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.

Seven Alien Misconceptions Revisited: Part Two

The scientific community and the general community tend to have differences of opinion over the topic of extraterrestrial life, especially intelligent extraterrestrial life with advanced technological capabilities. The scientific community tends to be ultra conservative; the great unwashed are way less critical since they get their news and views from the tabloids and sci-fi programs. Perhaps the middle ground is a more viable option than either side’s extremely conservative or uncritical point of view. 

An article titled “7 Huge Misconceptions about Aliens” by Natalie Wolchover has appeared recently on several websites including Space.com; Life’s Little Mysteries (prime site); and the Huffington Post (abridged to just five). It’s all about how scientists view the existence and nature of advanced ET as opposed to the more common perceptions of the great unwashed. The following comments are my addressing of the common misconceptions raised. Let’s see if I agree or disagree with the verdicts, and most important, why. Oh, of course the “THEY” referred to is our intelligent and technologically advanced ET. 

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

THEY WON’T EAT US: Agree

Alien biochemistry wouldn’t be absolutely identical to our biochemistry. So, we might as well be as indigestible to them as cellulose is to us. We’d give them the equivalent of an alien tummy ache. That aside: if aliens arrive from there to here, then presumably they know how to produce ‘artificial’ food supplements – produce their nutritional requirements from raw materials. I mean there are no supermarkets or fast food joints along the interstellar highway. Of course if aliens have master-chefs, well perhaps they might like to take a human or two and sauté them up in a super-duper alien stew. There’s an awful lot of missing persons who forever seem to remain missing! So where on (or off) Earth is Jimmy Hoffa, the crew of Flight 19, Glenn Miller, the crew of the Mary Celeste, or for that matter the entire Ninth Roman Legion? Joking aside, if humans are a food of last resort, well then, the cosmos is way more resource impoverished than I would have thought possible. 

THEY’RE IMMUNE TO EARTH’S BACTERIA: Agree

Alien biochemistry wouldn’t be absolutely identical to our biochemistry. Our biochemistry isn’t 100% identical with the biochemistry of other terrestrial species. And thus, 99.9% of the diseases that afflict one species can’t be passed onto another species. My cat sneezes – I don’t catch their cold. I sneeze – my cats don’t catch my cold. I can’t catch Dutch Elm Disease; Elm trees are pretty safe from all the germs I carry around and about with me. So, the odds ET will catch terrestrial diseases and vice versa are pretty damn slim. But, another reason is that presumably ET is pretty skilled when it comes to medicine. If there was any chance Earth’s microorganisms could infect ET, well ET would have tested for that in advance and done the proper procedures to nullify any potential threat. The “War of the Worlds” scenario and resolution is ultimately bovine fertilizer. 

THEY DIDN’T PUT US HERE: Disagree

Why would aliens ‘create’ humans? Why do humans ‘create’ slavery or jobs or employ beasts of burden, even if mechanical, perhaps ultimately robotic? The ultimate answer: to get someone or something else to do the bloody hard work! If you vacation at a resort, you expect to be waited on hand-and-foot. Well, when Mr. ET arrived on this third rock resort, ET wanted to be waited on hand-and-foot too; and worshiped to boot. You’ll find lots of references to that in various cultural mythologies. So, ET created humans, not from dust or clay or even ribs but from manipulating pre-existing primate stock via their advanced knowledge of artificial selection breeding techniques. Humans too know all about artificial selection – how many unnatural breeds of dogs have we created? Is there a single domesticated plant or animal we haven’t in a sense ‘created’? When you stop and think about it, don’t humans too come in ‘breeds’ (only we call them races). 

THEY WON”T COME IN PEACE: Disagree

Many a scientist has warned that we shouldn’t draw attention to ourselves (that’s already too little and too late a wish) or seek out aliens. We might wish aliens to exist, but we must be careful what we wish for. A lot of that is based on all the examples of terrestrial exploration. The discovered are not usually treated well by the discoverer. Cue case histories of the American Indian, the Aztecs and Incas, the Australian aborigines, and all manner of other invasions perpetrated by one or more nations / cultures / peoples against another. All of our actual exploitation histories are reinforced by hundreds of Sci-Fi films and TV shows that suggest in no uncertain terms that when aliens discover Earth, Earthlings are up shit creek!

