History
On Earth, the Elder Things built huge cities, both underwater and on dry land. They may be responsible for the appearance of the first life-forms on Earth, including the entity known as Ubbo-Sathla (although sources differ in this regard). They created the shoggoths to be their all-purpose slave race. Eventually, however, the shoggoths rebelled—an event that hastened the decline and ultimate collapse of their civilization. Although the Elder Things managed to initially subdue the Shoggoths after their attempted rebellion, the Shoggoths continued to improve physiologically; increasing in intelligence and developing the capacity to live on land.
The Elder Things are known to have warred against the star-spawn of Cthulhu, the Great Race of Yith, and the Mi-go. Despite these conflicts, it was the gradual cooling of the planet during the last ice age that spelled their doom. Retreating to their undersea cities deep in the ocean, they would thereafter have no further dealings with the outer world. Their last surface city, located on a high plateau in the Antarctic, remains frozen in ice. The ruins of this city were discovered in 1931 by two members of an Antarctic expedition from Miskatonic University.
The last known, and most significant undersea city, located directly beneath the Elder Thing's ultimate surface city in the Antarctic, was apparently overpowered by the Shoggoths. The Elder Things described in the story At the Mountains of Madness were killed by a Shoggoth whilst attempting to find a means to enter the subterranean ocean in the Antarctic, apparently unaware of the collapse of their ancestors' city.
Read more about this topic: Elder Thing
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“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
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—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)