The Borg were a pseudo-race of cybernetic beings, or cyborgs, from the Delta Quadrant. No single individual truly existed within the Borg Collective (with the possible sole exception of the Borg Queen), as all Borg were linked into a hive mind. Their ultimate goal was the attainment of 'perfection' through the forcible assimilation of diverse sentient species, technologies, and knowledge. As a result, the Borg were among the most powerful and feared powers in the galaxy, without really being a true race at all.
The precise origins of the Borg are unclear. As of 1484 they were reported as controlling only a handful of systems in the Delta Quadrant, but by 2373 they had assimilated thousands of worlds. In addition to this stronghold in the Delta Quadrant, the Borg also dispatched vessels throughout the galaxy via transwarp conduits.
By the 2350s rumors of an alien race called "The Borg" had reached the Alpha Quadrant, inspiring exobiologists Magnus and Erin Hansen to set out in search of them. Their research took them all the way to the Delta Quadrant before they were assimilated in 2356. Borg activity in the Alpha Quadrant went undetected until a series of unexplained attacks along the Romulan Neutral Zone in 2364. The Collective's true nature was finally revealed to the Federation in 2365 when Q took the USS Enterprise-D to meet a Borg cube near the J-25 system.
In late 2366 a Borg cube invaded Federation space and assimilated Jean-Luc Picard, whose tactical information contributed, along with the Borg's own vastly superior power, to Starfleet's disastrously one-sided battle with the cube, called the Battle of Wolf 359. A fleet of forty starships assembled to combat the cube, and 39 of those ships were completely destroyed, with the cube emerging damaged but healing rapidly. The Enterprise-D recovered Picard and used his connection to the hive-mind to disable the cube before it could attack Earth.
Intelligence provided by Erika Hernandez during in the Borg Invasion of 2381 suggest the Borg have a definite point of origin from a crashed and temporally-displaced Caeliar cityship, Mantilis, in 4527 BC. However there has also been evidence of Borg activity much earlier, such as the assimilation of the Hirogen homeworld around 110,000 BC, and possible Borg-Preserver conflicts dating back billions of years.
To explain these contradictory accounts of Borg activity, and multiple known accounts of the creation of the Borg, some have speculated that the Borg are not merely a single evolution but, like the recurring humanoid form in the galaxy, something that has developed time and again in the galaxy. The Borg, or something akin to them, have evolved and re-evolved, possibly assimilating the latest iteration of their form as each new type of Borg is spawned. It has also be suggested Borg activity has occurred in waves; with Borg expanding into the galaxy, assimilating most of it, and then entering periods of hibernation as a new set of civilizations forms in the Borg's wake ready for future assimilation. Thus the Borg have been active in the galaxy for billions of years, but have also arisen multiple times, and coalesced into the Borg Collective known in the 24th century.
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