The Dark Age of Technology saw the development of the first true human interstellar civilisation and the birth of a united stellar confederation centred on the human homeworld of Terra. Even tens of millennia later, Mankind has not been able to equal or regain its former height of achievement attained in this era. This age occurred long before the current Age of the Imperium and knowledge of this time period is now incredibly sparse. Many "facts" about the Age of Technology are no more than legend. Although a "golden age" for humanity in terms of scientific achievement, because of the catastrophic effects of the following Age of Strife in which so many of the technologies developed in this era were used to cause massive destruction and suffering on countless human-settled worlds, Mankind has since come to regard advanced scientific knowledge as an abhorrent and dangerous commodity. The lost Age of Technology is thus considered "dark" in the Imperium's current era because of the dangers it unleashed. It is also considered a Dark Age in the minds of the Priests of the Ecclesiarchy because Mankind in the Age of Technology had come to worship science as its god, and the God-Emperor had not yet revealed Himself as the saviour of humanity.
The Stellar Exodusis the name given by savants to the historical period that was defined by humanity's earliest interstellar colonisation of other worlds beyond the Sol System, actually starting in many cases in the millennia before the Age of Technology officially began in the 15th Millennium AD. Humanity initially established colonies within Terra's solar system. Spacecraft were still only capable of sub-light speeds at this time. Voyages beyond the Sol System took generations and the colonies that were established by the so-called "Long March" sub-light starships were effectively isolated from each other and from Terra. These Long March vessels established many of the colonies later called Knight Worlds as they carried the designs of the combat walkers called Knights that were used by the early colonists for both defence and labour. Interstellar trade was therefore severely restricted. This forced the individual colonised star systems to be completely self-sufficient in all of their vital requirements (food, medicine, technology, etc.) and allowed them to develop distinctive languages and cultures.
The truestart of the Age of Technology was marked by the development of the Warp-Drive and the Gellar Field sometime around the 18th Millennium A.D., allowing human spacecraft to make short jumps through the recently discovered extradimensional realm known as the Immaterium, or "the Warp," traveling vast interstellar distances in a relatively short amount of time. Though such vessels could now jump multiple light years, the many dangers inherent in the Warp meant that journeys could still take several standard years and many vessels never arrived at their destinations at all. Slowly, through many disasters, Humanity learned to use the Warp to make faster than light journeys out of their own star system. The Warp-Drive's development greatly accelerated the human colonisation of the Milky Way Galaxy, and for the first time allowed interstellar trade and communications between the far-flung extrasolar human colonies and the homeworld of Mankind, Terra. Also, during this time, the first sentient alien races were encountered by Mankind's explorers and colonists.
The secondvital development of the Age of Technology was the creation of the psychic Navigator Gene by unknown parties (many Imperial savants see the Emperor's hand at work in the discovery) and the resulting birth of the mutant Navigators, mildly psychic humans with a "third eye" of extrasensory perception who could see into the maddening currents of the Warp and navigate a course through them for human faster-than-light starships. This allowed human spacecraft to make longer and more accurate Warp jumps than previously possible when relying wholly upon a computer for navigation in the chaotic realm of the Immaterium. Navigator families, initially controlled by industrial and trade cartels, had become individual forces in their own right by the 19th Millennium. By the 20th Millennium, Humanity had proliferated and settled many of the countless star systems of the galaxy. It was a golden age for scientific achievement; technology provided all the answers. Thinking machines aided civilian and military production, allowing enormous labours to be accomplished at a frenetic pace.
Of major importance to the era and humanity in general during the Age of Technology was the invention of the Standard Template Construct (STC) database system. These highly advanced computer databases allowed human colonies to maintain an advanced technological level. The STCs contained all human scientific and technological knowledge of the era and provided the instructions required to build anything the colonists might need. As most colonists lived relatively simple lives and required only basic equipment and machines, the more advanced technology available in a full STC was rarely utilised. The resulting exploration of the galaxy brought Mankind new knowledge, wealth and arrogance. Science is said to have become humanity's new god in this time, replacing in importance all of the previous human religions. Perfection of the Standard Template Construct (STC) system permitted an explosion of colonisation that reached the furthest limits of the galaxy. This was the zenith of technological development and knowledge-sharing, for even the most far-flung colony had access to the entire inventory of human invention. Humanity encountered several intelligent alien races during their expansion out into the galaxy, such as the Aeldari and the warlike Orks. With these discoveries began, in time, the first human-xenos wars. With Mankind at the height of its power, the threat of aliens was viewed as trivial and eventually non-aggression pacts were signed between Terra, its colonies and many of the alien races. For the rest of the age, Mankind spread across the stars, becoming widely dispersed and divergent. Evidence exists of many wars, but none that threatened the stability of human space. Amongst the surviving records are lists of xenos enemies that have long since gone extinct, along with more familiar names such as Aeldari and Orks.
