This post is inspired by the other thread about Aliens in the Solar System, and is designed for discussion as a possibility not as a serious theory so please do accept only as a discussion topic.

Recently evidence has emerged that there were far more Homo species co-existing on Earth that anyone had ever thought existed at all. Further we have shown that Anatommically Modern Humans (You and I) have been about for somewhere between 220,000 and 280,000 years. Also Home Florensiensis (The Hobbit) is showing that perhaps our ideas of Intelligence and Brain size are not as simple as we once thought.

My thoughts are this, we have many myths on Earth that are similar, despite being seperated by millenia and thousands of miles, many stories of Gods have images of similar appearence, now all this could simply be caused by influence and coincidence (Which I honestly believe it to be), however what if around 50,000 years ago a group stated on the Road we did about 5,000 years ago, then what if they developed technology analogous to us today, then the Ice Age began, they could do nothing about it and some actually left the planet and moved into space, perhaps beyond the Solar System. Maybe some of the Unique people that have existed in History are somehow connected to this group, perhaps the Gods of Pre-History were members of this group who found their way back here?

Perhaps then Aliens could be here, but we would not know as they look exactly like us, because We are the Aliens??

OK so this is likely to be a load of old bollox, but it is not impossible in some context either.

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

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Hi Jim,

Interesting concept that I personally haven't heard before. Not to say that it isn't possible. There are alot of unexplained gaps in our history (human history) that we rely on our people of science (in different fields) to help us understand as much as we can about those "periods". Certain cultures in our history have had major advancements and then mysteriously they disappear, or else all documentation concerning their achievements.

Recently I watched another program about the inhabitants of Easter Island, again science was trying to determine what happened to the people and the island, why the statues were there... Program synopsis was: they outgrew the island and it's resources. (Alot more I would say about this, but I don't want to get too far off topic).

It's mysteries like this, which we, as semi-educated people, assume certain things/beings/creatures behave/act/react/think because they "must be like this/that because we are like that" (or along some similar line of thinking).
We rely on our most educated people (at the time) in whatever field to determine the most likely explanation of events.

If a previous race had managed to leave the earth, where would they have gone?
Wouldn't they want to come back and say "Look, we know how to do this, it works, you can go to "X", no taxes, live until your 320, never gain weight, but can't drink coffee, wanna go?" (Pardon my example) At times looking at how much we fight amongst ourselves, if I could leave, i would and you can bet I'm not coming back. I've done the "cold war" thing, i still have nightmares, i'm going to ask my kids if they want to go, and live a better life, somewhere else.

I'd like to think that your views and my views on this subject "the idea that there are actually other intelligent life forms" are not being supressed, either by a government agenda who may possibly be aware, or quite simply by that very same life-form trying to research our planet.

It's a big can of worms in my opinion, alot of things that are open to alot of intense investigation by people who are way more qualified than me. I've got alot of unanswered questions, still! :-)

James

When I originally saw the title of the thread, I thought of our "potenital" counter parts on another planet. I imagine them with posters of aliens but the aliens looking like humans. Instead of the alien face we all know, its a likeness of my neighbor Bob.

Our counter parts are probably having similar disussions about their world and aliens.


Now that I have read your email, I too have thought of the potential of previous races having our same inteligence and that they may have surpassed our level of technology.

I would propose that maybe the technological curve is more logrithmic and not linear. 50,000 years ago they were just as smart, but at the bottom of the curve.

I would also propose that technological development has had alot to do with the right person at the right time. Economic, social, geographic location and enviromental factors may be significant especially at early developmental stages of technology. Especially when survival needs are greater than technological advancement.

Our current progress may be as a result of a a sweet spot in earth's history with minimal catastrophes, no significant climate changing events and the right people in the right time and place.



However, I do prefer your idea as it would explain my neighbor Bob.


Cheers

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> I would propose that maybe the technological curve is more logrithmic and not
> linear. 50,000 years ago they were just as smart, but at the bottom of the
> curve.
>

Thanks for that. As an archaeologist, I get a bit peeved sometimes when folks assume that prehistoric peoples were somehow 'dumber' than we are. Different technologies yes, but certainly not stupid. All you have to do is look at the skill and artistry that went into the drawings, stone artifacts, and monuments of these cultures to know that these people were just as highly intelligent and creative as we are. Heck, maybe more so. ;)

In our more recent past, we have various mythologies that are now dismissed simply as 'naive explanations' of our world and the universe. I wonder if in another 2000 years the same will be said for Roman Catholicism. Wouldn't it be a hoot if ol' Zeus showed up one day in his spacecraft and said "Hey, you blathering idiots, you had it right the first time!"

