Humanity: The Cosmic Connection

There are various enigmas that cry out for resolution, like the Fermi Paradox regarding ET, “Where is everybody?” Then there are enigmas surrounding human origins, evolution and characteristics, extinctions, migrations and colonizations, and the rise to civilization. Finally, much that’s in our global mythologies is anomalous. In modern times we have UFOs and alien abductions. It’s time to wrap all this up in one neat little package, tied up with a nice little ribbon and bow. 

Let’s start off briefly with the Fermi Paradox. In essence, it suggests that if you accept that there has to be one or more extraterrestrial highly advanced technological civilizations out there in the galaxy, in interstellar space, with interstellar space travelling capabilities, then the odds are as close to 100% as anyone would care to bet, that Planet Earth has been discovered and visited. The time it takes to explore the galaxy, every nook and cranny, even without resorting to Star Trek type faster-than-light velocities, is but a tiny fraction of the age of the galaxy. The Fermi Paradox is only a paradox if one tries to argue that ET has never visited our humble planetary abode. So, let’s solve the Fermi Paradox and accept that once upon a time, ET paid Planet Earth a visit – at least one.

About eight or so million years ago, Planet Earth witnessed the arrival of a rather loose federation of extraterrestrials (ET) with a quasi social/religious/missionary goal of assisting in the development and spread of intelligent civilizations across the galaxy and the cosmos while simultaneously creating intelligent, civilized beings who will worship them as their superiors, even perhaps as gods. Since there were no such intelligent, civilized beings on Planet Earth eight million years ago, ET had to work what Mother Nature provided them.

Now eight million years ago is very recent relative to the age of Planet Earth, and extremely recent relative to the age of our galaxy and the cosmos at large. Therefore, this may not have been an ET first visit, but the one which finally yielded up a promising candidate from which they could manipulate to achieve their goal.

That most suitable candidate species to work with, or on, would have been the chimpanzee or a close ancestor to the chimp, found in Africa. And so ET set up shop and laboratory in Africa to start the long process of assisting Mother Nature in the development (creation or origin)and spread (migration) of another (soon to be engineered) intelligent civilization.

Over the next eight or so million years – no great rush; lots of time on their hands; these are an extremely long-lived ET – ET bioengineered, genetically engineered, or otherwise artificially bred and selected our initial primate stock into over twenty initial primate-to-ultimate-hominid species, each species slightly more advanced in IQ, dexterity, bipedal gait, speech, abstract reasoning ability (something other than just food, sex, danger), etc. than the one before.

For starters, individual groupings of each species in their own time and turn would be released by ET into the Africa’s wild environment to see how they coped, just like we humans will artificially breed up populations of endangered species and release them into the wild and hope for the best. Of those hominid species released into the wild, most didn’t – cope that is. Back to the drawing board and more genetics and breeding and artificial selection and on to the next advancement.

A few hominid species that did adapt reasonable to the outside backyard of Africa proper would then be transported to non-African locations and a wider variety of terrestrial environments. There were more failures, but some initial successes with out-of-Africa environments. Homo erectus just about fit the bill – just about, but it too ultimately went the way of the Dodo.

Finally, about 200,000 years ago, the latest in this twenty-plus long line of primate-to-hominid creations were created on the slab in the ET lab in Africa – Homo sapiens. They proved successful in adapting to the natural African environment. Further experiments with transporting and transplanting groups of them to various environments around the globe (except Antarctica) for the most part yielded positives in the Middle East, the Americas, Europe, Australia, Asia, etc. If ET transplanted groups of Homo sapiens to Oceania that was a failure as there are no archaeological sites that verify hominids in Oceania until only relatively recent historical (not prehistorically) times.

Once Homo sapiens became established globally, two things happened. Firstly, individual units of ET headed by a Supreme ET were assigned to oversee the various geographical regions that Homo sapiens had adapted to. For example, ET Yahweh and crew were assigned to the eastern coastline and seaboard region of the Mediterranean. Secondly, these units then assisted these nomadic bands of Homo sapiens in each region in the transition from being wandering hunter-gatherers living by their wits into becoming civilized agricultural-based settlements or rural communities that put down roots - assuming the region in question was suitable to settlements, and not all were, like Australia.   

At this point one might expect “and they all lived happy ever after”. Not so; it was not to be.

It is often said that man was created in God’s image, or in more general parlance, in the image of the gods. If that’s the case, it should come as no surprise that the gods have human traits. Translated, anything humans were (or are) skilled at doing, you can bet the family farm equally that the ‘gods’ were skilled ditto, the good, the bad and the ugly. ET was not above squabbling among themselves over ways and means, and there were power grabs and coups and mutinies afoot, like when Yahweh was nearly toppled by Satan. Collectively, our mythologies lump these ancient ‘star wars’ as Wars in ‘Heaven’.

Humans of course also didn’t live long and prosper either. Like father (the gods), like son (Homo sapiens).

There’s one other mythological anomaly that supports the idea that not only was ET highly advanced in interstellar space travel (well they got here didn’t they), but especially highly skilled in genetic and bioengineering. The genetics experiments of ET were not just confined to building a better hominid species, but creating all sorts of genetically engineered ‘monsters’. If there is one universal above nearly all other universals in the mythologies of primitive ‘man’ it’s the reality of hybrids, both animal-animal hybrids (i.e. – Pegasus in Greek Mythology) and animal-human hybrids (i.e. – the Birdmen of Easter Island). 

Whether misinterpreted by primitive humans, or deliberately misled, ET became the ‘gods’ and interactions between the two became the basis of our global mythologies, which is to a greater or lesser extent really a collection of religiously-themed mythologies since primitive ‘man’ thought ‘he’ was dealing with supernatural deities. Deities of course are there to be worshiped, probably encouraged by ET. Why might ET wish to be worshiped? ET might want to be ‘worshiped’ probably as “thanks” for bringing Homo sapiens into the world and bestowing the gifts of civilization on Homo sapiens.  Every parent expects a “thank you” from their child for special gifts bestowed. ET might have encouraged this misinterpretation as being ‘gods’; it would have been a lot less awkward that explaining astrobiology to them.

Having completed at long last their objective – one more race primed to join the Galactic Club, ET left, albeit leaving behind a token observational team – UFOs – which are still undertaking some genetic modifications with respect to Homo sapiens – alien abductions, apparently an attempt to engineer yet another hybrid – a human-alien.

Now make of this what you will, but the scenario does fit the facts as we know them about human origins, evolution, extinctions, migrations, and ultimately civilization. It also jives with our mythologies, and, IMHO, behind every mountain of mythology resides a molehill of fact.