Ultimately, these sorts of terrestrial doings and undoings have two basic root causes – resources are one such cause. You need more land because you need expansion room for your ‘fruitful and multiplying’ population, and/or the natural resources found there. Perhaps however, if aliens can again get from there to here, then they already have the resources of the Milky Way Galaxy under their ‘thumbs’ – assuming thumbs of course – or at their fingertips (or should that be tentacle-tips?). Earth has nothing to offer in terms of additional real estate, water, energy, minerals, etc. that can’t be found closer to their home turf.

The second root cause is someone else, some other nation or nations is/are perceived as a threat. The threat(s) you perceive maybe military, maybe political, maybe cultural or maybe religious. If you deem yourself in the stronger position, you may decide to hit first, hit hard and hit often. If your next door neighbor is no threat to you and has nothing of value you want, you’re going to tend to just live and let live. Well as far as any technologically advanced aliens are concerned, this here third rock and inhabitants is no threat to them and has nothing of value they can’t acquire closer to home at vastly less effort and expense.

“Independence Day” and a thousand clones of that plot element are highly improbable in the extreme. Highly improbable is not of course the same as impossible. 

But, and why is there nearly always a but, it’s within the realm of possibility that there might be those aliens who parallel those humans who don’t mind sticking a knife in your back just because they derive great kicks and great pleasure out of doing so. No motive other than sadistic pleasure and a sense of being ‘king of the hill’. But then again, perhaps there’s also an interplanetary extraterrestrial police force to help curb the enthusiasm of such alien backstabbers.

Now what’s never mentioned, but really terrifying, and perhaps more likely and what we may really need to worry about is that they’ll come in peace alright, but as missionaries to spread the word that their version of a supreme being(s) is the only true version of a supreme being(s) and that all of us terrestrial heathen, pagan infidels had better see the error of our untrue faiths and convert to their extraterrestrial theology quick-smart. Although you’d hope that advanced alien beings would have long since out-evolved such religious nonsense, that’s not a given. That missionary scenario is even more frightening than them coming here with their ray guns blasting away. So if those extraterrestrial evangelists come knocking at your door, be afraid, be very afraid!

But ultimately there’s no point in worrying about things that we have no control over, and since we can’t hide Earth (and ourselves) in a technological cloak of invisibility, we’re at the mercy of ET: the good ET, the bad ET and the ugly ET. 

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…

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

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.

Origin of the Universe

* Once upon a time there was this Big Bang.

* Since we are a part of the Universe, and since the Universe had an origin (the accepted standard model being the Big Bang event some 13.7 billion years ago), that alone of necessity means we have an extraterrestrial legacy since everything that makes you, you was born in that event, thereby in a manner of speaking making you 13.7 billion years old!

Origin of Our Stellar Solar System & Earth

* As it was in the beginning, well so too did our Sun and Planet Earth have a beginning.

* We are Star Stuff. Our solar system, our Sun, the planets, including Earth, were all formed out of the remains of extraterrestrial gas, dust and debris from older stellar systems, scattered to the four interstellar winds by supernovae explosions, over four and a half billion years ago. Thus, that too alone, no matter which way you slice it, means we (as beings part and parcel of our stellar system) are extraterrestrial in origin.

Origin of Life

* The terrestrial origin of life may have happened within that petrii dish/test tube called Planet Earth - Or maybe not. IMHO it happened way too quickly and way too soon post Earth’s formation to probably have been a solely terrestrial happening. There’s an alternative called panspermia which expands both the time and space available for life’s origin by many order of magnitudes.

* Panspermia is the idea that Earth was seeded by cosmic spores or microbes that were expelled from some other planetary abode in some other stellar system and drifted across the gulf of space. An incredibly tiny fraction of these cosmic spores lands on suitable planetary environments, where they survive and thrive and evolve. Our Earth was one such place for their lucky landing. It’s akin to a plant producing millions of spores – 99.999% of which fail to land on fertile ground; but that tiny fraction that does is all it takes to keep the species keeping on keeping on. 

