UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Censorship

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time the claims of the cover-up of the UFO ETH – official censorship.  

I received an email from a SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial) scientist along the line that cover-ups are the usual excuse for the claim there’s no obvious public evidence for the UFO ETH, and that's an argument from ignorance, so it has no force.  It's also implausible that every government in the world is participating in a cover-up. I’m guessing here, but I’d wager that scientist hasn’t ever been in the military (I have) or worked for any defence, security or diplomatic related agencies.

Well, any time the powers-that-be classify, conceal, deny, cover-up things, you’re in the dark so obviously any debate or argument to the contrary by you is an argument or debate from your relative ignorance because you don’t have all of the facts.

Regarding the question of censorship/cover-ups over things alien in nature, things like Martian microbes are too inconsequential to try to hide; ‘ancient astronauts’ are too old for a government to worry about; SETI aliens (if SETI succeeds) are too far away to worry about; but UFOs are a different kettle of fish. The possibility that highly advanced aliens with unknown motives might be present here and now – well can you imagine any government admitting to the great unwashed that they really have no control over their airspace! Any government that had, by accident, obtained alien technology would certainly not share that information with anyone, including allies, and thus wouldn’t admit same to their citizens.  Of course not all countries and their respective governments may even have the appropriate data which to cover-up. You can’t hide what you don’t know about in the first place.  

Take Area 51 (Groom Lake, Nevada). Even assuming that the location has bugger-all to do with UFOs doesn’t negate secrecy going on. There’s no denying the place exists. That’s on the public record. Satellite and ground photographs exist. There’s no getting around the fact that signs are posted around the site that there will be ‘no trespassing’ and that if you do, ‘use of deadly force is authorised’ to keep you out. [That includes SETI scientists!] That too is on the public record, filmed and documented. Translated, there are things going on at Area 51 the American government doesn’t want anyone to know about. Pine Gap in Central Australia is another such location. Many more exist throughout the world. You want cover-ups / censorship and related – call it what you will. Well, something that immediately comes to mind was the Manhattan Project. Then there’s that U-2 spy plane (and a whole range of stealth military aircraft that remained top secret while in development). Likewise, the Project Mogul package designed to detect foreign nuclear weapons testing, launched to high altitudes by balloon, as beloved as an explanation for Roswell.

Nobody can deny that the military has levels of classified security ratings ranging from confidential through to secret and top secret. Anyone suggesting that the Americans (or British, Australians, Chinese, Russians, etc.) don’t have skeletons in their respective closets are in serious denial or in delusion mode. A UFO case might be classified not so much because it’s a UFO, but because the surveillance equipment, type of radar or spy satellite, etc. might be classified.

The number of classified confidential / secret / top secret projects worldwide must number in the tens of thousands. The total number of classified confidential / secret / top secret documents (plus photos and films and related) must be in the millions. The number of multi-decades old classified projects and documents are unknown, but some surely exist. Something old by itself doesn’t equal declassified. And it’s not just the military – all sorts of government civilian and diplomatic projects and decisions remain under wraps for a whole variety of reasons.

There’s no doubt in my mind that UFOs could be one of hundreds to thousands or more topics somewhat too-hot-to-handle and pretty much under classified wraps. That’s a conclusion that’s fairly obvious to me when it came to light, after much denial by the CIA, but pressured via Freedom-of-Information requests, that the CIA had some quite considerable interest in UFOs. Alas, FOI not withstanding, a vast percentage of the text from those released documents are blacked out. And that too is on the public record.

When it comes down to all things classified (a fancy word for cover-up because classified things are covered-up and tucked away out of sight) there is a phrase called ‘need to know’. If you don’t need to know, and you want to, that’s a cover-up as far as you’re concerned. Now Australia had a very long serving Prime Minister (John Howard) who was finally defeated in a 2007 general election, and left politics. I’m sure he knows many secrets – military and diplomatic – from his years in the top job. But, like all good citizens, he’s not telling tales out of class. Ditto all American ex-presidents and Commonwealth PM’s and all other manner of retired statesmen.

