Mythology is not purely an invention of the human imagination out of whole cloth. There are grains of truth or reality within the tales. Humans are intelligent enough to separate basic facts from basic fictions, even if the facts are often embellished to make a good tale better, or misinterpreted. The mythological gods (including God) really existed. However, they weren’t really supernatural beings or deities. That’s the misinterpretation part. They were extraterrestrials.
A Fictional Analogy:
*We’re all somewhat familiar with the comic book, TV, and film adventures of Superman. Now just imagine that Superman was real and came to Earth in Mesopotamia 8000 years ago. What would the natives have called him – God perhaps?
A Modern Historical Analogy:
*There’s no doubt that ‘cargo cults’ arose in the Pacific as a result of WWII.
*The Pacific island natives that are identified with those cargo cults did NOT invent that cargo cult mythology out of hard cloth.
*Translated, the natives really saw and interacted with real beings (Allied servicemen and women) who really did come down from the sky and really did have solid ‘cargo’ some of which astonished the natives seeing as how the two cultures were ‘light-years’ apart.
*That after the Allied servicemen and women left, the Pacific island natives began to worship them and the ‘cargo’ they brought and built ‘temples’ to them in hopes they would return with more ‘cargo’.
*Now, substitute Pacific island natives of WWII vintage with human beings six to eight thousand years ago; substitute Allied servicemen and women with advanced extraterrestrials… Well, you have a gods and goddesses mythology ready made at your fingertips.
Some Unresolved Questions:
*One ultra-super-major question arises – if we can’t crossbreed with even our closest living terrestrial evolutionary relations, and I know of no even short-term viable union between human and other primate gametes (i.e. – there are no gorilla-human or chimpanzee hybrids in even just the earliest of embryo stages) then how can we breed with the ‘gods’? We’re terrestrial; they’re extraterrestrial – a goldfish should have a higher probability of successful mating with a petunia since their both terrestrial species. Well, I can only conclude that the ‘gods’, in their artificial selection program to create humans for their own purposes (including sexual) had the ability in advanced genetic engineering techniques to make successful mating viable. Clearly from their point of view, human-‘god’ offspring would result in better overall stock than just human-human breeding. The potential proof of that pudding is that modern humans went from hunter-gathering on Earth to hunter-gathering on the Moon, not in millions of years or hundreds of thousands of years, but in less than ten thousand years. No other species on this planet has accomplished so much so fast. That’s in view of the fact that overall there’s apparently no real natural evolutionary pressure towards higher intelligence. Will a smarter cat catch more mice, or will a faster cat and/or one with sharper vision and better reflexes catch more mice?
*One interesting question is that are all the motley collection of ‘gods’ (including ‘God’) and associated ‘pets’ and the ‘half-and- halves’ all one genetically-related race (like all terrestrial life-forms are), or many? If one takes concepts like “Star Trek”, “Star Wars”, “Stargate”, etc. at face value, the galaxy is teeming with many races many at similar technological levels. Given the diversity already mentioned I’m inclined to go with the ‘gods’ (including ‘God’) representing more of a (in “Star Trek” terms) a Federation.
*This Federation of extraterrestrials is further postulated by yet another range of apparently mythological beings – the wee folk, or in general the fairy folk. Tales of elves, fairies, leprechauns, sprites, etc. are also quite commonplace throughout the world’s culture. Were it not for the UFO greys, I might dismiss them, but modern UFO occupants show a diversity akin to that of ‘ancient astronauts’ (the ‘gods’ and ‘God’ and ‘pets”) and presumed ‘ancient astronauts’ – the wee fairy folk.
*Another question needs to be asked, could the polytheistic ‘gods’ and ‘ancient astronauts’ be two entirely different things? IMHO, the answer is “no”. If you remove the polytheistic ‘gods’ as being part and parcel of any ‘ancient astronaut’ consideration, and that’s including God from the ancient astronaut equation, then there’s no remaining suggestive evidence for ‘ancient astronauts’.
*Yet another reasonable question is that is the ‘ancient astronaut’ gods (including God) mythology one general overall story with many differing cultural variations in the telling, or are there many actual differing tales unique to differing cultures? That distinction probably remains to be worked out in detail yet; it’s probably a bit of both. Overall, because there are so many common (creation, paradise, sky being, etc.) themes between cultures, I’m inclined to endorse the former. However, many individual cultures probably have some myth or two or twenty that’s pretty much exclusive to them.
*Translated, with respect to similarities vs. differences, can one reasonably suggest that An or Enlil (Mesopotamia) = Zeus (Greek) = God (Christianity) = Jupiter (Roman) = Indra or Brahma (India) = Odin (Norse) = Fuxi (Chinese) = Quetzalcoatl (Aztec) = Viracocha (Inca), and so on and so on down the line, or are they all different ‘gods’ ruling different kingdoms? The same applies to ‘lesser’ gods – does Eros = Cupid or are they two separate beings? Is Ares (Greek) the same person as Mars (Roman)?
A Few Rival Ideas:
*Highest Probability: That the gods (including God) really existed or still do exist in some cases, but are really flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials as outlined above.
*Next Highest Probability: That the gods (including God) never existed and never had any sort of physical reality. This might imply that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations with interstellar spaceflight capacities don’t exist; they exist but somehow missed our planet; or found it uninteresting and moved on.
*Lowest Probability: That the gods (including God) really existed and still exist as supernatural deities.
My Conclusions:
*If technologically advanced extraterrestrials arrived on Planet Earth, say some six to eight thousand years ago, you could be pretty certain that…
*Humans would come up with legends of ‘sky gods’.
*Humans would interpret technology as magic or the supernatural.
*Humans would deify the beings as ‘gods’.
*The ‘gods’ would in reality be our modern concept of ‘ancient astronauts’.
*Lastly, regardless of the speculations, it’s not going to be 100% possible to totally separate out reality from mythology. Even if the ‘gods’ (including ‘God’) were flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials, many of the tales surrounding them will still have some mythological elements to them. Currently scholars will argue that its 0% reality; 100% mythology as far as the polytheistic ‘gods’ are concerned. Enthusiastic and fundamentalist-oriented monotheistic believers have 100% reality for ‘God’; 100% mythology for the ‘gods’ – what they think of ‘ancient astronauts’ probably varies from disbelief to high probability, as long as it doesn’t involve ‘God’. I put my money on 75% reality for the ‘gods’ + ‘God’ = ‘ancient astronauts’; 25% that the ‘gods’ and ‘God’ are total mythological.
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