and th e show have told and shown us this. So until we have reason to believe otherwise, we just have to chalk it up as the island having geologically produced electromagnetic energy within it for the same reason Ayers Rock in Uluru seems to have it.
So once again: volcano erupts and island forms, geologic anomaly produces a massive amount of electromagnetic energy that is stored within the island, magma still within the volcano cools leaving a deep underground system of caves, one of which freezes over, the shape of this cave and the properties of the island has allowed exotic matter to manifest itself here, and the electromagnetic energy continues by pushing the effects of the exotic matter out and around the island (while the electromagnetism bends light around the island rendering it invisible).
Where to next? How about one of the most popular questions in all of LOST: "What is the black smoke monster?"
And in the infamous words of Ben Linus, "I don't know." That's right, I don't have any solid answer for you, but I've got plenty of possibilities for you to mull over and decide for yourself. First of all, there are two things we know about the monster that are very important: 1) It can be summoned by doing something behind an ancient stone door that is covered in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and 2) It refuses to attack anyone who has taken shelter within the roots of the banyan tree.
Now lets take a moment to examine that first point. It can be controlled somehow? Well we don't know that for sure, but that seems to be the case. If Ben had just called the monster what would have stopped it from attacking Ben, Locke, and that group? How did it know to go straight for the mercenaries if Ben was just baiting it towards his house? Obviously Ben was somehow able to "tell" the monster to attack the mercenaries. After all, the monster is the island's security system, so it was doing its job, but it only managed to kill one of the mercs for some reason... (Perhaps it felt that it was wrong to kill without first analyzing and judging each of the men as it had done with Eko, and so it spared the lives of the majority of them, not having enough time to scan them all first?) Also, how did someone manage to implement such a thing that would give them some control over the monster? The only thing that makes sense to me is that the room to summon the monster was made at! around the same time as the monster if not even just before it. Is it possible then that these people created the monster? Well let's study these people for a moment and then return to the question at hand.
We know that somehow some very ancient people found the island. Perhaps they found it very shortly after the vocano erupted and the lava had cooled, so that the electromagnetic anomaly had yet to form, and the caves had not yet reached a formation that allowed the production of exotic matter. Perhaps they just found it by accident. We can still be fairly sure that they found the island earlier than the 1800s (this is because of the Black Rock, but we'll get into that in a little while). It also seems that the people were very religious (or at least traditionalist). They carved hieroglyphics in a number of places. They erected statues and temples, some of which are still standing on the island (we've seen Anthony Cooper tied to a giant column, and we've seen the four-toed statue; yes, the writers have said that the four-toed statue is from the past, so I'm willing to believe that these Egyptians (or at least these people that could draw hieroglyphics) are the ones who built i! t... probably in honor of one of their leader who only had four toes on one (or both) of his feet, but eventually something knocked down the majority of the statue). It is even possible that the Temple, mentioned by Ben in Seasons 3 and 4 is a sacred place built by these ancients for protection (there is a DHARMA logo marking the Temple on a map Ben had, but we don't know how DHARMA marked important locations like the four-toed statue that the ancients were responsible for building). Apparently, however, this protection wasn't enough. They had to bring the monster to the island.
This brings us to our second important point, the banyan tree conundrum. According to wikipedia the banyan tree is featured in a number of different mythologies and religions. In Hindu religion the banyan tree represents eternal life. In Hindu mythology the banyan tree is called the "wish-fulfilling tree". In Phillipine mythology the banyan is said to be the home of a variety of spirits and demon-like creatures. And in Guam it is believed the that spirits of a certain tribe's ancestors act as guardians to banyan trees. In case you haven't guessed it yet, you're getting a faith answer for the moment. Let's just assume for a moment that one of these is true. If the monster can't penetrate the roots of the tree because the tree represents eternal life, would that make the monster a physical embodiment of death? If it's because the tree is home to various spirits, would that make the monster a spirit as well that is simply weaker than the combined spirits that live in the trees?! (I kind of like this theory (though I don't really believe it) because it would explain why the monster always rips up trees in the jungle: it is trying to display its power over trees in order to scare off the spirits in the banyan trees, so it can overtake them.) If it's because there are guardian spirits watching over the trees, then again, perhaps the monster just can't break through. However, if it's because the tree can fulfill wishes, then that really doesn't tell us anything about the monster because anyone hiding in a banyan tree's roots are going to be wishing to be spared from the monster regardless of what it actually is.