There’s also the aspect or concept of ‘the superiority complex’. The ‘I know something that you don’t know’ – ha, ha, ha – that helps feed our egos. Maybe someone does have THE knowledge and THE proof positive of what UFOs are, but why should they share it with you hence share the Nobel Prize? Or, maybe they are just internally satisfied that they alone are blessed with THE answer and that’s the be-all-and-end-all of the matter.

Those who have investigated UFOs with maximum time, energy and resources are of course those from government agencies, representing the government. Therein lays a problem. No government is ever going to admit – assuming an extraterrestrial intelligence behind UFOs – that is doesn’t have full control over its airspace. No government is ever going to admit it is near powerless against possible invaders, including a hypothetical extraterrestrial one. Any government that has insights into the artificial (extraterrestrial) nature of UFOs technology is certainly not going to share that information with other governments, however allied, far less their great unwashed Joe Doe public.

Now sceptics will argue that some countries with official UFO investigations programs have shut them down (or at last that’s the official line). There are two possible reasons for that, assuming everything is on the up and up. The obvious one, to sceptics, is that there’s nothing to the subject – time, money, manpower, resources have been wasted and it’s time to bail out and cut the losses. The quite less obvious one is that we now know what we needed to know and therefore there’s no point in carrying on. That means either a secret admission that we’re helpless no matter what, so no point, or there’s been a conclusion that UFOs pose no threat, so again no particular point in carrying out more studies. In fact, if you example the reasons governments (American and British immediately come to mind) have given for getting out of the UFO business is that phrase – ‘no threat’ - UFOs, whatever they are, or aren’t, pose ‘no threat’ Note that there’s never a definitive statement that absolutely no UFO has represent  extraterrestrial intelligence technology, that aliens aren’t here, it’s always that UFOs pose ‘no threat’ and therefore we’ve got better things to do – like dealing with things that are threatening! That ‘no threat’ phrase might represent a possibility that the powers-that-be know more than they’re telling – ‘no threat’ means different things to those in the know vis-à-vis the great unwashed who might not be quite as convinced if they knew what the powers-that-be knew. That’s a good reason for not confiding in the great unwashed!

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Animal Mutilations

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time the disturbing concept of animal mutilations.  

For the better part of going on towards five decades worth, there’s been a ongoing and gruesome phenomena seemingly clustered around the American mid-western regions (though Charles Fort collected similar cases from England in the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries) that involves what has been described as the mutilation of large herbivore wildlife such as bison, but more usually domesticated livestock like cattle, sheep and horses. Mutilation is not usually a word associated with natural processes like predation, rather deliberate acts for purposes other than taking down an animal as a natural food source. We’ll return to that unnatural bit later on down the track.

These unfortunate victims usually have selected and nearly consistent bits and pieces of their body removed with near surgical precision. Most of the carcass is left behind, though the body is usually devoid of blood.

Firstly, from the outset, there’s no denying the reality of the phenomena – ghosts and UFOs come and go like will-o’-the-wisps, but animal mutilations, like crop circles, stick around and are available for ongoing scrutiny and analysis, and both have some other common threads like clustering in geographical areas (crop circles tend to be associated with and clustered in SW England. Both are ongoing and both now number in the hundreds to thousands of individual cases. Further, there have been several (two) independent Federal inquiries into the phenomena, one by the FBI (1979), the other by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (AFT). Both studies produced conclusions that anomalies existed in some mutilation cases and that further studies were warranted. There have also been various State-level investigations as well as Senate hearings.

The most obvious answer to the mutilation mystery is that all can be attributed to natural predators doing their thing. In fact professional veterinarians usually associated with university schools of veterinary medicine or science proclaim from their ivory towers that these are indeed the results of natural predation by known carnivores, all by studying the photographic evidence – god forbid they’d actually do any on-site fieldwork. However, they do admit that not all of the hundreds to thousands of mutilation cases fall into such neat little piles. All agree by now that all cases cannot be easily explained by wild cats like mountain lions and bobcats or those from the canine side of things like wolves and coyotes, and similar predators such as foxes and wild dogs. 

