Alien Intervention, what would we expect?

[ShadowSot]

I've been a poster here for a bit, and this is certainly my favorite section.

Over time there has been a lot of posts that try to use what amounts to lack of information, purposeful misinformation, or anomaly hunting to prove the belief that aliens have taken an active hand in shaping human history.

Putting that aside, what would the skeptics and historians, amateur or professional, expect to see if aliens did get involved?

For myself, I think much of human development is not fully figured out, but we have a good idea of most of it.

Some discoveries have reshaped it, but by and large we see a general trend of improvement and gains in knowledge, with occasional setbacks.

There isn't anything that didn't have some more primitive antecedent.

Definitely something that completely broke that, and a major advancement in technology or understanding of the world beyond the tools available at the time would at least indicate something screwy.

Images are hard to use as proof, since art is, well, art. It can be highly stylized making the figures unidentifiable, even if they were meant to represent something in the real world.

Especially if you don't have the experience to put the images in context with the rest of the culture.

Genetics would be a useful area, if manipulation of genomes is suggested. Hybridization is unlikely, since a completely unique lifeform from another planet would be less genetically compatible with us than a tree .

But genetics doesn't give us reason to suppose alien visitation anyway.

[Imaginarynumber1]

I'd think that medicine and tech would be the two biggest areas where you would see evidence of alien intervention. Introduction of fanciful new tech and materials would change a civilization over night. Medical advancements, i would think, would be one of the first things that aliens would give people.

Of course, we all know the real reason alien came here: to stack rocks.

[bubblykiss]

You mean like the time all of those resident aliens held an intervention for me due to my unreasonable love of Fluffy-Kitty products?

Because those Canadians were fierce.

******

Realistically though we often assume that aliens are physical beings with some sort of interest in us, not psychic units cruising through the clouds of sexless hydrogen like the dreams of unimaginable gods whose evolution has caused them to forgo the universe as we understand....maybe even flipping across the unicorn dusted rims of alternate realities that they create as expressions of art, bending-warping time into something that supersedes beauty causing mortal minds to shatter at the sheer complexity of the constructed realities, the art-verese, the time-scapes and gravity puddles that extend into endless numbers of parcels of reality that exist in the shadow of love, extending out into nothingness so deep that it forces new....things...to happen, to be....simply because something has compelled it into being.

******

Or the aliens could just be machine minds representing intelligences so old, so universally different from our understanding of what is, what should be....that they attempt to manipulate our very being, our genome and minds, to be more compliant with that which their long extinct creator species manufactured....changing all that they touch to be akin to that which was, recreating a living ideal of a dead world for the sake of making, or rather, remaking, others to be near copies of the prefect version of reality as their originators envisioned.

******

But, I also see the aliens as doing odd things to our world for the sake of a humor which we can't even begin to understand.

After all, duck-billed platypussies (duck-billed platypusi?) are surely a sign that god, evolution or aliens got a real sense of humor.

The duck-billed platypus is the signature of an intelligence telling us not to take the world too seriously.

Edited June 20, 2015 by bubblykiss

[Hanslune]

Well we'd have to assume - having no other model but ourselves to create a scenario on this:

Presuming there was nothing against 'interference' I'd say they give out information (once communications were figured out) on how to live better, sanitation, germ theory, nutrition, etc, Info on agriculture, aqua culture etc.

However, using us as a model, if it wasn't a structured alien contact but 'freelancers" you might see empire building, religious nuttery who knows!

This subject is hard to speculate on given the complete lack of knowledge of what aliens might be like, think or do.

Would they act like 21st century humans, 17th century or 11th humans, or more probably unlike anything we have experienced - we just don't know

[runamok]

It's somewhat insulting to me to think that aliens are responsible for human evolution. I find the thought that human achievements are nothing more than the product of alien intervention is demeaning to us as a species. Imo, our evolution has been a slow process of trial and error accumulating through the aeons of human existence and culminating in the many 'eureka!' moments which have brought us to where we stand today. I think that humanity has been around for 3 million years or so (counting our distant hominid ancestors). For me, that is enough time for humanity to have progressed from using primitive tools to our current state of technology (such as creating VLA radar telescopes in a quest to find evidence of extra terrestrial life) with no help from aliens. I think that our discoveries have altered our physiology, and that they have helped shape our bodies and minds. Not aliens. Evolved, not engineered. I may be wrong, but I doubt that my fragile ego could handle the fact lol. If we were engineered by ancient aliens, then I guess all of the skeptics owe EVD one big apology, huh? And one to that guy on Ancient Aliens, the one with the crazy hair... what's his name lol? Thanks for a thought provoking post, I'm going to go play my guitar and ponder now...

[bubblykiss]

Sometimes, I like to just stop and wonder, what sort of alien life-form would cruise across the vast void of space in machines designed to defy the laws of physics, mechanisms conceived and executed in design only to mock the limits of possibility.... just to probe the orifices of rednecks and cows.

I mean really, how great is it.....the, ah, end....results...of these journeys when compared to the amount of relative time, fuel, energy, expended to get to....ah...said, rears.

