The Lore's always been kinda murky, but I understand the original frames were made by infecting people with the helminth strain of the technocyte virus (e.g excal umbra, some of the primes), which are what the tenno connected with, but then they were used as blueprints to mass produce frames without the person. The ones you build in your foundry are copies, so you're just returning a lump of infestation to the original mass for it to reabsorb and learn from.
There haven't been many major updates since the new war, so you're not actually all that far behind. Lots of hot fixes, QoL, and updates to bring the content islands closer together. Nothing earth shattering, but some improvements.
Seeing as you're coming back, might as well start with the veilbreaker content that follows on from the new war - archon hunts are the new sorties and Kahl's missions are mini new war sections with various challenges, both weeklies. Zariman kinda sucks as a hub, but the missions are trying something new. Albrecht's lab is similar, but better executed, and has an extreme difficulty weekly if you're into that kind of challenge. Duviri offers a new version of open world without dailies, but the cool stuff from steel path does require a daily rep grind from the Zariman.