An obvious problem with the natural predation theory is the appearance of the phenomena in the mid-1960s (apart from still relatively recent England noted above). Prey and predators existed way before that as well as humans to report the cases.  

In contrast, the man-on-the-land, the farmers, rangers, hunters, wildlife field biologists and vets who work for government departments and other outdoors types who are quite familiar with viewing and inspecting your run of the mill animal predation tend to take a more opposite view – there’s nothing natural about these sorts of animal predations and the state the remains of the carcass are found in.  This might appear to be a typical academic skeptic vs. eyewitness (I know what I saw) disagreements were it not for a few other unusual features.

Firstly, you’d expect to see signs of a predator-prey struggle – the ground should have been scuffed up a bit; the vegetation slightly disturbed. That’s not what you find. You’d expect in many cases to observe the tracks of the predatory animal(s). You don’t tend to find tracks. Often there are not even tracks of the victim in the immediate vicinity as if the animal were dumped from above at the spot. Thirdly, if natural, you wouldn’t expect the ground/soil and surrounding vegetation in the immediate area of the kill to show any long-term lasting effects. Often the kill site can be identified way down the track by unusual changes in the condition of the soil and vegetation, usually for the worse.

Further, natural predators tend to avoid or shy away from the mutilated carcass even though it’s an apparently easy meal. Ditto other livestock avoid the area as well. It’s like a no-go zone. Some post-mortem biochemical studies suggest that the victim in question was tranquilized prior to the mutilation. One of the anomalies often reported via laboratory studies of the carcass are unusual alterations in the amounts of vitamins, minerals and other associated biochemical compounds. The findings of tranquilizers and/or anomalies in the standard biochemistry of the victim, points more to a human or an otherworldly culprit. What about the human animal?

Because the nature of the wounds often having the nature or hallmarks suggestive of surgery; well there’s another predator that needs to be considered, the human predator. Well that doesn’t really appear to wash either – again, no human footprints in the area prior to discovery; no tire tracks (and most of the kill sites are off the beaten track – a long walk to get to them). Further, to the best of my knowledge, no human(s) have ever been observed in the act, far less caught, tried and convicted. Further, no human(s) or cults (Satanic or otherwise) have claimed responsibility. In gun-toting America, especially rural America where rifles and shotguns probably outnumber their human owners, any other humans with animal mutilation on their depraved minds are really risking their hides – farmers seeing their livestock (and livelihoods) butchered are liable to shoot first and ask questions later!

Further still, the nature of the incisions hasn’t been duplicated in the laboratory by lasers (an obvious human tool if humans were responsible) since there’s no signs of heat or cooking on the carcass incisions. Laboratory tests show that the time and effort to do the high precision cutting job using sharp steel implements is quite considerable. Hides are tough, unlike human skin. Further, no evidence beyond reasonable doubt (say by the FBI or the AFT) of any human or cultist activity was ever uncovered by any official investigation

Of course there have been claims that the American government is actually responsible via clandestine or covert research into possible cattle-human transmitted diseases like ‘mad cow disease’ and scrapie, research  via the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) with covering support from the armed forces via ‘black helicopters’. However, on balance, you’d think such work in the public interest wouldn’t have to be done undercover! Surely the American powers-that-be can buy livestock at random for testing; ditto hunt other wildlife for routine and ongoing testing in the open. Some conspiracy scenarios make sense – this one doesn’t.

You can’t really pin this on some sort of unknown, undiscovered predator like the Chupacabra – an animal that would be in the providence of cryptozoologists since there have been no sightings of such potential critters in the area with the necessary ‘tools’ (teeth and jaws), and anyway no tracks, known animal or unknown animal.

Since the phenomena exists and requires explanation and resolution, perhaps that leaves the otherworldly. Are aliens in UFOs responsible? While there have, on occasion been reports of unusual aerial objects in the relevant vicinity prior to mutilations, it would seem on the surface to be relatively absurd. Why would aliens want bits and pieces and the blood of large herbivores?