During this time period, interplanetary trade was established and great fleets carried goods to and from the ends of the galaxy. As planets became overpopulated, the recently invented construction mediums of plasteel, plascrete, ferrocrete and rockcrete were used to build colossal cities, which became the proto-hive cities. At this time, after the discovery of Warp-Drive allowed interstellar transportation, commerce and communications to develop, the human colonies were politically united with Terra in some form of federated interstellar government, thus allowing the human race to remain unified and powerful. The form and nature of this unified government remains unknown in the remaining records. It was during the Age of Technology that psykers were first scientifically verified to exist at some point in historical records towards the end of the 22nd Millennium, making a sudden appearance on almost every human world within a relatively short span of time. It was only then that psykers were a confirmed phenomenon, after long millennia of legend, rumour and pseudoscience in which the scientific establishment simply could not prove the existence of psychic powers among humans. It is, however, unexplained how these early human psykers avoided the danger of daemonic possession for thousands of standard years, which would have led to the destruction of entire worlds as later happened during the Age of Strife. Whether daemons and the Ruinous Powers were less prevalent or potent in the Warp in this time before Slaanesh's birth is unknown. Where at first the gift of the psychic mutation was limited to only a few individuals in every human population (who often fell victim to superstitious suppression), towards the end of the Age of Technology, psykers suddenly began appearing in unusually great numbers, on every human world. On the more progressive and technologically-advanced human colonies, these psykers -- at least until the threat of daemonic possession became apparent -- were protected by law and allowed to develop and explore their abilities. On other, less sophisticated human worlds, they were often killed in literal witch-hunts and anti-psyker pogroms.
One of the reasons humanity was so successful at conquering a large part of the galaxy during this era was the development of the artificially intelligent humanoid constructs now only known in fragmentary pre-Imperial records as the Men of Iron and the Men of Stone. These powerful and fully autonomous intelligent robots intended for both labour and combat won many wars for humanity, but for some unknown reason turned against their masters at the end of the Dark Age of Technology and unleashed a terrible war upon the human worlds. During this ancient conflict, remembered only as the "Cybernetic Revolt," both sides unleashed fearsome weapons of advanced technology. These included the mechanivores, massive thinking machines capable of lifting entire continents and ripping open chasms on planetary surfaces that extended down to the world's core. The mechanivores could even absorb space-time itself as a form of data. Among the other terrible weapons of mass destruction unleashed at this time were the serpentine machines called "sun-snuffers" that uncoiled into great structures in the void larger than the rings of Saturn and were designed to devour the stars themselves. And perhaps the most ubiquitous and dangerous of the weapons of this terrible war were the omniphages, swarms of intelligent, microscopic nano-machines that could consume everything across the surface of a world in only solar hours. The Cybernetic Revolt was eventually won by an alliance of galactic powers, some of whom may not have been human, but at a terrible cost. The damage to interstellar human society was catastrophic and shattered much of humanity's hard-won economic strength and political unity, lay the foundation for the later collapse caused by the onset of the Age of Strife. It is as a result of this ancient war that it is now considered one of the greatest crimes in Imperial space to develop an artificially intelligent thinking machine, an "Abominable Intelligence," or Silica Animus. The widespread fear and revulsion towards artificial general intelligence amongst the worlds of Mankind in the wake of the terrible conflict with the Men of Iron led to the development of the first Servitors at the end of this period. Servitors were cybernetic servants lacking true sentience created from the bodies of condemned criminals or lobotomised, vat-grown humanoids whose bodies and brains were partially replaced with machine systems.
This Golden Agefor humanity would not last. Warp travel became increasingly difficult and ultimately impossible due to the great Immaterium Warp Storms that would herald the violent birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh and the Fall of the Aeldari that began in the 25th Millennium. The economy of the human federation had already been damaged by the terrible wars against the Men of Iron, and the growing frequency and extent of the Warp Storms caused trade and communication between the human colonies to collapse, restoring the isolation of human-settled planets and star systems. Within this relative isolation Abhumans, new human mutant subspecies like the Ogryns, Ratlings, and Squats, adapted to their environments and developed on several planets in the galaxy. In this situation, certain high population worlds like Terra that relied heavily on trade with the rest of humanity were suddenly unable to feed their enormous populations. Hunger and starvation followed. Those human psykers who had recently developed their powers were relatively weak and inexperienced, and at constant risk of possession by daemons and other Warp entities after the great Warp Storms began. The sudden impossibility of Warp travel meant that the once-unified interstellar human federation broke apart into completely isolated star systems and worlds. Daemonic possession, widespread insanity and isolation led to inter-human conflict, utter anarchy and the regression of most human civilisations into barbarism. The 5,000 Terran years following the end of the Dark Age of Technology are thus aptly named the Age of Strife by the savants of the Imperium of Man.
-Adeptus Titanicus (1st Edition), "The Collegia Titanica," pg. 6
-Codex: Chaos Knights (8th Edition), pp. 14-23
-Codex Imperialis (2nd Edition), pg. 42
-Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook (5th Edition), pg. 122
-Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook (8th Edition), pp. 40-41
-Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook (6th Edition), pg. 167
-Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (1st Edition), pp. 132, 150, 219
-White Dwarf 178 (UK), "The Titan Legions" by Rick Priestley
-Galaxy In Flames (Novel) by Ben Counter, pp. 280, 410
-Space Hulk (1993 Video Game)
-Space Hulk (2013 Video Game)
-Perpetual (Audio Book) by Dan Abnett