We talk about the Kaminoans, the architects of
the Grand Army of the Republic, a whole lot on this channel. They they put the “clone” in
“Clone Wars,” after all, and without them, the CIS would’ve steamrolled the Republic.
But as we’ve discussed in many past videos, the Kaminoans weren’t the nicest of
folk. They were brutal eugenicists, ruthless towards their creations and,
indeed, towards other species in general, which they saw as inferior. But, while we’re
certainly not here to defend the Kaminoans, there are reasons why their culture developed
the way it did. In this video, we’re going to be taking another look at the Kaminoans, and
how their species got a particularly nasty lot. Kamino, the Kaminoan homeworld, was located
outside the galaxy itself, suspended between the galaxy and Companion Aurek, a satellite
galaxy otherwise known as the Rishi Maze. It was about as obscure as a planet
could be, astrographically speaking; its star was pretty much drifting out on
its own on the edge of the Rishi Maze, not really part of any larger galaxy. As a result,
the Kaminoans had a rare chance to evolve and take to the stars without making contact with any other
sentient species. This was a blessing and a curse, however, as it also meant the Kaminoans
were on their own when catastrophe struck. The planet the Kaminoans evolved on was a far
cry from the Kamino we’re familiar with. It had a number of different climates, ranging from
shallow oceans to icy tundras to sprawling grass plains. The Kaminoans built their first
cities in Kamino’s lowlands, building first with stone and then with metal, constructing many
great shrines and monuments over the years. Kaminoan civilization thrived
as technology began to advance, and it seemed to the Kaminoans like their people
had a bright future. Then came the Great Flood. Kaminoan civilization developed during
a prolonged ice age, and in 19,000 BBY, that ice age came to an end. The climate of
Kamino changed drastically -- perhaps due to Kaminoan industrial activity -- and as a result,
all of the planet’s glaciers and ice caps melted. The atmosphere became much more turbulent, so that
torrential thunderstorms were the norm on Kamino. The oceans rose until the only land that
was left were a few scattered islands, the remains of what used to
be mighty mountain peaks. When the Great Flood began, the Kaminoans knew
they were screwed, and they knew that drastic measures would have to be taken to ensure their
species’ survival. They turned to science, pouring their energy into researching genetic engineering
and the art of cloning, which they hoped to use to preserve both Kamino’s native animal species
and themselves. As their old cities drowned, they built new stilted ones that would be safe from the
rising oceans, and started to move there en masse. Before long, the new stilt cities were the only
habitable places left on the entire planet. This quickly became a problem. The Kaminoans were
low on resources, and their population was much too large to support itself. They had managed
to preserve many of Kamino’s nonsentient species through cloning, but cloning was a time-consuming
process, and time was something the Kaminoans didn’t have. This was how the Kaminoans
became eugenicists. They tore apart their species’ genome, deciding which traits were
desirable for the species’ long-term survival and which were not. Those with desirable
traits were given preferential treatment, while those with undesirable traits were
pretty much left out to dry - or soak, rather. It took the Kaminoans thousands of years to
move past the challenge of the Great Flood, but eventually, their society did stabilize again.
They emerged from the disaster a changed people, however. Genetics became the centerpiece of their
society, culture, and even religious ideals. They became rigid perfectionists, especially
when it came to themselves and the species they were cloning. Gone were the days when
the Kaminoans would build great monuments in the valleys of their homeworld; after the Flood,
even their architecture became clinical and cold. Even Tipoca City, the greatest and
wealthiest of the Kaminoan stilt-cities, was minimalistic in design,
like one massive laboratory. Before long, Kaminoan genetic engineering stopped
being a matter of survival and started being an endless quest for genetic perfection.