Alien beings will, by definition, have alien minds, an alien psychology and alien motives – alien relative to us of course.

There is however an obvious parallel with alien UFO abductions. Humans who claim to have been abducted by the ‘greys’ also claim to have had tissue samples taken from them – biopsies – and often have the unexplained scares to ‘prove’ it, though to the skeptics that hardly constitutes real evidence, far less proof. Still, it’s another dot point suggesting that aliens, for whatever reason, just take tissue samples to monitor – what? Well, who knows? At least the humans aren’t sacrificed on the alien’s altar.

Needless to say humans (biologists, vets, nurses, medical doctors & researchers) do tissue sample work all the time and sometimes it’s necessary to kill the subject under the knife first.

Ultimately, to date, the only reasonable conclusion that can be reached is that there is no ‘smoking gun’ proof yet to identify beyond question whodunit, if indeed there is just a single whodunit. Unfortunately, this is likely to be a phenomenon that’s likely to be continued!

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Ancient Astronauts

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO ETH – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time the concept of the ancient astronaut, UFOs’ kissing cousin.  

Scholars when they research the polytheistic gods of ancient civilizations and cultures start with the assumption that the gods are imaginary inventions of the fertile human mind and purely mythical beings. I start with the opposite assumption, that is that ancient peoples depicted real (extraterrestrial) beings which to them were so advanced as to be deities - the gods. These ‘ancient astronauts’ have an actual ongoing presence which has filtered down through the present day, achieving now an actual quasi-mythology of its own, not just fictional as in say “Stargate”, but as a basis for serious speculation such as Erich von Daniken’s or even my own minor musings.

Before embarking on my little fairy tale, I note that for such taken-for-granted imaginary beings, the polytheistic gods and their relationships and adventures are spelled out in exquisite detail. I mean this was way before multi-season TV shows and volumes of related paperback novels for mass consumption. I mean we know an awful lot about Captain Kirk and Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter. But were there writers of polytheistic fiction back then who knew perfectly well they were fabricating the lives and times of the gods for consumption by and entertainment for the great unwashed and kept quiet about their literary fictions? Probably not! I don’t think the gods were literary characters invented out of whole cloth. Dare say a non-fictional biography of (fill in the blank - pick a god, any god) would be far more detailed than a similar tome devoted to God or Jesus Christ (J.C.).

The second point from the outset is that IMHO the polytheistic gods aren’t gods but ‘gods’. We think of them as the mythological gods but they weren’t actual gods but real alien beings. Now let’s get on with the tale.

*Once upon a time, a long time ago, a group of boldly going extraterrestrials discovered Planet Earth and took dominion over it, like humans take dominion over national parks and reserves, but starting at a time before humans.

*Now I’ve no idea where they came from except from somewhere out there. Different myths and legends point to different points of origin, all of which could well be the case.

*In the time of humans, sometime later on down the line, these extraterrestrials would become, in the minds of the humans, the ‘gods’. But the so-called ‘gods’ (including ‘God’) were never real supernatural deities, but ‘flesh-and-blood’ extraterrestrials with advanced technology and powers.

*The ‘gods’ reign over their dominion of mankind wasn’t always benign and just.

*They, the extraterrestrials, made their presence felt at the dawn of mankind’s emergence; but hence, because there were so many of them, polytheism became the religious order of the day as far as the various human cultures were concerned. The humans obviously mistook the advanced extraterrestrials for supernatural deities, worshiping what they thought were the ‘gods’, but who in reality were at best pseudo-gods.

*Therefore, the polytheistic pseudo ‘gods’ (or at least some, many or most of them) exist. Later on down the track, what became the monotheistic ‘God’, actually pseudo-God also existed. However, in the beginning, pseudo-God was just one of the pseudo-gods.

*Now I assume here that the ‘gods’ and ‘God’ are all related, but like humans, aren’t always one big happy family. In fact, if there’s any one word that describes the family of the ‘gods’, its “dysfunctional”!

