Humanity
Humanity first drew interest from the galactic community in the year 484 CE, when the Knights of Cybertron discovered Earth (though independent cybertronian explorers may have made contact with humanity long before then). Over the next thousand years or so, Ancient Cybertron maintained a mostly covert presence among human civilizations all over the world, sworn not to interfere with their natural evolution. Despite this, however, there is evidence to suggest that ancient humans the world over were occasionally aware of their extraterrestrial observers, and that exchanges of culture took place sporadically over the centuries. Many minor deities, monsters, and local folktales may in fact be misremembered encounters between ancient humans and cybertronians.
The ancient cybertronians wrote highly of humans, in spite of the brutality and many atrocities they must have witnessed as they studied them. Whatever their primitive or violent nature, the ancients seemed to find in humanity a kindred spirit: they were both young species then, with much to learn about themselves and the universe, but they had the potential to become something greater with time. Mystics wrote of shared destinies and intertwined fates, though these prophecies seemed to be dashed as the Knights of Cybertron left Earth to fight in the War of the Primes in 1530. By 1947, cybertron and humanity were entirely isolated from each other, and would not meet again until the year 1984. Thirty-seven years may have been no time at all for a species as long-lived as cybertronians, but much had changed on Earth by then.
Humanity and Cybertron, both now aware of each other’s existence, became fast allies. While the Imperium of Cybertron was still reluctant to meddle in human affairs, they nonetheless had a profound impact on human civilization. The realization that there was an entire community of other intelligent species out in the cosmos inspired humans to do away with their old international grudges and ideological conflicts. The Cold War came to a swift end in 1986, and a kind of world peace was achieved as the human race devoted itself to raising quality of life for all peoples, developing sustainable technologies, and furthering space exploration. Humanity developed transwarp technology in 2007, and expansion into the solar system and beyond began in earnest shortly after.
By 2121, humanity had organized itself under the banner of the United Human Polities, an international government made to present a unified front to the rest of the galactic community while preserving human civilization’s many national and cultural identities. Nations now laid claim not just to land on Earth, but to entire star systems as well. Over the ages, though, these identities have changed greatly. Cultures have diffused or merged to form new societies that are at once vaguely familiar and largely unrecognizable to the 21st Century observer. The UHP was inducted into the Federation of Allied Species in 3359 after their heroic actions in the Fourth Quintesson War, and later came to the Autobots’ aid in the war against the Decepticons. When the Allied Species moved to exile Cybertron after the Great War, the UHP was the lone dissenting vote. It was after this that the long era of peace between humans began to come apart, with multiple interstellar conflicts culminating in the Final War in 11992907.
No-one can be sure when exactly the Final War started, who started it, or why, but it swept through human space like a wildfire, and the fighting was no more intense than in the Sol system. The urban sprawls of the Kuiper and asteroid belts were reduced to rubble, cities on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter were raized, Mars’s ecosystem was so thoroughly ravaged that the planet essentially returned to its ancient pre-terraforming state, and Earth was consumed by a nanotech weapon called the Red Plague. Earth’s destruction heralded the end of the war: united in mourning the loss of humanity’s homeworld, the surviving nations allied against the Red Plague’s creators, the Orion Technoarchy, and thoroughly obliterated them. These nations then declared to never again take up arms against each other, and began the arduous task of rebuilding the UHP.
Roughly 15000 years later, humanity has largely recovered from the Final War. The resettlement of the Sol system is well underway, and true to their ancestor’s word, armed conflict has not occurred since between nations. When the New Imperium of Cybertron returned from exile in 120002917, the UHP was more than eager to renew the bonds of fellowship between them and their oldest friends. Today, humans and cybertronians are each other’s most steadfast allies and greatest advocates.
Humans are the most genetically and phenotypically diverse organic species known to exist in the Milky Way galaxy, so any attempt at a uniform description should best be kept somewhat vague. It can be said that humans greatly resemble nebulons in their size and shape, though with greater muscle mass and bone density, on average, and without the technicolor skin tones. Humans and nebulons are, in fact, almost eerily similar anatomically and physiologically- human-nebulon couples can even produce healthy, but sterile offspring. Human values and beliefs are also difficult to generalize, what with their insistence on maintaining several distinct cultural identities. Perhaps it could be said, then, that humans place great importance on self-determination, and celebrate diversity while at the same time valuing commonality as a foundation for relationships- whether those relationships be personal, diplomatic, or otherwise.