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

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’ Mate with Humans

* We should be no more able to mate and be fertile with an extraterrestrial than we are with a species that’s even far closer to us in terms of terrestrial ancestry, like felines say, unless aliens and humans are much closer in genetic similarity than is even remotely suspected. That therefore should put the kybosh on that alien-human possibility. As to the feline-human combo however, one could in theory manipulate the DNA and other genetic bio-molecules of the feline and of the human to be compatible enough to produce a cat with human features or a human with feline features. If you’re advanced enough in genetics and biotechnology, just about anything goes. No doubt extraterrestrials that can traverse the depths of interstellar space will also be technologically advanced in other areas – like genetics. Regardless, mythologies are full of the ‘gods’ having their wicked way with Earth women (sometimes the reverse – ‘goddesses’ have their wicked way with terrestrial males), but in any event it gives a whole new meaning to that phrase “close encounters”.   

* Demigods are an obvious product of a ‘god/goddess’ mating with a mortal of the opposite sex. So by my reckoning at least demigods and demigoddesses like Gilgamesh, Brahma, and Shiva as non-Greek examples, and Achilles, Helen of Troy, Heracles, and like [King] Minos [of Crete] were really human-alien hybrids. For all you Christians and religious types, there are those Sons of God/Daughters of Men unions noted and logged in the Bible. Since many of them in turn mated with mortals and produced offspring, and they in turn ditto right on down the timeline, that means that most of us have probably a tiny percentage of our genetic makeup that is ultimately extraterrestrial in origin. 

* Miraculous Births: if ET is a master at genetics, maybe ET is also a master at other anatomical wonders, or at least biotechnology. . 

** Much significance has been made of THAT virgin birth as recorded in the New Testament. However, Jesus isn’t the ‘lone ranger’ when it comes to being born of a virgin. In addition to Jesus, there’s the Assyrian/Babylonian Marduk; Zoroaster too was born of a virgin and a shaft of light! Many more examples can be found in mythologies from around the world. Of course what was miraculous back then isn’t quite so miraculous now. They obviously hadn’t heard about, or any conception of, artificial insemination, invitro fertilization way back then.

** Apart from virgin births, there’s records of those giving birth way, way beyond their childbearing years, like Old Testament Sarah (born Sarai) giving birth to Isaac via Abraham, who, given his advanced years probably had a hard time getting it, well hard. 

** Moses was born circumcised and was able to walk-the-walk and talk-the-talk immediately after being born.

** The Greek Goddess Athena was born fully formed and clothed when born from the head of Zeus; Aphrodite, like Athena, had a rather odd ‘birth’. She was also ‘born’ thanks to some weird biology between seawater foam and those severed private parts of Zeus’s grandfather, Uranus. Zeus also gave birth to Dionysus from his thigh. Helen of Troy, daughter of Zeus, was apparently hatched from an egg.

** While dealing with Greek mythology, it seems King Minos pissed off Zeus’s brother Poseidon. Poseidon, ever inventive, caused Mrs. Minos (Pasiphae) to lust after a bull (and presumably the bull to lust after Mrs. Minos). The end product of this sexual union became that human-bovine hybrid, the Minotaur (and that’s no bull!).

* All this is just barely scratching the surface. No matter the culture, you’ll find something in the annals of their register of births that are quite out of the ordinary.

The ‘Gods’ Other Genetic Engineering Experiments

* Animal-Animal Hybrids: Why ancient cultures around the world depicted a menagerie of imaginary or mythological animals in their artwork, on their everyday utensils, clothing, jewellery, etc. as well as real animals is quite beyond me. You’d think there would be more than enough real animals to represent if they wanted to depict the images of animals. Or, of course, maybe their imagery of their imaginary zoology wasn’t quite so imaginary. For example, imaginary beasties, animal-animal hybrids, often had an attachment of wings placed on common animals like horses (Pegasus) and lizards (dragons) and lions (Griffins). This was, well, commonplace. But surprisingly, as if lacking imagination, there are no winged cows or zebras or frogs or mountain lions. Not even common domesticated animals like cats and dogs were depicted with wings. Very selective, which suggests that which was so depicted was real. And how can you get a winged lizard (dragon)? Well it has to be genetic or bioengineering of some sort.  

* Human-Animal Hybrids: Where does one start here since there are thousands of examples? You name the animal, and I’m certain somewhere, at sometime, that animal’s head was depicted on a human body; or a human head was depicted on the animal’s body. Any textbook on the gods of ancient Egypt will provide examples. Apart from that, there’s the Minotaur (noted earlier), the Centaur, the (Greek) Sphinx, etc. Is this all human imagination on overdrive or something else?

* Shape-Shifting? While you might like to turn into a fly-on-the-wall that’s impossible since said fly would have your mass and thus be unable to defy gravity. Oh, and even if you could figure out how to nullify gravity, you can’t shape-shift into a fly so the problem is moot. However, that doesn’t detract from the massive mythological literature that selected individuals can indeed shape-shift – Zeus is well known for that trick and not just from one organic form into another, but from organic into an inorganic form as well. The Mesoamerican Olmecs had a were-jaguar cult. Now shape-shifting is known in the biological world, albeit not sudden transformations. Tadpoles shape-shift into frogs; seeds into plants; babies into adults; flatfish (flounder) alter to have their eyes on one side of the head. Thus, it’s not totally beyond the pale to suggest that shape-shifting totally belongs in the realm of science fiction, fantasy and horror (like werewolves). Either the concept of relatively sudden shape-shifting is nonsense, and there are myths and legends that say otherwise from all over the globe, or else some sufficiently advanced technology – super-science – is operating behind-the-scenes. 

The ‘Greys’

* Thus far I’ve been pretty much addressing the past – ancient mythologies and associated ‘gods’. However, the pattern continues. Extraterrestrials are still, apparently, very much interested in biotechnology, genetics and genetic engineering. Enter, the ‘Greys’.

* Genetic Harvesting: There are two separate areas suggestive of aliens in the here-and-now highly interested in terrestrial biochemistry, reproduction/sex and genetics. Animal mutilations are in no doubt a reality as something tangible. UFO abductions of humans being subjected to various medical / genetic / reproductive tests is equally reported, but not as equally validated. Still, it’s not good policy to throw babies out with their bathwater and one really does have to come to terms with the question that revolves around why would anyone in their right mind make this stuff up? It’s certainly not for fame or money!

** Animal mutilations are certainly well documented, and the cause(s) are mysterious to say the least. If human culprits, why hasn’t anyone been apprehended, tried and convicted of violations of animal welfare laws, destruction of private property (if livestock) and trespass? If natural predators are to blame – well that should be bloody obvious if true and no controversy should therefore ensue. If extraterrestrials, well that explains a lot that natural predation can’t like precision incisions and lack of blood and no hoof/paw prints and no signs of a struggle, though it also leaves mega-questions unanswered. Presumably, it has something to do with ET interest in terrestrial biochemistry and genetics.

** Human-Alien Hybrids: If UFO abduction accounts are taken at face value, then extraterrestrials are mightily interested in the creation of more hybrids – not animal-animal hybrids like the Chimera, or human-animal hybrids like the Mesopotamian Shedu (winged bulls with human heads) but human-alien hybrids, something perhaps akin to those alien-human (‘gods’ mating with humans) referred to above in all things mythological.

In conclusion, we have an extraterrestrial legacy because 1) we’re a child of the Universe – a child that originated out of the origin of the Universe; 2) we’re star-stuff; 3) the origin of life was probably ‘out there’ somewhere and migrated to Earth; 4) ET exists and the Fermi Paradox says ET must also exist here; and 5) there’s just too much damn weird stuff around that falls better into place by assuming those ‘ancient astronauts’ and extraterrestrial UFOs.

