Note:  Long-time TREK participants may skip this message.  You've heard
me rant before.
 AP> On , Brian Chang wrote to EUGENE TANG :
 BC>> Are the Vulcans and the Romulans originally from the same race.  I was
 BC>> reading that Romulans are really Vulcans that rejected peacful
 BC>> philosophy and fled to Romulus and Remus (the twin
 BC>> homeworlds)
 AP> Yes, they were from a common race.  They left Vulcan because they did 
ot
 AP> accept the logical values that other vulcans did.
This is what we thought for a long time, but the TNG two-part episode
Gambit changed our understanding quite a bit.
It turns out that the followers of Surak were using a weapon called the
"Stone of Gol" which amplified and reflected violent emotions back at
the person experiencing those emotions, generally killing them.
The Surakians were engaged in a crusade as aggressive as anything ever
conducted by Christianity to convert Vulcan to Logic.  Their (somewhat
stilted) logic told them that people must convert or die.  The Romulans,
as a result, left in order to save their lives.  In Gambit, we saw that
a faction of Vulcans was still alive in the current Federation era,
willing to use the Stone of Gol to kill in order to reach its societal
goals.
Later Vulcans were rather embarrassed by the brutal crusade of the early
Surakians, and cleansed their history books of all references to it,
which is why Spock had no clue that the Rolumans were Vulcan offshoots,
when he first encountered them in Balance of Terror.
Most fans tend to scoff at this interpretation, because of long-held
ivory tower views of the Vulcans.  The story of Vulcan history made
clear by Gambit, however, is that the Romulans were the victims of
persecution, and fled Vulcan to save their lives.  Is it any wonder that
they are hostile to the descendants of their persecutors?
--- GEcho 1.00
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