* Balistic panspermia is a slight variation on traditional panspermia in that the microbes or spores are inside the protective covering of a solid object – dust or tiny rocks, even massive rocks. These, alone with their microbial passengers get blasted off home turf by incoming ballistic objects (impacting meteors), escape their home planet and a few eventually, by chance land on another suitable abode. That Mars rock, ALH84001 that caused such a stir several years back is one such example of a potential case history of ballistic panspermia.

* Directed panspermia is yet another variation on the theme, only in this case there’s intelligence behind the scenes, either sending out canisters of microbes willy-nilly in a shotgun manner, and/or directing that canister specifically at a chosen target.

* The upshot is if terrestrial life’s origin was via a form of panspermia, then we humans, being a species of terrestrial life, ultimately had an extraterrestrial origin. If a Mars rock full of microbes impacted Earth billions of years ago, well, we might be the Martians transplanted from the fourth rock to the third rock from the Sun. Perhaps our origins were even farther a-field. Perhaps some cosmic gardener planted life here billions of years ago, maybe even stuck around to fertilize, cultivate, prune, and weed that garden. 

Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, Civilization and Technology: The Fermi Paradox

* The Fermi Paradox can be summed up simply enough by pointing out that as long as you assume the existence of at least one other technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilization with the same sorts of ‘boldly going’ drives as we humans have (i.e. – plain old curiosity, the what’s on the other side of the hill, if nothing else, then just as humans explored and colonized Planet Earth in a tiny fraction of the Earth’s existence, technologically capable extraterrestrials would have explored and colonized the Milky Way Galaxy in a tiny fraction of its existence. In the case of humans, we don’t need to ask “where is everybody?” We’re everywhere. In the case of ET, we do ask “where is everybody?” They should be here. Scientists say they’re not, never have been, and thus have to explain the paradox. On the other side of the fence, those who see evidence in those ‘ancient astronauts’ and in UFOs have no paradox with which to have to come to terms with.

* The ‘Gods’ arrive. Very few people today would try to defend the position what in the vastness of the cosmos we, human beings, are the proverbial intelligent ‘IT’ within that cosmos. Since we are the new boys on the block, having only existed as a unique species several hundreds of thousands of years at best in a Universe that’s 13.7 billion years old, the odds are pretty good that our intellectually cosmic superiors are out there. Now on the likelihood that at least one such superior extraterrestrial intelligence will boldly go and explore the cosmos, let’s define ‘cosmos’ and restrict that term to our ten billion years old Milky Way Galaxy, the time it would take that extraterrestrial intelligence to explore every nook and cranny of our Milky Way Galaxy is but a tiny fraction of the age of our galaxy. By analogy, Planet Earth has existed four and a half billion years; yet as noted above our 100,000 plus year old species crawled all over it in real quick-smart fashion, as did the bacteria, plants, insects, and other life forms as well. Translated, since there’s nowhere to hide Planet Earth from the ‘I spy with my little eye’ aliens, we’ve been found! The extraterrestrials have arrived, not yesterday but millions of yesterdays ago. And since Planet Earth is a hospitable bio-friendly place, one with a pretty unique property – a biosphere – they decided to stick around and set up camp. Because these beings are high-tech, and because any sufficiently advanced technology is something supernatural to any sufficiently lower technological civilization (like us), that supernatural quality gets interpreted as beings who ARE supernatural – deities or ‘gods’ – not interpreted by the great unwashed primitives as flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials. Our cultural mythologies, worldwide, are full of references to ‘star beings’; ‘guardians of the skies’; ‘sky gods’; ‘gods in the heavens’ and gods who come from the stars or who are associated with specific stars and constellations, most notably Cygnus, Sirius and Orion.

Origin of Humanity

* Just about every religious mythology, and every culture has one, well you’ll find something along the line that the gods (or God) created human beings. Let’s take that at face value. Now ‘created’ doesn’t mean creating something from scratch. If you ‘create’ a plank of wood, you create it from an existing tree or log, not from your home chemistry set (though in theory you could do so since ultimately chemicals make up wood). You probably ‘create’ your meals from ingredients you got from the supermarket. Again, your home chemistry set had nothing to do with it, and even if you did grow your own vegetables and herbs and raise your own chickens and pigs, you still started from existing ingredients – seeds and other advanced biological products like eggs and baby pigs. That analogy equally applies to the case of the ‘gods’ creating humans. They didn’t start from clay and dust and the gods’ equivalent of a home chemistry set. They started work on pre-existing advanced ingredients.

