Partner and I like to watch those programs on Discovery and TLC and Syfy about Ancient Aliens. You know: the aliens who built (or helped build) the Pyramids, and Machu Picchu. They designed the Nazca Lines. They fitted together the stones of Tihuanaco. They brought Prescelly bluestone hundreds of miles, overland, to build Stonehenge. Our ancestors painted pictures of them, and told stories of them.
I am very happy to believe in alien life. In fact, I think it’s silly not to believe in alien life. The universe is utterly bloody vast, and it would be ridiculous to think that we were the only walking talking things in it. I have two problems with the Ancient Aliens theory, however:
- Where did they all go? They were (evidently) all over the place in our ancestors’ days; now they’ve keeping a very low profile. How come? Are they afraid of us?
- Why in the hell would they come here? What do we have to offer? Water? There’s water everywhere in space; if they wanted water, they could probably mine comets. Metal ore? Hydrocarbons? Nah. I’m with Douglas Adams on this one: the best thing you can say about Earth is that we’re “mostly harmless.”
I also have a problem with the UFOlogists who keep giving us humanoid aliens, and horse aliens, and elephant aliens, and kitty-cat aliens. Alien life, if/when we find it, will probably be far more peculiar than we can imagine now. I’ll wager that it doesn’t even use DNA. Scientists (human scientists) have already come up with a number of other molecules that can self-replicate. (Admittedly they’re amino-acid based, but it’s a step in the right direction.) The aliens, when we finally meet them, will be blobs, or sighing clouds of methane with rubbery coverings, or bundles of sticks, or potted plants.
And they will have absolutely no interest in building Stonehenge.
(But it’s fun to think about.)
My roommate is all about The Ancient Aliens show; I figured it was just to laugh at Giorgio’s hair, but I could be wrong. I have to agree with you, I don’t see too many reasons that aliens would want to come to earth and alter our paths. The only thing I could think of that might make an alien race come here would be the precious metals, maybe they don’t exist on another planet, but then again maybe they do. Of course the roommate is convinced now that ancient man could not have made any of these monuments; apparently they lacked the cranial capacity. I even sat down and watched an episode using my sling adapter to stream it to my phone while I was waiting for my bus, and every theory they gave up for every mysterious thing that happened had to be done by aliens. I had a friend come over that I work with at Dish, and he is an ok guy, but you should have heard the two of them going on about how accurate the show is, and how they lay it all right out there. I lost hope in humanity that night, luckily though, my DVR had an “accident” when I using the Dish Remote Access app about a month ago, and all the ancient aliens’ shows got deleted. I don’t know about you, but I think it was aliens.
ReplyDelete