AFAIK It was a shield imploder - so specifically a weapon - and it was mentioned in one of the books - Templar One I think? I don’t own the books myself so can’t check.
Talocan are likely another civilization that survived the EVE Gate collapse - and by survived, I mean they had no dark ages at all. Even the Jove had a brief dark age and regressed technologically with each empire collapse - there were 3 Empires, and the third came to an end recently as the Inheritance -chronicle reveals that the Jove are no longer and possibly in the past 10 years haven’t been a functional civilization, some of them (hundreds at most) apparently still exist in isolation and in hiding, but as a people they have basicly ceased to be, giving their inheritance - the Jove seat on the CONCORD council among others - to their “spiritual children”, Society of Conscious Thought.
Got a bit sidetracked there - Talocan, being a civilization that focused on living among the stars a a migrant culture never had the resource problems that other civilzations did. They managed to sustain themselves and kept most if not all of the Terran technology alive this side of the gate. Mind - Jove were considered the least technologically advanced factions that came to the New Eden cluster, and Talocan likely weren’t all that more advanced than the Jove, but as Jove societies crumbled, the difference became far greater.
At some point the Talocan decided to leave known space and created artificial wormholes and then entire wormhole networks - one apparent entryway to this network that the third empire Jove found several centuries ago was in W477-P. What is completely unknown is that where or how the Talocan vanished in the meantime. Sleepers are confirmed to be Second Empire Jove. Sleepers seem to have gutted and studied whatever Talocan remains still exist in Anoikis, but it is in my mind implied that Sleepers had nothing to do with the Talocan’s apparent extinction, and were just as perplexed as we are.
As for the main question by the OP, you could look at it this way:
Oldest in-universe known civilzations: Jove and their sub-empires and the Talocan.
First back to space after the dark ages were the Amarr, then the Minmatar, then Gallente and then Caldari.
It is a little remembred fact that Minmatar actually had a small space-age civilization spanning a few systems before their enslavement, and the first Minmatar spaceship was launched as far as 1104 years prior to the rise of the Gallente and Caldari as space-age civilizations.