The funny thing is that none of these explanations have anything to do with the Egyptians, yet it seems like the Egyptians that created the monster (or at least brought it to the island) in the first place. So perhaps the first group of people that came to the island were very racially and culturally diverse. If the monster isn't a manifestation of death, perhaps it is a mixture of spirits conjured by many different tribes and religions explaining why it is bound by two separate schools of thought (this may also explain why it can split itself up: it can split itself into a separate piece for each culture, and these pieces can join together to form the full monster at a later time). For some reason the island can project a person's thoughts and dreams into "reality", or some sort of physical means. So maybe the island's ability to do this (electromagnetic energy syncing with a person's mind and projecting it onto the plane of sight, sound, and feeling?) allowed for all of th! e cultures to imagine their protective spirit and have it become one real entity to protect their island.
However, maybe there is a scientific explanation for the monster. Unfortunately it would take way too much assuming for me to even begin to explore those answers at this point because we have to assume that the original island inhabitants managed to create the monster (or capture and transport it) using the limited technology that was available to them thousands of years ago (and managing to create something that flies, is able to uproot trees, is able to separate itself into many different parts, and scan a person's memories seems like a pretty difficult task given what they have to work with). There seems to be no scientific explanation at this point unless someone from the future somehow traveled back in time with outrageously advanced technology, met with the Egyptians and other cultures on the island, created the monster for them, and some how the monster was still bound by the Egyptian stone room and the banyan trees...
We truthfully don't know how long these ancients lived on the island, but we do know that at one point the people who were making the hieroglyphics found the ice cave deep within the island. There they installed a large wheel in between the two stone faces found in the cave. By turning the wheel, for whatever reason they did in the first place, be it for experimentation or because it needed to be done, the turning of the wheel stirred up the exotic matter in the pocket behind the wall. At that moment the exotic matter stabilized a wormhole to a random point in space and time, the island flew through it, and the island's inhabitants found themselves in an entirely different location and time. Of course they probably weren't the only ones surprised about where they were.
It was somewhere around the year 1845 and a ship that had set sail for a trading mission to the Kingdom of Siam suddenly found itself run aground... with no water as far as the eye could see. The most likely explanation for how the Black Rock ship managed to get so far inland is that the spacetime traveling island coincidentally ended up right where the Black Rock just happened to be at the time. However, even though we know the rough time (if we go by the dates in the show; the dates in the ARGs suggest a time in the 1880s), we can only narrow down the place to two. The ship left Portsmouth, England. According to the show, that was the last time anyone heard from the Black Rock again. Because the Black Rock was on its way to Thailand (the Kingdom of Siam), it could have been in the Atlantic Ocean or the Indian Ocean when it disappeared. Locke theorized that the skeletons chained up in the brig were those of slaves being transported from Mozambique (if this were true, they d! efinitley would have been in the Indian Ocean when they disappeared, but because England was still transporting slaves and convicts out of England as well, it is possible that the brig could have been full while the ship was still in the Atlantic, allowing it to have been there that the Black Rock met its fate. Despite where the ship and island were, be it in the Atlantic or Indian Ocean, we know there were survivors. The blast door map suggests that Magnus Hanso never left the island and was buried on it, but somehow the journal of the first mate (who may have been Magnus, it may have been someone else) somehow got off the island and was found seven years later by pirates. The journal eventually made its way into the hands of a Tovard Hanso. Given that it was seven years before the journal was found, it is likely that the journal was still being filled before it left the island. As such, Tovard Hanso likely got a very good idea of what the island was capable. A man named A! lvar Hanso would likely later use this information to search f! or the i sland and claim it as his own.
