Does anyone know who the first Jedi or Sith was? I've been thinking about who actually started it. Jedi or Sith?
Was it just a skill that turned into a religion and power?
Any information would be useful.
:atat:

Well, the Sith were Jedi who decided to go to Korriban and have the primitive Sith worship them. Eventually Sith also became the name of the Dark Jedi being worshipped. I think that was between 5,000 years B.B.Y. and 10,000 years B.B.Y. More closer to 5,000 years I think.

I dunno about Jedi, but they had at least been around since 20,000 years B.B.Y.

Note: B.B.Y. stands for Before the Battle of Yavin. A.B.Y. stands for After the Battle of Yavin.

The Jedi were indeed an order that rose from philosophers. Specifically, the Force was discovered on a wide scale shortly after the formation of the first Republic, some 25,000 years BBY. The order was at first dedicated to discovering, from a philosophical and scientific perspective, the nature of the Force. Over time, the group learned to manipulate it, eventually gaining greater and greater control over it.

The Jedi only became an order of "Knights" per se much later. It had clearly happened by 5000 years BBY, at which point, the Sith order (the first, order, that is) arose and started a great war. In reality, those Sith were not fallen Jedi, but a species of beings on a world distant from the Republic, intermarried with fallen Jedi.

Another order, tied to the first but not actually it, arose near 4000 BBY and, led by men such as Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma, ravaged the Republic, even attacking Coruscant.

Finally, a third order arose somewhere between 2000 and 1000 years BBY, consisting of a fallen Jedi imitating the older orders; it culminated in another great battle with Jedi, the Battle of Ruusan; only one Sith Lord survived (Darth Bane) who founded the modern order of Sith (with one master, one apprentice), leading eventually to Darth Sidious and Darth Vader.

If you want more detail than that, check out TimeTales over at TheForce.net or Nathan Butler's Star Wars Timeline Gold. The Completely Unofficial Star Wars Encyclopedia would also be a good resource.

" Although the modern era of the Sith is attributed to Darth Bane, and the Dark Jedi that preceded him, the cult can find its roots further back in the galaxy's ancient past. Long before the Republic rose, there lived a culture on the planet Korriban. These primitive people were called the Sith, and the Force flowed strongly through their bloodlines. Although they didn't practice the Force as the Jedi would, they were talented in their own brand of magic.

In the early days of the Jedi, a great schism tore the order apart. Jedi who had tapped the forbidden power of the Force's dark side rebelled against their light-sided brothers. After a terrible war, the Dark Jedi were exiled from the Republic. Past the Republic's growing borders, these castaways discovered Korriban and the Sith people.

Powerful with the dark side, the Jedi outcasts set themselves up as gods on Korriban. The primitive Sith worshipped them as their lords, and so the Jedi grew, and built temples and monuments to celebrate their power. Millennia of interbreeding blurred the distinction between Sith native and offworlder, and the term Sith came to encompass not only the indigenous people of Korriban, but also the powerful overlords that ruled them.

Five thousand years ago, during the Sith Empire's golden age, a Republic explorer vessel stumbled upon the secluded worlds of the Sith. One Sith Lord, Naga Sadow, saw this as an opportunity to invade the Republic, and exact vengeance on the Jedi who had banished them. History would record the invasion that followed as the Great Hyperspace War, and it would be the first of many terrible conflicts between Jedi and Sith.

Time and again the Sith and Jedi would clash, with devastated worlds lying in their wake. The last great conflict took place on the scarred plains of Ruusan. The Sith Lord Kaan and his Brotherhood of Darkness did battle with the Jedi Army of Light. From this onslaught, one Sith escaped: Darth Bane. It was he who would resurrect the order with duplicity and secrecy in mind."

http://www.starwars.com/databank/organization/thesith/?id=eu)

You can never get any closer to official EU information than Starwars.com... Well, most of the time. ;)

I'm curious but did Lucas come up with all of this himself or did a group or a single writer create this and Lucas merely approved of it?

Most likely, he just authorized LF/LL/Whichever LucasCompany to go ahead with it, and writers came up with this stuff. Georgie doesn't like the EU much.

But some of us do at the least, because EU is, well, literally what it says it is! It's an expansion of the stories told by George Lucas (Episodes 1-6), it allows us to see what's been curiously kept in the dark that was mentioned in the movie, or was in-between, or maybe it's a story after Episode 6, or before Episode 1 we like reading on, like when maybe Luke was starting his Jedi Academy, or when Qui-Gon was finishing up his padawanship, or when Exar Kun ruled.
The basic point is that we like EU because it's more SW-based stories for us that we get exited about, that we'd gladly read. Take Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy for example.