Extraterrestrialism: Our Out-Of-This-World Inheritance: Part Two

If asked the question about your ultimate origins, you might reply that you were of this or that nationality, perhaps with ancestry from this or that other place. Perhaps if you’re a bit more clued you’d say “Africa” as the birthplace of the human race. If you’re really cluey, you might say the oceans, the undoubted place where life itself got its start. But no doubt, no matter what, you’d say you were “terrestrial” – of this Planet Earth. Alas, you’re still not cluey enough. You’re extraterrestrial. We are the aliens, directly and indirectly.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The ‘Gods’ Create Humans

* What’s common in mythology is not only do the ‘gods’ create humans, but we (humans) were created in their (the ‘gods’) image. Alien genetic engineering assists in providing an explanation. Now the ‘gods’ have a choice. They can do the hard work here on their new Planet Earth, their home-away-from-home abode, or else they can employ the natives to do the hard work for them. Unfortunately, when they arrived, there were no suitable native life forms they could employ to do that work, so, it’s creation time – the ‘gods’ create, dada, the human species – all of them, one step at a time; there’s no immediate creation of modern Homo sapiens. Fortunately, the ‘gods’ have some promising genetic material to work with – the primates in general and the chimpanzees in particular. Now what clues do we have that we’re a part of this Planet, but at the same time apart from this Planet; that there’s something slightly screwy about human beings.

* One item more than slightly screwy is just that super, ultra, amazing, coincidence that each and every one of our more than 20-plus hominoid ancestral species went extinct – each and every one. All the in-betweens bracketing chimpanzees on one side to Homo sapiens on the other – kaput. That really defies the odds and the natural order of things. Could it be that once an ancestor had been genetically engineered and given rise to the next generation that that species was no longer of any use and cast off to fend for itself yet not having evolved naturally, being unable to do so?    

* The sudden arrival of culture about 50,000 years ago is puzzling. Around the parts of the world that were inhabited by various species of humans, culture arrived in a relatively short period of time. Things like cave art and petroglyphs; mother goddess ‘Venus’ statuettes; burials and grave goods (implying the concept of an afterlife). Why? Whenever something happens very suddenly, in diverse places to boot, one might look towards a guiding hand of outside intelligence. 

* The sudden arrival of civilization about 8,000 years ago is equally puzzling. Once upon a time all humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Some human bands still are. However, many human societies, around 8,000 years ago give or take (6,000 BC or thereabouts) underwent a career change and developed agriculture and animal husbandry and settled down. We became ‘civilized’. Small settlements became villages; some villages morphed into towns some of which in turn grew large enough to become cities. That transition happened in a relatively short period of time in various cultures that at that time had no cross-pollination. Why? The traditional nomadic to quasi-nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life, a way of life practiced by all other animal life forms (predators are the hunters; prey the gatherers) served us well too for millions of apparently natural evolutionary years. So what changed unless it was artificial manipulation from outside forces? It’s either that or coincidence stretched to the breaking point.

* Human societies have creation mythologies, and not just of humans, but by all rights shouldn’t since there’s no obvious first-cause creations that have transpired within individual human memories and overall histories. Some external power must have clued our remote ancestors that there were such things as first-cause creations.  

* Unique Human Traits

** Clues include the most obvious of the obvious that we come in breeds. We are one species but there are many racial/ethnic variations on the theme. How do we explain dog breeds and breeds of roses? - Human breeders. How do we explain human breeds? - Alien breeders!

** Our nakedness relative to our furry primate ancestors and current primate ‘relatives’ is another clue – there are multi-dozens upon dozens of primates; only one ‘naked ape’ (humans). Why did we alone lose our fur? I mean when the outside temperature drops much below the comfort threshold, we require in no uncertain terms clothing. When it hits freezing point, we can’t survive without clothing, yet our furry animal cousins seem to manage A-OK. There’s many an image of a furry mammal surviving, even thriving in the snow. Quite apart from the fact that fur is a better regulator of temperature than just sweating (our main means of temperature regulation), loss of fur resulted in other highly negative evolutionary rock and hard place restrictions. We’ve exchanged temperature regulation via fur for control via sweating. Humans of all the mammals are the species that sweats the most. The retrograde step of temperature control via sweating instead of fur imposed two additional restrictions on us. We were forced to stay close to reliable sources of fresh water and it also makes us way more dependent on supplies of salt since salt is excreted from the body via sweat. Salt supplies in the natural environment are rare – so rare that once upon a time salt was extremely valuable and you got paid in salt. It’s were we get our word, salary from. If only we’d kept our fur. Now the relevant issue here is that Mother Nature doesn’t tend to select for traits that decrease survival value. Therefore, perhaps something other than Mother Nature is at work here, maybe like Mother ET.

** Then there’s our bipedal gait relative to the rest of the mammals. Name me one other mammal that routinely walks on two legs.  That’s probably because there are many negatives to a bipedal gait, like loss of stability and strife if you lose the ability to use one leg. Again, it’s not like Mother Nature to encourage evolutionary features that have more negative implications relative to alternatives. We should have evolved as a traditional quadruped but with two additional arms!

** We show way more signs of visible aging than our animal cousins. Our cats and dogs don’t tend to get grey hairs and wrinkles. Is this another sign of genetic tampering?

** Animals don’t seem to have the same sort of need for bathroom/sexual privacy that we have – animals are hard to embarrass. They do what they have to do and don’t give a damn who’s looking. Did we inherit a sense of embarrassment from our creators?

** On the other hand, we also have a sense of humour that even the ‘higher’ animals seem to lack.

** There’s our very high IQ relative to the rest of the animal kingdom, a comparison that’s not even remotely a close contest. While that’s not an evolutionary negative (well not so far at least), the awesome gap between us and our nearest intelligent rival species l is, well, just awesome.

* Why is the human species so vastly different in so many different ways from the rest of our animal kin? Might it be our extraterrestrial ‘gods’ that made it so? Then there’s our ability to mate with the ‘gods’ and produce viable offspring.

To be continued…

Our Post Biological Evolution: Boldly Going (Both Ways) Revisited

A well worn staple of science fiction is travel to the stars – ‘boldly going’ to borrow the tag phrase from one well known science fiction staple, “Star Trek”. Unfortunately, what’s easy to do in the pages of sci-fi literature, or show on the small or big screen isn’t anywhere as simple in reality. But, just because something isn’t simple doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. Most solutions focus on new cheaper, better, faster rocket propulsion technology. I got a better idea!

A well known SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) scientist recently made the following statement.

“The real question to me isn’t why ET isn’t everywhere, but why ET’s machines aren’t everywhere.”*

The standard thinking, that basic point being made is that it’s dangerous and costly to boldly go anywhere out there in person relative to staying at home. But sending out unmanned probes instead, probes which might be sophisticated enough to not only explore but reproduce themselves using resources discovered while exploring would like a cancer spread out more and more until they have covered every cubic mile of space. Maybe there’s just one ET; zillions of ET’s machines.

Perhaps ET and ET’s machines are one and the same. Even if there is but one ET race or civilization, there could be an abundance of ET’s machines (that’s standard thinking noted above), but all containing not just ET but lots of ET (that’s not standard thinking). Translated, if you want to ‘boldly go’ (i.e. interstellar travel), it may make more sense to be an actual part of the spaceship instead of just being a passenger. Better rocket propulsion might prove to be fairly irrelevant.

Premise: Exploring is in our very makeup. Humans do not want surrogates to do their exploring for them. It may be necessary, but it’s never enough. A photograph of Paris isn’t good enough – I want to see the Eiffel Tower for myself.

While a robotic probe discovered the location and wreck of the RMS Titanic, humans had to go to the time and trouble and cost to see and explore the shipwreck in person.

We don’t send an unmanned robotic rover to climb Mount Everest; we do it ourselves, even though it’s a very dangerous activity to life and limb.

