i know you love bamber best, but i'd vote for helo first.
i agree that the hybrid isn't one of the 12. my thoughts are that perhaps the 5 missing ones are ones that turned against the cylons and living either alone or among the humans. perhaps the capsule thing was designed by them. Although i rather doubt that. i think it was left by the 13th colony.
but i also see where logic is going that how can a map of earth have been on kobal if they hadn't been there yet? so i'm not sure where it went or where they started from.

i'm just confused i guess. lol this is where the suspense is a good thing! lol
I was thinking that either the other 5 are just single models, i.e. there are only one of each of them. That's why they're not talked about, for security. Or they're mistakes. Errors. Cylons that turned out wrong, or maybe a little unpredictable, i.e. baltar?
I definately think the capsule was not cylon in origin, it's tied to the 13th colony.
I guess a lot of people here never played
Homeworld, but here's a quick storyline for it. While it's obviously not identical to BSG, it's similar (after all some of the same people who made the origional BSG worked on the game). There are definately some clues we might draw from it.
The story starts out on a planet called Kharak with a group of humans called the Kushan. They discover an ancient starship buried in the sand of the great desert on their world. Inside the ship is a stone monument, in the center is etched a map of the galaxy, showing the location of their world, and a line drawn to another world on the other side of the galaxy. Above the other world is written a word in their language that is older than any of their clans, Hiigara, which translates to "Our Home."
Throught their history, they had never known quite where they came from, many beleived they didn't originate on Kharak. So all the clans united, and built a great spaceship, or mothership, to seek out the planet described on the guidestone. It took them about 100 years to make the ship, and on it's maiden test flight to the outskirts of their solar system they were attacked. Upon jumping back to Kharak, the returned in time to see it set ablaze and utterly destroyed by an unknown force.
The mothership rescued those people it could, and it was decided there was nothing left for them there, thus they jumped away and began their long journey to Hiigara. Along the way they are constanly attacked by people called the Taidan, the people they learn are responsible for the destruction of their world.
To keep this long story short, they come to find out that their people once lived on Hiigara. And from their were the leaders of a vast civilization amoungst the stars. Until the Taidan rebelled against the Hiigarans and destroyed them. Through bitter pleas and negotiation, the Taidan agreed to spare the lives of the few hundred thousand remaining Hiigarans, but banashed them from their homeworld for all of eternity. They were given a pittiful fleet of ships and forced out amoungst the stars like vermin.
That fleet traveled across the galaxies for hundreds of years. Some ships split off from the main group, choosing to live where they could find shelter. The others eventually found a world on the other side of the galaxy, Kharak, and settled their. And as they began to make it their home, their true history was forgotten through the eons. And when the mothership was built thousands of years later, they violated part of the agreement that their ancestors had made with the Taidan, barring them from ever traveling in space again.
So we can see a lot of parallels here. Including the Circle of time. If you take the story as a whole, it ends the way it starts, small fleet in search of a new home, etc... Just like there is a circle of time in BSG.
So what does that mean for BSG? Did we really originate on Earth? Are we, in looking for the home of the 13th tribe, going to find out that Earth was originally our home as well (Our as if we are part of the galactica family)? How does Kobol fit in? And who are the Lords of Kobol? Are they us (the remnants of the fallen civilization) from the previous circle in time?
Do the Cylons know the truth about all of this? Did the somehow become aware of the true origins of man after they left the colonies the first time? Are they playing a part they've decided they are intended to play in this circle of time?
When the 13th tribe left Kobol, IF they DID, were they seeking out a NEW home, or returning to an OLD one? When the prophets (like pythia, the one who wrote the book of pythia that roslin likes to read from so much) wrote about all these things, were they seeing the future? Or recounting THEIR PAST that they knew would come again? Is it all a grand scheme to get humanity back to their orginal home of Earth? If so, why did humanity leave in the first place?
So many good questions!!! that's what makes the show so great! Whatever the answers are, it can't just be as simple as we are led to beleive. That's whats so interesting!