Why aren't Earth humans considered Species 001?

From startrek.com:

As a rule of thumb, the events that take place within the live-action episodes and movies are canon, or official Star Trek facts. Story lines, characters, events, stardates, etc. that take place within the fictional novels [...] have traditionally not been considered part of the canon.

Therefore the events of this book series don't fit in with the TV series because they're not canon. There's no need for any other Star Trek works to acknowledge or be consistent with this version of the Borg's origins.

The Borg were first introduced in the "Q Who?" episode of STNG. During a conference is the following dialog:

PICARD: Guinan, how much more can you tell us about these creatures?

GUINAN: Bits and pieces.

PICARD: Anything would help.

GUINAN: They're made up of organic and artificial life which has been developing for thousands of centuries.

http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/142.htm[1]

Thus it seems that the Borg first became cyborgs hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Could the Borg have been a more recent combination of organic and mechanical elements that had been been developing separately for hundreds of thousands of years before combining recently? NO! it took billions of years for the first multicellular life to develop on Earth and hundreds of millions more for the first intelligent life to evolve. It would be impossible for the biological component of the Borg to evolve tens of thousands of times faster than Earth life.

The writer of Star Trek: Destiny obviously forgot to check "Q Who?" to see what it said about the origin of the Borg. If he had he would have seen that his origin date of

4527 BCE

was falsified.

The same is even more true for the popular fan theory that the Borg were created as a result of Voyager VI/V'ger encountering the machine Planet.

The memory of the Borg being fragmented before 900 years ago is canon and is stated in the Voyager episodes dealing with the Vudwaar by Seven of Nine!

As for Q's stated origin date of 4527 BCE, as Q would say, "Oh, you're assuming linear temporal progression, how quaint!" We need to know how Q defines 'origin' and also keep in mind that the Borg are a combination of both technological and organic components and a good degree of assimilation.

I haven't read Star Trek: Destiny but I'm going to leap into this here:

The creation of the Borg was not a planned event. For all intents and purposes, it just happened.

Survival was the first priority. Expansion -- by assimilating other species -- came later. It was at that point numbering was introduced, starting with species 001 as the first species assimilated from that point forward.

As a huge fan of Destiny, here's my take on the numbering system. Since the Caelier was badly degraded when she merged with the two humans, it is possible that no memory existed from any of the three. Therefore, Species 001 would be the humanoids that were assimilated when they came to explore the island, that were native to that world.