Come Fly with Me on Mythological Wings: Part Three

Mythology is full of strange winged creatures, some of them humanoid. If these creatures are not native to Earth, that is they are really real, not mythological, but extraterrestrial, is there anything really implausible at work here? There’s nothing implausible about wings – obviously – even when extrapolated to beings our size or larger. There are just three variables at work here, sheer oomph muscle power; the density of what you’re flying in; and gravity. With the right combination, all sort of flying creatures not native to Earth might be possible.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

ARTIFICIALLY WINGED HUMANS: Some reports of winged humans have wings that aren’t biological but technological.

*Daedalus and his son Icarus in Greek mythology both donned self-manufactured wax-wings in order to escape imprisonment in Crete. Things ended badly for Icarus. Because this is relatively low-tech, just wax and feathers (the prototype of the hang-glider-parachute) and there’s nothing else to suggest that these figures are anything but purely human beings in every sense of the term, I personally dismiss them from any further consideration in the context of this essay.

*Hermes (Mercury to the Romans) was among other duties, a messenger deity with winged helmet and winged sandals to facilitate his duties.

*Perseus, son of Zeus and the mortal woman Danae (and therefore a demigod), the heroic Greek slayer of the Gorgon Medusa, also had a pair of winged shoes with which to fly upon. Unlike Hermes, he didn’t have a winged helmet, rather, like Hades, an invisibility helmet, though it was probably on loan from Hades to Perseus. 

MODERN WINGED HUMANOIDS: In modern cryptozoology, there’s no shortage of sightings of large unknown species of birds or bird-like creatures. Humanoids with wings are cited rather less frequently. One exception however was Mothman.

*Mothman: When talking real modern winged humanoids, one would be remiss not to mention Mothman, a winged hominoid with glowing red eyes, associated with the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia around the period of November 1966 through December 1967. Mothman’s been the subject of several books, dozens of articles, and at least one motion picture (“The Mothman Prophecies” – 2002). However, there have been no sightings since. Perhaps Mothman’s a purely imaginary half-breed, one never before or after seen. Well, maybe yes and maybe no.

DISCUSSION: If the ancients thought there was anything unusual, anomalous, out of place, or out of the ordinary with the presence of winged creatures or winged humanoids in their midst, I’ve found no reference to it. Despite having wings though, it isn’t obvious that all these beasties from ancient history could actually fly. Images from ancient times clearly show Pegasus and dragons in flight, but not griffins, despite Apollo’s gold chariot, by some accounts being pulled by griffins (other accounts suggest swans). Also those Lamassu (or Shedu) aren’t actually depicted in flight. Ditto that of the Greek version of the Sphinx.

One interesting facet that emerges from this brief examination is that the Harpies, Gorgons, Furies and Sirens all seem to be kissing cousins; all nasty predatory examples on the feminine side of the coin. They all come in a trilogy. All are ultimately descended from the Titans branch of the Greek pantheon. All are shown in flight mode. All were dangerous to mortals. That may have nothing to do with the subject at hand of course, but it’s a connection I haven’t seen mentioned in the literature, not that I’ve digested every morsal on the subject which would be a very forbidding task indeed. 

Slightly off topic, related to the Gorgons (sisters in fact) but un-winged though swan-like, are yet another trio of grey-haired crones, the Graeae (Enyo, Pemphredo and Deino) whose mythological claim to fame, apart from unwillingly assisting Perseus, was that they had to share their single tooth and lone eye between them. 

Also those who can trace their ancestry in part or in full back to the Titans are Nike and Eros.

None of the original six Olympian gods and goddesses, Zeus (Jupiter), Hera (Juno), Poseidon (Neptune), Hades (Pluto), Hestia (Vesta) and Demeter (Ceres) was winged. The latter eight, Ares (Mars), Athena (Minerva), Apollo (Apollo), Artemis (Diana), Aphrodite (Venus), Hermes (Mercury), Hephaestus (Vulcan) and latecomer Dionysus (Bacchus) weren’t winged either, apart from Hermes and that wasn’t natural wings but technological ones.

The question is, could some, most, even all of the above be aliens? What entities are the most likely of the candidates? I personally would expect intelligent aliens to resemble something humanoid but not human and thus most of these winged beasties fit that bill although perhaps the winged gods and goddesses are illustrated as a tad too human to come across convincingly as extraterrestrial, with perhaps the exception of Hermes and Perseus.

Hermes and Perseus are obvious candidates being a god and demigod respectively who employ high technology to get around, the sort of high technology not yet to hand here in the 21^st Century.

Mothman is a candidate since that beastie was associated with a UFO flap in the local area at the time.

Fairies could be extraterrestrial. They abduct people (like the UFO ‘Greys’); they have control over space and time, another trait UFOs seem to exhibit; and they inhabit rather exotic home worlds (extra-solar planets perhaps).

But the best candidates IMHO are the Cherubim. They are larger than humans by a wide margin; they are exotic looking; they are multi-winged; they are associated with UFOs (that ‘Wheel of Ezekiel’); they have an extraterrestrial home base even if it is Heaven. They have the added advantage from a cultural perspective of being Biblical. Greek mythology is still widely read and part of our culture, but way more people are willing to accept Biblical mythology as reality. The logic IMHO doesn’t follow, but that’s the way it is.

Come Fly with Me on Mythological Wings: Part Two

Mythology is full of strange winged creatures, some of them humanoid. If these creatures are not native to Earth, that is they are really real, not mythological, but extraterrestrial, is there anything really implausible at work here? There’s nothing implausible about wings – obviously – even when extrapolated to beings our size or larger. There are just three variables at work here, sheer oomph muscle power; the density of what you’re flying in; and gravity. With the right combination, all sort of flying creatures not native to Earth might be possible.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

WINGED HYBRID HUMANS AND HUMANOIDS:

*The trio of Greek Erinyes, more commonly called the Eumenides or Furies (Roman) were hags that had snakes for hair and wings too. They go by the names of Alecto, Megaira and Tsiphone.

*The Gorgons were a trio of rather ugly appearing Greek ladies with copper hands, large fangs, snakes for hair, oh, and gold wings. The most famous of the trio was Medusa, decapitated by the hero Perseus. Medusa was the only one of the three who was vulnerable. The other two Gorgons (Stheno and Euryale) were apparently immortal, or should that be translated as just having an extremely long natural lifespan compared to humans since nothing can be really immortal unless the Universe itself is infinite in duration.

*Harpies (quasi-vultures) were monstrous flying creatures, half-bird and half-woman with the heads and faces of girls with claw-like fingers. The trio were called Aello, Calaeno and Ocypete. They had rather unhygienic habits of fouling things via their extreme bad breath or by pooping on people’s food. Disgusting! 

*The Lamassu (or Shedu) were life-size winged lions or bulls respectively with human heads in ancient Mesopotamian or Assyrian mythology. They played the role of guardians.

*Sirens were bird-like creatures with girls’ faces and exquisite voices that any man would die for – and many did. Fortunately, they were outsmarted by two of ancient Greeks most noted heroes – Odysseus and Jason (of the Argonauts).  Odysseus did the trick by plugging his crew’s ears with wax while he himself was tightly strapped and bound to his ship’s mast and thus could not surrender even if he wanted to – which he did. Jason thwarted the Sirens via having one of his crew, Orpheus, sing louder and better than the Sirens – drowned them out as it were. Not so much fighting fire with fire, but fighting vocals with a vocal. There’s some dispute about the exact number of Sirens – it varies between two and five, but the standard tradition number is three – Parthenope, Leucosia and Ligeia. 