They euthanized any members of their species with unusual genetic traits, such
as green eyes, and started experimenting on themselves to create individuals with special
beneficial traits. One Kaminoan, Kina Ha, was genetically modified to be able to live for
much longer than most members of her species; she ended up living for over three thousand years. Genetic traits determined Kaminoans’ social
status, with eye color becoming the determiner for the emerging castes of Kaminoan society. Kaminoans
with blue eyes became laborers, Kaminoans with yellow eyes handled skilled work, and Kaminoans
with gray eyes served as administrators. Genetic “perfection” became an almost religious
concept for the Kaminoans. They believed they represented the pinnacle of life, able to
rise above even the calamitous Great Flood and still thrive, but they always sought
to improve upon their species even further anyway. They feared and hated genetic
imperfections within their own species, some more than others. The most extreme members
of Kaminoan society, the Kaminoan ascetics, took this to an obsessive level, shunning
other, “less perfect” Kaminoans and routinely euthanizing clones they produced that weren’t
completely perfect according to their standards. Some curious aspects of the Kaminoans’
original society endured, however. They had a ritual dance called the Nahra, which
involved public displays of emotion, something the Kaminoans otherwise frowned upon. Additionally,
after the Kaminoan clone laboratories began to breed creatures capable of carrying them to the
seafloor, many Kaminoans made pilgrimages to the ruins of Derem City, the largest of Kamino’s old
cities. There, they would look around the ruins, contemplating existence and reflecting on
their lives and the survival of their species. Cloning, naturally, was an essential part of the
Kaminoans’ new way of life. It was their main source of food and other animal resources, and as
a result, the Kaminoans became quite good at it. Their cloning methods differed greatly from
the ones that were developed simultaneously in the galaxy at large; their quest for genetic
perfection led them to approach the cloning process slowly and carefully, valuing quality
in their products far more than quantity. They rarely sped up the development of their clones
by more than 50%, a rarity in the outside galaxy, and they often took the time to properly
socialize their creations as well. It’s unknown when visitors from the greater
galaxy first made contact with Kamino; it could have been as early as 15,000 BBY or as
late as 4000 BBY. What is known is that contact between the Kaminoans and the rest of the universe
was sparse right up until the start of the Clone Wars. This was mostly for two reasons. The first,
of course, was that Kamino was remote, and only a handful of beings in the Republic knew where it
was. The second, however, was that the Kaminoans were tremendously xenophobic. They saw all other
species as inferior, especially those that didn’t constantly strive towards genetic perfection.
Of course, in the interest of avoiding problems, they generally kept this perspective to themselves
when dealing with outsiders, who only ever saw the icy, clinical façades the Kaminoans hid
behind for most of their waking lives. Despite their disdain for other species, the
Kaminoans eventually started making clones for offworlders, albeit for hefty sums of money. Their
products included everything from armies of cloned berserkers to slaves intended to be worked to
death in the mines of Subterrel. Generally, the Kaminoans cared little for the fates of
their products; they were more interested in the process of creating a successful clone. The
ethical implications of creating living beings to sell as slaves didn't really occur to them;
they had been cloning for so long that they had lost the idea that treating sentients as property
was wrong, if they ever had it in the first place. Kamino’s proper introduction to the galaxy at
large came in 22 BBY, when the Kaminoan-made Grand Army of the Republic descended on Geonosis,
sparking the Clone Wars. By that point, Kaminoan society had been rather stable and
consistent for millennia, kept at a nice, even population of about one billion. But while
the Kaminoans had overcome the hardships of the original Great Flood, the effects the
Flood had on their culture persisted. They made their own lives hellish with their
ruthless perfectionism, and they coldly persecuted any Kaminoan with genetic oddities. They treated
each other horribly, and all things considered, it really should be no wonder that they
were just as terrible towards their clones. After all, if these self-obsessed perfectionists
didn’t even treat members of their own species with dignity, could they really be
expected to extend that courtesy to others? So, that’s why the lives of the Kaminoans sucked. But what do you think? Are there
other species you’d like us to look at the history and culture of? Feel free to
post your thoughts in the comments below.