I’m sure the scientists who guide the unmanned rovers on Mars are happy little campers; they would be even happier if they were on Mars in person.

Sending Pioneer 10 & 11; Voyager 1 & 2 out into interstellar space is all fine, well and good but wouldn’t you want to travel to, say the star Tau Ceti, in person? An unmanned probe (a descendent of Pioneer or Voyager) exploring Tau Ceti and sending you back data doesn’t generate quite the same thrill as being there up close and personal.

However, it’s difficult to get you to Tau Ceti. Your life span isn’t long enough to last the trip at projected interstellar velocities achievable in the foreseeable future, and in any event, you’d need massive life support infrastructure which adds lots of additional mass requiring lots of extra energy and thus cost to your journey. All up, too much mass, too much energy, and too much cost.

But, what part of you really needs to get to Tau Ceti? Does your big toe need to go? Does your liver need to get up close and personal with Tau Ceti? No. The only part of you that really needs to encounter Tau Ceti is your ‘inner you’, your mind, not the physical body part of you apart from that which houses the mind – your brain thingy. Alas, even your mind, your wetware, is part of your physical body (your brain) and it won’t last the distance from Earth to Tau Ceti.

Now let’s pause to consider the following interlude. Somewhere around the time of humanity’s transition from a hunter-gather lifestyle to a life of domestic settlement and leisure, even if not always domestic bliss, there was a remarkable but hardly remarked upon revolution. There was a slow but sure transition from Darwinian natural selection and evolution to artificial selection and evolution.

So how does artificial selection come into play? What useful role is it? Well, we now augment enough of our natural abilities with some sort of non-biological technology to allow us ultimately to produce offspring that otherwise would not have been produced. Reproduction is ultimately the name of the game; no reproduction, no selection, no evolution, natural or otherwise.

That transition to a post biological humanity probably all started when the first human used a long stick as a prop; as a cane to help him support himself and walk easier, instead of lying helplessly on the ground as prey for a saber-tooth cat! That stick could further serve as a prosthetic and be used to fend off the cat or hit it and drive it away. We are now in control, or at least better control over our fate. Clearly, like the stick-cane, we’ll continue to use artificial means – technology – to better our existence and defy the odds Mother Nature throws our way.  That path has already been well and truly started down. Since the stick-cane we’ve added eyeglasses and hearing aids and dentures and artificial joints and drugs** to help us with our sex lives and to breed and we’re talking about using nanotechnology nanobots to circulate through our blood stream seeking out nasty cancer cells from the inside and destroy them while unclogging our arteries, plus various prosthetics that increase our strength, etc.

There are in addition to non-biological technology those other sorts of means to achieve artificial selection, as in genetic engineering techniques for improving the human lot, like DNA splicing and manipulating the structure of our genes, etc., but I want to stick with biological plus non-biological integrations (bioengineering), like human-computer interfaces often used to immerse yourself in virtual reality simulations or games. 

We’ve come a long way in applying artificial selection technologies since those hunter-gather days. Now where does it all end? And how might artificial (as in technology) selection help us, and by analogy ET, boldly go?

Fast forward say 500 years. Might it not be possible to transfer the ‘inner you’ contained in your wetware, the brain thingy of yours, and transfer it into software and hardware made of more durable non-organic stuff like silicon and steel? If so, you’re now onboard, but as part of the electronics, the computer, that’s onboard. You and the ship have merged.

Of course your wetware, once downloaded or transferred into a software package, could be transferred again and again into many different computers, sort of like an endless  ‘copy and paste’ operation, each copy of you on a ship headed to some other interstellar destinations. In fact, everyone could explore anywhere and everywhere they wanted. If a lot of ‘people’ (could we still call ourselves ‘people’?) wanted to go to Tau Ceti, that’s as easy as if just one wanted to go since presumably there’s room on the ship for many ‘brains in the electronic vat’. Maybe everyone is headed everywhere. Eventually everyone experiences everything, but not quite at the same time of course.

I mean You #1 goes to Tau Ceti, while You #2 heads off to say the star Sirius. However, You #1 and You #2 don’t share your separate experiences even if you both communicate them to each other. Each is a surrogate to the other. But of course You #1 could go to Tau Ceti and then go on to Sirius; You #2 goes to Sirius and then on to Tau Ceti. Both ‘copy and paste clones’ get both experiences.

Regardless of those variations on the theme, your lifespan has increased by orders of magnitude. There’s little if any real ‘life’ support needed. There might even be a ‘sleep’ switch to turn you off while the light years slowly tick by. [That alone, by the way, takes care of the ‘they (aliens) can’t get to here from there’ argument, often used as a debating point against the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis.] And, when you reach Tau Ceti, there will be mechanical devices, rovers or robots on board you can download into and thus explore the Tau Ceti environment – in person!

Post-biological development or bioengineering is our ticket to the stars, even if the big toe has to stay at home! So, I wouldn’t be surprised if each and every one of ET’s machines didn’t actually contain ET or ET’s entire population for that matter!

Of course some real extraterrestrials might not have to resort to the ‘brain in the electronic vat’ to get from there to here, but it’s one way of doing it.

And as to why we don’t see ET or at least ET’s machines, since they (the machines) are supposed to be everywhere, well perhaps our scientist hasn’t heard of UFOs, or perhaps taken the time to study the subject. If s/he did, well perhaps s/he wouldn’t have raised the issue in the first place since ‘everywhere’ obviously includes here.

There is some interest in the morals or ethics of wetware to software transfer and cloning of that resultant software. From an ethical or moral point of view, the ‘inner you’ transfer from wetware to software would probably happen just prior to your natural death. The body would be buried or cremated in the normal way. Or, you might sign a consent form authorizing the transfer at any time after you reach the legal age. The body would still be treated as if it had died since it obviously must do so if there’s no longer any wetware running it. Oh, since this is a copy-and-paste arrangement, there could be one copy of the ‘inner you’ as software; two copies of you; 20 copies of you; 200 copies, etc. Think of a video game with a character in the game. Now recall that there are thousands of copies of the game in existence, therefore thousands of copies or clones of the character - Same distinction.

Each version of the ‘inner you’ would probably regard itself as the real ‘me’ but it makes no sense to distinguish between them as an outsider. Each version wouldn’t really care about the other versions. Even though you no longer have a flesh-and-blood body, your consciousness will be where it always has been – part and parcel of your wetware. Only now it’s cloned and exists as software not wetware – one copy per how many copies of the software you now are part and parcel of. But from the point of cloning onwards, those clones of your consciousness diverge depending on the various career paths taken by the various software versions of you.

*Impey, Chris (Editor); Talking About Life: Conversations on Astrobiology; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2010; page 325.

**In fact all your pharmaceutical drugs and over-the-counter medicines are technological fixes designed to help you beat the odds.

Human Evolution: By Natural or Artificial Selection? Part Three

If you’re reading this, I’d be 99.99% sure you’re human. That being the case, you probably are aware that humans evolved from our primate ancestors, most likely the chimpanzees, starting many eons of time ago in deep, darkest, equatorial Africa. From that point of origin, humans colonized the globe, including whatever part of Planet Earth you currently call home. That’s the be-all-and-end-all of the origin, evolution and colonization of and by the human race. Well, I think there are some flies in that ointment, especially the bit about our evolution.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Are there any other bits and pieces that set humans apart that might be suggestive of us getting some sort of special evolutionary treatment, translated artificial evolutionary treatment?