*Sphinx: In this case it’s the Greek version of a winged lion with a feminine face and head that was famous for posing a riddle (much like the operatic heroine Turndot). Much like with Turandot, if you failed to answer the riddle of the Sphinx (or in Turandot’s case, a trilogy of riddles) you forfeited your life by becoming a Sphinx-snack (or in Turandot’s case, via the use of that time-honoured phrase, “off with his head”).

WINGED HUMANS AND HUMANOIDS

*Angels: Sorry, despite the zillions of images found across and around the world, angels, as in Biblical angels, haven’t a wing to share between the whole lot of them. So, angels really shouldn’t be mentioned here though I will just because of that popular misconception. Readers will expect to see angels referenced. Angels however could easily be extraterrestrial since they are clearly identified as sky beings from somewhere up there. You could say their home world address somewhere out there as described is a fairly exotic one.

*Boreas (Greek – North Wind): Well one would just about expect a deity representing the wind to have wings.

*Calais (Greek) was the son of Boreas and like father, like son – he had wings upon his back, or feet, depending on what version you read. His claim to mythological fame was being one of the crew on the Argonaut and doing battle with the Harpies.

*Cherub: In modern English the word cherub is sometimes used for what are strictly putti, baby or toddler angels, or winged children in fact, mainly shown in works of art. Sort of like our current images of Eros or Cupid but without the bow and arrows!  In this case the cherubs appear to have some sort of kinship with the fairy-folk. Check out images of fairies and they are, though not childlike, are tending to be small and winged.

*Cherubim (Biblical): The cherubim (singular is cherub) are actually Assyrian in origin. They were depicted as enormous eagle-winged beings with the bodies of lions with human heads (Lammasu) or human heads on the bodies of bulls (Shedu).  They seemed however to have shape-shifted from their Assyrian image just a bit and taken on a different persona in the Bible, especially prominent in the Old Testament. However, it was these beasties, a composite of some things human and wings that morphed into the stereotyped image of an angel, especially as both played the role of guardians. However, cherubim are named as such in the Bible and their image is anything but traditionally angelic. Angels and cherubim are two separate entities.

The definitive book in the Bible on cherubim is the Book of Ezekiel, mainly 1:10 and 10:14. The prophet Ezekiel first describes cherubim as a tetrad of living creatures, each having four faces: of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. Later there’s a slight shift to cherub, man, lion, and eagle. They are said to have four wings each. Two of the wings extended upward, while the other two stretched downward and covered the creatures themselves. In the New Testament similar beings are mentioned in Revelation 4: 7 with four faces: a man, a flying eagle, a lion and a calf. But just to muddy the waters, these entities had six wings each. That means they must be the somewhat related Seraphim since they instead of four wings have six wings. Just to further distance cherubim from traditional angels in either Ezekiel or Revelation, the cherubim’s wings are multi-eyed – no doubt that’s all the better to see you with I guess.

If you check out 1 Kings 6 (KJV), you’ll find that cherubs have a wingspan of 10 cubits, and a height of 10 cubits, at least I gather that must be their real life size since Solomon manufactured two of them, I assume on a one-to-one scale. The whole story is repeated in the third chapter of 2 Chronicles by the way. Now a cubit is roughly 18 to 22 inches; say 20 inches on average. So our model cherub is 200 inches tall; ditto the wingspan. That’s a tad over 16 ½ feet! Well, the Assyrians did say their versions were enormous being life-sized!

You’ll also find several references to someone hitching a ride on a flying cherub (2 Samuel 22:11 and Psalm 18:10). At over 16 feet, well that sounds plausible.

*Eos (Aurora to the Romans) was the goddess of the dawn, usually depicted, much like Helios (Sun god) and Selene (Moon goddess), as driving a horse-drawn chariot through the heavens or across the sky, nevertheless was also imaged as having wings, perhaps because she was mother to the winged deities of the winds like Zephyrus (see below), Boreas (see above) and Notus (see below).  

*Eros (Cupid or Amour to the Romans) was in Greek mythology a deity with wings, celebrated or cursed by lovers or ex-lovers around the world. Eros does a neat trick in that he grows younger as the years go by ending up as the chubby bouncing baby boy with bow and arrows we all recognise in the numerous images of him. [Eros isn’t the only god to grow younger – ditto Dionysus, the god of wine and overall good times, though never back to the bouncing baby boy stage.] 

*Eurus: (Greek – East Wind): See Boreas above.

*Fairies are known throughout the world, and it’s a rare image that doesn’t show them without wings.

*Hypnos is the Greek god of sleep; twin of Thanatos; born of the goddess Nyx (night) and her brother Erebus (darkness). Hypnos has wings attached to his head!

*Nike: The Greek goddess of victory (Victoria in the Roman pantheon), was the winged daughter of Pallas and Styx.

*Notus (Greek – South Wind): See Boreas above.

*Thanatos is the Greek personification of death; twin of Hypnos; born of the goddess Nyx (night) and her brother Erebus (darkness).

*Zephyrus or Zephyr (Greek – West Wind): See Boreas above.

*Zetes (Greek): See comments on Calais above. It’s the same story.

To be continued...

Come Fly with Me on Mythological Wings: Part One

Mythology is full of strange winged creatures, some of them humanoid. If these creatures are not native to Earth, that is they are really real, not mythological, but extraterrestrial, is there anything really implausible at work here? There’s nothing implausible about wings – obviously – even when extrapolated to beings our size or larger. There are just three variables at work here, sheer oomph muscle power; the density of what you’re flying in; and gravity. With the right combination, all sort of flying creatures not native to Earth might be possible.

There are lots and lots of really real winged creatures – birds, bats, insects, and in prehistoric times flying reptiles like pterosaurs/pterodactyls. One might even count ‘flying’ fish or ‘flying’ foxes or squirrels if one had a broad enough definition of ‘flying’. But just because you have wings of course doesn’t of necessity mean you can fly. There are lots of terrestrial flightless birds for example yet they still have wings.

There are also a lot of mythological creatures that fly – the griffin (or gryphon – alt spelling), the dragon, and on and on and on. One can’t of course forget Pegasus, the flying winged horse as one of those.

Now perhaps these are real terrestrial animals. Alas, despite lots of eyewitness accounts, there are no dead bodies available for examination or any other fossil evidence for them.

Or perhaps they are misinterpretations of real, or once real, terrestrial animals. In that latter case, dragons or griffins are misinterpretations of fossils. That’s highly unlikely IMHO. Perfectly intact, fully articulated, fully exposed large winged reptiles from the Age of Dinosaurs are as rare as hen’s teeth. Any vertebrate palaeontologist would probably sell their soul to the Devil for such a find.  The norm is for much of any vertebrate fossil skeleton to have substantial bits missing; what remains is usually in a jumbled state; and near all of it is buried and out of sight. 

Perhaps they are really real, but not of this Earth, that is to say, they are extraterrestrial, or in other words, alien life forms. That’s the most likely scenario IMHO. 

But of course the most logical explanation is that they are, as common knowledge has it, entirely mythological – that is purely fictional with as much reality as a $7 bill!

