Twelve Colonies

Twelve Colonies

The Twelve Colonies of Man or Twelve Colonies of Kobol are fictional locations that constitute the principal human civilization in the original Battlestar Galactica television series, the "reimagined" series of the same name in 2004, and in the prequel series, Caprica, and Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome. The names of the tribes and the planets they lived on were borrowed from the Zodiac.

The Twelve Colonies were established by tribes who left their homeworld Kobol, the alleged birthplace of humanity. There were at one time thirteen tribes, but one went to a planet called Earth. In the 1978 series, the thirteenth tribe were humans but in the reimagined series the thirteenth tribe were biological Cylons. The humans of the Twelve Colonies (around 28.5 billion according to the official map released) were virtually exterminated by the Cylons on the onset of both series, called the Second Cylon War. Fewer than 60,000 survivors managed to escape in a small collection of civilian spacecraft that survived the Cylon invasion, guarded by the Battlestar Galactica. The concept of twelve colonies alludes to the Twelve Tribes of Israel.