[bubblykiss]

But, then again, I like to think of an intelligence that *lives* on a different level than we can even begin to comprehend.

Sometimes I envision the world as a house mouse sees it. With the biggest living things representing danger. The mouse can not begin to comprehend the mind of the cat, the cat does not see the world as the man does and the man can not believe that the mouse has any understanding of anything. Each components exists in proximity to each other part, and none can see the world through the eyes of any other part....each piece plays its role without understanding that the roll of the die moves, involves, them all.

And I like to expand that image unto a planet or system intelligence, with billions of species operating as parts of a whole, each aware of its existence on some level but serving as a part of a larger mind and never understanding that the larger mind does....or even can exist.

This is not some boo-hoo humans are a cancer on the world theory. No, it is a bad thing is a lesson to a larger mind.

It is to say that a larger mind *could* exist with billions of species being parts of the machine, functioning as learning queues on levels that can not be perceived by individuals, much less a species...even if said species was in possession of intellect.

[questionmark]

If humans are the measure:

First we would see some running around the countryside trying to buy some objects for their anthropological collection, the some would come to check our geology and biology where they would find that cow dung strongly enhances the power output of the Mk122 matter to power converter. Next they would convince us in exchange of some, basically worthless, trinkets to kill off all bison in Yellowstone and use the area as cow pasture, where they would offer us some trinket paid jobs collecting cow dung.

We got basically nothing, they got more power. Or the story of the colonization of every underdeveloped area.

Lets hope we get to the aliens first... injustice is easier bearable by him who commits it.

[Essan]

Assuming the aliens were favourable towards the development of intelligent life, then some form of terraforming: improving the climate? Or maybe removal of any potentially dangerous asteroids in the vicinity? Also perhaps elimination of any viruses or diseases, and disease-bearing insects? Basically, making the planet safer for us.

[Grandpa Greenman]

I just can't get that Twilight Zone episode out of my mind.

[Hanslune]

Of course based on our understanding of physics what we would most likely encounter are not the aliens themselves but their exploring robots run by computers programmed by said aliens.

I use to speculate that an alien probe came to our solar system 750,000 years ago, dropped a number of probes and sent all the information back. The probe finally broke down several hundred thousand years ago and silently orbits the sun.

That is what I would suspect a first contact to be, contact with an alien artificial intelligence reconnaissance machine.

[cladking]

I would suggest that there may be no such thing as "supernatural" so anything done

by aliens is necessarily natural. This means there might be no evidence at all unless

they left a crashed ship somewhere. Perhaps in the future after we've learned to lev-

itate things or transport them remotely then we'll be able to diffentiate between levitated

and not levitated, or disassembled and reassembled and not disassembled and reas-

sembled but at this point in time all we can do is seek anomalies that don't fit with our

knowledge. I think this would certainly include some major anomalies like how our an-

cestors invented agriculture without any science at all and why our history doesn't start

for centuries after writing was invented. Of course we also might look at the many things

surviving from the past that could be interpreted as direct evidence for aliens such as

freak atmosperic conditions and UFO sightings.

[Hanslune]

I would suggest that there may be no such thing as "supernatural" so anything done

by aliens is necessarily natural. This means there might be no evidence at all unless

they left a crashed ship somewhere. Perhaps in the future after we've learned to lev-

itate things or transport them remotely then we'll be able to diffentiate between levitated

and not levitated, or disassembled and reassembled and not disassembled and reas-

sembled but at this point in time all we can do is seek anomalies that don't fit with our

knowledge. I think this would certainly include some major anomalies like how our an-

cestors invented agriculture without any science at all and why our history doesn't start

for centuries after writing was invented. Of course we also might look at the many things

surviving from the past that could be interpreted as direct evidence for aliens such as

freak atmosperic conditions and UFO sightings.

Agriculture is easy, they went from gathering wild plants, to seeding (planting) them then gathering then to seeding, caring and then gathering - over a period of time of thousands of years, many peoples never made if past gathering.

[Emma_Acid]

Medical advancements, i would think, would be one of the first things that aliens would give people.

Bit of a stretch to imagine that alien biology is anything like ours?

[Hanslune]

Bit of a stretch to imagine that alien biology is anything like ours?

True but the basics of medical knowledge would have been helpful - clean water, disposal of waste, germ theory, antiseptics, etc

[Kenemet]

Okay, so let's look at what it looks like when an alien culture with advanced technology here on Earth contacts a more primitive culture.

* the advanced culture decides that the other culture has things that they want (whether religious conversion, eco-resources, land, or whatever)

* contact and negotiations and trade begin (think of the Europeans and the goods they manufactured for trade with the Native Americans... glass beads and so forth.)

* the alien group sets up bases for their vessels to land. If they take over native buildings for this purpose, they add refinements from their own culture (plumbing, etc, etc) PARTICULARLY plumbing and comfort enhancing technologies (insulation, heating, air conditioning, wells, roads for their vehicles, their own vehicles)

* within the contact area, natives move in but never live in the compound of the aliens...so archaeologically you have an area with a huge number of native structures surrounding an area where the land has been used differently and has materials and goods that are not found elsewhere.