Just some late-night meanderings from little old me.

Dig

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I saw a bit of something one time that might indicate humans are not native to earth. Basicly it was if you put any animal in isolation with no external stimuli it will stay on a 24 hour cycle. If you put a human in that situation it will change to a 25 hour cycle. I don't mean an sensory deprivation chamber thing but something with no time, food always available, light always on or controlable.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

Riley, I think some of what you said is spot on, in the early stages of any society environmental factors have to be a profound influence on the progress and direction that society take. As fr the linear progress of Man, well that is simply laughbale, nature doesn't do much in a linear manner, and evolution is nothing like linear as there are simply too many factors involved for it to be.

The simple fact is that Humans have been "Intelligent" for about 1 million years, Homo Erectus may not have been able to build cars, but these were far from stupid creature, I find it laughable when so called "Intelligent" researchers speak of Erectus being a smart chimp or something of this nature, or they attribute no vocal skills to the creature. My mothers cats speak to each other, as do wild Lions, Chimps and other Primates, how dumb of us to think our ancestors could not vocalise, like it is something that only humans can do.

Research is showing that Erectus was a lot smarter that has ever been given credit, that they knew how to make boats and cross bodies of water over 800,000 years ago, 10 times further back than previously thought.

The diminutive Homo Floresiensis found barely 18 months ago shows us that even with a brain of reduced size, the thought process of these miniture Homo Erectus was a lot more sophisticated and advanced than anyone thought possible.

Who knows what Erectus may have achieved prior to the emergence of Homo Sapiens some 300,000 years ago, the fossil record is woefully incomplete, especially for Human evolution, recently I read that only one skeleton in 250,000 is ever fossilised, and only one in 1000 of these will remain complete over geological periods, so the simple truth is we know less than nothing about our ancesters.

Our species is an inquisitive, semi social territorial predatory omnivore, there is no reason for us to think that our behaviour now is any different to that of our ancesters some 200,000 years ago. We are not any smarter, so the real question is

"Why did we suddenly all develope societies and emergent technology around the globe at the same time"

This is too coincidental if you ask me, there had to be some other influence taking place, I do not favour ETI interference as some may claim, but I do favour that perhaps a group of Humans had developed further than others and they spread this "culture" around the globe over a period of several hundred years. This is not that far fetched, it is EXACTLY what European did from 1450AD to the modern era.

Had this occured say 40,000 years ago, prior to the Ice age, who is to say what level of sophistication this society may have had, what technology they may have developed, the Ice age would have removed all traces of it, and had they understood engineering as we do, then perhaps their buildings were not over engineered like the old ones which have survived for thousands of years, but perhaps they were engineered Just so, and nature had removed them from the landscape?

There are most certainly serious anomolies with Human development, and whilst I am not convinced that what i have proposed as a possibility actuially occured as I have said it, there is no reason for us to believe it did not either.

Perhaps the Ark of myth and legend was not a wooden sailing ship, but a generation ship to take survivors and other creatures to another world, perhaps the Two by Two was frozen Foetus of creatures here that could be allowed to thaw and develope naturally on the new world. We know that the Ark could not have been a wooden ship as desribed on Earth.

Maybe Battlestar Galactica is partly true, and our ancestors left what they thought to be a dieing planet for a new home, and they have not returned. Some survived the Ice ages and they founded the societies we see in the historical record.

I do not believe Humans are Aliens in as much as we came here from elswhere, the actual scientific evidence for our evolution on this planet is too overwhelming, but it is possible that we are the Alien somewhere else, regardless of how improbable this may be.

We will be one day that we can be confident of, and if we have done it once.....

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Jim Franklin said:

> Recently evidence has emerged that there were far more Homo species
> co-existing on Earth that anyone had ever thought existed at all. Further we
> have shown that Anatommically Modern Humans (You and I) have been about for
> somewhere between 220,000 and 280,000 years. Also Home Florensiensis (The
> Hobbit) is showing that perhaps our ideas of Intelligence and Brain size are
> not as simple as we once thought.


This would fit in quite nicely with the biblical and sumerian histories regarding genetic experiments and hybrids of various kinds.


