Time is a Corkscrew by Palirath

The Lost island is stuck in a loop. There, I said it! After many seasons of being anti-loop. But this is not your daddy's loop... it's a Mayan loop.

Have you ever heard the famous quote from Winston Churchill, "Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." Well, the Mayans made this into a kind of religion. They believed that all human events were cyclical. So if there was a famine this year that caused starvation, then after time time the wheel of time could turn and bring the famine again.

How does this fit into the big picture of Lost? The easiest way to introduce it is to start at the end. Listen to the following conversation between Jacob and the Man in Black (MIB) from The Incident, part 1:

JACOB: I take it you're here 'cause of the ship.
MIB: I am. How did they find the Island?
JACOB: You'll have to ask 'em when they get here.
MIB: I don't have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren't you?
JACOB: You are wrong.
MIB: Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.
JACOB: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.

So, whatever Jacob is trying to prove, this is not the first time he has tried it. In fact it seems that it has gone on long enough for MIB to want to kill Jacob just to stop it.

My thought is that the cycle of the island is that different groups of people have been landing on the island for centuries (maybe forever) and having experiences that parallel what our favorite beachcombers have been enduring over the past 5 seasons.

So, the corkscrew "starts" with the Black Rock and crew landing/crashing on the island. They meet up with a native population that is hostile to them. They begin to sense odd things about the island. They capture the leader of the natives... you see where this is going... and eventually the crew of the Black Rock take over leadership of the Island, becoming the new natives. After some time, another ship is spotted on the horizon, and the natives fight off the newcomers to save the island...

This cyclical idea is pretty much nailed when Hawking reveals that Locke's body must be aboard Ajira flight 316. In her little office in the Lamppost station, she tells Jack, "he [Locke's body] is going to help you get back. John is going to be a proxy. A substitute... You need to, as best you can, recreate the conditions of the original flight, which is why you need to give John something of your father's. You have to get something that belonged to your father, and you need to give it to John."

There is a pretty good list of the various proxies/parallels between Oceanic 815 and Ajira 316 over at lostpedia (http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Proxy).

The fact that conditions need to be recreated to re-enter the island points to the cyclical nature of island events. We currently know of several modes of groups that entered the island: the Black Rock, the American army/science team that bought Jughead, the DHARMA submarine, the French science team, Desmond's yacht, Oceanic 815, the freighter Kahana, and Ajira 315.

We already know that Ajira 315 is a "copy" Oceanic 815, and I am willing to bet (regardless of the silly plot I outlined above) that the Kahana is a "copy" of the Black Rock. For the obvious reason that both are boats and both were packed with explosives.

So, this is a mildly satisfying theory with pretty good evidence. It explains why there is such a confluence of events on the island, since the island only lets you enter under a very narrow set of circumstances, blah, blah, blah... What use is it?

1)it does not require a time loop! That makes me very happy.
2) it might allow us to predict some events if we ever get to see the Jughead team or the Black Rock team in one of Richard's flashes.
3) it could explain how Jacob could know the course of future events without having to have god-like powers. He has seen the same handful of scenarios play out soooo many times before. Personally I do not care if he does, but it is very important for some that he doesn't...

Let's expand on (2). If I am right and the Kahana is a "copy" of the Black Rock, then there will be a military team on the boat that will terrorize the natives. Also a woman will commit suicide by wrapping an anchor chain around herself and jumping in the ocean. The boat will be on a secret mission (which is why the "slave ship" didn't seem to be carrying any slaves).

And in any case, the people who think that the writers have planted clues in the show all along will be very happy.