My theory, idea, notion thing.

[Mr X]

Ok, I touched on this in VekzeN's introduction thread, but thought rather than hijack that I would post a fresh thread for people to discuss the idea.

I have a theory, it is a bit circular so bear with me.

Our current level of civilisation (for want of a better word) has taken some five or six thousand years to develop (that we know for certain). But modern humans, homo-sapiens, have been around for a lot longer than that, anything up to between 100,000 and 200,000 years.

So it is entirely possible that humans have had advanced civilisations many times over in the past that have faded, or been wiped out, and all trace of them has now disappeared. As an example, if there was a global catastrophe tomorrow which wiped out 99% of humanity, in ten thousand years from now the only remaining trace of our current civilisation would be Mount Rushmore. Which future archaeologists would wonder at as we wonder at the Sphinx.

Part of this theory is that if in the distant past there were advanced human civilisations at different eras, what is to say they had not advanced far enough to have space travel? After all, we have it, all be it rudimentary and very much in it's infancy. Now, supposing that ancient human civilisation was facing a global catastrophe. Would they not try to evacuate the planet? Perhaps settling elsewhere in the solar system while they waited to return. Suppose they didn't return for some reason. Say because of the ice ages?

Is it possible that what we perceive as 'alien' UFOs are in fact our ancient ancestors returning to see what is happening here now? Are 'aliens' really aliens? They could be us. Maybe they have been returning throughout history and guiding our return to an advanced level of civilisation? How advanced might we be if the library at Alexandria had not been burned in the first century AD? So much knowledge was lost, much of which we are only just rediscovering now some 1,900 years later!


I believe this is more likely than truly 'alien' visitors. Space is vast, bigger than we can imagine, if there are visitors it is more likely they come from a near Earth location than from far out in the cosmos. If the planet was vacated would we not find a near Earth location out of sheer practicality? Say Mars or even the Moon, or other moons around the gas giants?
It would explain why we were told not to go back to the Moon in the 70s...


Just a thought I have now and then!


Ps. What is to say the dinosaurs did not evolve a saurian-sapiens? Maybe they are returning? A lot can happen in the hundreds of millions of years this planet has harboured life.

[Cynar]

A well thought out idea, the only problem with it is that, contry to what many believe, the signs left by a previous civilisation would be extensive, even after millions of year. At least compared to organic remains. The biggest limitation on how far a civilisation can advance is population. The more people you have, the more you can specialise and so the more advanced things can become. The infrastructure needed for a large population is not something that's easy to miss. And to reach space flight you would need a huge population to provide the economic support.

One other thing of note. Humans have a 'natural' group size limit. If you plot the brain mass of apes etc. against max group size. It forms quite a neat line. Scale to human size, and you get a value of 150 individuals. Interestingly, this is generally considered the size where companies begin to have serious problems with internal communication etc. Most deal with it by splitting the company into sub units less than this size (either deliberately or by accident). In prehistory, getting a group larger that the limit to remain coherent would require either extensive internal support or a very strong external threat. Either way, I could quite easily see it taking that long to figure out the details.

Interestingly the converse of this might be possible. A highly advanced group, finding themselves cut off form their economic base would struggle to maintain their level of technological knowledge. Unless they managed to achieve a population of 10s of thousands within a generation or 2 then much knowledge would be lost (what use, as a kid, is learning to program when you don't have electricity, let alone having ever seen a computer. By the time the population could, in theory, start building computers, the knowledge has been lost (at least in the practical sense). Because of this, what would happen if a space craft crash landed on earth. The amount of high technology would be minimal and easy to miss/destroy but the genetic effect would be huge. All that might be left is legend and stories, garbled by generations of Chinese whispers. Depending on the overall situation, it could also have taken this long for a rescue/reconnaissance craft to reach here.

The thing people forget, with all this, is quite how advanced previous civilisations were. The Greeks for example knew all about the steam engine, but the economics were such that slave labour was cheaper and easier and so steam engines were nothing more than a toy. Likewise, most of Europe's major roads are Roman in origin, it is still one of the largest individual empires to have ever existed. Minoan managed a huge trading empire (Commonly thought to be the source of the Atlantis legend since they were destroyed when the volcano at the centre of their main island when BOOM). Based on the sailing ship. A tech many shipping companies are reconsidering, with the ever rising cost of fuel oil. The only reason we got further than them was population size. Built up on the advances of previous civilisations. We measure a civilisations advancement in technology, when technology is only the newest incarnation of a much larger iceberg of advancements (The town, communal farming, division of labour, not killing each other's children, the list goes on).

[Mr X]

You are thinking too small. The Greeks, the Egyptians, the Minoans, the Sumerians, they were just the very first steps in our own civilisation which has grown out of the seeds of those beginnings.

I am talking about civilisations over 60, 70, 80, or more, thousand years ago.

If we disappeared tomorrow, in 50,000 years it would be extremely difficult to find any traces of our civilisation. The only things left would be monuments like Mount Rushmore. Anything man made, glass, metal, concrete, even plastics etc. would have succumbed to the elements.
The Egyptian civilisation faded only a couple of thousand years ago, but all we have of their civilisation are stone ruins and some buried artefacts, that is after only two thousand years.
Here in Britain we have examples where after only 150-200 years, landscapes have changed entirely and relics of the industrial revolution are very difficult to find, let alone identify.
Watch this programme, Life After People, in nine parts. Here's part one:

[Mr X]

Another block in the foundations of my theory.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/lif...cle6991643.ece

"Evidence for the world’s earliest seafaring has emerged from an archaeological survey in Crete. Tools of Lower Palaeolithic type, at least 130,000 years old, have been found on the Greek island, which has been isolated by the Mediterranean Sea for at least the past five million years, so that any human ancestors must have arrived by boat."


So mankind were a LOT smarter 130,000 (and possibly up to 700,000) years ago than previously thought. Fits in with my theory perfectly.

Another article points out that these tools could be anything up to 700,000 years old, pushing the boundary of intelligent humans even further:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/sc...rcheo.html?hpw

[CheesecakeLarry]

Nice theory. Makes for an interesting read. Thanks!

[7redorbs]

A lot can happen in 42,500 years ;-)

It's a great theory mr X, one to which I at the very least subscribe to in most part. This is article worthy.

A

[outlander]

Could be true and it would explain why these craft appear to leave the planet so quickly! hehe

I've also heard people claim that the visitors are humans from the future.

[goldfishka]

Super Site

[Government]

Take into consideration the theory that the earth has gone through many landscape overhauls in it's time as well... quakes, volcanos, super volcanos like the Yellowstone for instance (will cause upheaval of almost half the US and some of Canada), flooding, asteroids, ice age, possible extreme heat. These things have a serious impact, so much so that evidence of previous culture is covered by layers and layers of time. Why else would we find things like that are said to be dated at 2.8 billion years old? Even if the carbon dating is wrong by a billion years, that thing is still really really old. Heres the link for this article including machined screws dated back 60 million years Here

Interesting at the very least, you have opened a wonderful discussion! I agree with the premise and your conclusion, almost like you had at one time read my mind.