|
|
Humanoid
race native to planet Vulcan, of which Ambassador Spock is a member. Vulcans were once a passionate,
violent people whose civilization was torn by terrible wars. The ancient philosopher
Surak, revered as the father of Vulcan civilization, led his people some 2,000
years ago to reject their emotions in favor of a philosophy that embraced pure
logic. Vulcan society is now based entirely on logic and any trappings of emotion
are considered to be socially unacceptable. One group did not accept Surak's teachings
and instead left Vulcan to found the warrior Romulan Star Empire. In the distant past, Vulcans killed to
win their mates. Even in the present, Vulcans revert to ancient mating rituals,
apparently the price these people must pay for totally suppressing their natural
emotions. When Vulcan children are about seven, their parents select a future
mate, and the two children are joined in a ceremony that links them telepathically.
When the two children come of age, they are compelled to join together for the
marriage rituals. The time of mating, Pon farr, is when the stoically logical
Vulcans pay for their rigid control by experiencing a period of total emotional
abandon. In Vulcan adults, Pon farr comes every seven years. Because planet Vulcan
has a higher gravity than Earth, and its atmosphere is thinner, Vulcans in an
Earth-normal environment demonstrate greater physical strength and more acute
hearing than humans. The intensity of the Vulcan sun caused the Vulcans to evolve
a secondary eyelid to protect the retina. This inner eyelid involuntarily closes
when the eye is exposed to extremely intense light. Spock's inner eyelid protected him in 2267 against powerful
light used in an experiment to eradicate the Denevan neural parasite in 2267.
A Vulcan's heart is where a human's liver is. When injured, Vulcans concentrate
their strength, blood, and antibodies onto the injured organs in a type of self-induced
hypnosis. Certain elements of Vulcan prehistory suggest that the Vulcan race may
have originated with colonists from another planet, possibly humanoids from Sargon's
planet 500,000 years ago. Vulcans have telepathic capacity, as practiced in the
Vulcan mind-meld. Although the telepathic ability is quite limited, Spock once
felt the death screams of the 400 Vulcan crew members of the Starship Intrepid
across interstellar distances.