WINGED BEASTIES

One facet in particular leads me to suggest that such beasties were considered as much a part of the ancient’s menagerie as animals we today know exist. That is, dragons, Pegasus and griffins were 3-D physical flesh-and-blood organisms: for example…

*Dragons: I find it interesting that in the Chinese calendar, there are years for the rat; ox; tiger; rabbit; snake; horse; goat; monkey; rooster; dog; pig and dragon. Of all the twelve, only the dragon is considered by modern society mythical. I find it odd that the Chinese would employ eleven real beasties and one mythical one. Perhaps all dozen were real!  

If only a Chinese emperor or empress could, under pain of death for transgressors, wear an image of a dragon, it’s because their dragons weren’t fictional. Could you imagine the President of the United States being the only American allowed under the Constitution to wear a Felix-the-Cat tee-shirt and anyone else receives the death penalty for doing so? It could only take place in the context of a really real highly significant ‘animal’ that would we think be offended if just anyone of the great unwashed wore their image. Such extreme penalties are more than just a tad hard to comprehend if the ancient Chinese knew perfectly well that there weren’t such things as dragons. Translated, the ancient Chinese (and other cultures) took their dragons very seriously indeed. The fact that the serious occupation of dragon-slaying is a popular, widespread image in ancient, even historical times speaks volumes IMHO.   

Dragons could also be used in place of horses and hitched to aerial chariots. Medea (of Jason and the Argonauts fame) had an aerial dragon-drawn chariot.

And if you believe in the accuracy of the Bible then you need to accept the reality of, for example, those dragons.

Dragons were considered flesh-and-blood right through the Middle Ages; dragon-lore persists right down to our own modern era as witnessed by their popularity in video games, films and novels. 

*Griffins: I recall seeing a photograph of an ancient Greek pottery piece, vase probably, that had surrounding the circumference illustrations of various animals, animals we today instantly recognise as a representation of reality. Bulls, horses, dogs, ducks, etc. – oh, smack dab in the middle of this reality was an image of a griffin! 

Griffins dominate the images in the throne room of the palace at Knossos in Minoan Crete from roughly over 3,500 years ago. Ditto that at in the throne room at the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, Mycenae in Greece. That has images of lions, deer, and of course griffins!

One tends to decorate objects like murals and pottery with familiar things, and what could be more familiar than animals. If you hark back to all those Palaeolithic cave artists, nearly all their artistic images were of animals that all and sundry can recognise and name today with very few exceptions.  So, the logic follows that if you have lots of images (and statues, etc.) of griffins, then griffins were a familiar animal and therefore no doubt really composed of flesh-and-blood.

Griffins were also well known and established in ancient Old Kingdom Egyptian lore as well, as far back as 3,300 BCE in fact. They were no stranger back in ancient Assyria and Sumer, in fact throughout the entire ancient Middle East. The popularity and reality of griffins extended right on through to and including the Middle Ages.

*Pegasus was that famous winged horse of ancient Greece. Pegasus was born out of a pregnant Gorgon, the Medusa, after her decapitation by Perseus. 

Pegasus has been depicted on a 4^th Century BCE Corinthian silver coin as well as on other antiquities such as a Parthian era bronze plate excavated in now modern day Iran. Of course Pegasus is well represented too as a stellar constellation.

Pegasus wasn’t the only flying horse, of course. The Greek sun god, Helios, had his chariot pulled across the sky daily by a team of four white winged horses. The Greek moon goddess, Selene (Luna to the Romans) was drawn through the night sky by two white horses in her chariot.

There are lots of similar illustrations of a mixing between the obviously real animal kingdom and the ‘obviously’ mythological equivalent in the various artistic, even everyday works of the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, etc.

Further, there’s nothing in the ancient texts or inscriptions or images that says “Hey stupid, this is a work of fiction. I’ve imagined this all on my own. Aren’t I really something for having conceived of this?”

And that’s the crux of the question – did the ancients know that dragons, griffins and say Pegasus were as fictional as we know Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are? If so, did they just go along for the ride and the fun of it all, or did they accept their reality like we accept the existence of giraffes and the platypus? The latter is the answer.

Having, I trust, established the plausibility that griffins, dragons and Pegasus might exist, what about even more interesting, even exotic, winged beasties – of the humanoid kind.

Just as we tend to be more interested in and fascinated by extraterrestrial intelligence relative to extraterrestrial critters, and for obvious anthropological reasons associate intelligence with images of ourselves, or at least variations on that image – call it the humanoid image. One has to look no further than the depiction of intelligent aliens in the movies or on TV – nearly all have some sort of humanoid face. 

So, I’m more interested in a humanoid extraterrestrial context, which is not to suggest that dragons or griffins couldn’t really be alien but non-humanoid, rather I’m just looking for something say that’s not just alien but human or humanoid in appearance with wings, and for that one needs to further examine primarily ancient mythology. 

To be continued…

Gaia: The Mother of All Aliens: Part Two

The asexual and sexual reproductive biology of the ancient Greek Mother Goddess Gaia is impossible as related. Her reproductive skills are akin to a human female giving birth not only to humans but to all sorts of other animals and even monstrosities. No writer of mythology (fiction) even back then would make such a fundamental error if he wanted his fiction to be credible. What’s the alternative? - Aliens.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

So how can there exist a whole multitude of species of deities, from those appearing human or humanoid, to the hideously monstrous, and yet are all genetically related to Mother Goddess Gaia?

Now I maintain that if you (or any other animal) produce offspring, while they would not of necessity all be identical, they will be fairly similar in appearance and conform to your own basic body plan. You’re not going to produce one kid that will grow up to be ten feet tall while another attains only four feet. One kid won’t have two eyes, the next three. The odds that your first born will have one head and two arms, but that your second born will have ten heads and twenty arms, is unlikely in the extreme. As this like-begets-like reproductive rule of thumb applies to you, I strongly suggest it should have applied to Mother Goddess Gaia. 

 IMHO, the ancient Greek Hesiod, who wrote up the origins of the Greek deities including Mother Goddess Gaia, and the world in his tome “Theogony” [“the birth of the gods”], should have and would have known better that to invent such outlandish sexual tales producing such an outlandish diversity of offspring. Presumably the people who read all of this also knew better – they knew that like-begets-like – just like the Norse hero Siegfried knew the dwarf Mime was lying to him about being his father because they didn’t look anything remotely alike. Siegfried knew from observations of animals and their babies in the forest that like-begets-like. Mime got his comeuppances! 

I conclude from all of this that Hesiod and whoever else came up with all this mythological reproductive nonsense was warped in the extreme; really puffing on the good stuff. Or perhaps, as in all mythology, there’s a true kernel of corn in the mythological haystack waiting to be uncovered. Perhaps both Hesiod and his readers couldn’t think of any other interpretation of reality but that Mother Goddess Gaia really did mate and produce offspring as wildly divergent as nymphs, 50 headed giants and the Cyclopes. Perhaps they had no concept of the extraterrestrial!

All of these collections of beings (Titans, Cyclopes, Meliae, etc.) are so different that each is unlikely in the extreme to be related to each other. Each is probably an alien race in its own right – alien as in various extraterrestrial intelligences.

So here’s my alternative scenario. Chaos (the void, the cosmos) ultimately formed our Sun and solar system including ‘Gaia’ as Terra/Tellus, the Planet Earth. Eons ago that other but biological flesh-and-blood Mother Goddess Gaia and her sons (Uranus and Pontus) along with a host of her species (probably the Titans) arrived on Planet Earth as part and parcel of their boldly going, exploring the Milky Way Galaxy exercise. Liking what they found, they settled down, perhaps thinking of Planet Earth as an R&R spot, perhaps as a colony planet. Things then proceed pretty much according to Hesiod’s mythology, except for one incorrect translation. There were no real acts of Mother Goddess Gaia reproducing which resulted in the creation of a high and unlikely diversity of other biological species. There were only those like-with-like sexual reproductions as in the original Titans creating the next generation of Titans (Atlas, Prometheus, etc.). Mother Goddess Gaia wasn’t so much a mother of extreme biological diversity as a hostess (with the mostest) to that rather wide diversity of extraterrestrial species.

