: I have to point this out again, but regardless what Contact Harvest and other
: lines of dialogue that hinted to humans being Forerunners, the Halo 3
: Terminals and the Halo 3 Cradle of Life comic contradicted the whole
: plotline that Humans = Forerunners. While I do agree Contact Harvest
: contradicts it aswell as 343i's statements before the Forerunner trilogy
: of novels, the fact is Bungie's own canon contradicts that and supports
: 343i's canon decisions. Bungie's tier of canon dictated that in-game canon
: took priority over the novels, therefore with that logic the Halo 3
: Terminals > Contact Harvest. If Bungie was so for it, they should have
: enforced it but instead did the opposite.

: Other than that though I agree with alot of your points, though looking at
: Destiny I can't see Halo being anymore relevant than it is now, at the
: very least things are improving and hopefully 343i continues to improve.

Having now taken the time to re-read Cradle of Life (which I probably haven't seen since 2007), I can safely say that I have no idea how you are reaching the conclusion you have reached. This N'Challa guy simply observes the Strato-Sentinels, which he apparently considers to be gods of some kind. He does not see an actual Forerunner in the flesh, only their machines (and as far as we're aware of, in Bungie-era Halo lore the Librarian was the only actual Forerunner at Earth). Ergo, Cradle of Life says absolutely nothing about the nature of Forerunners as a species, only that a primitive human on Earth witnessed Strato-Sentinels building what is presumably the Ark portal, and that he believed what he witnessed was a divine occurrence.

As for the Halo 3 Terminals, the Librarian makes the following remarks:

"I'm trapped. On a beautiful, empty world. Its inhabitants have been safely indexed, every single one of them. They're special - well worth the effort it took to build one final gateway, even at this late hour." - Terminal #4

"Did I tell you? I built a garden. The earth is so rich. A seed falls and a tree sprouts or a flower blooms. There's so much... potential. We knew this was a special place because of them, but unless you've been here, you can't know." - Terminal #6

The Librarian merely remarks that there's something special about humans, but doesn't specify what that special something is. It could be anything. Perhaps finding a biologically similar species, one that could be your own progenitor species. While Bungie only made a passing mention of the Precursors in Halo 3's material (and indeed they never mentioned them in future material), the Bestiarum refers to them as a "Tier Zero" species, and states that "they can travel intergalactically and accelerate evolution of intelligent life." It's entirely possible that the Forerunners were an artificially-evolved population of humans transplanted from Earth to elsewhere by the Precursors. At least that was a possibility before 343i's alterations and additions to the canon. In any case, the Halo 3 Terminals neither confirm nor deny any biological link between Forerunners and humans.

However, both Guilty Spark and Mendicant Bias, through all their various commentary, did essentially confirm that humans and Forerunners were one and the same. If Spark didn't make it clear enough, Bias made it pretty explicit by calling us his makers and masters.

Bungie never fleshed out the Forerunners like 343i did, and they only ever made a passing mention of the Precursors, and they may have intended for them to remain largely a mystery, but one thing that Halo CE, Halo 3, and Contact Harvest, taken together, made clear is that, yes, Forerunners were humans. 343i either failed to take note of those revelations or simply didn't think they were conducive to the kinds of stories they wanted, and thus we have the Forerunners being a separate species that originated on another planet millions of years before humans did. Humans are now merely who the Precursors, and later the Librarian and her allies, chose to be the Reclaimers, the inheritors of the Mantle. And Sparky is now a former human himself.