*Even further on down the track, was there was some sort of a falling out between ‘God’ (and His followers) and the other ‘gods’ for control over humanity? If so, ‘God’ and hangers-on win – monotheism comes to the fore.

*However, ‘God’ (assuming His reality) and His minions have a falling out in turn – a house divided against itself. This is where ‘Satan’ and followers tell ‘God’ and followers to take a long walk off a short pier. Ultimately, ‘God’ proves to have ‘the force’ be with Him.

*But, a now much weakened ‘God’ and company are ripe for getting their comeuppance and it was so. They then get overturned and banished by the ‘gods’, which is why there’s no evidence for any Godly presence over the past several millenniums. ‘God’ has left the building! ‘God’ has been tarred and feathered and exiled from Dodge City.

*But are the ‘gods’ still around? There’s been equally and relatively little evidence for them too over the past several millenniums. Still, I propose they’re out there at a distance, patiently observing, ever observing.

*But what happens when humans get advanced enough technologically to begin to, at least in principle, have the potential to challenge the ‘gods’ on their own turf? That is, we humans can begin to toss around a thunderbolt or two of our own.

*Enter the modern UFO era, with the ‘gods’ moving in to keep far closer tabs on us and their dominion, which they’ve probably never relinquished but are worried that it will be taken away from them, even by force. Our thunderbolts are now, or soon will be, bigger and better that their thunderbolts.  

In conclusion, if aliens stumbled upon our humble abode it would likely as not have been millions, maybe billions of years ago. Alas, terrestrial critters around then (trilobites or dinosaurs) couldn’t leave behind any record of their observations! It’s only when humans developed that some sort of record could have been entered into. So, there’s no contradiction with suggesting that ‘ancient astronauts’ are only ancient in human terms since that doesn’t exclude the possibility they were around millions of years before that. One bit of suggestive I find interesting for the credibility of ‘ancient astronauts’ is that ancient cultures from around the globe have myths and legends of ‘sky beings’ – the Australian aborigines; the American Indians; the Mesoamericans – Aztecs, Mayans; the South Americans, the Incas; the Egyptians; the cultures of the Indian subcontinent; and of course the Romans, Greeks and Norse cultures all had tales of ‘sky beings’. I suspect that detailed research would find the presence of ‘sky beings’ universal, or nearly so. A human culture needing to invent imaginary friends from the sky is probably less likely than the reality, or the possible/probable reality of actual ‘sky beings’. [As an aside, maybe trilobites and T-Rex aren’t totally kaput – if ancient astronauts (UFO aliens) were around way back then, doing their abduction thing, then maybe the descendents of these prehistoric life forms are alive and well in some cosmic zoo!]

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Alien Abductions

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO ETH – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena starting with the UFO alien abduction phenomena.

If the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis is controversial, then abductions of humans by alien beings is controversial squared, if not cubed. There’s intense polarisation on the issue, not just between UFO sceptics and UFO believers, but between UFO believers themselves. Is there anything to be said for the reality of alien abductions?

The subset of UFO reports collectively lumped together as ‘close encounters of the fourth kind’ is a minefield, and like the subset of ufology collectively known as ‘contactees’, lots of middle-of-the-road UFO investigators steer clear of the subject. Lots of others don’t and boldly go not so much into outer space, but inner space – the inner space of the mind. I see both pro and con on the merits of the abduction phenomena. For example:

Con: The appearance of the aliens, the greys, reflects a tad too closely the stereotype of what humans will look like many millennia from now – enlarged heads; atrophied bodies as the shift from physical to mental labour intensifies. The trend to less and less body hair (we’re much less furry than our ape relations) continues until we’re all bald all ‘round. The aliens aren’t human, but still very humanoid, perhaps too much so.

Con: What’s the physics behind the obvious artificial gravity our abductees must be experiencing (since they don’t report any weightlessness on the alien’s spaceship which is presumably in Earth orbit)? From orientations reported, it’s not the UFO rapidly revolving, since reports indicate their presence on a level floor between top and bottom, not on one of the outside walls. Aliens have obviously mastered physics unknown providing artificial gravity.