* At this point of course, based on previous remarks, you realise that there are no gods. The ‘gods’ are of course just technologically advanced extraterrestrials with intellectual powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal humans.

To be continued…

Parallels Between Terrestrial Intelligence and Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Part Two

The existence, behaviour, motives, abilities of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), given ETI is behind the UFO and ancient astronaut phenomena, is way more convincing if there are parallels with our own (TI) existence, behaviour, motives and abilities.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Universal Mythology Number Two: We were created to serve the ‘gods’ (now often termed ‘ancient astronauts’), to be their domestic servants and make their life easier and more meaningful (like having worshippers).

Human analogies abound. History is full of emperors, empresses, pharaohs, kings, queens, dictators, presidents, ministers, religious officials of every type who demand our loyalty and our labour and our taxes, and who erect monuments to themselves, or rather have others erect those monuments on their behalf.

Fast forward to more modern times, like say 1947, when the ‘gods’ or ‘ancient astronauts’ have now morphed into ‘aliens’ who buzz around in their UFOs. One argument against there being real UFOs buzzing around is the following:

Every cubic inch of the sky is monitored from above and below 24/7/52 by highly sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment, always on the lookout for sneak attacks and to track satellites and space junk. The orbits of thousands of bits of space junk are known with high precision, even if that bit is no larger than a ham sandwich! Any alien spaceships that large or (obviously) larger that’s up there, well, we’d know about it.

However, IMHO, advanced stealth technology rules; okay anyone? It’s a major and ever ongoing R&D into stealth technologies that are of interest to the military, the intelligence community and law enforcement agencies on Earth. What might an advanced alien civilization 1000, 10,000 years in advance of our have in the way of such camouflage? They’d obviously use that technology to prevent being shot at by trigger-happy generals! In ‘Star Trek’ terminology, we’d call this sort of technology something akin to a ‘cloaking device’.

My bit above about UFOs and stealth technology or ‘cloaking’ devices’ is nothing more than drawing a parallel between with we humans (the military in particular) do R&D on, and have adopted, and will continue to do R&D on and continue to adopt for obvious reasons. If stealth technology exists, then it would surprise me that ETI wouldn’t have discovered this as well and adopted same, if for no other reason, assuming UFOs are the products of ETI, than it would be useful to often cloak themselves from human observation. ETI is here on a scientific mission, IMHO, and like say wildlife biologists hide in the bushes so as not to disturb the objects of their study; or why a hunter uses camouflage in the woods so their prey doesn’t spot them. If humans, why not ET?

There’s an association been made between the phenomena of animal mutilations and aliens for reasons that aren’t totally clear but might be related to the abduction phenomena (see below). Regardless, from the point of view of terrestrial livestock humans slaughter for meat; frogs dissected in biology classes by humans; humans who do biological and medical research, well often it is less than a bed of roses for the animal subjects who go under the knife.

Another argument against the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) is the absolute absurdity of UFO-related alleged abductions by alien beings.

I’d like to think that their agenda, the alien’s motive for being here is science. As noted above, Planet Earth is really interesting real estate in the cosmos since we have a biosphere. And like our wildlife biologists and anthropologists, etc. go out of their way so as not to disturb the objects of their study in their natural environment, so too might any ETI associated with UFOs try to keep to a minimum disturbing the natives (see stealth technology above). The aliens are ‘harmless as kittens on Xanax’ (a phrase used by a well known SETI scientist) by deliberate design. Of course even wildlife biologists have to occasionally capture, study (maybe dissect), tag and release their subject – perhaps a parallel with the abduction phenomena?

One question immediately leaps to mind – if abductions are imaginary, why? Abductions, as reported by the alleged abductees aren’t overly pleasant experiences. Humans by their very nature like pleasant experiences – warm sunshine, gentle rain, red roses, hot chocolate, a loving relationship with a partner, a nice view, your own home, no job related stress, sufficient finances to pay all your bills, and overall the good life, including in that the philosophy according to Peanuts, ‘happiness is a warm puppy’.

Of course most humans, at some time(s) or other, have nightmares – very unpleasant. However, we apparently have built-in defence mechanisms that jolt us awake if things get too intense. However, you don’t wake up from an abduction nightmare, if nightmare it be, so you’re probably not dreaming.