Since all humans are one species because we can all breed with one another, and since we presumably originated from small beginnings (population wise) in Africa, all humanity must have been akin to one not-quite-so-big melting pot.  We were a uniform cup of coffee – one species; one race. Then we started spreading out throughout the world (minus Antarctica) and for some unexplained reason diverged into different breeds or ethnic classifications or races. The Big Question is - as Big Questions always tend to be – WHY?

And here I want to focus on facial features. What’s so different or unique about the Asian environment(s) so as to evolve in humans’ typical Asian facial features, say vis-à-vis the Australian environment and her indigenous aboriginals who also have distinguishable but different facial features versus Europe, the European environment and Caucasian facial features vis-à-vis Polynesia and Polynesian facial features, etc. Something is screwy somewhere!  I can’t see how this aspect of human biology can be accounted for by Darwinian natural selection.

But what if human breeds – one species, now different races – were created or manufactured in the same way we artificially select and create different cat breeds, or cattle breeds or different plant varieties like the many varieties of roses or orchards?

Just like cats and cattle; roses and orchards – one general species; many created breeds or varieties – so too for humans – one interbreeding species now existing as many (artificially selected?) breeds all capable of interbreeding. Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest natural selection can not explain this. There’s no explaining the breed differences in racial facial features other than to resort, IMHO, to artificial selection, and the only beings capable of doing that were the ‘gods’ – the extraterrestrials who have this thing for advanced bioengineering genetics!

Now if you have a species, and that population gets separated by some geographic barrier, then over time the two split halves will slowly evolve into I guess first two separate breeds (that in theory can still interbreed), then eventually two separate species that can no longer breed and produce viable offspring. But, if you postulate that the one-species, one-breed humans scampered out of Africa and migrated around the globe without undo hindrance, then presumably there were no insurmountable geographic barriers big enough to then keep the various migrating clans or tribes or human herds forever and ever apart and thus prevent any interbreeding. Yet the one-breed one-species became multi-breeds, one-species as if there were now in place geographic barriers and isolation between the clans, tribes, herds; whatever. At least this alleged isolation of the tribes only lasted until the ‘modern’ age of travel and exploration and then all manner of human tribes discovered all manner of other human tribes. That’s of course if you accept the traditional view of things. But the question remains – why no barriers in getting from A to B, but once at B, not being able to get back to A again. I repeat that there’s something’s screwy somewhere.

Perhaps a more far-out but ultimately better or more plausible explanation is that the extraterrestrial ‘gods’ genetically engineered or designed the various human breeds in the African ‘laboratory’ and then transported the various types of human races to various locations throughout the world. The Asian-looking human population were transported, not surprisingly, to what we call today Asia! And thus the various human breeds, located in their separate abodes having been transported over natural geographic barriers by ET, where they had to pretty much stay put, came up with their own unique cultural and ultimately mythological variations or versions of their ‘creator’ god’s creations having been pretty befuddled by all the super technology that really ‘created’ them. And so in mythology we have universal tales of the gods (or IMHO ‘gods’) creating humanity, with individual cultural variations on that theme.

In a similar way, other things associated with the ‘gods’, say their pets or other entities, there being more than one type of ET present, translated into some of the near uniform and near universal mythologies surrounding say dragon-lore and dragons (pets) or fairy-folk (another variety of ET).

Something I find puzzling is why did humans, the Neanderthals and later the Cro-Magnons, choose to live in the harsh conditions of Ice Age Europe 30,000 to 60,000+ years ago? Presumably the human population was low enough back then that there would have been ample room for all in more pleasant climates. Why not follow the Sun and migrate south? Perhaps if my way out ideas are true, they were transported there by the ‘gods’ and couldn’t leave!

Anyway, why would the ‘gods’ create and transport different human breeds to different geographical locations – why do it this way? Two possible reasons suggest themselves. ET is the ‘farmer’ and they have, say, ten fields. They can plant one corner of one field (say a part of Africa where their ‘lab’ is) and wait for Nature to spread the seeds around to the rest of that field and hence to the other nine fields, or, they could plant parts of all of their ten fields at one go. That’s the same crop in all ten fields. But perhaps it’s better to have diversity. The second scenario is that you plant one crop (human breed) in one field (say Africa), another (human breed) in another (say Asia), a third human breed in the field called Europe, and so on though all ten. Why do this?

If Nature doesn’t take her normal course – if humans don’t spread out, if all the fields don’t naturally produce crops, then all isn’t lost by taking the above action. By deliberately planting a diversity of ‘crop’ breeds in all ten fields you’ve maximized your return on your investment by not putting all your eggs in the one-species, one-breed in Africa basket. 

It’s doesn’t strike me as being a natural state of affairs to naturally have way back when just Black Africans in Africa; Caucasians in Europe;  Asians in Asia; Aborigines in Australia, etc. That’s because it’s not as if Asians can’t survive and thrive in Europe; Caucasians can and do live okay in Australia; Black Africans have made the USA home as Afro-Americans. Every human breed can find a successful biological niche in every geographic area, so why the initial geographic separation when human traffic could presumably go both ways, and segregation and evolution into breeds or races, if one assumes a natural state of affairs, puzzles me. Something is indeed screwy somewhere!

Human Evolution: By Natural or Artificial Selection? Part Two

If you’re reading this, I’d be 99.99% sure you’re human. That being the case, you probably are aware that humans evolved from our primate ancestors, most likely the chimpanzees, starting many eons of time ago in deep, darkest, equatorial Africa. From that point of origin, humans colonized the globe, including whatever part of Planet Earth you currently call home. That’s the be-all-and-end-all of the origin, evolution and colonization of and by the human race. Well, I think there are some flies in that ointment, especially the bit about our evolution.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Though there are some limited advantages to standing upright (apart from freeing up two arms to do things with like grab forbidden fruit slightly higher up in the trees)  – you can see farther; wade slightly deeper waters, in general a bipedal stance comes at a considerable cost. Two limbs now have to take up all the body weight instead of four legs (or six - if you’re a bug; or eight – if you’re a spider). If one of those two limbs fails, you’re in deep poo. However, survival is more probable if you have four (or six or eight) legs and one fails.

Further, if you’re bipedal, your centre of gravity shifts, making you way more prone to losing your balance and falling over. Also, bipedal animals tend to run slower than a quadrupedal one. Most dogs whose backbones are at my knee height or more, and cats, can easily outrun me. The same goes for alligators, even with their splayed out limbs when they’re going full tilt. The upshot of all of that is that in the animal kingdom, only birds (and their ancestors, the theropod bipedal saurischian dinosaurs) are (or were) bipedal – for fairly obvious reasons. Two of their four ‘legs’ have evolved for flying. Humans have no such fallback since we can’t flap our arms and fly.

You don’t have to be a professional zoologist or expert in anatomy to realise that any creature going from a quadrupedal gait to a bipedal one has to have a massive amount of anatomical alterations to its basic structures. Bone and muscle lengths and widths will change; there must be alterations to the various joints, nearly all muscle attachments to the bones will alter; support structures for many internal organs will need rethinking, etc. Imagine the anatomical changes you’d have to make in your dog or cat or horse for that animal to walk in the same manner you do; imagine the changes that would have to be made in your anatomy for you to walk like a dog, cat or horse. It’s a big ask of natural selection to go from quadrupedal to bipedal without some clearly defined survival advantage(s); perhaps not so much of an ask if the shift is artificial selection; guided by an intelligence using bioengineering or genetic engineering techniques.