Mother Goddess Gaia threw out the welcome mat for other alien species that came to visit, or were invited to visit, just like parents might play host to a much broader diversity of humans than their offspring would typify. Their dinner party might include guests short and tall, old and young, black and white, normal and handicapped, as well as other species – cats, dogs and aquarium fish – for the sake of wide-ranging diversity, etc. In the case of Mother Goddess Gaia however, things got a bit more serious as Mother Goddess Gaia and the various extraterrestrial races she’s associated with IMHO formed a block of allies against another block of allies – the Olympians (offspring of the original Titans and thus related to [Grand] Mother Goddess Gaia. The ‘War of the Titans’ was on the horizon and inevitable in a power struggle of epic proportions.

The extraterrestrial Cyclopes and that alien race, the Hecatonchires, which were once allied with Mother Goddess Gaia and the Titans, changed sides and supported the Olympians led by Zeus in their war against the Titans (the Titanomachy). Some Titans like Prometheus also switched sides and supported Zeus. In fact only about five of the original dozen Titans took up arms against Zeus and company. The Titans were actually led mainly by second generation Atlas (as first generation Cronus, Zeus’s daddy, proved not to be so invincible when Zeus freed his swallowed brothers and sisters, and therefore wasn’t really available for a leadership position). Zeus, as leader of the winners, however reserved a special punishment for Atlas as we all know. Atlas ended up with the weight of the world on his shoulders. As an aside, the ‘War of the Titans’ apparently happened in that region of Greece known as Thessaly.

It should be noted, in support of the extraterrestrial hypothesis, that the Titanomachy was a high-tech war, at least high-tech relative to what the ancient Greeks had. It was not a war fought with bows and arrows, slingshots, spears and swords, even though it did last an entire decade plus. Zeus had his thunderbolts – lightning, or perhaps in today’s terminology, lasers or particle-beam weaponry. Hades had a ‘magic’ helmet providing invisibility – the ultimate form of stealth technology and camouflage. Poseidon had his ‘magic’ trident which he could use to produce storms (weather modification), earthquakes, tidal waves/tsunamis, floods and all manner of ‘natural’ disasters – and he was noted for having a very bad temper with a very short fuse attached.

The Titanomachy was also noted for the hurling of massive boulders (missiles?); the rumbling earth which became scorched with flame and the vast forests that were levelled. The oceans and rivers, probably courtesy of Poseidon, swelled and steamed and boiled. And of course the heavens shook as well. If extraterrestrial, I’m sure the Titanomachy was as much a ‘star wars’ as a terrestrial one.

Now all of this probably happened in Planet Earth’s pre-human era. That’s because ‘humans’ back then probably weren’t the Homo sapiens we know today. Our modern species was created out of clay (as the ancient Greeks had no concept nor phrase for ‘genetically engineered’) by Prometheus (of gift of fire fame), a second generation Titan, and that ‘clay’ event probably happened way after the original extraterrestrial ‘gods’ (like Uranus) and ‘goddesses’ (like Gaia) arrived to set up shop. Thus, we probably have no actual eyewitnesses to what actually happened regarding the Titanomachy, as well as no real first hand accounts of Mother Goddess Gaia’s reproductive prowess, only what happened can not be taken literally as it violates fundamental principles of reproductive biology. The tales were probably all handed down way after-the-fact to the ancient Greeks by the Olympians – the winners – with a lot of understandable mistranslation and misunderstanding in the nitty-gritty details eventuating. 

But that’s not quite the end of the story. Mother Goddess Gaia had another go at dethroning Zeus and his Olympians, the location allegedly shifting to Italy and the Phlegraean Fields. This time she threw the Gigantes (Giants) against them (the Gigantomachy). So, round two - it was Mother Goddess Gaia and the Gigantes versus Zeus and the Olympians, but with a little help from the demigod Hercules, the Fates and even Helius (the sun-god), Selene (the moon-goddess) and Eos (the goddess of the dawn, known to the Romans as Aurora). Now since Hercules was the offspring of a deity (Zeus) and a mortal, humans had to have been around to witness round two. What was the upshot of Mother Goddess Gaia’s second attempt to grab power? All of the Gigantes became the late Gigantes, and nothing was ever heard from Mother Goddess Gaia ever again! In my version of the tale, Mother Goddess Gaia and those Gaia supporters who survived the Titanomachy and the Gigantomachy tucked tail (if they had one) and headed back to whatever planet(s) they originally came from. Eventually, for reasons unrecorded and unknown, Zeus and company ultimately did the same, or at least boldly went elsewhere.

One other observation is required. Normally, sexual relations between mother and son; mother and grandson; mother and just about anyone and anything else without benefit of a wedding ring, is considered taboo. That’s of course according to human morals and ethics. However, if my premise is correct, and all and sundry belonged to various species of extraterrestrials, then we can’t hold them to, or impose on them, our standards.  

Gaia: The Mother of All Aliens: Part One

The asexual and sexual reproductive biology of the ancient Greek Mother Goddess Gaia is impossible as related. Her reproductive skills are akin to a human female giving birth not only to humans but to all sorts of other animals and even monstrosities. No writer of mythology (fiction) even back then would make such a fundamental error if he wanted his fiction to be credible. What’s the alternative? - Aliens.

The asexual and sexual reproductive biological skills of the ancient Greek Mother Goddess Gaia is impossible as related. Her reproductive skills are akin to a human female giving birth not only to humans but to all sorts of other animals and even numerous monstrosities. No writer of mythology as fiction even back then would make such a fundamental error if he wanted his fiction to be credible. And that’s just the point – it wasn’t written to be read as fiction. The ancient Greeks didn’t interpret Mother Goddess Gaia and her offspring as make-believe. What did they know that we don’t today? What’s the alternative? Aliens - a misinterpretation of what was actually extraterrestrial activity. The ultimate stories behind Mother Goddess Gaia’s reproductive abilities centre around two rival alliances of various extraterrestrial races battling over Planet Earth, or at least their allocated part of it – Italy, Greece and the islands of the Aegean Sea.

In the beginning there was Chaos according to ancient Greek mythology. Chaos was neither a deity nor a personality, just an all encompassing dark void, lifeless matter with no distinguishing features which is as good a view of the cosmos as any by the ancients.  Chaos might just as well have been their shorthand for explaining life, the universe and everything; the creation of life, the universe and everything, and probably was.

Chaos gave rise to Planet Earth, among other cosmic attributes, like darkness and energy. Planet Earth was known as Gaia (or Gaea). Gaia as Planet Earth is obviously a physical product, a natural creation of the cosmos. However, Gaia (Terra in the Roman pantheon) was also considered to be the daughter of Chaos, a mother goddess. We need to separate the two concepts (Gaia as Earth (the planet) and Gaia the Mother Goddess). Chaos as a formless void would have to via natural physical processes form independently Planet Earth first before the arrival of the Mother Goddess that would represent Planet Earth, Tellus or Terra, alternative names by which Planet Earth is known. 

