- You may also be looking for the Preservers or the Progenitors.
An ancient humanoid in a recorded greeting.
The ancient humanoids are one of the oldest sentient species and possibly the first humanoid race to evolve in the Milky Way Galaxy. They flourished some 4.5 billion years ago and explored the galaxy, but found no other lifeforms like themselves.
Knowing that the lifespan of a single species was finite, they seeded the primordial environments of many planets, including Earth, Cardassia Prime, Indri VIII, Loren III, Qo'noS, Ruah IV, Vilmor II, and Vulcan, with DNA fragments that would direct the evolution of life on that planet towards a form similar to their own. These fragments of DNA also contained parts of a computer program containing a message from an ancient humanoid explaining its race and their actions. It was hoped that their descendant species would come together in the spirit of cooperation in order to assemble the program.
In the 2360s, the noted Federation archaeologist Professor Richard Galen discovered the existence of the program and began collecting the genetic samples. However, the Klingons and Cardassians also learned of the program and sent expeditions of their own to assemble it, each believing it to contain a great technological advance, while the Romulans observed all of them under cloak. After Galen's death, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise-D was able to convince the Klingons and the Cardassians to cooperate with them to finish the program.
The last part of the program was obtained on Vilmor II, and the message was played to the assembled members of each present party. The Klingons and Cardassians rejected the message due to their own prejudices, but the Romulan commander later expressed to Picard in confidence that perhaps their races were not as different as they had before believed. (TNG: "The Chase")
Background
It is possible that most or all of the humanoid species encountered in the galaxy could have a common ancestry to this species, as the extent of the seeded planets may extend throughout the four quadrants. Though the program was assembled from planets in a relatively small area of space, the program fragments may have been duplicated in other regions as insurance against premature extinctions.
The ancient humanoid in the recorded message was played by Salome Jens, who later played the Female Changeling on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.