Con: You’d really think there would be hundreds or thousands of independent witnesses to all these home invasions and alien takeaways!

Pro: There’s a very high degree of consistency in abduction scenarios that’s independent of age, sex, race, nationality, religion, occupation, etc. that needs to be explained away by sceptics.

Pro: The abduction scenario reflects what our wildlife biologists do – capture, study, tag and release. We are to the aliens what animal species are to wildlife biologists. 

Pro: It’s difficult to explain why so many people would independently imagine or hallucinate or dream up the sort of obviously traumatic nightmare abduction scenario, especially when it involves painful invasive medical procedures. If you’re that sort of masochistic person, wouldn’t you dream that it was a mad scientist/medical doctor doing the kidnapping instead of aliens? Why aren’t we flooded with abduction reports by demons taking one to the underworld, or by leprechauns taking their victims to – well wherever leprechauns call home? 

I remember a time, now long ago, even before the start of any media coverage of abductions, when the idea of UFOs as extraterrestrial vehicles was one thing, logical and acceptable, but the idea of actual occupants was just too far out to be seriously entertained. Why is beyond me since I would have thought the two concepts would have fitted together like hand and glove. It’s like saying a Boeing 747 airliner is okay, but an actual pilot? That’s just too farfetched. 

One very telling point about ufonauts or UFO occupants (aliens associated with UFOs) and the aliens and scenarios behind alien abductions: in the case of the former, within the ranks of sci-fi (films, TV, novels, short stories, video games, etc.) the range of alien body-types is massive. If you can imagine it, it’s been done. However, the range of alien body-types associated with UFOs is way, way, way more limited. Imagination is not at the forefront here. With respect to the abduction plot, if you were asked to write a sci-fi story that started with the premise of UFO aliens abducting a human in their ‘flying saucer’, the evolution of that initial plot element could take hundreds of different turns. Real abduction tales hardly differ from initial abduction to final resolution. Again, imagination isn’t coming to the forefront. If UFOs, UFO occupants and abductions are all in the mind, well the variety should be more akin to Heinz (57 varieties) squared.

UFO Abductions: One common thread in the tales of abductees is some sort of invasive medical procedure(s) performed on them. Back in the real world, anybody undergoing a routine terrestrial medical, standard medical exam, blood donation, etc. will be able to count on one universal part and parcel of same. Their heart/circulatory system will be checked. There will be stethoscopes, blood pressure measurements, pulse rates taken, haemoglobin levels checked, etc. That’s nearly a given. However, in abduction scenarios, the ‘medicals’ never, but never, seem to include anything to do with the heart, veins, arteries, or associated blood chemistry. Now if abduction tales were all in the mind, all made up, entirely imaginary, you’d bet the family farm that the aliens would check your heart and blood pressure! They don’t!

There’s one more interesting point to be made about the ‘greys’ behind UFO abductions. Horror author Whitley Strieber came out of the closet to tell the world that he too had been abducted by aliens - the ‘greys’ and wrote a best seller about it called “Communion” (plus sequels). Strieber’s claims, true or false, aren’t the point here. The image on the dust cover of “Communion” – a head shot of a typical ‘grey’ – well a picture is worth a thousand words or perhaps nightmares in this case. That image, on the front cover of his book in thousands of bookstores around the world had an amazing responsive chord with the public; it had a resonance with multi-thousands of ordinary people. It seemed to unlock hidden, repressed memories/experiences in many people. The question is why? If ‘greys’ don’t exist; in UFO abductions aren’t real, then that image should not have had the psychological impact it did. 

There is an interesting quasi-parallel between the 50’s contactees and the later abductees, even though the “Nordic” “Space Brothers” appear vastly different than the abductee’s “Greys”. The contactees were pre-Hippy New Ager types. In contrast, many abductees seem to undergo quasi-New Age lifestyle changes post abduction(s). They may have become vegetarians, gave up smoking or drinking, joined community groups, started participating in charity work, developed ecological concerns and/or become overall a more spiritually-oriented being.

