i'd thought about something along these lines too... what if the events of the collapse aren't exactly as we were told...after the collapse, human civilization went down the shitter, and most of our historical records were lost. WE know what earth was like before the golden age, because we're living in that period now, but our guardian wouldn't know anything past "well, i'm told up until a little while ago, i was dead, and now i'm not, and i can't remember shit" now...obviously, something of humanity survived, and there may have even been an original speaker.... given what we know of humanity TODAY(and it has been stated in multiple places, most notably, the opening cinematic, that the traveler first arrived in the sol system very close to our present day), it's not unreasonable to assume that some sort of global cult, or religious movement would have sprang up, with the traveler as it's deity, or object of worship...similar to how the unitologists of the dead space series worship the marker... if such a thing happened, i imagine they would have had a figure in their order, similar to the Catholicism's pope...i imagine the speaker would fill that roll handily. so...let's run down real quick what we have so far: traveler shows up near to present day(perhaps between 1-3 decades from 2014), it changes everything...lengthens the human lifespan, endows us with technology we can't come close to today, and turns earth into a genuine utopia...this gives us what we need to expand to other worlds in the system(partly due to the traveler having made them habitable). the traveler is seen as a worker of miracles by many, and a religious movement is founded, based around the traveler. a prominent figure in this movement, perhaps even it's leader, is a figure known as "The speaker". the collapse happens at some point....we don't know for sure how long the golden age actually lasted, or how it actually ended...we don't know what brought on the collapse, all we know is what the speaker has told us, and what the people in the tower believe. i think when the collapse happened, the speaker at that time survived. i think a large number of adherents to the traveler cult/religion survived...i think we might be the victims of revisionist history. our worlds were destroyed, our history lost. it's not insane to think that perhaps through the ages, generations of speakers have rewritten history, to suit their purposes....never let a good crisis go to waste, right? another thing that supports what you've (bird of ares) said is something i heard Eva Levante say when i walked up to her last night...she said something like "i'm still not used to guardians walking around the tower, like they're.....regular people".....well shit, eva...wtf's THAT supposed to mean? yes, we're brought back from the dead...the traveler was capable, apparently, of some REALLY amazing things....why not the ability to resurrect the dead, like some kind of crazy space jesus?...and the ghosts are literally of the traveler, acting as it's agents.....so yeah, we're resurrected corpses...but we're still alive, so why would she think we're not normal people?