On the biological as opposed to the planetary side of things, Mother Goddess Gaia (representing the Earth, or of the Earth) had siblings called Nyx (which represented night), and Erebos (representing underground darkness). Later on down the track Chaos formed other siblings in the form of Eros (representing desire/energy) and Tartarus (the underworld).

Asexually, Mother Goddess Gaia gave rise to her two sons Uranus (Ouranos) and Pontus and the ten Ourea (Aitna, Athos, Helikon, Kithairon, Nysos, Olympus 1, Olympus 2, Oreios, Parnes, and Tmolus). Asexual reproduction is reproduction without benefit of a partner, usually termed parthenogenesis.

Mother Goddess Gaia does however ultimately take a husband and sexually mate - with her son Uranus (representing the sky or of the sky). From that union comes:

*The three elder and original Cyclopes: giants with one eye: Brontes, Steropes, and Arges.

 *The original first generation six male Titans (Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus) and the original first generation six female Titanesses (Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys): all human looking. [Now the original Titans then did their ‘be fruitful and multiply thing’ and produce the second generation of Titans, making Mother Goddess Gaia a grandmother. These second generation Titans included Atlas and Prometheus – in case you were wondering if I had forgotten these important figures.]

*The three Hecatonchires: giants with 100 arms and hands and fifty heads apiece: Cottus,  Briareus and Gyges.  

Mother Goddess Gaia’s son and hubby, Uranus, then met an uncomfortable fate at the hands of his son Cronus when the latter castrated the former!

Mother Goddess Gaia then, via a not-so-immaculate conception, being splattered with blood from the severed genitales of her son/husband Uranus, conceived:

*The three Furies (Erinyes): Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone though their actual number maybe however indefinite. The Furies were winged hags with snakes intertwined in their hair.

*The Gigantes: a race of giants born in full armour with spears.

*The Meliae: the ash tree nymphs. Nymphs tend to be beautiful eternally youthful amorous maidens (sounds like my kind of aliens) who attend to the needs of more senior deities. Nymphs are a sort of yeoman figure.  

Mother Goddess Gaia mates sexually with her other son Pontus (representing the sea or of the sea). From that union came Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto and Eurybia, all relatively minor sea gods and goddesses. They appear pretty human looking.

However, later generation descendents of Mother Goddess Gaia’s and Pontus’s minor sea god and goddess were not quite so humanoid appearing. They include:

*The Harpies, predatory monsters; a woman’s head on top of a vulture’s body, wings and claws.

*The Graeae, a trio of swan-like women with grey hair who shared one eye and one tooth between them.

*The 50 Nereids who at least retain their maritime heritage being nymphs of the sea.

*The Gorgons, who on the other hand, were monstrous sisters with wings, claws and serpent hair, the most famous being the Medusa.

*The Muses, nine human-looking goddesses of the arts.

*Chiron – a centaur.

Mother Goddess Gaia also mates with Tartarus to produce the mother of all monsters, the Typhon (which Zeus later defeated in battle).

Mother Goddess Gaia mates with her first generation Titan offspring Oceanus. That union gave rise to Reousa/Creusa (a naiad or type of water nymph) and Triptolemus (a primordial man who flew across the land in a winged chariot and educated the whole of Greece in the agricultural sciences after being instructed himself by the goddess Demeter or Ceres if you’re Roman).  

Mother Goddess Gaia mates with Zeus (her grandson). Their offspring became Manes, the first king of Maeonia otherwise known as Lydia in western Asia Minor. The odd bit here is that two deities apparently have produced a mortal and not another deity!

Mother Goddess Gaia also mates with Poseidon (also her grandson). That produces offspring we know as Antaeus (a half-giant) and Charybdis (a sea monster).

The Python, that earth-dragon of Delphi is alleged to have a genetic type relationship with Mother Goddess Gaia – mother being the operative word. The daddy is unknown; perhaps this is another example of parthenogenesis in action. Python, as you’d guess from the name, is a serpent. The Greek Olympian deity Apollo did Python a mischief in mortal combat. Alas, Python is no longer among the living! Neither were the original Cyclopes as Apollo bumped them off which didn’t please Zeus one little bit as the Cyclopes assisted him and his fellow Olympians in their war against the Titans, providing the high-tech necessary for victory (see below).

While that’s not the absolute end of Mother Goddess Gaia’s bedroom romps (actual or suspected), the above covers the basics and shows that Heinz has no monopoly on varieties, 57 or otherwise. Now Mother Goddess Gaia is not the be-all-and-end-all of the varieties of presumably extraterrestrial species that are part and parcel of Greek mythology, but I think it’s safe to now at least conclude this segment on Mother Goddess Gaia remarkable reproductive prowess!

To be continued...

Mythology’s Hybrids: Human Imagination or Alien Genetics? Part Three

Various mythological beasties, associated with the polytheistic gods include a generic type commonly referred to as hybrids, but which I term the ‘half-and-halves’. That is to say, these mythological beasties are a composite of two (sometimes more) distinct life forms.  There are the half-and-halves that are half human–half animal, and the half-and-halves that are half animal–half some other form of animal.  My premise is 1) these half-and-halves weren’t mythological; neither were the gods. The gods were really extraterrestrials, and the half-and-halves among the end products of ET’s genetic engineering experiments.

There are many puzzling features in mythology, if taken as purely mythology, regarding the so-called gods. I say so-called because to my way of interpreting things, the gods weren’t mythological but flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials with advanced technology, especially in the field of bioengineering or genetic engineering. A puzzling feature regarding the ‘gods’ and related tales, or even tails, are the half-and-halves (my phrase – you probably won’t find it lasted in any index in any mythology text). But these half-and-halves, some of which I’m going to cite, are just scratching the surface of the sum total of those represented in our ancient mythologies. The interesting point is that these hybrids are universal within that collective mythology. That is, they appear across all cultures; all geographies. Anytime something supposedly mythological, is represented everywhere, it’s time to sit up and take closer notice that things might not be quite as mythological as things first appear.

Continued now from yesterday’s blog…

Where’s the body-on-the-slab-in-the-lab evidence? With no fossil evidence of any such hybrids, perhaps this is where mythology overrides reality. Perhaps it is just a natural pondering to wonder ‘what if’ human abilities could be combined with some other animal’s abilities; or what a composite of one animal’s body parts attached to another animal’s body parts might achieve.

But then again, maybe that’s not the case.

Now clearly, judging from the small number of examples noted above, a lot of people, our ancestors, went to a lot of valuable time and effort to create or depict in often quite considerable detail all over the world, the who’s who, and what’s what, in tens of thousands of paintings, literature, statues, figurines, murals, monuments, carvings, pictograms, hieroglyphs, etc. to what we (their descendents) would call nonsense – purely imaginary entities. But I maintain our ancestors would not go to extraordinary lengths to devote precious resources into making images of beings they knew to be imaginary. Translated, they believed with all their hearts and souls that these beasties, globally numbering in the multi-hundreds, whether ‘gods’ in various combinations or lesser mortals (human-animal) or purely animal-animal forms, really existed. Multiply that by more multi-hundreds of ‘normal’ mythological characters that have been honored with thousands of monuments, and well there’s apparently a whole ancient expensive and often backbreaking industry devoted to what again, we superior modern descendents of theirs, believe to be nothing at all.

As an exact parallel, ‘modern’ human have built and erected all manner of monuments, memorials and statutes to really real historical people. Many are on display in all manner of public parks for the pigeons to rest their weary wings on.