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Introductory Remarks

The concept that aliens have and are visiting Planet Earth is plausible in both theory and observation. The theoretical part is often called the Fermi Paradox and it goes something like this: Extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) with advanced technology is plausible; interstellar travel violates no laws of physics; the time it takes to explore our galaxy is a small fraction of the age of our galaxy (the parallel, the time it takes life forms – be it bacteria or humans - to explore the surface of Planet Earth is a small fraction of the age of Planet Earth); there are valid reasons to ‘boldly go’, not the least of which is that stars and planets don’t last forever; lastly, we can’t hide from potential alien eyes. The ‘paradox’ part comes into the picture only if you maintain that they should be here and they’re not. If they’re here, or have been here there’s no paradox. Of course in the exceedingly unlikely event there is no ‘they’, never has been, well that too resolves the ‘paradox’.  

The compliment to the theory is actual observational evidence, both for past (ancient astronauts) and present (the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis – UFO ETH). Even if human eyeball testimony isn’t considered really ‘evidence’ and is questionable according to sceptics, there are various physical types of evidence, from various physical traces (ground markings; physiological effects on biological tissues, etc.) to radar returns, as well as photographic (for example the Trent family McMinnville, Oregon 1950 photos) and motion picture images (such as the Nick Mariana, Great Falls, Montana 1950 film and the Delbert Newhouse, Tremonton, Utah 1952 film) that have withstood critical/sceptical analysis.

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO ETH – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – I’ll look at a few snippets of the phenomena in the days ahead.

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’s Extraterrestrial Connections: The Best of the Rest

Mythology is not purely an invention of the human imagination out of whole cloth. There are grains of truth or reality within the tales. Humans are intelligent enough to separate basic facts from basic fictions, even if the facts are often embellished to make a good tale better, or misinterpreted. The mythological gods (including God) really existed. However, they weren’t really supernatural beings or deities. That’s the misinterpretation part. They were extraterrestrials.   

 A Fictional Analogy:

*We’re all somewhat familiar with the comic book, TV, and film adventures of Superman. Now just imagine that Superman was real and came to Earth in Mesopotamia 8000 years ago. What would the natives have called him – God perhaps?

A Modern Historical Analogy:

*There’s no doubt that ‘cargo cults’ arose in the Pacific as a result of WWII.

*The Pacific island natives that are identified with those cargo cults did NOT invent that cargo cult mythology out of hard cloth.

*Translated, the natives really saw and interacted with real beings (Allied servicemen and women) who really did come down from the sky and really did have solid ‘cargo’ some of which astonished the natives seeing as how the two cultures were ‘light-years’ apart.

*That after the Allied servicemen and women left, the Pacific island natives began to worship them and the ‘cargo’ they brought and built ‘temples’ to them in hopes they would return with more ‘cargo’.

*Now, substitute Pacific island natives of WWII vintage with human beings six to eight thousand years ago; substitute Allied servicemen and women with advanced extraterrestrials… Well, you have a gods and goddesses mythology ready made at your fingertips. 

Some Unresolved Questions:

*One ultra-super-major question arises – if we can’t crossbreed with even our closest living terrestrial evolutionary relations, and I know of no even short-term viable union between human and other primate gametes (i.e. – there are no gorilla-human or chimpanzee hybrids in even just the earliest of embryo stages) then how can we breed with the ‘gods’? We’re terrestrial; they’re extraterrestrial – a goldfish should have a higher probability of successful mating with a petunia since their both terrestrial species. Well, I can only conclude that the ‘gods’, in their artificial selection program to create humans for their own purposes (including sexual) had the ability in advanced genetic engineering techniques to make successful mating viable. Clearly from their point of view, human-‘god’ offspring would result in better overall stock than just human-human breeding. The potential proof of that pudding is that modern humans went from hunter-gathering on Earth to hunter-gathering on the Moon, not in millions of years or hundreds of thousands of years, but in less than ten thousand years. No other species on this planet has accomplished so much so fast. That’s in view of the fact that overall there’s apparently no real natural evolutionary pressure towards higher intelligence. Will a smarter cat catch more mice, or will a faster cat and/or one with sharper vision and better reflexes catch more mice?