* two types of middens (landfills/garbage dumps/etc) emerge: one with high tech only stuff and one with mixed local goods and broken bits of advanced tech.

...and that's just off the top of my head. Think about the archaeology and culture changes at any major contact point (Spanish and the natives of the Americas, for instance. The British and the Indias. Americans and the Chinese.)

* The contactees begin to adopt some of the clothing styles of the aliens.

* Goods begin to flow to the contactees, including goods they could not manufacture (clothing, tools, etc) made from materials that they don't have in the area.

* Linguistically, pidgins and creoles appear with the local tribe gaining a lot of words for these new devices.

[Hawken]

What I find interesting is that for thousands of years, humans only had horses & wagons for land travel and boats with oars/sails for sea travel. It was only the last 150 years or so that their was an explosion of technology that made great advances. Why didn't this happen much sooner in human history? Say like for example, 500 AD.

Edited June 20, 2015 by Hawkin

[questionmark]

What I find interesting is that for thousands of years, humans only had horses & wagons for land travel and boats with oars/sails for sea travel. It was only the last 150 years or so that their was an explosion of technology that made great advances. Why didn't this happen much sooner in human history? Say like for example, 500 AD.

First, there were less of them, and second (and I love this part) as I have shown in my book advances are not made because something wants to advance but because there is a need for them. For example: the seed for our current advancements was laid by a simple event: the plague. Because people were lacking, machines were improved to do the work.

Another example, the first functioning steam engine was build by a certain Mr. Heron of Alexandria... around the turn of the first Millennium. It was quite an attraction but nobody had a application for it. The little work that needed to be done could be done by water wheel and by muscle power.

And finally, contrary to the "official" version, the air gun was not invented by a certain Mr. Girandoni in the 17th century but by a certain Mr. Ktsebios in the first century... BC! And the same thing happened: Nobody saw an application for it and it was too complicated to build.

[Shouldthisexist]

Bit of a stretch to imagine that alien biology is anything like ours?

Isn't it even a bigger stretch to assume that's aliens would be any different? Our carbon based selves are the only model we observed that currently really works.

But I can see how they can easily have viruses and bacteria that our bodies haven't seen and vice versa. But they could essentially have the same problems we have such as broken bones, allergies somewhat common occurrences they could possibly learned to treat better, or maybe if we were lucky aliens might have the knowledge to beat cancer without subjecting people to radiation.

[Hanslune]

First, there were less of them, and second (and I love this part) as I have shown in my book advances are not made because something wants to advance but because there is a need for them. For example: the seed for our current advancements was laid by a simple event: the plague. Because people were lacking, machines were improved to do the work.

Another example, the first functioning steam engine was build by a certain Mr. Heron of Alexandria... around the turn of the first Millennium. It was quite an attraction but nobody had a application for it. The little work that needed to be done could be done by water wheel and by muscle power.

And finally, contrary to the "official" version, the air gun was not invented by a certain Mr. Girandoni in the 17th century but by a certain Mr. Ktsebios in the first century... BC! And the same thing happened: Nobody saw an application for it and it was too complicated to build.

Yes and some things were made and used but the methods kept secret and the ability to do so lost; Greek fire, Damascus steel, etc

[ShadowSot]

Isn't it even a bigger stretch to assume that's aliens would be any different? Our carbon based selves are the only model we observed that currently really works.

But I can see how they can easily have viruses and bacteria that our bodies haven't seen and vice versa. But they could essentially have the same problems we have such as broken bones, allergies somewhat common occurrences they could possibly learned to treat better, or maybe if we were lucky aliens might have the knowledge to beat cancer without subjecting people to radiation.

It is entirely possible that life on another planet has a different biochemistry than ours.

Might look more like squids than like us.

[questionmark]

It is entirely possible that life on another planet has a different biochemistry than ours.

Might look more like squids than like us.

It is not only possible but also likely. Instead of carbon the "life building element" could be anything that produces energy in a reaction.

[Hawken]

First, there were less of them, and second (and I love this part) as I have shown in my book advances are not made because something wants to advance but because there is a need for them. For example: the seed for our current advancements was laid by a simple event: the plague. Because people were lacking, machines were improved to do the work.

Another example, the first functioning steam engine was build by a certain Mr. Heron of Alexandria... around the turn of the first Millennium. It was quite an attraction but nobody had a application for it. The little work that needed to be done could be done by water wheel and by muscle power.

And finally, contrary to the "official" version, the air gun was not invented by a certain Mr. Girandoni in the 17th century but by a certain Mr. Ktsebios in the first century... BC! And the same thing happened: Nobody saw an application for it and it was too complicated to build.

I guess that knowledge is useless without application.

[questionmark]

I guess that knowledge is useless without application.

And a good demonstration for that is our "civilization attempts" for the so called "primitives". Did not do much good either.

Edited June 20, 2015 by questionmark

[ShadowSot]

True, though silicon is the only real contender for a building block of life as in how readily it bonds.

We do know that amino acids form pretty commonly in space, so we cod suppose the same in other solar systems.

Though different amino acids could be used.

And there is something called chirality, here on Earth one spin was picked, on another planet the other could have come out on top. Biochemistry could be very different.