Humans might like the occasional nasty horror movie or TV show, but though we may hide behind the sofa, or leave the room for a TV snack just when the horror element reaches a peak, we are ultimately in control and can turn the TV off.

So what’s the parallel with the alien UFO abduction phenomena? Alleged UFO abductions aside (and that in itself presents all manner of issues, not the least of which are social and/or psychological if there’s no UFO ETH) are the central point. I mean human scientists, with all good intentions, abduct and perform nasty experiments on wildlife or laboratory animals. If wildlife (and mice and rats used in medical research) could talk, what a gruesome tale they would tell about what ‘harmless as kittens on Xanax’ we humans are. So, we abduct animals for all manner of experimentation; aliens return the favour and abduct us for similar reasons. Why?

If my interpretation of mythology is correct, aliens ‘created’ humans via genetic engineering from our primate ancestors for reasons noted above. Aliens also, via genetic engineering, created the hybrids of mythology – those half-human half-animal, or half-animal-half other form of animal ‘half and halves’, like for example the sphinx.

Now if UFO abductees are to be believed, aliens are really interested in furthering their genetic experiments. They’ve ‘created’ humans from primate stock – artificial selection; they’re created terrestrial hybrids; now their next step is creating alien-human hybrids. Exactly why this should be so, whether for purely academic reasons, or because they have a practical goal in mind – well, time will tell the ultimate tale. I think the jury is still out on that scenario. However, I must point out that if there is an ETI behind some of the UFO phenomena, then we must remind ourselves that we are dealing with aliens. By definition that means an alien mind, alien behaviour, alien psychology, alien emotions, and alien motives. The parallels between human mental processes and alien mental processes might not be one-on-one.   

It’s just as important IMHO to consider what they (the aliens) don’t do as well as what they do, do. An important argument against the UFO ETH is that aliens would obviously make contact with us, for diplomatic and trade related reasons. Why would they come all this way and then not openly interact with the lords and masters on this planet – the presidents and prime ministers and associated powerbrokers?

Well, we humans don’t come up to a troop of primates or a pod of dolphins (intelligences in their own right) with a “take me to your leader” or “let’s establish diplomatic and trade relations”.

Aliens, way back then or here and now, didn’t and haven’t adopted traditional Hollywood invasion scenarios. Aliens don’t want our planet the way Hitler did. And although history is chockfull of one nation(s) invading another nation(s), on balance, most nations leave most other nations alone most of the time. There’s probably no resources, minerals, water, real estate, etc. that aliens need Earth for that they couldn’t just as easily get closer to their home and from uninhabited abodes. What resources they want appear to be biological ones (animal mutilations; abductions) and for those they do require being here, but don’t actually have to do Hollywood-style ‘War of the Worlds’ conquest to get what they want or need.

In summary, aliens, like humans, have motives. In the case of our ‘gods’, ‘ancient astronauts’ or today’s aliens, it’s clear that if bona-fide UFOs (past or present) somehow equate to ETI, then ETI doesn’t have extraterrestrial invasion as an agenda, nor a diplomatic ‘take me to your leader’ scenario. Not after some six plus decades. Again I note that alien invasion, a staple of Hollywood like “Independence Day” and hundreds of other similar films, isn’t apparently their agenda. Also, diplomatic contact and setting up trade relations isn’t on their agenda either apparently. I guess it could be tourism and R&R, but I’d like to think the agenda, their motive is science.

Humans have explored ever since we had the ability to explore. We’ve boldly gone, in person or via machine surrogates, to the depths of the ocean, to Antarctica, to the Moon, and to all of the planets (actual, or in the case of Pluto, on route). All this exploration for all practical purposes has been for the sake of just science, pure science, and nothing but the science. Of course there’s usually an ulterior motive in the back of the mind – exploration leads to exploitation. We explore, we like what we see, we colonize, we exploit, we build resorts for R&R, we migrate to escape various forms of environmental/political pressures, we mine for resources, and we farm for food and do more besides. Today the Moon is for science; tomorrow we may exploit its resources. Why should the ET-Earth relationship be any different?  Keep watching the skies – we might be in for a rough time of it yet!