However there were still members of the Black Rock that likely survived, and it would seem that they eventually joined with the inhabitants that were already on the island. Did they immediately accept the Black Rock survivors into their midst? I would think that's unlikely, and Damon and Carlton have even suggested that the Hostiles may have been just one faction of the inhabitants of the island. It is possible that the "pure" and religious groups that had been on the island for so long were disgusted by these outsiders who loved violence and enslaved people. Maybe the original inhabitants kept to themselves in their temples and such while the pirates found shelter in the jungles.
Thus we have quite a population on this island. For nearly 100 years it would seem that no one else came to the island. And right around this time, one century later, a man and woman were laid to rest in an above-ground cave formation and two rocks were placed with them. These people would be later referred to as Adam and Eve by the Flight 815 survivors that found them, but according to the writers they were meant to tell us that they had something planned all along. This was also back when the writers were saying there was no time travel. Taking that into consideration, plus the fact that the only way to physically time travel right now back to the time of Adam and Eve is to either pass through the island's "time barrier" at the right bearings so that it sends you back in time around 50 years or so (and since the bearings only seem to warp time a few days at most, it would take many, many trips to go that far back in time), or be on the island some time in the future when t! he donkey wheel is turned and the island is sent back into the past, (this latter option gives only two possibilities: either the island could reappear in the past around the same time that Adam and Eve lived and died, someone could leave the future/present island and find the original island that had been there in the past and become Adam and Eve that way, or the island could have gone so far back into the past that it never formed, but it was just always around from the future, all the DHARMA stations and ruins were destroyed, and the island's history had started completely over, with these people that would become Adam and Eve living the hundred of years until Adam and Eve died) we have to assume that Adam and Eve aren't time travelers unless there's some other way to time travel that we don't yet know about.
So what could they have been there for? It likely has to do with one of three things (it could even be two of the three). It could have been an early sign that the writers had already figured out some of the background of the natives on the island (and that there actually were natives), and that these two people were important enough to the natives to be laid to rest in these caves with the white and black stones that must apparently represent something to the natives. This could mean that the two were the leader of the others and his wife/her husband, or just two high-ranking members who died at about the same time (I'm leaning towards the former though, and come point three you'll see why). The second possibility is that it was the writers saying that they knew that more people had crashed on the island before even Rousseau. This seems unlikely to me, however, because I can't see how this would have been very important to the writers or the audience. It also wouldn't expla! in how both bodies came to be laying on the same slab of rock (unless one person laid down beside his/her dead partner until he/she died). The third option has to do with the couples' dates of death. Jack estimated that the couple had been dead between forty and fifty years due to the degradation of their clothes. That would put their death somewhere around the years 1954 to 1964 if Jack's estimate is correct. The Hostiles were still in control of the island. During this time Locke and Ben were born. We saw Richard come to a young Locke and test him with almost the same test that is administered to a person thought to contain the reincarnated soul of the Dalai Lama. Is it possible then that Richard thought that someone had (using the word lightly) "reincarnated" into John Locke? Seeing as how it was John's destiny to be the leader of the Others, I would say this is a very good possibility. So it is likely that the Hostiles' leader died around the same time that Locke was bo! rn, which was 1956, a date that fits right in where Jack's est! imate sp ans. If Adam was the leader of the Hostiles, then the writers certainly could have known some very important things that, by showing Adam and his wife/partner/friend/sister (whatever she is), it was showing that the writers knew about the Hostiles, and Adam's date of death suggests they might have known that Locke was to become the leader of these natives all along...
Of course Richard could never get to Locke, but eventually he would have much more to worry about than just one young boy. Soon his entire people would come under attack by a new arrival to the island known as the DHARMA Initiative...
Theory by Trs10882
What is the island?
If I'm just using evidence we have right now, however, and I'm not making any giant conclusive leaps that may be no where near the truth, I have to ask, "Can't it just be an island?" Obviously there are many things that make this island special, but could it be that this is just an island that happens to feature unique geologic phenomena that others have manipulated for their own reasons?