Now various animals can, and do, for brief periods, stand upright, say prairie dogs, chipmunks, bears, etc. Some animals can be taught to briefly stand up like circus elephants. Kangaroos, wallabies and related are usually bipedal, but they hop, not walk or run. Not even our primate relations routinely walk around on two legs although many can and do so for brief periods.

I think the advantages of a bipedal way of posture and locomotion are overstated, otherwise way more animals would have evolved that posture; you’d expect our cats and dogs to not so much as sit-up and beg but stand-up and beg for special treats. Out of millions and millions of vertebrate species that have existed over the past 300 or so million years of geologic history, only a relative tiny handful have adopted the bipedal mode of lifestyle. It’s not proved to be exactly an evolutionary success story unlike the more universal backbones and rib cages and skulls all vertebrates have.

Overall, in the biological scheme of things, we’re not just a little bit more advanced in a bipedal way, we’re WAY MORE advanced. The question is, why? Again, why are humans so obviously bipedal? And if we’re not so inclined to be bipedal by natural selection, perhaps then we’ve been so evolutionary inclined by artificial selection – by the ‘gods’ to free up our upper limbs, a useful trait if the ‘gods’ put us to work.

Now humans are smart. We’re top of the ‘food chain’ when it comes to IQ. We have very large brains relative to our body size. We have very complex brains. But all that size and complexity has a cost. An infant’s head has to be pretty soft and squishy and malleable and hence very vulnerable in order to fit through the birth canal, and even then it’s a struggle and a pretty dicey part of an infant’s and mother’s life.

Another high IQ evolutionary drawback is that it takes a lot of energy from the food we consume to power the brain and brain functions/activity, including thinking and processing thoughts. Higher IQ translates into the need to consume more calories. In the ancient world that took additional time to find or harvest food; in the modern era, it costs you more, say pound for pound to feed you vis-à-vis your lower IQ companion animals. 

Now intelligence, the ability to figure things out, must have a degree of natural survival value. Cats and dogs and pigs and many wild birds and dolphins and the humble octopus and our primate cousins aren’t dumb. Again, unlike the universal vertebrate backbone, rib cages, and skulls millions of vertebrate species have (or had) only one has excelled – top-of-the-pops – in IQ. BUT, we’re not just a little bit more advanced in the IQ department. We’re massively more advanced.

One might expect, based on natural selection, that if our average IQ was 100, perhaps our primate relations might have an average IQ of say, 90. That’s not the case. Most of the mammalian kingdom is clustered around a relatively narrow range of IQ way lower than ours. A dog isn’t a 100 times smarter than a cat or vice versa. But, humans are a 100 times smarter than our mammalian (and all other vertebrate) relations. Why? What natural evolutionary pressure did we face than thousands of other vertebrates, especially mammals, and especially, especially the primates, didn’t? Some human-only evolutionary pressure drove up our IQ levels to such extraordinary heights, but what evolutionary pressure?

You’d be hard pressed to think of any other terrestrial bipedal, high IQ species that could build the pyramids – in fact the answer is no other terrestrial species could.  Again, why were humans so blessed? And if we’re not so blessed with a high IQ by natural selection, then perhaps it must be by artificial selection; selection by, or genetic bioengineering by, the ‘gods’?

Moving on down the line, as each step in the ‘gods’ enforced artificial evolution of humans was achieved, slightly more upright posture; slightly higher average IQ, the previous lot – the less advanced hominoid species – were left to their own fate – extinction. There’s a lot of extinct hominoid species (for example, Homo habilis, Gigantopithecus or the Neanderthals) that are evolutionary links separating us from our primate ancestors, most probably chimpanzees, now our closest modern kissing cousins. 

When the ‘gods’ had at last achieved a reasonable facsimile of their objective, they gave us the gifts of knowledge (the basics anyway) and helped kick-started us on our road to civilized society. At some point or other we probably – ungrateful twerps that we tend to be – pissed them off and they packed their bags and left, perhaps leaving behind a token presence (UFOs) to monitor us to ensure we don’t ever become a threat to them and reverse the roles of slave and master.

To be continued...

Human Evolution: By Natural or Artificial Selection? Part One

If you’re reading this, I’d be 99.99% sure you’re human. That being the case, you probably are aware that humans evolved from our primate ancestors, most likely the chimpanzees, starting many eons of time ago in deep, darkest, equatorial Africa. From that point of origin, humans colonized the globe, including whatever part of Planet Earth you currently call home. That’s the be-all-and-end-all of the origin, evolution and colonization of and by the human race. Well, I think there are some flies in that ointment, especially the bit about our evolution.

We come in breeds. The proof of that pudding stares you in the face everyday as you observe the racial variety of people around you. I don’t recall anything in Genesis that explains this, so maybe God had nothing to do with this – assuming the existence of a bona-fide supernatural creator God of course in the first place – though I stand to be corrected on the lack of a Biblical explanation by appropriate authorities.

But if the Bible doesn’t explain the origin of the various breeds of humans neither does Darwin’s natural selection, in the same way that natural selection didn’t create, and doesn’t explain our dog breeds. Survival of the fittest didn’t produce the French Poodle – we did that! But who (or what) created our diversity of breeds or races?

To quell the immediate curiosity of the reader, my answer comes down solidly in favour of our evolution by ‘artificial selection’, which detracts not one jot from the Darwinian principles of evolution via natural selection. The difference between the two is that artificial selection is selection deliberately guided by intelligence; natural selection is, well natural, and not by design.

Humanity, mankind, human beings, however you label us, are collectively made up of breeds just like our own domesticated and bioengineered (artificial bred) animals (companion, farm or other) and plants (crops or garden varieties). The key words are ‘domesticated’ and ‘bioengineered’. We’ve been domesticated and bioengineered too, but we didn’t domesticate and bioengineer our own human breeds like we domesticated and bioengineered our domesticated plants and animals. Somebody or something else will take that credit.

Now I’m not really talking here about the so-called scientific phrase now substituted for creationism – ‘intelligent design’. Intelligent design has the philosophical baggage of having a supernatural creator, a God, behind the design. Alas, in the case of the human being, if God designed us from scratch; from the ground up, well He really failed Bioengineering 101. The various aches and pains and ailments we suffer because of bad biological design testify to that!

No, I’m referring here to the sort of artificial selection we humans employ when we breed dogs or cats or cattle or drought-resistant crops or whatever for our particular real (or imagined needs). I’m just turning the tables here a bit in what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. As we do, so has it been done to us! The question again is, done unto us by whom? 

To further quell the immediate curiosity of the reader, the ‘who’ collectively are the mythological gods, who aren’t really mythical, nor are they supernatural, but flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials who happen to have a special interest in, and abilities toward, genetics.