*One interesting question is that are all the motley collection of ‘gods’ (including ‘God’) and associated ‘pets’ and the ‘half-and- halves’ all one genetically-related race (like all terrestrial life-forms are), or many? If one takes concepts like “Star Trek”, “Star Wars”, “Stargate”, etc. at face value, the galaxy is teeming with many races many at similar technological levels. Given the diversity already mentioned I’m inclined to go with the ‘gods’ (including ‘God’) representing more of a (in “Star Trek” terms) a Federation.

*This Federation of extraterrestrials is further postulated by yet another range of apparently mythological beings – the wee folk, or in general the fairy folk. Tales of elves, fairies, leprechauns, sprites, etc. are also quite commonplace throughout the world’s culture. Were it not for the UFO greys, I might dismiss them, but modern UFO occupants show a diversity akin to that of ‘ancient astronauts’ (the ‘gods’ and ‘God’ and ‘pets”) and presumed ‘ancient astronauts’ – the wee fairy folk. 

*Another question needs to be asked, could the polytheistic ‘gods’ and ‘ancient astronauts’ be two entirely different things? IMHO, the answer is “no”. If you remove the polytheistic ‘gods’ as being part and parcel of any ‘ancient astronaut’ consideration, and that’s including God from the ancient astronaut equation, then there’s no remaining suggestive evidence for ‘ancient astronauts’.

*Yet another reasonable question is that is the ‘ancient astronaut’ gods (including God) mythology one general overall story with many differing cultural variations in the telling, or are there many actual differing tales unique to differing cultures? That distinction probably remains to be worked out in detail yet; it’s probably a bit of both. Overall, because there are so many common (creation, paradise, sky being, etc.) themes between cultures, I’m inclined to endorse the former. However, many individual cultures probably have some myth or two or twenty that’s pretty much exclusive to them.

*Translated, with respect to similarities vs. differences, can one reasonably suggest that An or Enlil (Mesopotamia) = Zeus (Greek) = God (Christianity) = Jupiter (Roman) = Indra or Brahma (India) = Odin (Norse) = Fuxi (Chinese) = Quetzalcoatl (Aztec) = Viracocha (Inca), and so on and so on down the line, or are they all different ‘gods’ ruling different kingdoms? The same applies to ‘lesser’ gods – does Eros = Cupid or are they two separate beings? Is Ares (Greek) the same person as Mars (Roman)?

A Few Rival Ideas:

*Highest Probability: That the gods (including God) really existed or still do exist in some cases, but are really flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials as outlined above.

*Next Highest Probability: That the gods (including God) never existed and never had any sort of physical reality. This might imply that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations with interstellar spaceflight capacities don’t exist; they exist but somehow missed our planet; or found it uninteresting and moved on.

*Lowest Probability: That the gods (including God) really existed and still exist as supernatural deities.

My Conclusions:

*If technologically advanced extraterrestrials arrived on Planet Earth, say some six to eight thousand years ago, you could be pretty certain that…

*Humans would come up with legends of ‘sky gods’.

*Humans would interpret technology as magic or the supernatural.

*Humans would deify the beings as ‘gods’.

*The ‘gods’ would in reality be our modern concept of ‘ancient astronauts’.

*Lastly, regardless of the speculations, it’s not going to be 100% possible to totally separate out reality from mythology. Even if the ‘gods’ (including ‘God’) were flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials, many of the tales surrounding them will still have some mythological elements to them. Currently scholars will argue that its 0% reality; 100% mythology as far as the polytheistic ‘gods’ are concerned. Enthusiastic and fundamentalist-oriented monotheistic believers have 100% reality for ‘God’; 100% mythology for the ‘gods’ – what they think of ‘ancient astronauts’ probably varies from disbelief to high probability, as long as it doesn’t involve ‘God’. I put my money on 75% reality for the ‘gods’ + ‘God’ = ‘ancient astronauts’; 25% that the ‘gods’ and ‘God’ are total mythological.