> My thoughts are this, we have many myths on Earth that are similar, despite
> being seperated by millenia and thousands of miles, many stories of Gods have
> images of similar appearence, now all this could simply be caused by influence
> and coincidence (Which I honestly believe it to be), however what if around
> 50,000 years ago a group stated on the Road we did about 5,000 years ago, then
> what if they developed technology analogous to us today, then the Ice Age
> began, they could do nothing about it and some actually left the planet and
> moved into space, perhaps beyond the Solar System. Maybe some of the Unique
> people that have existed in History are somehow connected to this group,
> perhaps the Gods of Pre-History were members of this group who found their way
> back here?
>
> Perhaps then Aliens could be here, but we would not know as they look exactly
> like us, because We are the Aliens??
>
> OK so this is likely to be a load of old bollox, but it is not impossible in
> some context either.
>
> Anyone got any thoughts on this?


Sounds logical. Only problem is, the "gods" were not very nice. In fact, according to the ancient Mayans, the nicest one was Quetzcoatl because he only demanded one human sacrifice a solar year (or month, can't remember which), compared to the rest of the "gods", who demanded many human sacrifices in any given year/month, whatever. Now, if these "gods" were advanced humans from a pre-Ice Age civilization, who returned here in our epic, why would they need and demand human sacrifices?

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<a href="http://artapprentice.net/sumer/"><img src="http://artapprentice.net/sumer/sos.gif"></a>
<a href="http://artapprentice.net/sumer/">Secrets of Sumer</a>

> The diminutive Homo Floresiensis found barely 18 months ago shows us that even
> with a brain of reduced size, the thought process of these miniture Homo
> Erectus was a lot more sophisticated and advanced than anyone thought
> possible.

Just wanted to add to this part of the discussion. Years before this recent announcement, I was talking with a doctor of neurology, who told me about Microcephaly and how this "small brain" condition can be present in people with normal sized craniums (anyone of us could have this condition, which usually is only revealed by MRI or other inspection). She also pointed out that it doesn't manifest itself statistically as lower I.Q. The article referenced indicates the same thing.

Murasaki, I know that some feeble minded researchers attempted to paint the "Hobits" as suffering from Microcephaly, but this load of old tosh has been soundly and squarely blown out of the water with concrete research.

Also, Microcephaly always results in a reduced Cranium, they are not normal sized craniums with small brains, the Cranium and Brain are proportaional in size, also those suffering from Microcephaly have severally reduced Brain functions, learning disorders and extremely reduced IQ in most cases. Evidence from Flores shows that the "Hobits" suffered none of these traits, and the fact that the Fossil skeletal remains found so far stretch across a period of time dating from 90,000 years ago to only 13,000 years ago means that these poeple were very common. The statistical odds of finding these skeletons is staggering, the odds that the only ones found also happened to be the extremely rare one who had suffered from Microcephaly, something that only effects something like one in 10 million humans are so staggering that is is safe to say impossible.

The Hobit's ARE a new species of the Homo branch of Primates.

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> Also, Microcephaly always results in a reduced Cranium, they are not normal
> sized craniums with small brains, the Cranium and Brain are proportaional in
> size, also those suffering from Microcephaly have severally reduced Brain

For one, I wasn't suggesting your "hobbits" were just microcephalic humans. [EDIT] Although doing a more refined web search and finding the articles, I can see why you'd jump to that conclusion. Sorry for being so obscure, but I didn't know of the controversy. [/EDIT]

According to the researcher I was speaking to, who was doing this kind of research, neither of your statements about smaller cranium size always accompanying smaller brain size nor invariably reduced IQ are accurate. While "microcephaly" indicates both brain and cranial cavity reduction, this doesn't necessarily have to be the case (and if there's a separate name for the condition I'm describing, I don't know what it is). There are some people whose brains are simply suspended in greater volumes of fluid.

In any case, if you read through the link I referred to, it indicates the relationship between crude volume measurements and psychological factors such as IQ, perception, specialization, motor skill, etc are far more complicated than commonly represented by previous theory.

My whole point was you can't just measure a creature's cranial volume and tell what they could or could not do. Such correlations don't match up even in a single identified species, such as H. sapiens, let alone across species boundaries. I believe that was your point too, yes?

> My whole point was you can't just measure a creature's cranial volume and
> tell what they could or could not do. Such correlations don't match up even
> in a single identified species, such as H. sapiens, let alone across species
> boundaries. I believe that was your point too, yes?

Murasaki is correct. In the 19th century the "skull is smaller so they are dumber" argument was used to keep women out of higher education (it has also been used to argument for the same discrimination against persons of colour). Within statistical bounds, there is no correlation between cranial/skull size and "smartness"/mental ability. The skull/cranium size argument has been thoroughly disproved by scientists.