The basic premise, as expounded upon by universal cultural mythologies, is that the gods created humans, creating humans to relieve the gods of, and do the hard work instead, and to also serve the gods – and I don’t just mean by kneeling and prayer and building edifices to them. Translated, in more modern terminology, the flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials, which came upon Planet Earth many hundreds-of-thousands, perhaps millions of years ago, set up shopkeeping. Eventually known, if not loved, as the gods, these ‘gods’ genetically engineered humans from primate stock with again the ultimate goal of making the ‘gods’ life easier and more rewarding. Because of genetic similarities to our modern selves, that initial primate stock more likely as not were the chimpanzees.

One of those ‘more rewarding’ bits; one of the ‘gods’ tricks in their genetic engineering experiment, a design element designed to appeal to the ‘gods’ was to ensure humans were sexually compatible with them, and by Jove, did they ever make use of that engineered compatibility – at least if you take at face value and believe what transpired according to the mythological tales. Not suitable reading for the kiddies!

Now, the initial question is, if the overall intention of the extraterrestrial ‘gods’ is to create slaves to do the housework for the ‘gods’, and to serve the ‘gods’ (sexually or otherwise), and all you have to work with is terrestrial life (minus humanity), what sort of traits do you need to select for in order to get a life form that can build the pyramids and monumental structures that are constructed in order to serve the purpose of worshiping you? Clearly only humans can build a pyramid, so what skills or attributes do we have now that all other terrestrial life forms didn’t have then?

Two particulars stand out. One is that in order to build a pyramid, etc. one needs a free pair (or more) of appendages in order to manipulate stuff. How do you get a free pair of appendages? Well, you have got to go from a quadrupedal stance to a bipedal stance, thus freeing up two appendages (i.e. – arms). From a Darwinian point-of-view, that’s a problem. There’s a cost. Now we’re clearly bipedal. But will a bipedal posture be selected for naturally? Not usually, for again, there’s a price to be paid.

The second particular is that you need some degree of smarts! Translated, to build a pyramid you need a relatively large and complex brain. Many animals might be strong enough to build a pyramid, but they just don’t have a high enough IQ to pull it off. However, again from a Darwinian perspective, a high IQ comes at a high cost. Will high intelligence be selected for naturally?

To be continued...

The UFO ETH: Pro and Con: Long-Lived Alien Civilizations Don’t Exist

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 while there are extraterrestrials, and some have evolved a high degree of smarts, and they have produced advanced forms of technology, they quickly blow themselves up or otherwise give themselves collectively as a civilization one huge Darwin Award. If there’s no extraterrestrial longevity once they reach the advanced technology state; no extraterrestrial UFOs are likely.

OBJECTION #4: Extraterrestrial intelligence exists, extraterrestrial intelligences developing advanced technology is commonplace, but they quickly exterminate themselves through nuclear war or as the result of other technologies. Very short-lived alien species means another no-go to the UFO ETH, or at least makes it way less likely.

ANSWER: Lastly, there’s the issue of longevity. If your neighbours buy up and move in, but then sell up and move out again in less than 24 hours, that doesn’t allow much time to meet and greet them and gossip over an afternoon cup of coffee - blink, and they’re gone. But if you’re both on the block for twenty years, that allows lots of time for afternoon teas, philosophical chats, bridge games, etc. So, how long do technological civilizations last?  

Well, the pessimist will look around and cite global warming, probably antibiotic resistant germs giving rise to pandemics, chemical, biological and radiological warfare and/or terrorism, the extinction of biological species, rampant industrial pollution, and in general an overall quality of life heading rapidly down the gurgler, right down to the point that the human race will probably go extinct by our own hand. But if you’re an optimist, then the sky’s the limit.

It’s not all that obvious that technology actually adds all that much value towards ultimate long-term survival. Lots of technological advancements have, like controlling energy sources such as fire, developing a sustainable food supply via agriculture, the rise of modern medicine and food preservation technologies. But then lots of modern technological wonders, the automobile, CDs, sofas, microwave ovens, and thousands of other consumer products don’t really contribute much to our overall survival – certainly cars don’t when considering the road toll! That brings up the fact that things technological can sometimes work in the opposite direction. Toxic this, pollutant that, nuclear the next thing; then throw in a bit of global warming; the rise of urban city living with overcrowding and in general overpopulation; chemical, biological and radiological warfare/terrorism; instruments of warfare in general, like guns; the overuse of antibiotics hence the rise of antibiotic resistant germs; exposure to electromagnetic fields – well, the list of horrors or potential horrors keeps on keeping on and on.

It makes for an interesting question: would mankind ultimately survive longer had technology never entered the equation, or not? It’s an unanswerable question in that 1) we can’t run the contrary as a controlled experiment, and 2) that the genie is well and truly out of the bottle and there’s probably no turning back now.

Assuming humanity as a collective whole doesn’t end up going the way of the Dodo within the next several generations, even centuries – whether it actually morally deserves to go extinct is another question – then what?.

It’s hard to imaging what human civilization, what humans themselves will be like 1000 years from now. If you could come back 1000 years hence, would you indeed find a human civilization, indeed find recognizable ‘humans’ at all? Once you have evolved to the stage of being a multicellular critter with intelligence and advanced technology, then physics, chemistry and plain everyday evolutionary biology are no longer in control of your evolution. You are now in control! You are in control not only over the future evolution of other species (artificial selection instead of natural selection) but of your own evolution. The age of the designer baby is already here, albeit still in its infancy (pun intended). What will another few decades bring to this now embryonic field; obviously one with an ever ongoing and continuing maturity? 

Humans will probably go kaput within 1000 years, not because of any global nuclear war, or pandemic, or asteroid strike, but because humans have by their own free will evolved themselves into something else, and the process has already started. In fact, it’s possible that in 1000 years time there could be two humanoid species on Earth. One will be an amalgamation of flesh-and-blood plus ‘iron-and-silicon’; the other pure ‘iron-and-silicon’ (artificial intelligence, perhaps in the form of robots).

The first is not too difficult a swallow. Just replace or augment flesh-and-blood bits with ‘iron-and-silicon’ bits (or wood bits, or ceramic bits, or plastic bits, etc.). Look at most pirate films and you’ll see those beloved peg-legs and hook-hands. Do you wear glasses or contact lenses? What about a hearing aid? Perhaps you have an artificial joint(s) or a heart pacemaker. You surely have a dental filling (or two), maybe even dentures. Then there’s artificial skin and all manner of other internal or external types of technology that have replaced your failed flesh-and-blood – like kidney dialysis. There’s now serious talk about the development of a bionic eye within a few years (to go alongside the bionic ear). What further artificial bio-bits will be available in another 20 years, another 50 years, or another 200 years? The era of “RoboCop” or a real life “Six-Million Dollar Man” (and “Woman”) is getting close to fruition.

Within 500 years or so, maybe less, I can envision that someone will be able to download the contents of their brain (their mind) into an ‘iron-and-silicon’ equivalent.  Why? Well, does the word ‘immortality’ (or as close to immortality as makes no odds) suggest a possible reason? You don’t think anything of endlessly replacing worn automobile parts for new parts to extend the useful lifetime of your car. Why not endlessly replace your worn parts? Your mind, that ‘inner you’ housed within your brain won’t last forever. Replace it - transfer it to a more durable technology. Do it again, and again and again as is necessary. In fact, one might create a mega-mind or super-mind by merging into an ‘iron-and-silicon’ body containing a lot of minds (in much the same way as computer hardware can have a lot of operating software programs. By merging the minds of say a cosmologist, general relativist, quantum physicist and mathematician, one might speed up the development of the Holy Grail of physics, the Theory of Everything (TOE) – which is as currently conceived, a theory of quantum gravity. 