Let's look at what we know. The island features a number of unique properties. It has an extensive underground cave system which includes an ice cave that houses a pocket of "negatively charged exotic matter". It has a volcano (that may or may not be dormant). It produces an unusual amount of electromagnetic energy. How do these things add up? How do a volcano and ice cave fit together? What (if anything) does negatively charged exotic matter have to do with electromagnetic energy?"
A little research shows that ice caves can often form in extinct lava tubes. If you're not familiar with lava tubes, they are long cave-like channels through which lava used to flow but long ago cooled leaving the cave-like formation behind. Through various means such as cold traps, evaporative cooling, and others (wikipedia is definitely your friend here if you wish to research these more fully), these ancient lava tubes can transform into ice caves. If this is what we are being shown on the island, this must mean that the island's volcano went extinct a LONG time ago, giving at least one underground cave the time to freeze over into an ice cave. That seems to indicate that the volcano was largely responsible for the creation of the island. It erupted, building up the landmass that the Losties would crash on, the lava cooled leaving a labyrinthine system of caves below the island's surface, and at least one of these caves (one of the deepest ones) froze over.
So what does this cave that froze over have to do with exotic matter? If it wasn't for the Orchid Station orientation video, this would be a very hard question to answer. According to Edgar Halliwax, however, the island's properties created a "kind of Casimir effect". The actual Casimir effect has to do with uncharged magnetic plated being placed micrometers apart from each other in a vacuum which creates an attractive force. This region of "pseudo-negative pressure" is the exotic matter that is tapped into by DHARMA at a later time, but that's to be saved for the next entry in this series. However, Halliwax says that the island produces a "kind of" Casimir effect. This means that the effect produced by the island is similar in some way to the Casimir effect, but it doesn't match it exactly. Since we have seen that the area where the exotic matter is housed is behind a wall that has a thin, flat opening just wide enough for a wheel to be pushed through, I think it's likely t! hat this is our Casimir effect state. The two metal plates placed micrometers apart could very well be these two level slabs of rock placed so many centimeters apart. According to Halliwax, "the electromagnetic energy within the island can be highly volatile and unpredictable." Since Halliwax says this in the Orchid Orientation video, we have to assume that the electromagnetic energy must have something to do with the exotic matter. We have learned that the electromagnetic energy within the island is so powerful that it can bend the light all the way around the island in order to make it look invisible to anyone who is too far away from it (taking in mind Faraday's comment about how the light doesn't bend right on the island, and the real-life Michael Faraday who discovered that magnetism could bend and rotate rays of light), the island must be exuding a tremendous amount of electromagnetic energy. Since Halliwax seems to suggest that this energy is tied to the exotic matte! r, the only thing I can think of right now is that it is the s! heer vol ume of electromagnetic energy that is expanding the exotic matter and even causing it to project outwards around the island.
As we probably all know by now, exotic matter is what is theoretically needed to stabilize a wormhole to allow faster-than-light travel (which allows time travel). Because of the giant mass of electromagnetic energy multiplying the effects and range of the exotic matter, it appears that the island has accidentally created a time barrier around itself. Because of the nature of this barrier, entering from certain bearings will either send you forward in time, backwards in time, or not distort time at all. This would become very important when people began to come and go from the island often, but not so much at the point we are now. But then where did all of this electromagnetic energy come from to be able to project the effects of the exotic matter? There is certainly no clear answer for this just yet. However, we do have something to at least think about. Isaac of Uluru is a faith healer that uses "energy" from the earth to heal people. We have seen the island heal people as! well. It is likely that the source that Isaac gets his "power" from is somehow connected to where the island gets its from. According to Isaac, "There are certain places with great energy -- spots on the Earth like the one we're above now. Perhaps this energy is geological -- magnetic. Or perhaps it's something else." Yes, a little vague, but still food for thought. Is the island home to electromagnetism because of some geologic phenomena and no other reason? Since we know the island has moved in the past, did it somehow stick with the island despite its displacement from where it was originally formed? Still that phrase, "Or perhaps it's something else," leaves the door open to other possibilities. Was it simply destiny that made sure that the island would form over an area where it would have a large amount of electromagnetic energy within it? Did God put it there? Regardless of whether the answer has more to do with science or faith, we know that the source of all of th! is electromagnetic energy is somewhere underground. The writer! s and th e show have told and shown us this. So until we have reason to believe otherwise, we just have to chalk it up as the island having geologically produced electromagnetic energy within it for the same reason Ayers Rock in Uluru seems to have it.
