Prologue

It was in the Earth year of 2002 that the Galactian Prime managed to finally pick up a small unmanned spacecraft that they had known about the existence of for a while but had been waiting for it to stop transmitting its every observation back to Earth so they could easily pick it up without alerting the Humans, Earth's inhabitants who had sent out the spacecraft, to their presence. The craft was within the Sol system, although it had been given a route which would eventually take it out of their star system, and was taken to the Galactic Centre for examination to see whether this craft was a way of the Humans trying to establish contact with the Galactian Prime.
What they found was far stranger then they expected. Whilst other species had sent out messages saying things such as 'If you're out there, we're here.' or even 'Hi.', on this spacecraft there was a plaque which wasn't exactly saying ‘We’re here!’ but did announce the presence of the Humans, even including a very explicit image of human anatomy, in a rather confusing way and sparked many debates between the member species’ delegates for accepting new species. First, in the top left corner, there was a drawing of two circles connected by a line. On the leftmost circle was a line with a circle inside the circle, and on the righter of the two was a line with a circle outside the circle.
This wasn't the explicit bit but rather one of the most confusing bits, as 14 Earth years on this still hasn’t been decoded, but there are many theories, many of which end with scientists pondering 'What the fuck is wrong with humans?' and 'Why the fuck didn't the Humans just broadcast a message like every other species in the galaxy except for the Bierrberies and Napaki.' (Who would have sent out a broadcasted message if they hadn't been two of the founding species). This is thought to maybe be Earth and its moon, Luna, or maybe even the star Sol and Earth (this being less accepted due to the diagram at the bottom of the plaque) and a few xenocryptologists suggested it might be the hyperfine transition of hydrogen but, like most things xenocryptologists say, they were ignored. No one else could come to a consensus on what it represents.
The other non-decoded part is understood to be a map with directions to the Sol system, however, the Humans decided that a simple diagram of the Milky Way from above with a circle saying 'Here!' was too difficult, as was a broadcasting saying the whereabouts in the Orion spur you could find the green-blue planet and therefore drew a load of lines, seemingly just to confuse not only the everlasting fuck, but the everlasting shit, and hell out of everyone. As for what they centre on, no one knows if it is the Galactic Centre or Sol, though most people say it’s Sol, which doesn't explain the long line and led many council members to quit their jobs in frustration. As for the lines, it is thought that they may be black holes of a sort or, more likely, stars. If so, the way Humans write the name of stars in their chosen language is very odd. Who calls a star, or even a black hole for that matter ‘I-II--I--II--I-I-III-II-IIII’? Humans.
By far the easiest parts to understand are the huge drawing of the spaceship that the Human plaque was found on and a diagram of Sol and 9 of its 13 planets, assuming Humans use the standard planet definition of ‘Gravitationally rounded object in orbit around a star.’ and have discovered all of their star systems planets. It also shows a simplified version of the craft’s programmed journey out of the star system and into interstellar space. Of course, it never finished this, but who cares? Maybe the citizens of Earth, probably not most of them though, definitely not the Galactian Prime, who have, despite the people of Earth not knowing it, taken this one Human spacecraft further than anyone could ever have thought it would travel. It’s also much more alarming that there’s a language on Earth where Earth is spelt ‘II-I-’.
In front of the ship stand two stark naked Humans. Although many ‘primate’ species prefer to wear clothes and therefore this was seen as explicit there are many others, mostly not 'primates' though, who don’t and therefore the Humans nudist culture shouldn’t be viewed as too weird if and when they join, hopefully. At least not by the non-primates. The two had different body parts and shapes, indicating the presence of gender, with a smaller gender with longer hair which was skinnier and a taller gender with shorter hair which wasn’t as skinny. Said taller gender had some sort of sack on their lower body, which might make this the female and the sack the place where she stores her eggs. This would be similar to other species such as the Trastask, although they do like their clothes.
This was, after 7 Earth years of trying to interpret the rest of the plaque, interpreted in the Earth year of 2009 after many arguments about the Human body, such as whether the arm is permanently in that position or, as it was later decided, not. Immediate reactions to this decision about the arm were that the species was sexist for making the female raise her hand in greeting, doing all the work whilst the male just sits back with his hip at an angle in some cultures and in others for the female being the only one greeting people, whilst the male isn’t allowed to greet anyone. After dealing with these accusations, mostly from men who were complaining that 'radical' women might think that, a group of councillors decided to close down all complaints.
Of course, it took another couple of Earth years to do that and then, after which it was decided that they probably wanted to show how their arms move, not make a gesture and have everyone told that firstly, putting words in people's mouths is wrong and causes arguments and secondly, any complaint which contained the words 'sexist' or 'sexism' would lead to a complaint against the person sending in the complaints, carry out a debate on why they chose a 2-letter language when the ship itself had ‘Pioneer XI’ written on its side in another Human language, especially when a 26-letter language is much more effective at writing than one with only 2 letters and the 26-letter one is used more often.