Once your mind is contained in an ‘iron-and-silicon’ ‘head’, just attach that to an all ‘iron-and-silicon’ ‘body’. Then boldly go where no ‘iron-and-silicon’ human has gone before. Immortality indeed!

All of which leads to a future Earth inhabited by a humanoid robot species, artificially evolved from today’s human species. That process too has already started - robotic appliances, even artificial ‘iron-and-silicon’ ‘pets’ are now on the market. Research into artificial intelligence is ever ongoing. Watch that final minute of the final episode of the TV revision of “Battlestar Galactica’! How about those sci-fi “Transformers” or “Terminators”, or Data (from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”)? Then there’s “Doctor Who’s” Cybermen or his main enemy, the Daleks (though Daleks are part machine; part organism).

Think of those robots from “Westworld” or the “Futureworld” sequel where nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong… Then there’s “The Stepford Wives”, “Cherry 2000”, the original Cylons from the original “Battlestar Galactica”, and many more. It might be just science fiction today – could it be science fact tomorrow? There doesn’t seem to be any violation of physics involved. In physics, everything not forbidden is compulsory! However, some of those sci-fi scenarios suggest that perhaps ultimately there might be a conflict between the (part) machines we become, and the (artificially) intelligent machines that we create!

We’re ultimately in control, so a quasi-robotic future isn’t of necessity compulsory. But I suspect it will happen. Why? There are rational reasons for humans deliberately abandoning their flesh-and-blood existence and evolving themselves, if not 100% into ‘iron-and-silicon’ then at least into something part flesh-and-blood coupled with part ‘iron-and-silicon’ – sort of like we have today (recall those now primitive dentures and peg-legs). 

Quite apart from immortality (well quasi-immortality anyway) arguments, its nice having more indestructible bodies and bodies that can be more easily repaired. Death won’t go away of course, not totally – accidents will still happen. Presumably, your mind will be able to absorb 10, 100, 1000 times the amount of experiences, memories, knowledge, etc. than is currently the case. You might be able to explore environments now closed to you, like taking a stroll across the sea bottom – many kilometres down – in your ‘iron-and-silicon’ robotic ‘birthday’ suit.

All of which then opens up the entire ‘boldly going’ experience hinted at above. What’s the hardest part of going to Mars? – it’s the flesh-and-blood frailty of the human body – the need for gravity, oxygen, organic food, water, space suits, and that you can’t carry spare flesh-and-blood parts along.  Extrapolate to our exploration of the entire solar system, then our stellar neighbourhood, eventually the galaxy. Even if you don’t want to go yourself, well, there’s artificial intelligence housed in perhaps nanotechnology bodies, spreading throughout the cosmos like so much a cancer analogy.  

The ultimate point of all of this is that if eventually us (humans), why not them (extraterrestrials) now? Translated, after a relative short period of biological development, a civilization can obtain longevity that evolutionary development into ‘iron-and-silicon’ provides, coupled with far easier expansion into the realm of outer space.

So, overall, UFOs might not be alien spaceships right here and now, because it’s 1) somewhat relatively hard to evolve multicellular organisms (but obviously not impossible); 2) will intelligence tend to have evolutionary survival? 3) Associated advanced technology isn’t inevitable and might even be counterproductive. 4) If counterproductive, longevity is at risk. Thus, Earth, with its multicellular critters and humanity with its technology, might be quite the rare planet within the Universe – according to some.

But, there’s a catch. There’s always a catch. What ultimately undermines the UFO ETH sceptics is that all you need is ONE boldly going, intelligent, advanced technological and long-lived extraterrestrial species and the galaxy is theirs for the taking and we’re in their sights. Few pundits would like to bet against that ONE, given, in the immortal words of the late Carl Sagan, a statistical possibility of ‘billions and billions’.   

So, IMHO, the fourth objection fails because all extraterrestrial intelligences, past and present, would have had to have gone extinct with short periods of developing advanced technology is statistically unlikely. Long lived alien civilizations with advanced technology might be rare, but not zero. They probably aren’t even rare since advanced technology quickly alters natural selection/evolution into artificial selection/evolution.

Mythology Interlude: Why Creation?

Mythologies around the world have given rise to thousands of gods (polytheism) who have all manner of duties and responsibilities and are credited (or blamed) for a whole host of natural phenomena. That’s understandable to primitive people who don’t quite grasp the science behind natural phenomena as well as the various aspects of the sociological, psychological, legal, political and other related parts of their world. However, humanity has also given substance or credit to creator gods whose obvious function is to create. That’s not understandable at all, unless mythology isn’t quite as mythological as it first appears.

*There are numerous creation myths surrounding the ‘gods’. The ‘gods’ created heaven and Earth; living things; other ‘gods’ – you name it, they probably created it.

*’Gods’ are of course usually responsible for creating the human race and beings.

*How did or could the ‘gods’ create humans, when we’re obviously descended from our primate branch of the zoological tree of life?  Slowly but surely, the ‘gods’ created ever newer and improved hominoid species. How? By genetically improving their earlier experiments on more primitive hominoid and primate species. That genetic bioengineering ultimately produced modern humans from that earlier hominoid, and ultimately primate stock – most likely the chimpanzee branch.

*This solves a lot of physical anthropological quandaries like why our facial features; why our racial features; why our high IQ; why did we lose our fur; why are we bipedal; why are all our hominoid ancestors extinct?

*Mythologies across the globe tell tales of various gods, well known as well as obscure to audiences of our modern era, that have created life, the Universe, and well, everything. These ‘in the beginning’ tales I suggest were highly unlikely to have been invented out of whole cloth by our ancient ancestors unless these imagined mythological creator gods were neither mythical, nor creators nor gods, but sophisticated extraterrestrials who knew a thing or two about the need for explaining creations.

*Say you lived 8000 years ago at the dawn of the transition from ‘primitive’ hunter-gatherer to ‘sophisticated’ urban dweller (well maybe a farmer or herdsman in a small settlement). Now you have no knowledge of modern biological evolution, the origin of species, or physical geology or cosmology or astrophysics. Would you, in pondering life, the Universe and everything (in your spare time of course) come up with an ‘in the beginning’ or ‘as it is, so shall it have ever been so’? I would suggest the latter because in your world, your environment, your environmental world view, everything is cyclic – a seemingly endless repeat of events, of events, of events, of events (like a stuck record): Birth-death-birth-death; seasons come and seasons go, but always in the same order; the Sun rises-sets-rises-sets-rises-sets; ditto the stars, their patterns and movements are endlessly fixed (patterns) and cyclic (movements); you go from full Moon to quarter Moon to new Moon to quarter Moon to full-quarter-new-quarter, etc. You witness no Big Ticket newness – no acts of grand creation. You have no real reason to assume any grand scale ‘in the beginning’.

*Why would you assume that the ground beneath your feet hadn’t always existed as that solid good earth? Wouldn’t such an idea seem rather alien? It would go against the grain of commonsense.

