Vulcans didn't just happen to be in the Solar system when the first warp drive was activated, they had a permanent presence to study human development. This resulted in a cultual feedback loop, where studying the development of a younger civilization lead to new insights in Vulcan logic and spiritualism. The Romulan split happened because a group of Vulcans were fed up with what they viewed as "navel gazing nerd-shit" and, ironically, started a colony that ended up looking more like infant Humanity than Vulcan ever did.
In the Rihannsu novels that we going to be canonised if enterprise had got another season, the Vulcans didnt have ftl due to being in more or less a state of constant nuclear war.
When Surak unified Vulcan after an Orion Pirates invasion, his student broke with him over the destruction of Vulcan culture he was proposing and instead decided to control Vulcan behaviour with rituals and a rigid social structure.
They then piled into slower than light starships and spent a century losing most of their ships before landing and recommencing slightly less nuclear war.
They got ftl after a United Earth ship got too close.
The Vulcans settled down and developed ftl the normal way.
Vulcans didn't just happen to be in the Solar system when the first warp drive was activated, they had a permanent presence to study human development. This resulted in a cultual feedback loop, where studying the development of a younger civilization lead to new insights in Vulcan logic and spiritualism. The Romulan split happened because a group of Vulcans were fed up with what they viewed as "navel gazing nerd-shit" and, ironically, started a colony that ended up looking more like infant Humanity than Vulcan ever did.
Really like to imagine a lost scene in tos of a Romulan being like "I'm over this navel gazing nerd-shit!"
In the Rihannsu novels that we going to be canonised if enterprise had got another season, the Vulcans didnt have ftl due to being in more or less a state of constant nuclear war.
When Surak unified Vulcan after an Orion Pirates invasion, his student broke with him over the destruction of Vulcan culture he was proposing and instead decided to control Vulcan behaviour with rituals and a rigid social structure.
They then piled into slower than light starships and spent a century losing most of their ships before landing and recommencing slightly less nuclear war.
They got ftl after a United Earth ship got too close.
The Vulcans settled down and developed ftl the normal way.