Earth's late-20th century genetic engineering produced a breed of superior people, eventually resulting in the devastating Eugenics Wars. The conflict's roots lie in the attempt of a group of scientists' ambitious attempt to improve the human race through selective breeding and genetic engineering. A race of supermen, populary known as Augments, was created, being stronger, faster and more intelligent than normal humans.

Rising to power among others of his kind, the Indian prince Khan Noonien Singh's ambition helped forment the Eugenics Wars that involved much of Earth's third world.

Hostilities brook out in 1993, when Khan and his forces seized control of fourty Earth nations. By 1996, Khan ruled a quarter of the planet from the Near to the Far East. As western military forced attacked Khan's empire, terribly wars ensued, both between the west and the Augments, as well as between rival supermen. Entire populations were bombed out of existence, while hostilities spread as far as northern Africa. In late 1996, Khan's empire - the last of the Augments' nations to fall - was defeated by combined western military forces. Thousands of Augment embryos were placed in cryogenic suspension, while over eighty of the tyrants were unaccounted for; a fact the western governments succesfully hid from the general population in order to avoid the outbreak of widespread panic. It was not until 2267 that Khan and his followers were discovered adrift in a sleeper ship, apparently having succesfully fled the planet shortly after the eugenics conflict.

Sources for this information include TOS: "Space Seed", ENT: "Hatchery", ENT: "Borderland", ENT: "Cold Station 12" and ENT: "The Augments".