*Day after day, year after year, you see the Sun rise and the Sun set. The exact same set of observations, the circumstances surrounding what the Sun does daily, has been passed down generation unto generation. Nobody has experienced anything different no matter how far back your ancestors go. Why would you not assume it has always been that way; that way forever and ever, amen? There seems no need to postulate that some natural event, or deity, created the Sun.

*That’s not to suggest you wouldn’t invent deities in order to explain natural phenomena you had no understanding of, like the tides or volcanoes or earthquakes or eclipses or where does the Sun go at night and why rain, wind, thunder and lightning? It’s just there’s no need to invent creator deities, deities who did things ‘in the beginning’.

*Yet ancient mythologies nearly all adopt creator deities and an ‘in the beginning’. The Universe isn’t cyclic – it had a creation (the Big Bang event). Ditto the Sun and the Moon and the stars and the Earth (land, sea and sky) and plants and animals and humans. All were created ‘in the beginning’. Why? Maybe because there were ‘people’ (i.e. – those extraterrestrial ‘gods’) around 8000 years ago who did have knowledge of biological evolution, the origin of species or physical geology or cosmology or astrophysics and were able to pass on that information to the human populace who (not fully grasping the technical fine print) incorporated those revelations into their world view: what has come down to us as creation mythology.

Mythology: The Extraterrestrial ‘Gods’ Strut Their Stuff

The concept that once-upon-a-time, a time long, long ago, an extraterrestrial civilization’s beings held sway and had influence over humanity has gained stature. We call those ancient beings the ‘gods’, even ‘God’. Collectively, they are now known by the popular phrase ‘ancient astronauts’. While that concept has just about zero credibility with scholars (vested interests perhaps), the general populace has had a far more open mind on the issue, at least judging from the popularity of books, movies, TV shows, documentaries, etc. that discuss the issue. 

When it comes to mythology, my basic premise is that anytime you have near universal themes between wildly dispersed in space and/or time cultures, ethnic groups, nationalities, whatever, then you sit up and take notice that something more than just human imagination is at work. Last time the extraterrestrial ‘gods’ had arrived on Planet Earth and set up shop – a sort of home-away-from home.

*Our advanced extraterrestrials set up shop on Planet Earth as an R&R home-away-from-home, sort of taking dominion over this paradise / nature reserve / national park, perhaps with a view towards eventual long-term colonization. 

*In much the same way as British colonizers of Australia brought with them reminders of home, from plants and crops to cattle and sheep, not to mention rabbits, cats and dogs, so to did the aliens bring with them their menagerie, like say the hydra, chimera, unicorns, Pegasus, and of course dragons.

*This would certainly explain why nearly every pre-Christian human culture independently had dragons as part of that culture. Dragons could be good (The East), or bad (The West) but regardless ‘here be dragons’. So, I suspect that at one time, thanks to the aliens, dragons were anything but mythical.

*There are many other common themes that cut across several cultural mythologies involving the extraterrestrial ‘gods’. One is that you can be turned to stone (or in the Biblical sense, a pillar of salt perhaps?). ‘Global’ floods are common in the mythological literature, not just in the Bible. Nearly all cultures have trickster ‘gods’. And in creation myths involving the cosmos, there’s nearly always a subdivision between attic (the sky or heaven, etc.); the basement (the underworld); and ground level (Planet Earth). That trilogy is probably not too surprising however since wherever we are there’s always an up, a down, and a sideways. However, the importance of near universal mythological themes between cultures with no contact between them is relatively obvious in an ‘ancient astronaut’ context.

*Speaking of alleged ‘global’ flood myths (actually local disasters separated in time and space), humans, not knowing any better when subjected to various natural disasters like these local, but intense, floods, were prone to blame the ‘gods’ for being pissed off at humanity – maybe they were!

*Such extraterrestrial beings became known collective as the gods or as deities to humans as soon as humans evolved sufficiently to develop (or were given a) language and a reasonable level of intellect. The gods are really an advanced race(s), representing a Type-II civilization(s), but to more simplistic humans, such advanced extraterrestrials were interpreted as deities.

*These advanced extraterrestrial beings will be hereafter often be referred to as the ‘gods’, because that’s they way humanity perceived them.

*The polytheistic extraterrestrial ‘gods’ divided up the Earth into various regions each patch under the administration of one of the senior ‘gods’.

*God, as just one of the numerous polytheistic gods (or ‘gods’ since they’re alien beings) had as His chosen people or patch of geography to lord over was the Middle East, the Israelites. Zeus / Jupiter had the Mediterranean region (Greece, Italy and surrounding regions); Odin’s chosen people were the Norsemen and his patch the Norse lands (Scandinavia); Atum and Ptah shared parts of Ancient Egypt, Indra covered India, etc.

*There are numerous creation myths surrounding the ‘gods’. The ‘gods’ created heaven and Earth; living things; other ‘gods’ – you name it, they probably created it.

*The ’gods’ are of course usually held responsible throughout our mythologies for creating human beings and human races.

*Humans may have evolved from ‘lesser’ primates, but the ‘gods’ did some artificial selection (genetic engineering) to assist the process so as to provide the ‘gods’ ultimately with a labour force. This is how the ‘gods’ ‘created’ humanity. That the ‘gods’ created humans is one very common creation tale among many differing cultures. “Genesis” has no monopoly on how the ‘gods’ breathed life into man and woman.  

*This is akin to humans establishing a horse farm say, stocking same with say wild horses and then artificially breeding them for the trait(s) you want.

*Based on these universal mythological themes, there’s the belief that not only did the ‘gods’ create humans, but often for the purpose of ultimately serving the ‘gods’ as in doing their ‘housework’, and serving as sex objects, and of course serving the ‘gods’ through worship. The ‘gods’ are the masters; humans are their servants.

*The ‘gods’ created humans to do the hard yakka (one good reason why humans, not aliens, built the pyramids and other monumental stoneworks such as cities, as temples, as buildings, as massive statues, etc). 

*Ultimately, the ‘gods’ (now called ‘ancient astronauts’ in our modern times), again based on universal mythologies shared by all cultures, gave modern humans the gifts of knowledge and culture and tools required for our domestication and transition from primitive unsophisticated hunter-gatherers to advanced sophisticated urbanite. This is, in fact, what archaeology confirms – our very rapid turnabout from the one lifestyle to the other.

*The ‘gods’ brought culture, arts and crafts, trades, fire, agriculture and all the other civilized products (i.e. science, writing, language) to early human societies. That might be one reason why the transition from primitive hunter-gatherers to sophisticated settlements and ‘civilization’ was apparently reasonably quick in many, but not all parts of the world.

*Some ‘gods’ were more generous in gift-giving than others; some geographical areas were better suited to these godly gifts, so not all humanity’s geographical cultures transformed from ‘primitive’ to ‘civilized’ equally. Some African and Pacific cultures (i.e. the Australian aborigines) remained nomadic, but their ‘gods’ and mythologies are also hard to mesh with the European, the Subcontinent and Asian cultures. This might be another case of division of labour – this lot of ‘gods’ took sole responsibility for this geographical area; this other lot of ‘gods’ looked after another geographical area. The styles of these differing collections of ‘gods’ might have differed enough to account for why some parts of the world developed ‘civilization’ and some didn’t, even though all parts had ‘gods’.