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When Cooper and Murph mention the gravitational anomalies that led them to NASA’s site, the NASA explains that they have observed similar anomalies for 50 years, presumably originating from the creators of the wormhole.

Later, in the tesseract, Cooper assumes that they aren’t able to communicate via gravitation, and that’s why they built the tesseract in a way that can be grasped by Cooper, so that he is able to communicate. We see that he only manipulates Murph’s room and her watch.

If they really aren’t capable of communicating via gravitation, who or what was responsible for 50 years of gravitational anomalies (except for Murph’s room and the watch)? And what was their purpose? Were these messages?

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    It's entirely possible that other tesseracts were created somewhere else or other experiments that the future humans were doing that created the anomalies. However these attempts did not yield the desired results, until the tesseract that Coop used were created. I think at this point, it's basically up to your imagination since there is no details about it in the movie. I have this memory where I thought they said the other anomalies is the wormhole but I can't really be sure.
    – Huangism
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 18:22

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I think it's that they can make gravitational anomalies, but their minds are too alien to do anything specific with them. They probably have difficulty even understanding a purely three-dimensional existence, so while they could write something in the sand or send radio waves, they can't understand basic language.

It's like if you were trying to send a message to an ant. You know it won't understand writing, they would only understand ant pheromones (I think that's how it works, anyway). Any message you tried to send would be completely alien. It may well be that the gravitational anomalies were attempts at communication that are lost on us.

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    So you disagree with Cooper's assessment that they are actually we in the future?
    – Lexible
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 17:37
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    @Lexible: We in the insanely distant future. They might as well not be us; they merely came from us. They're obviously way beyond the ability for direct communication with their long-lost primitive ancestors.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 22:06
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    To put it another way, imagine if you're trying to communicate with someone who was born blind, deaf, and mute, and has no concept of a written language...and you need to communicate to them what the sky looks like at sunset. The gap in language and sensory data would be so different that communication would be nearly impossible. Now, imagine that they even perceive cause and effect backwards, and they can only feel the warmth of your breath, not the touch of your hand, and the difficulty with communication grows exponentially.
    – Liesmith
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 23:57
  • @Liesmith I understood your point the first time. My point is that you may be confusing the interface with the nature of the intelligence. For example what appears to be "Whoa spooky multidimensional handshake from an alien intelligence!" is actually just Cooper shaking hands. Similarly they might be from Murph's grandchildrens' generation, and they look way abstreuse from the other side of time, space, and the tesseract, but really, the abstreuse is just the interface through dimensions, not actually a major difference in intelligence.
    – Lexible
    Commented Nov 27, 2014 at 6:37
  • @Lexible, yes, actually. I think it causes a paradox and there's no real evidence to believe they're related to us in any way. But as Lightness said, it would make no difference either way as they're so alien to have no resemblance to us whatsoever.
    – PointlessSpike
    Commented Nov 27, 2014 at 9:05
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I understood it as Cooper's own attempts at locating the proper time when he could communicate with Murph, while he was trapped in the tesseract. It was him "flipping" through the different time periods, some going too far back and some a bit ahead, that caused the anomalies.

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The anomalies previous to that (created by future us, not "them") will have been first attempts to communicate. They could also have been unsuccessful first small tests (future "we" might still be good old typical "we" in a sense that those evolved people might still need a few first tests, not necessarily all succesful, before a procedure works...) The anomalies occured before the worm hole showed up. (Just like if a friend of yours would be living in a 2D world and a line there needs a swirl for a certain reason visible only from your 3D perspective, then when you draw the swirl on the 2D paper and it's messed-up, you draw it again, regardless if you're 3D and have a super futuristic looking pen - the swirl was too small, you do that again.)

Plus, you write: "Later, in the tesseract, Cooper assumes that they aren’t able to communicate via gravitation, and that’s why they built the tesseract in a way that can be grasped by Cooper, so that he is able to communicate." - AFAIU, their actual problem is that they just don't know how exactly to communicate in a way that could be understood in our 3D-world in that time.
He says, they have access to infinite time and infinite space, they just don't know where to dock on as they have no own emotional connection to their ancestors (and honestly - how much emotionally connected do you feel to a mesolithic skeleton). Remember they just built the tesseract. A tesseract, no more no less. The rooms, the exact moments are "found" by cooper (there is a line where he expresses that, he talks about finding a certain time... he finds the dusty room right when - after morsing "STAY" - he realises that he must indeed find the NASA facility to be able to communicate the data). Like if using a formula, the formula creating -a- tesseract that can contain infinite times of a certain space, and the emotionally bound person being the one that can fit in the values.

His exact words are: "They have access to infinite time and space, but they're not bound by anything! They can't find a specific place in time! They can't communicate." - I don't read the "They can't communicate" as that they can't communicate at all but the communication with us [for direct submitting of the missing data for example, by the future "we"] does not work as they can't dock on in specific times and spaces due to the missing "quantifiable" emotional connection. (Although I'd be very interested in learning details from Coop how exactly he "quantifies" his love for Murph on Sunday in relation to his love for Murph on Saturday but let's just leave it at that.) In order to submit the data you need to know which data (TARS has them, gladly, but without him? Which exact data did these ancestors need, how to know after so many evolutions?), and even when you have that - communicate with whom? Cooper says "they chose her", but where? Where between those integrally "infinite" moments of her life, which of those infinite spaces to choose? And what language to use? C#? Google translate? Smoke signals? And who should translate them, how after so many evolutions? I don't see an impossibility of communication at all, just the missing means to communicate with pre-evolved minds in a 3d world of that time.

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The concept in the movie of "they" was confused in the first until the movie reaches the end and Cooper says that it is 'us' from future and its quite evident because a person from earth knows better that their generation will be the last one to survive on earth and obviously he will try to save all humanity on earth, if there wasn't a wormhole humans couldn't enter in to another Galaxy, just like all what was done to make Cooper to move through the space, was also a gravitational anamoly like falling of the books, falling of the dust and shaking hand in the space with brand, so at that time when people couldn't understand it, that was so alien for them, but then we know all the way long it was cooper a being from 3d world who seems so alien at a particular time for the people of the earth , the same goes for placing of wormhole and tesserect both of which is a gravitational anamoly made by humans from the future who wanted to save humanity of earth.

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