The UFO ETH: Pro and Con: E.T. is a Litter Bug

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena, this time the endless stalemate between those supporting the UFO ETH, and those sceptical debunkers of the UFO ETH starting with the most basic of all arguments, UFOs can not be extraterrestrial because investigators and/or archaeologists would have found their artefacts, garbage dumps or at least their litter.

OBJECTION #10: If E.T. is here (via UFOs), and/or was here (those ancient astronauts) then there would be alien fossils or artifacts left behind, even if it’s just E.T.’s garbage and little else. Unfortunately, there’s no such undisputed fossil or artifact evidence. Not one bit of E.T.’s litter to be had and put under the microscope. Now is this a legitimate argument that rules out any visitations and somewhat lengthy stays by extraterrestrials to our humble abode, Planet Earth? If there is no UFO rubbish, is the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) rubbish?

ANSWER: Pro-UFO (as in supporting the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis) and ancient astronaut buffs are happy to claim evidence for extraterrestrials having been, or even now are, as just plain folk, tourists, scientists, colonizers, whatever, sharing with us this Third Rock out from the Sun.  Now a logical objection to this scenario is that there’s no obvious extraterrestrial detritus or garbage sites (kitchen middens) or ruins, etc. they left behind. There’s no fossil evidence for any non-terrestrial critter or of the mythological and possible extraterrestrial hybrids (like centaurs, the sphinx or mermaids). There are no skeletons of E.T. itself thus far uncovered. We’ve yet to find the burial remains (if any) of the alien Cyclops.

That’s not to say there aren’t some pretty weird fossils in the geological record - within the strata of the rocks – but nothing that ultimately can’t be interpreted in terrestrial and Darwinian evolutionary terms. Trilobites were terrestrial.

Of course as any palaeontologist is happy to point out, what fossils we do have amount to a tiny fraction of those still existing within the geological rock record; all fossils (discovered or not) are but an incredibly tiny fraction of all those critters (including plants) that once upon a time got fossilized. Of those that got fossilized, many remain buried, but many have since been destroyed by natural forces; that subset, all those potentially undiscovered fossils, or fossils that no longer exist, are in turn but a super ultra tiny fraction of all critters who have ever lived and died. Most (nearly all) critters when they die serve as food for something else, even if just bacteria. They get biodegraded in one way or another – dust-to-dust and ashes-to-ashes. Translated, the odds that one lone (out of trillions) Joe Trilobite will ever have been fossilized discovered and ultimately grace a museum display is astronomically against. So, that would have to apply to E.T. as well. There might well exist buried in the ground some bona fide E.T. artefact, even an E.T. itself, but that does nobody any good if that artefact remains buried or more likely as not, has been destroyed over geological eons by various and destructive natural geological processes.

In summary, if any such extraterrestrial artefacts and fossils exist, they are so few in number, so eroded and weathered and buried and biodegraded that the proverbial-needle-in-the-proverbial-haystack is easy pickings by comparison. If anyone is familiar with the History Channel’s documentary series “Life After People”, infrastructure when left unattended to the mercy and forces of nature and ravages of time don’t last or survive all that long before crumbling to dust. It’s said that ‘man fears time, but time fears only the pyramids’. However, even so, it’s obvious that time has in fact taken its toll on those ancient wonders at Giza in Egypt. In another 50,000 years, even if ten times that, even the pyramids will have been recycled back to sand as the wind and rain and pollution and earthquakes do their destructive things.

Still, maybe an amateur archaeologist or palaeontologist or just plain lucky prospector or individual who happens to look at the right spot at the right time might stumble onto the find of the century – E.T. Actually it would be the find, not just of the century, but of all time.

Those same natural geological forces and biological agents would also strut their natural recycling and breakdown stuff on E.T.’s waste. But, in addition, E.T. can and does have the option of removing their detritus off the planet. One also needs to ask; would we of necessity recognize and distinguish E.T.’s rubbish from all other forms of human rubbish? Would there be any obvious differences that would suggest extraterrestrial rubbish is somehow different from human rubbish? If we wouldn’t immediately jump to a conclusion that a metal bolt we found was extraterrestrial, would we then go to the trouble and submit it to complex analysis, analysis that would be required to confirm that this rubbish wasn’t ordinary rubbish but extraordinary rubbish?  Lack of E.T.’s garbage is not evidence of a lack of E.T.

The lack of extraterrestrial rubbish dumps and artefacts could well be that E.T. cleaned up after themselves (unlike prone-to-litter humans on which a lot of human prehistory is based – excavations of our ancient garbage dumps, technically called kitchen middens, etc.). The E.T. ‘gods’ (ancient astronauts) took all of their stuff with them when they left, including the end products of their genetic experiments (apart from their ultimate final product – we humans and our hominoid ancestors which had died out on their own), the hybrid half & halves (like the Minotaur) of our mythology.