So once again: volcano erupts and island forms, geologic anomaly produces a massive amount of electromagnetic energy that is stored within the island, magma still within the volcano cools leaving a deep underground system of caves, one of which freezes over, the shape of this cave and the properties of the island has allowed exotic matter to manifest itself here, and the electromagnetic energy continues by pushing the effects of the exotic matter out and around the island (while the electromagnetism bends light around the island rendering it invisible).
Where to next? How about one of the most popular questions in all of LOST: "What is the black smoke monster?"
And in the infamous words of Ben Linus, "I don't know." That's right, I don't have any solid answer for you, but I've got plenty of possibilities for you to mull over and decide for yourself. First of all, there are two things we know about the monster that are very important: 1) It can be summoned by doing something behind an ancient stone door that is covered in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and 2) It refuses to attack anyone who has taken shelter within the roots of the banyan tree.
Now lets take a moment to examine that first point. It can be controlled somehow? Well we don't know that for sure, but that seems to be the case. If Ben had just called the monster what would have stopped it from attacking Ben, Locke, and that group? How did it know to go straight for the mercenaries if Ben was just baiting it towards his house? Obviously Ben was somehow able to "tell" the monster to attack the mercenaries. After all, the monster is the island's security system, so it was doing its job, but it only managed to kill one of the mercs for some reason... (Perhaps it felt that it was wrong to kill without first analyzing and judging each of the men as it had done with Eko, and so it spared the lives of the majority of them, not having enough time to scan them all first?) Also, how did someone manage to implement such a thing that would give them some control over the monster? The only thing that makes sense to me is that the room to summon the monster was made at! around the same time as the monster if not even just before it. Is it possible then that these people created the monster? Well let's study these people for a moment and then return to the question at hand.
We know that somehow some very ancient people found the island. Perhaps they found it very shortly after the vocano erupted and the lava had cooled, so that the electromagnetic anomaly had yet to form, and the caves had not yet reached a formation that allowed the production of exotic matter. Perhaps they just found it by accident. We can still be fairly sure that they found the island earlier than the 1800s (this is because of the Black Rock, but we'll get into that in a little while). It also seems that the people were very religious (or at least traditionalist). They carved hieroglyphics in a number of places. They erected statues and temples, some of which are still standing on the island (we've seen Anthony Cooper tied to a giant column, and we've seen the four-toed statue; yes, the writers have said that the four-toed statue is from the past, so I'm willing to believe that these Egyptians (or at least these people that could draw hieroglyphics) are the ones who built i! t... probably in honor of one of their leader who only had four toes on one (or both) of his feet, but eventually something knocked down the majority of the statue). It is even possible that the Temple, mentioned by Ben in Seasons 3 and 4 is a sacred place built by these ancients for protection (there is a DHARMA logo marking the Temple on a map Ben had, but we don't know how DHARMA marked important locations like the four-toed statue that the ancients were responsible for building). Apparently, however, this protection wasn't enough. They had to bring the monster to the island.
