David then drugs Shaw with the intention of having her put her into cryosleep until the ship returns to Earth.
The image of a Xenomorph on the wall of a room inside the structure on LV-223 suggests that the birth of The Deacon at the end of the film is not the very first Xenomorph. Engineers stand 8-9 feet tall and, like humans, breathe oxygen. Vickers herself spells it out when she says to Weyland: "A king has his reign, and then he dies.
While Shaw tries to find out why the Engineers -- in human terms, "hate" -- mankind, the truth is that humans may simply not matter enough to deserve such a strong word.
The crew return to the Engineer structure to try and locate two missing crewmates. "For the generations to come, if any of your descendants is ceremonially unclean and yet comes near the sacred offerings that the Israelites consecrate to the Lord, that person must be cut off from my presence. They pass through the Engineer ship's cargo bay in which are stored thousands of canisters of pathogen.
Cavalorn writes, “So, we know something about the Engineers, a founding principle laid down in the very first scene: acceptance of death, up to and including self-sacrifice, is right and proper in the creation of life. The follow up plan to destroy life on Earth is because the Engineers did not want it there in the first place. Shaw managed to escape from the Engineer and revealed the alien's intention to Captain Janek who commanded the Prometheus. Once there, and in severe pain as the creature tries to exit her body, she performs surgery on herself. to the room with the black substance, the body is dated as being around 2,000 years old. With Shaw still on the planet, the remaining crew of the Prometheus sacrifice themselves to prevent the Engineer ship's departure from LV-223, jettisoning the vessel's lifeboat for Shaw to use, before ramming the Engineer ship at full thrust, causing the alien craft to fall back to the planet. This could be the impetus for the Engineers' decision to disavow and possibly eradicate mankind. David does not share his discovery with any of the crew. Upon reaching the bridge, David wakes the surviving Engineer and attempts to speak to it. While doing so, the android David discovers a vessel within. Giger, shows that the "trunk" is supposed to be an air hose and there is a helmet surrounding the Jockey's head. This is also supported by the fact that soft tissue such as elephant trunks do not fossilize. Together they activate the other ship which is last seen powering away from the planet. The very quest by Weyland to set out to "talk to the gods" and gain the selfish knowledge about prolonging his own life could suggest to the Engineers that man is no longer content with his place in the chain. This Engineer was chosen by the elders of his race to serve as a sacrifice in the process of seeding Earth.
On primordial Earth, a lone "Approximately 2,000 years prior to the Prometheus expedition to In 2089, archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway discover 35,000-year old cave paintings on the Isle of Skye on Earth depicting a tall figure pointing to a series of stars. Their eyes are said to be "dead seeming", with pupils shaped like oblong crosses.
Along with Scott's quote, this could suggest that mankind's Fall from Grace occurred when the Engineers tried to intervene when mankind was led astray two millennia ago.
The Engineer's immediate reaction was to resume the mission to deliver the black substance to Earth and "reset" man's evolution to maintain the Engineer's status as the unchallenged rulers of the cosmos.