Human (Earth-8756)

Humans (Latin Homo sapiens sapiens, meaning "man who knows of his knowledge"), also known as Hamanune (plural Hamanush) by the forerunners, are a sapient race of species native to Earth. Members of the primate family, they are the only remaining species of the once diverse genus of multiple human species. Humans, like most Covenant species, are bipedal and four-limbed, enabling their movement on two legs and use of arms and hands to manipulate objects. Having a mysterious connection, seemingly that of creation, to the forerunners, humans were given the roles of Reclaimers by the ancient, extinct species, in order to inherit their Mantle. Humans would start to rise 100,000 years later, inventing space-travel in the mid-20th century and colonizing space for the next hundreds of years. After the Interplanetary War, humanity became divided under either the United Nations or  the Chinese/Asian Nations Cooperative. A century later, with the discovery of slipspace and the creation of the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine, humans expanded beyond the Sol system and spread through the Orion Arm.

With the development of civilization through space, came political and social uneasiness, which gave rise to the numerous Insurrectionist movements and the Insurrection, with many of the UN's Outer Colonies actively seeking to secede from the government. While the war claimed the lives of millions, a more dangerous threat came in 2552, with the arrival of the alien hegemony known as the Covenant, starting the Human-Covenant War, a religious crusade against humanity which caused billions of casualties on both sides and drove humans to near-extinction, something only averted with the discovery of Installation 04, leading to the Great Schism, where the sangheili, one of the Covenant's species, were betrayed and allied with humanity to save the galaxy from the Covenant and the xenomorphs.