Parallels Between Terrestrial Intelligence and Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Part One

The existence, behaviour, motives, abilities of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), given ETI is behind the UFO and ancient astronaut phenomena, is way more convincing if there are parallels with our own (TI) existence, behaviour, motives and abilities.

Humans (and other higher animals) love to explore – what’s over the next hill? Food or sex or enemies or greener grass or gold or buried treasure – we’ve got to know. It’s in our very nature; our genes and probably a trait vital for survival. I strongly suspect the same will be true for any extraterrestrial (ETI).

Part of that survival is knowing about your neighbours (friend or foe) so we seek out new life forms and new civilizations, be they across the valley, across the pond, or across the gulf of space. That should also apply to ETI.

Traditional SETI (the Search for ETI) is handicapped in that it can only detect a small subset of new extraterrestrial life forms and new civilizations. SETI can’t detect non-intelligent life or intelligences that don’t have a high enough or suitable technology. That would also apply to ETI. Their SETI program wouldn’t have detected human civilization even as recently as say 200 years ago.

To find the rest, that is most life throughout the cosmos, we need to Boldly Go and travel to the stars. Ditto ETI.

There are no natural physical laws, relationships or principles that would prevent this, and that applies to ETI as well.

We’ve only just begun to Boldly Go, taking our first few baby steps into our own shallow waters that ultimately lead to the great depths of the cosmic ocean. ETI (in general) has had potentially vastly more time in which to sail the cosmic ocean and way more time to become more advanced technologically – as in interstellar spaceflight capability. We’ve only had roughly 4.5 billion years to get to where we are today; our cosmic (Milky Way Galaxy) neighbours have had potentially an additional 5.5 billion years on top of that since our galaxy is roughly ten billion years old.

More technologically advanced Europeans discovered Australia, Japan, the Americas, etc. not the other way around. By analogy, ETI will discover us before we discover them. In fact, translated, ETI has discovered us. We are the modern equivalents of the Aztecs, Maya, Incas, North American Indians, Australian Aborigines, the Japanese. But that’s getting slightly ahead of the game. In actual fact, ETI discovered Planet Earth probably way before humans were thought of in anyone’s philosophy – especially theirs (but that’s getting ahead of the game again).

We’d be excited to discover the biosphere of another planet – microbes on Mars would be exciting to astrobiologists. Biospheres are relatively rare in the cosmos compared to other real estate abodes. The Moon is cosmic real estate, but it’s not very exciting real estate. ETI would presumably be more interested in real estate with a biosphere – like our biosphere – because again biospheres are rare real estate.

Of course ET may not have actually discovered Earth and Earth’s biosphere by actually exploring our inner solar system. ET could have detected spectroscopically our biosphere remotely, at a vast distance, by finding biomarkers that’s unique to life like chlorophyll or oxygen, or otherwise suggestive of an environment that’s bio-friendly, like water vapour or methane. The parallel there is that we human’s are detecting via remote sensing, extra-solar planets at a rapid rate of knots. Determining the general chemical makeup of such bodies is plausible, and in fact has been accomplished for several extra-solar planets already. It probably won’t be too much longer before we detect an alien biosphere, or at least a potential one.

If humans discover something new and important, and assuming it doesn’t have sensitive military or diplomatic connotations, that information tends to get disseminated as quickly as the technology of the times allows for. In like fashion the first discovery of our biosphere could be common knowledge throughout all of our galaxy’s ETI civilizations within a maximum of 100,000 years at light speed (or less) since the diameter of our galaxy is only 100,000 light years.  Probably every space faring ET would want to come and have a look. The terrestrial parallels are obvious. Once we discovered Antarctica it quickly became common knowledge. We (collectively) went back, again, and again and again, finally setting up near permanent quarters despite the obvious costs and hardships, all in the name of science. We’ll go back to the Moon too one day – maybe not anytime real soon, but eventually. Your great grandkids will see lunar settlements or outposts like we today see in Antarctica.

Of course it would prove to be an extraordinary stroke of luck if, after 4.5 billion years of Planet Earth’s existence, that an ETI just happened to stumble across our humble abode at the very era in time that our generation (1947+) was in existence. Therefore, let’s postulate that ETI happened upon Planet Earth – oh, let’s bisect the timeline – say 2.25 billion years ago.

