I got into a hard dilemma while deciding wheter to post it either in "Characters, Plot and Themes" or "History, Locations and Artifacts" forum, but I finally made up my mind. I'm just hoping there's no trouble.
Well, yes, I got a theory about Demi-humans' origin. Yes, I've made a small search in the forums, read three or four threads and found nothing similar to this. Actually, everybody keeps talking about Dragonians and humans and Mystics in some kind of bizarre orgy and... ew! Not that I have anything against interracial relationships, but... argh!
Back to the point, I felt so confused and excited (like "OMG!IGOTATHEORY!OMG!") when I saw nobody speaking about it, because it seems almost simple and quite logic to me. I read only 3 or 4 topics, but I think it was enough to guess that no or few people must have spoken about something like that.
So, for a start, forget about Mystics and Dragonians. They are, by now, irrelevant. This theory implies that there's only one being responsible for the existence of all Demi-humans. The most valuable treasure, perceived by so many, yet reached by so few. The legendary relic known as both divine and monstrous. The one being that once sought to engulf the world! The evil progeny of Lavos! YES! THE FROZEN FLAME! MWAHUAHUAHUAHUAHUA
Didn't get it? Ok, follow my thought. Remember how and why Wazuki turned into Lynx, a human torn into a Demi-human.
He got inside Chronopolis when it was totally deactivated, due to Schala's storm. Since the facility had no energy, there were no barriers to refrain the Flame's power. Thus, when the fisherman got closer to the jewel, his body and mind suffered great changes (the changes weren't instantaneous, but that's irrelevant). His body changed into a shape of important meaning to him, a feline, due to the recent event involving the panther-demon. Presumably, some kind of radiation originated from the Flame caused such transformation.
The contact with the Flame also affected his mind's integrity, permitting FATE to gain its control afterwards. But that fact is also irrelevant to the theory.
Alright, so the Frozen Flame, when capable of using its unique habilities, can transform humans in humanoid animal shapes for which the transformed human has some strong sentiment. Keep that in mind!
My theory implies that the first Demi-humans were all originally humans, residents of Chronopolis affected by the Frozen Flame during the Time Crash.
As some random ghost in Chronopolis says, they would be releasing "the Flame's lock level to D" to study the counter-time effect or something. That experiment most probably caused the Time Crash. Lowering the Flame's lock level (which I understand as force fields or some kind of refraining system) let the jewel not only contact Lavos and move Chronopolis towards the past, but also liberate its strange mutating radiation over some unfortunate Chronopolitans. Or, maybe, releasing the lock level let the Flame liberate enough power to completely shut the whole Chronopolis down. With nothing impeding the rock's might, the consequences were the same as above.
No matter how long it took, the affected people transformed into new shapes which had some important meaning to them. Perhaps a young time traveling trainee girl had always loved fishes as pets and, thus, became a mermaid. Or some renowned physicist had this terrifying experience with pidgeons when he was a child and became a moaman. And the same happened to all the other affected ones.
After the Polis War and the creation of the archipelago, FATE erased the memories of all Chronopolitans (that includes the transformed ones) and sent them all to live among the surviving Dragonians. They must have received the name of "Demi-human" either before or after their minds got erased, but that doesn't seem to be a real matter. Although, we might have the exact explanation for that name if it was conceived before the erasure. The Chronopolitans would still be completely aware of those humanoids' origin, being them "almost human" or "not actual humans" anymore.
The lore of El Nido also keeps a few interesting information which might support this theory.
"Be very careful when
you stare into the flame...
For the flame will also
stare back at you...
It will either transform you
into a different being...
Or burn you into ashes."
"Transform you into a different being", it says. Since Wazuki was in fact transformed into a completely different being, that line might pretty well refer to previous transformations the spiky red relic caused centuries in the past.
In the end, Demi-humans would have nothing to do with Dragonians or Mystics, being just the products of an accident involving time traveling experiments and a sentient being whose existence goes beyond human capability of understanding the universe as it is (aka Frozen Flame).
All in all, I believe I have here quite a consistent, simple, logic and respectable theory. So, please, reply pointing all those inconsistent, illogic and disrespectable aspects so I can realize (not to say remember) how ignorant, despicable and humiliatable I am.
Thanks for the attention and for the patience while reading all this (or for just scroolling down to see the bottom of my post =D).