Dark Age of Technology
"In ancient times, men built wonders, laid claim to the stars and sought to better themselves for the good of all. But we are much wiser now."
- – Archmagos Ultima Cryol - Speculations On Pre-Imperial History
"The Day Science begin to study non-physical phenomena, It will make more progress in one decade than in all previous centuries of its existence"
- – Nikola Tesla
The Dark Age of Technology (or just the Age of Technology) was a period of history before the Imperium of Man, where human civilization flourished and spread throughout the stars. It takes place shortly after the discovery of the Warp-drive and the Navigator gene.
Thanks to the discovery of the Warp drive technology, Geller Fields allowing for Warp travel (alongside the heavily implied "design" of the Navigator sub-species. There are several hints throughout the books that they did not evolve "naturally") and the Standard Template Constructs, humanity was able to spread far and wide, settling millions of planets and driving out the xenos-civilizations that came before them. The result was akin to a golden age for humanity, with technological marvels (beyond even the Adeptus Mechanicus's ability to recreate comprehend) being constructed, and laws of physics being re-written.
The Age of Technology ironically ended because humanity had become too dependent on their technology and on Warp travel. They lost the former with the rebellion of the Men of Iron, and the latter as the increasing emergence of psykers and the uncontrolled release of their powers (as they did not know how, making them either convenient entry points for daemon invasions or making them power-hungry, possibly Chaos corrupted slaver-kings), and Eldar partying too hard caused Warp storms. Enslaver plagues due to the increasing number of Human psykers and the resulting (aforementioned) close encounters of the daemonic kind on various populated human worlds as well as spacecraft (think "Event Horizon") throughout the galaxy did the rest. With humanity severly set back by these events, the aliens that had been thought to have been driven off or who would have lived under the benevolent care of the human empire came back / rebelled for that sweet sweet vengeance. Thus, humanity fell into a period that would later be known as the Age of Strife. Interestingly the emergence of psykers in human strangely coincides with the gestation of Slaanesh.
The "Dark" in "Dark Age of Technology" is kind of misleading as it implies that technology is evuuul. In truth though, it is mainly called that as, after the Age of Strife, the wars of the Great Crusade, the Horus Heresy, and then the long millennia of the Age of the Imperium almost no records remain of this age anymore. In essence, it is termed "dark" because huanity basically knows next to nothing about this period anymore, and the closest thing we can know about how Humanity lived during this Age was the Interex, a civilization that was more advanced than the Imperials, but was unfortunately wiped out by the Luna Wolves, who were manipulated by Erebus. It is also called a "Dark Age" because it was a spiritual dark age compared to the "glorious modern age", because humanity used to worship science (which may or may not have caused the birth of the Omnissiah), rather than the God-Emperor of Mankind. The irony of this is lost on every human in the setting. The only remnants of the technological wonders of that age (called "archeotechnology" or "archeotech," which the Adeptus Mechanicus furiously seeks), are the STC, which could be the Imperium's salvation. Others, like the Men of Iron, are best left alone (or better yet, destroyed). Pfft... good luck getting a tech-priest to not poke around the possibly-dangerous ancient technology, though.
Highlights of the technology that has been hinted at canonically include still-pristine warships with bridges made of solid light, something equivalent to time-weapons, and a cloud of sentient nano-machines that can kill you by making your blood explode. Dark Age of humanity wasn't nothin' to fuck with.
TL;DR: It's basically Star Trek meets Atlantis.
List of reasons why the Dark Age was kickass
A.K.A. why the Emperor is kind of a failure.
Canon
- Widespread immunity to all diseases and poisons (The Panacea).
- Far more widespread use of anti-gravity.
- Teleportation.
- Guns that can travel their ammo back in time so they can hit their target with 105% accuracy and shoot blackholes.
- Robots with the strength of Space Marines that numbered in levels close to the Imperial Guard.
- On a similar note, Sentient AI's. Or close enough to it to be highly capable but not close enough to be people.
- Imperator Titans were practically universal in most planets' PDF.
- Average humans performing really hazardous duty like deep space mining or maintenance of a voidship's plasma coils had access to Terminator armour. Well, not exactly Terminator armour as the Space Marines use; but those incredibly durable exoskeletons-cum-spacesuit that were used by civilians while performing their day job back later served as the template from which Terminator armour was developed by the AdMech. After they recovered a bunch of them during the Great Crusade, they only had to add auto-senses, black carapace interfaces and whatchamallicks to allow a Space Marine to use the suit like a regular set of Power Armour.
- Weapons that could shoot enemy ships in the middle of a warp jump.
- Something like DC Comics' Nth Metal made by Human technology (invented after Psychic Powers are scientifically proven to exist after being used as the poster boy of IRL pseudoscience)
/tg/
A basic Fanon timeline of the Dark Age of Technology http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/155-homebrew-40k-fluff/211473-fanon-history-dark-age-technology.html#post2375305