Then again, in our modern era, nobody designs and builds cathedrals just to provide work for the construction industry, but rather because the relevant powers-that-be, the instigators and designers and fundraisers of cathedrals firmly believe there is a being who deserves such monuments to be built in his honor. Now the fact that being probably doesn’t exist, at least as a supernatural creator deity, but rather just one of many of an advanced race of extraterrestrials is irrelevant. You build the cathedral because you believe that being exists – full stop. Atheists don’t build cathedrals. Okay, our smart-as-we-are ancestors believed the half-and-halves really existed.     

Now that we’ve seen some of the puzzling anatomical features associated with the half-and-halves, beasties that are composites of two or more terrestrial life forms, here’s a hard as solid rock case study that not only illustrates time and effort but might highlight why human imagination is not at work. There’s a very large life-size statue from ancient Assyria housed in the British Museum of a winged, human-headed bull (probably representing Shedu or Lamassu). That would be odd enough, but in this statue of a bull with wings and a human head, you find that the bull is depicted with five legs (please note I can count up to five!).  Now, if you were to design from scratch a mythological beastie, one thing I’m pretty convinced of is that you would NOT give it five legs! So, I ask instead, is this statue a representation of one of the ‘gods’ genetic experiments?

Now before pursuing that tack, we’re all aware of the various plants and animals we’ve artificially selected for via breeding pairs of organisms that have the sorts of characteristics we desire such as leading to faster horses; disease resistant wheat, cuter puppy dogs, etc. Sometimes we interfere at the cellular level to increase the pace of the changes we want. We’ve all heard of genetically modified food or genetically modified organisms; of DNA from one species being spliced onto the DNA of another species. We’ve heard of harvesting animal tissues and organs for transplantation into humans. We’ve come into the era of the designer baby, or at least prospective parents undergo genetic counselling and testing before having children. Having children is no longer hit or miss and take your chances. And it won’t be long before babies will be made-to-order if the parents so wish.

Now imagine the genetic tricks a highly advanced, if somewhat amoral race of ET’s were to use terrestrial stock to further their genetic research and agenda. Even several hundred, far less thousands of years in advance technologically of us could produce the half-and-halves of our mythologies.

So, were the half-and-halves of our mythologies evidence of genetic and bioengineering experiments by the ‘gods’, the ‘gods’ own version of “The Island of Dr Moreau”?  If these hybrids are not the wild imaginations of our ancestors, and standard Darwinian natural selection cannot adequately account for them, then it’s clear an alternative artificial selection mechanism must be contemplated instead. What on Earth (or off Earth) could be the driving force behind such artificial selection – behind the required bioengineering or genetic engineering required? Well, unless your best guess is better than my best guess, ET, that’s who.

But then it all ceased to be; then they all went away, either literally (as I suspect) or within the human imagination (and if so, why?). I can imagine first and foremost that these non-deity hybrids (assuming their reality) were probably sterile. Thus, they were rather limited in population. One didn’t have a sphinx litter from which to choose a family sphinx pet. 

One thing I’m convinced cannot adequately for the massive range of our mythological hybrids are fossils. Fossils cannot explain the half-and-halves. There aren’t going to be too many buried skeletons of a lion minus its head that just happens to have a human skull in the immediate vicinity to explain the Sphinx. And what about the odds of finding the skull of a falcon minus body that just happens to rest next to a headless human skeleton and thus explain several of the Egyptian ‘gods’?

Now clearly some of these half-and-halves beasties are going to ultimately prove to be mythical – figments of the human imagination invented for reasons now lost and buried by the sands of time. Some cases are probably of real beasties we all know today but embellished for reason or reasons unknown and probably unknowable. There’s going to be cases of linguistic misinterpretations or misunderstandings or errors in translations. Then too there’s going to be cases of someone who told someone who told someone who told someone who told someone over many miles and probably generations before the tale was written down. The 20^th generation retelling of an ‘eyewitness’ account explains some of the half-and-halves.

But are the mythological half-and-halves all really products of pure human imagination and embellishments and 20^th generation retellings? If that be the case, why are there no more recent equivalents, in the multi-hundreds, in our ‘modern’ (say within the last 300 years of fictional literature, later films and TV) apart from those taken directly from our mythological ancient history like Mermaids? Nearly all ‘modern’ literature’s creations are human (Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Harry Potter, and Captain Kirk as examples – even if they do come from another planet like Superman or Mr. Spock). The Creature from the Black Lagoon was humanoid; ditto the Wolfman who at no time was represented as being a wolf’s head on a human body or vice versa. Frankenstein’s Monster was still human, even if patched together. Dracula may have been able to shape-shift into a bat, but he never was actually half-human and half-bat – ditto Batman. Even Donald Duck was still a duck; Mickey Mouse was just a clothed talking mouse. Some of the Egyptian gods were represented as half-and-halves, but The Mummy wasn’t! So, if all is assumed to be human imagination, then there’s this discrepancy between way back then and recent history. The one obvious ‘modern’ exception is the well known novel “Island of Dr. Moreau”.

The “Island of Dr. Moreau” was originally a novel published in 1896 by H.G. Wells with film adaptations in 1933 (as the “Island of Lost Souls”), 1977, and 1996. It basically deals with vivisection and an obsessed scientist who conducts profane experiments in evolution, eventually establishing himself as the self-styled demigod to a race of mutated, half-human abominations. This all takes place on a remote island, the inhabitants being those experimental animals being turned into strange looking humans by one Dr. Moreau – the obsessed mad scientist in question. I’m just substituting the ancient ‘gods’ for the more modern Dr. Moreau; the so-called mythological half-and-halves for those modern fictional experimental animals turned into abominations.

That ‘modern’ novel aside, you may think the ancient mythological menagerie – if entirely imaginary - exhibits quite an intense range of the human imagination in the creation of half-and-halves. I’d beg to differ. There’s an immense array of potential half-and-halves possibilities that apparently have never been realized, or at least popularized. The whole plant and invertebrate communities have largely been ignored, which may make sense from the biological reality of a genetic engineering standpoint. I do realize that Hollywood has rectified this with several versions and sequels to “The Fly” and B-Grade films like “The Wasp Woman”, and probably several other B-Graders in that vein. But 1) those cinema features were relative rarities in terms of modern half-and-halves images and 2) there was never any possibility of mistaking those films for anything else other than social commentary and/or entertainment, just like the novel by H.G. Wells.

Anyway, as to what might have been imagined by our ancient ancestors, but never really was, though I do seem to recall a mythological human head on an octopus body, but that was about it when it came to the invertebrate and plant kingdoms – no lobster heads on a human body; no human heads on a slug; and as for humanoid rose bushes – forget it! 

However, when talking real modern half-and-halves, one would be remiss not to mention Mothman, a winged hominoid with glowing red eyes, associated with the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia around the period of November 1966 through December 1967. Mothman’s been the subject of several books, dozens of articles, and at least one motion picture (“The Mothman Prophecies” – 2002). However, there have been no sightings since. Perhaps Mothman’s a purely imaginary half-and-halves case, one never before or after seen. Maybe.

Finally, there might be a really real modern version of the ‘gods’ and their half-and-halves. If UFO / alien abductions are to be believed, taken at face value, (somewhat backed up and supported by animal mutilation cases), then the alien ‘gods’ – collective now called the ‘Greys’ – are still manipulating human genetics and further progressing with the evolution via artificial selection (breeding) of the human species, as well as their own, for the apparent objective is nothing less than a human-alien (or human-grey) hybrid. That this is implausible, well, recall from mythologies around the world those human-animal hybrids like the Satyr, Sphinx, Minotaur, Mermaid, and a host of others.