Unless we humans start launching our garbage into space, say the ultimate incineration in the solar furnace; well let’s just say that option is going to increase waste disposal rates several thousand fold and therefore isn’t a realistic option – for us. Therefore, we have little option but to use Planet Earth as a garbage dump – much to the delight of archaeologists who base much of ancient human history on just such detritus. But of course, as noted earlier, time, natural forces and biological agents ultimately deal with most forms of human waste – solid, liquid and gaseous.

There’s yet another solution to a lack of E.T.’s rubbish. A technologically advanced E.T. is probably equally advanced in recycling technology. If you undertake interstellar voyages you’d better be damned efficient at recycling. Anyway, I don’t recall anyone in ‘Star Trek’ for example leaving behind their litter – an artifact, maybe like a book on Chicago’s gangsters yes, but not rubbish! Even that book was a violation of the Prime Directive! E.T. would pay closer attention to rules and regulations.

Whether extraterrestrial artefacts have been eroded away by time or whether the aliens nearly removed or recycled their detritus, any and all remaining physical evidence as interpreted as evidence for E.T. is therefore evidence from our more modern eras, not the geological past. That evidence might be contained within human mythology or human archaeological relics that depict in one way or another the ‘gods’, entities that could be alien beings – figurines, artworks, monuments, etc. or the half & halves hybrids (like the stone monument of the Sphinx that rests near the trio of those great but crumbling pyramids on the Giza Plateau in Egypt). However, any archaeologist worth his or her salt will tell you that these are all the works of humans – works by man. Some out-of-place artefacts have been discovered but while anomalies or curiosities, they aren’t so totally extraordinary as to make a solid case for the existence of aliens. But, in conclusion to that observation that all roads that point to extraterrestrial ‘gods’ were paved by humans, well, absence of direct evidence linking extraterrestrials on Earth isn’t the same as evidence of extraterrestrials absence on Earth.  

But speaking of artifacts related to E.T. or ancient astronauts, there have been lots of authors, quite apart from Erich von Daniken, who have made careers out of pointing out archaeological evidence suggestive of E.T. Now clearly much of that is embellishment and wishful thinking and often plain nonsense, but, as most of life’s little mysteries are, this isn’t an either/or situation. There are many shades of gray here and I’ve seen quite a few artifacts, especially images that are quite suggestive of an E.T. in our past, and of course if past tense, why not present tense? Now throw in that mythology to complement the archaeology…

Finally, consider your own environment – home, work, community. Within that sphere that you exist in for the most part, what proof do you have that meteors exist? Has any meteorite landed in your back yard; crashed into your place of employment or for that matter anywhere within your day-to-day environment? What about an aircraft? You see these strange flying objects all the time yet you find no artifact of them, an artifact falling to earth in your back yard, your place of employment, or within your community. You probably have no actual physical piece of evidence to prove meteors or aircraft exist. It’s all just an eyewitness reality on your part. Of course if you claim to see a ‘shooting star’ or a Boeing 747 fly overhead; no one is likely to rubbish your sighting. So, can we rubbish UFOs just because there are no artifacts to be conveniently had, rather just eyewitness testimony in the main?

And so, based on your own patch of turf, you have as much in the way of artifacts for E.T. as you have for meteors or airplanes (unless you have been unfortunate enough to really anger the gods and have a plane or meteorite land on your roof).

But wait, what about that July 1947 UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico and other alleged incidents involving UFO crashes? Unfortunately, even if true, the alleged extraterrestrial artifacts are not in the hands of the scientific community. There are no peer-reviewed papers in scholarly journals on the studied remains. There’s no literature full stop in existence that isn’t controversial. The alleged artifacts aren’t on display in museums. Only the need-to-know elite have access, and they’re not talking. So, Roswell is a yes, but as proof positive, it’s a no – at least so far.

However, there are modern UFO artifacts of sorts. In geology, not all fossils are bones or shells. In fact not all fossils are even remains of living things, but rather events. For example, there are fossilized rain drop impressions in now solid rock; ditto ripple marks. But with respect to former living creatures, there are fossils of just their burrows, and more frequently, just their footprints. A UFO ‘footprint’ is akin to a ground trace left behind after a UFO landing, like say the Socorro, New Mexico landing on 24 April 1964 as witnessed by local police officer Lonnie Zamora. Magnetic traces left behind on metal objects like automobiles or physiological effects incurred on human (or plant and animal) tissue is something else that can be dealt with and analyzed in a laboratory. So, in one manner of speaking, there are UFO ‘artifacts’.

So hunting for UFO or ancient astronaut artifacts, is akin to the old needle-in-a-haystack quest. But that’s something scientists employed in the scientifically legitimate Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) quest can identify with. That needle/haystack argument is their fallback position when SETI scientists are pressed or pressured into explaining why they haven’t themselves detected E.T. (albeit out there and not here) in over five decades of searching the heavens for that artificial radio beam or optical beacon. They would state, and rightly so, that absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence.

So, IMHO, the tenth objection fails because that pithy saying assists in coming to terms why UFOs (and ancient astronauts) are not rubbish. Absence of E.T.’s garbage is not the same thing of necessity as evidence of E.T.’s absence.