Like the Americas or Australia was to the Europeans – prime real estate, so too our Planet Earth was prime real estate to ET all those billions of years ago. That’s because even back then, Planet Earth had a biosphere, albeit one full of microbes – no humans, just lots of microbes. That’s okay since that still puts our home planet in the higher echelons of valuable and prime real estate.

Fast forward several billion years to just before the dawn of the human. As far as intelligence goes just before the dawn, dolphins and kin, and primates rule the IQ roost – along with the crows and their kin (like magpies).

As noted, way back then, ET couldn’t interact with humans – we hadn’t yet evolved from the primordial scum - yet – but that was to change. If a superior nation happens upon an inferior nation (superior and inferior referring mainly to technology), the usual outcome is, based on our terrestrial history, fairly obvious. So, ETI couldn’t do much with microbes, but they could bide their time until something more suitable and promising came along – the primates.

Enter the realm of mythology, a subject I take as factual until proven otherwise, especially when it comes to universals shared between all races, cultures, and geographical regions. So hence forth the mythological gods are actually an ETI that’s come to pay their respects to and investigate our biosphere. 

Universal Mythology Number One:  The ET ‘gods’ created humans. Why humans should have imagined they had ever been created in the first place is a total mystery unless someone (the ‘gods’) told them that was the case. Now unless the ‘gods’ are super-duper organic and biochemists, I’m sure they didn’t literally create humans out of mud and dust and all manner of other stuff. Rather humans were ‘created’ as a product of artificial selection and genetic (or bio) engineering from primate stock (as dolphins and crows weren’t quite as suitable as experimental subjects). 

Okay, haven’t humans ‘created’ all manner of breeds of organisms (cats, dogs, horses, cattle, roses, wheat, rice, etc.) via just such genetic (and bio) engineering and artificial selection? Genetically modified organisms are a big biotech industry. And isn’t such artificial breeding and genetic manipulation all done with ultimately us in mind, either for practical or cosmetic reasons?

Fast forward to the dawn of human civilization, that transition from hunter-gather to settlements and domestic bliss.

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...

Mythology’s Extraterrestrial Connections: Summations

Several hundreds of thousands of years ago, a technologically advanced race of alien beings landed on Planet Earth, perhaps with the idea of colonization. They selected the most highly suitable ‘intellects’ on the planet, the primates, in order to genetically engineer an intelligent enough species to basically be their subjects, if not downright slaves to do all the hard work. This was pretty much accomplished by about 8000 years ago, when said aliens began to educate the now intellectually sufficiently race of Homo sapiens. The transition from unsophisticated primitives to sophisticated urbanites had begun. The alien race became the gods (in modern terminology, ‘ancient astronauts’); human’s dealings with them our mythologies. Perhaps we were too much of a good thing, for ultimately they withdrew from our obvious presence, however still maintaining down through our modern era a presence via the phenomenon we call the UFO (and associated baggage).   

Meantime, what the future of extraterrestrial influences on us humans will bring, well your crystal ball is as good as mine and I haven’t any idea. Be prepared for anything is probably as useful as it gets.

Glossary:

*Ancient Astronauts: The gods (including God) and associated beings (like angels, etc.) who came to Earth multi-thousands of years ago from a place or places unknown.

*Demigods: Offspring resulting from the mating between a god and/or goddess and a human.

*God: One of thousands of (falsely presumed) deities albeit in the top echelon and who briefly assumed Top Dog status before His demise.

*The gods: The combined officers and crew of a fleet of interstellar starships who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. The gods includes God within those ranks.

*Half and Halves: The apparent outward appearance of some mythological beings that reflects a part-human/part-animal hybrid. Some gods are also half-and-halves (i.e. – the ancient Egyptian gods tend to have animals heads).

*Jesus Christ: The Son of God, but now a dead ancient astronaut, executed by humans.

*Paradise: Planet Earth.

*Shape-Shifting: The apparent ability of the gods (or at least many of them) to alter their outside appearance when it suits their purpose(s).

*Starship Asgard: Captain Odin’s spaceship and command, which includes an accompanying battle-fleet including the Starship Valhalla.

*Starship Heaven: Captain God’s spaceship and the ship under His command.

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’.