Mythology’s Hybrids: Human Imagination or Alien Genetics? Part Two

Various mythological beasties, associated with the polytheistic gods include a generic type commonly referred to as hybrids, but which I term the ‘half-and-halves’. That is to say, these mythological beasties are a composite of two (sometimes more) distinct life forms.  There are the half-and-halves that are half human–half animal, and the half-and-halves that are half animal–half some other form of animal.  My premise is 1) these half-and-halves weren’t mythological; neither were the gods. The gods were really extraterrestrials, and the half-and-halves among the end products of ET’s genetic engineering experiments.

There are many puzzling features in mythology, if taken as purely mythology, regarding the so-called gods. I say so-called because to my way of interpreting things, the gods weren’t mythological but flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials with advanced technology, especially in the field of bioengineering or genetic engineering. A puzzling feature regarding the ‘gods’ and related tales, or even tails, are the half-and-halves (my phrase – you probably won’t find it lasted in any index in any mythology text). But these half-and-halves, some of which I’m going to cite, are just scratching the surface of the sum total of those represented in our ancient mythologies. The interesting point is that these hybrids are universal within that collective mythology. That is, they appear across all cultures; all geographies. Anytime something supposedly mythological, is represented everywhere, it’s time to sit up and take closer notice that things might not be quite as mythological as things first appear.

Continued now from yesterday’s blog…

Now if two (or seven) heads are better than one; if many arms and hands make for lighter work, then rest assured we had many beasties, and ‘gods’ that had many heads and/or arms.

For starters, well the Hydra comes immediately to mind, ditto the Greek multi-headed dogs (Cerberus with three heads and Orthrus with two heads; collectively each with a snake for a tail). The Amphisbaena (Greek) was a serpent with two heads – one at each end. That’s sort of like the Mesoamerican ‘god’ Quetzalcoatl, often depicted as a feathered snake with a head at each end. The Scylla was a multi-headed sea monster with a woman’s torso attached to a dog’s body with a (cheaper by the) dozen legs! Not quite as bizarre was the Azhi Dahaka who was an ordinary run-of-the-mill triple-headed serpent (perhaps the inspiration for Godzilla’s nemesis, the Ghidorah).

That’s just a sample, but there are lots of others, especially from the Indian (as in subcontinent) mythology. For those, see the India section below.

Were some of the ‘gods’ themselves half-and-halves? Most of the Egyptian ‘gods’ tended to have had an animal head but a human body. For example:

 * Amon (or Amun) had the head of a ram.

* Anubis had a jackal head placed on a human body.

* Bastet had a cat’s head atop a human body.

* Harakhte was another falcon-headed deity.

* Hathor was often depicted as a cow-headed goddess.

* Horus had a falcon head placed on a human body. Of the four sons of Horus, three had animal heads (Duamutef – jackal; Qubhsnuf – hawk; and Hapi – dog).

* Khnum was another ram-headed god.

* Ra (or Re) had the head of a falcon.

* Sebek (or Sobek) was one of their gods who had a crocodile head.

* Seker (sometimes known as Sokar) had a hawk’s head.

* Sekhmet had the head of a lioness placed on a human body.

* Then there was the ancient Egyptian God Seth (Set) – a really one off. See below for more nitty-gritty details.

* Sokar (sometimes known as Seker) had a falcon head placed on a human body.

* Thoth had the head of an ibis placed on a human body.

It’s interesting that several ‘gods’ have falcon heads on human bodies. If Horus, Sokar, Ra and others depicted as falcon-headed were figments of the ancient Egyptians’ imaginations, you’d think there would be enough animal heads to go around without duplicating. I mean it would make things easier in terms of who’s who. However, there’s more than one ‘god’ with a jackal’s head, a hawk’s head or a ram’s head as well.

Speaking of strange non-terrestrial appearances of the ancient Egyptian ‘gods’, let’s take the ancient Egyptian ‘god’ Seth (or Set). Here’s how various mythology texts tend to describe him.

* He [Seth] was often depicted as a tall beast – perhaps a jackal or donkey – with a long muzzle. 

* Seth (Set) was mostly depicted as a fabulous creature, with a curved snout, square ears, forked tail, and canine body, or sometimes as a human with only the head of the Set animal. It has no complete resemblance to any known creature, although it could be seen as a composite of an aardvark, a donkey, a jackal. Some early Egyptologists proposed that it was a stylized representation of the giraffe due to the large flat-topped 'horns' but the Egyptians themselves distinguished between the giraffe and the Set animal. In the late period Set is depicted as an ass or with the head of an ass.

* When depicted in animal form, the god Seth was a very odd creature, with a long snout, short ears, and a pointy, upright tail. There have been many attempts to try to identify this creature with a known animal. The possibility remains that it was purely a mythological creature. To Egyptologists, it was known as ‘the Seth-animal’.

* [Seth was] depicted with floppy ears and an erect and divided tail. 

* Set was represented as having the features of a fantastic beast with a thin, curved snout, straight, square-cut ears and a stiff forked tail. This creature cannot with certainty be identified and was commonly called the ‘Typhonian animal’. Sometimes Set was depicted as a man with the head of this strange quadruped.

* Seth had a bizarre appearance. His human-form body is topped by a head that appears to combine the rounded snout of an aardvark (unknown to the ancient Egyptians) with curious, straight, flat-topped donkey ears. When represented in fully animal, four-legged form, he also displayed a long neck, a dog-like body and an erect, curiously forked tail.  Egyptologists have struggled to identify Seth’s component features: the more imaginative include camel, long-nosed mouse, hare, antelope, pig, giraffe and boar.

If Seth (Set) was an ‘ancient astronaut’, and extraterrestrial ‘god’, then by implication all his kin were too and by implication so were all the ancient Egyptian ‘gods’ (noted above), and by implication the whole lot of the polytheistic ‘gods’.  

If the physical appearance of the ‘gods’, or at least one representative ‘god’ can not be reconciled with that of any living thing known to man, then that alone is suggestive of something not-of-this-Earth; an extraterrestrial in other words, or the catch phrase, an ‘ancient astronaut’.

Let’s now take as examples some other geographical regions and their half-and-halves.

Mesopotamia (Persia) had several hybrid ‘gods’: Mithra had the head of a lion on the body of a human – with wings; Ahura Mazda on the other hand had a human head, but, like Angels, they had bird wings.

Half-and-halves were common throughout nearly all cultural mythologies, not just European and Egyptian ones, and other combinations from other mythologies have been realized. Here’s a small sample:

India: As noted above, when it comes to multiple body parts, you had the many headed hydra. However, one culture in particular seems to revel in multi-headed and/or multi-armed gods or creatures – ancient Indian (as in subcontinent) mythology. For example, the Nagas of India were multi-headed cobra-like snakes. Brahma had multi-heads; Shiva had multi-arms; ditto Durga, Kali, Lakshmi, and Yama. Agni and Ravana had multi-heads and multi-arms.

Then as noted above, there was the Indian elephant-human hybrid ‘god’ called Ganesha.

Peru: Ancient Peru had a pot-load of half-and-halves. There were owl-headed supernatural folk healers; unreal monsters shown flying through the air with falcon wings and tails attached; sculptures of half-human half-feline beings. In fact you had the flying felines known as the Ccoa, somewhat larger than a domestic cat with a winged body. The Ccoa was one of many frequent appearances of flying creatures containing human, feline and bird characteristics.

There must be something about Mesoamerica that has a thing about felines. The mysterious Olmecs showed images of a human body but with feline facial features. Unfortunately, the Olmecs vanished mysteriously leaving only the images for us to speculate on.

To be continued...