This brings us to our second important point, the banyan tree conundrum. According to wikipedia the banyan tree is featured in a number of different mythologies and religions. In Hindu religion the banyan tree represents eternal life. In Hindu mythology the banyan tree is called the "wish-fulfilling tree". In Phillipine mythology the banyan is said to be the home of a variety of spirits and demon-like creatures. And in Guam it is believed the that spirits of a certain tribe's ancestors act as guardians to banyan trees. In case you haven't guessed it yet, you're getting a faith answer for the moment. Let's just assume for a moment that one of these is true. If the monster can't penetrate the roots of the tree because the tree represents eternal life, would that make the monster a physical embodiment of death? If it's because the tree is home to various spirits, would that make the monster a spirit as well that is simply weaker than the combined spirits that live in the trees?! (I kind of like this theory (though I don't really believe it) because it would explain why the monster always rips up trees in the jungle: it is trying to display its power over trees in order to scare off the spirits in the banyan trees, so it can overtake them.) If it's because there are guardian spirits watching over the trees, then again, perhaps the monster just can't break through. However, if it's because the tree can fulfill wishes, then that really doesn't tell us anything about the monster because anyone hiding in a banyan tree's roots are going to be wishing to be spared from the monster regardless of what it actually is.
The funny thing is that none of these explanations have anything to do with the Egyptians, yet it seems like the Egyptians that created the monster (or at least brought it to the island) in the first place. So perhaps the first group of people that came to the island were very racially and culturally diverse. If the monster isn't a manifestation of death, perhaps it is a mixture of spirits conjured by many different tribes and religions explaining why it is bound by two separate schools of thought (this may also explain why it can split itself up: it can split itself into a separate piece for each culture, and these pieces can join together to form the full monster at a later time). For some reason the island can project a person's thoughts and dreams into "reality", or some sort of physical means. So maybe the island's ability to do this (electromagnetic energy syncing with a person's mind and projecting it onto the plane of sight, sound, and feeling?) allowed for all of th! e cultures to imagine their protective spirit and have it become one real entity to protect their island.
However, maybe there is a scientific explanation for the monster. Unfortunately it would take way too much assuming for me to even begin to explore those answers at this point because we have to assume that the original island inhabitants managed to create the monster (or capture and transport it) using the limited technology that was available to them thousands of years ago (and managing to create something that flies, is able to uproot trees, is able to separate itself into many different parts, and scan a person's memories seems like a pretty difficult task given what they have to work with). There seems to be no scientific explanation at this point unless someone from the future somehow traveled back in time with outrageously advanced technology, met with the Egyptians and other cultures on the island, created the monster for them, and some how the monster was still bound by the Egyptian stone room and the banyan trees...
We truthfully don't know how long these ancients lived on the island, but we do know that at one point the people who were making the hieroglyphics found the ice cave deep within the island. There they installed a large wheel in between the two stone faces found in the cave. By turning the wheel, for whatever reason they did in the first place, be it for experimentation or because it needed to be done, the turning of the wheel stirred up the exotic matter in the pocket behind the wall. At that moment the exotic matter stabilized a wormhole to a random point in space and time, the island flew through it, and the island's inhabitants found themselves in an entirely different location and time. Of course they probably weren't the only ones surprised about where they were.
It was somewhere around the year 1845 and a ship that had set sail for a trading mission to the Kingdom of Siam suddenly found itself run aground... with no water as far as the eye could see. The most likely explanation for how the Black Rock ship managed to get so far inland is that the spacetime traveling island coincidentally ended up right where the Black Rock just happened to be at the time. However, even though we know the rough time (if we go by the dates in the show; the dates in the ARGs suggest a time in the 1880s), we can only narrow down the place to two. The ship left Portsmouth, England. According to the show, that was the last time anyone heard from the Black Rock again. Because the Black Rock was on its way to Thailand (the Kingdom of Siam), it could have been in the Atlantic Ocean or the Indian Ocean when it disappeared. Locke theorized that the skeletons chained up in the brig were those of slaves being transported from Mozambique (if this were true, they d! efinitley would have been in the Indian Ocean when they disappeared, but because England was still transporting slaves and convicts out of England as well, it is possible that the brig could have been full while the ship was still in the Atlantic, allowing it to have been there that the Black Rock met its fate. Despite where the ship and island were, be it in the Atlantic or Indian Ocean, we know there were survivors. The blast door map suggests that Magnus Hanso never left the island and was buried on it, but somehow the journal of the first mate (who may have been Magnus, it may have been someone else) somehow got off the island and was found seven years later by pirates. The journal eventually made its way into the hands of a Tovard Hanso. Given that it was seven years before the journal was found, it is likely that the journal was still being filled before it left the island. As such, Tovard Hanso likely got a very good idea of what the island was capable. A man named A! lvar Hanso would likely later use this information to search f! or the i sland and claim it as his own.
