Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-5.65.81.205-20131020155613/@comment-6078851-20140513003934

the original shaman of earth did indeed pool their collective souls. because they practised soul-reincarnation they started to notice that their souls were being consumed during the transition between death and rebirth (i assume this is when the chaos gods were named as 'the ruinous powers'), and so they tried to prevent this by combining their souls into a single being - the emperor. this was in 8000 b.c.

as for the gods needing the attention and/or worship of mortals: khorne gets most of his power from killing so no worship required, nurgle gets most of his power from suffering so no worship required, slaanesh gets his/her power from excessive indulgence and while he/she probably likes a bit of worship more than the others it's not strictly necassary, and tzeentch gets his power from....actually i'm not sure, but it's probable that he also doesn't need worship. obviously they are all worshipped and they all benefit from it but they don't actually need it.

there might not be much human records of daemonic activity before the fall of the eldar but remember that the other 3 had existed as major powers for, at least, tens of thousands of years, probably hundreds of thousands of years, and possibly even millions.