From the introduction:
Eight ages have come before us.
Each lasted more than a millenia and each have risen to heights beyond our comprehension.
Worlds that have traveled the stars and danced in its all-consuming vastness; worlds that have transcended the need for physical bodies and embraced the autonomous wonder of machines; worlds that have ventured beyond our planar existence and communed with eldritch gods; worlds that have faded from time itself from either failure, success, or a mystery that would never be solved.
Eight ages have come before us, and we build a Ninth World upon their bones.
Numenera is a setting that exists in a future so far flung from ours that the people live in the remnants of space ships, war machines, and ruins dedicated to alien pantheons, but know nothing of their purpose or what they truly are.
Some call the technology magic. Others worship it like deities. But most use the remnants of the past to survive. Salvaging what they can to build a future for themselves and their community in a world that is just as dangerous as it is beautiful.