However there were still members of the Black Rock that likely survived, and it would seem that they eventually joined with the inhabitants that were already on the island. Did they immediately accept the Black Rock survivors into their midst? I would think that's unlikely, and Damon and Carlton have even suggested that the Hostiles may have been just one faction of the inhabitants of the island. It is possible that the "pure" and religious groups that had been on the island for so long were disgusted by these outsiders who loved violence and enslaved people. Maybe the original inhabitants kept to themselves in their temples and such while the pirates found shelter in the jungles.
Thus we have quite a population on this island. For nearly 100 years it would seem that no one else came to the island. And right around this time, one century later, a man and woman were laid to rest in an above-ground cave formation and two rocks were placed with them. These people would be later referred to as Adam and Eve by the Flight 815 survivors that found them, but according to the writers they were meant to tell us that they had something planned all along. This was also back when the writers were saying there was no time travel. Taking that into consideration, plus the fact that the only way to physically time travel right now back to the time of Adam and Eve is to either pass through the island's "time barrier" at the right bearings so that it sends you back in time around 50 years or so (and since the bearings only seem to warp time a few days at most, it would take many, many trips to go that far back in time), or be on the island some time in the future when t! he donkey wheel is turned and the island is sent back into the past, (this latter option gives only two possibilities: either the island could reappear in the past around the same time that Adam and Eve lived and died, someone could leave the future/present island and find the original island that had been there in the past and become Adam and Eve that way, or the island could have gone so far back into the past that it never formed, but it was just always around from the future, all the DHARMA stations and ruins were destroyed, and the island's history had started completely over, with these people that would become Adam and Eve living the hundred of years until Adam and Eve died) we have to assume that Adam and Eve aren't time travelers unless there's some other way to time travel that we don't yet know about.
So what could they have been there for? It likely has to do with one of three things (it could even be two of the three). It could have been an early sign that the writers had already figured out some of the background of the natives on the island (and that there actually were natives), and that these two people were important enough to the natives to be laid to rest in these caves with the white and black stones that must apparently represent something to the natives. This could mean that the two were the leader of the others and his wife/her husband, or just two high-ranking members who died at about the same time (I'm leaning towards the former though, and come point three you'll see why). The second possibility is that it was the writers saying that they knew that more people had crashed on the island before even Rousseau. This seems unlikely to me, however, because I can't see how this would have been very important to the writers or the audience. It also wouldn't expla! in how both bodies came to be laying on the same slab of rock (unless one person laid down beside his/her dead partner until he/she died). The third option has to do with the couples' dates of death. Jack estimated that the couple had been dead between forty and fifty years due to the degradation of their clothes. That would put their death somewhere around the years 1954 to 1964 if Jack's estimate is correct. The Hostiles were still in control of the island. During this time Locke and Ben were born. We saw Richard come to a young Locke and test him with almost the same test that is administered to a person thought to contain the reincarnated soul of the Dalai Lama. Is it possible then that Richard thought that someone had (using the word lightly) "reincarnated" into John Locke? Seeing as how it was John's destiny to be the leader of the Others, I would say this is a very good possibility. So it is likely that the Hostiles' leader died around the same time that Locke was bo! rn, which was 1956, a date that fits right in where Jack's est! imate sp ans. If Adam was the leader of the Hostiles, then the writers certainly could have known some very important things that, by showing Adam and his wife/partner/friend/sister (whatever she is), it was showing that the writers knew about the Hostiles, and Adam's date of death suggests they might have known that Locke was to become the leader of these natives all along...
Of course Richard could never get to Locke, but eventually he would have much more to worry about than just one young boy. Soon his entire people would come under attack by a new arrival to the island known as the DHARMA Initiative...
Theory by Trs10882
