What do guys think about UFOs and their connection with human origins?

[SkepticLance]

The ancients were able to do some things better than we can. Not due to technology, but due to body physical conditioning. For example, Roman triremes could be rowed at an average of 7 knots for 6 hours non stop. Modern researchers have manned replica triremes with olympic champions and found they could not keep this speed up for more than 30 minutes.

 

Superior body conditioning is reported in historical documents for Roman gladiators, and for Spartan soldiers. Perhaps some of the great ancient accomplishments were due to extraordinary physical abilities. Dragging bloody great rocks up earth ramps to build pyramids would require outstanding strength and stamina.

[SamWalker]

UFO are an invention of the US Military as a cover for testing experimental aircraft.

 

Aliens capable of space travel are too intelligent to come here.

[mooeypoo]

The ancients were able to do some things better than we can. Not due to technology, but due to body physical conditioning. For example, Roman triremes could be rowed at an average of 7 knots for 6 hours non stop. Modern researchers have manned replica triremes with olympic champions and found they could not keep this speed up for more than 30 minutes.

 

Superior body conditioning is reported in historical documents for Roman gladiators, and for Spartan soldiers. Perhaps some of the great ancient accomplishments were due to extraordinary physical abilities. Dragging bloody great rocks up earth ramps to build pyramids would require outstanding strength and stamina.

 

You know, other than physical strength, the human race has been using animals to do heavy lifting for many many years. Bulls, Elephants, Horses... these animals are very strong, specifically if used in groups, and can pull and push extremely large masses.

 

~moo

[SkepticLance]

mooeypoo

I had thought of that. However, the full potential of animal power could not be realised before the invention of the yoke. A horse or ox pulling against a coil of rope or similar could not do much work, since the rope would act to restrict breathing. Only the yoke and collar could spread the load and permit the animal to pull heavy loads. Not sure of when this happened, but I think it was after Greek civilisation???

 

In fact, I vaguely remember reading that the invention of the yoke was a major influence in the reduction of human slavery. Horses and oxen, using yokes, could do more work than a human slave.

[mooeypoo]

mooeypoo

I had thought of that. However, the full potential of animal power could not be realised before the invention of the yoke. A horse or ox pulling against a coil of rope or similar could not do much work, since the rope would act to restrict breathing. Only the yoke and collar could spread the load and permit the animal to pull heavy loads. Not sure of when this happened, but I think it was after Greek civilisation???

 

In fact, I vaguely remember reading that the invention of the yoke was a major influence in the reduction of human slavery. Horses and oxen, using yokes, could do more work than a human slave.

...

 

Pushing.

 

I need to find that resource again, but I think that you're wrong about this (not sure though ) -- I think that one of the relatively early feats of humanity was using animals for stuff, be it riding on it or using it for lifting. You can also put lots of stuff on their backs.. it's not THAT hard to figure out how to get an animal to pull (or push!) something; it's just hard to get that animal to do it in a manner that we consider humane. I think that what 'evolved' later on was the ethical thinking part -- getting animals not to die while working.

 

I will try to find out more about this, not sure, but I heard somewhere that humanity has used animals for a very very very long time.

 

I mean.. seriously, haven't you seen Xena: Warrior Princess ?!

 

hehe jk, let me find more about this.

[JohnB]

I_Pwn_Crackpots, firstly, note the smilies. My comments were in a light hearted vein.

Depends on which source you look at. As far as I'm aware, the Egyptians knew that the ratio between the circumference and the radius was about 3, but they did not have the tools or the logic necessary to actually get the exact value. The first few digits were discovered by the Greeks.

Wrong. The Ahmes Papyrus dates to ca 1650BC and Ahmes states that he is copying a text some 200 years old, hence the original is from ca 1850 BC. Problem 48 of that text deals specifically with finding the area of a circle with pi working out at the 3.16049 I quoted. Where do you think the ancient Greeks went to for an education?

And you do really want our sewers to be self cleaning, a lot has changed in our waste since ancient times.

Really? How is our crap different?

It's not that big a feat to build a pile of rocks in the shape of a pyramid.

You were doing real well up to that statement. Dig a bit deeper and you'll find it is indeed a big feat. How many sides does the Great Pyramid have?

They did not have machines, or steel, or electricity, or wind mills (not until medieval times), or mechanized farming, or any of that good stuff.

Yet when Abu Simbel was moved to prevent it's destruction, we got the alignment wrong. So a people for whom "Engineering principles were quite undeveloped, and they just simply didn't have the philosophical and logical principles necessary to gain any significant scientific or mathematical knowledge" did a more accurate job than the best engineers using the best equipment of the 20th century. You don't need the "good stuff", you need the "right stuff".

Modern methods completely pwn the ancients.

I think I've just shown this statement to be in error.

Which all makes the idea of alien visits completely questionable, if they have visited way back when and helped humans, why weren't humans building mega-cities 3000 years ago, or going into space, or utilizing advanced technology in general? Why did it take so long for us to compute the correct value of pi???

Are you assuming I support the ancient astronauts theory? If so, why?

But, even cities the size of 50K could never sustained if not for slave labor

I think you need less Hollywood and more Archaeology. Dependance on slaves was nowhere near as great as you think. (Depending on the period, of course.)

[Realitycheck]

As a Fortean, I regard myself as open-minded but skeptical. UFO's certainly exist, but they may be many things - military craft, natural phenomena, misidentification and maybe, just maybe, little green men or time travellers. However, the people you mention seem to take ideas and run with them before looking at other possibilities at the outset. I have never seen any evidence to convince me that aliens visit earth, but I have seen enough to keep me open minded.

 

Flares fired from military aircraft. Happens all of the time. Catch-all explanation for practically everything that happens at night.

 

Originally posted by Moontanman

 

 

Ok so 10,000 years ago the early humans were CAVEMEN and did not know mathematics, engineering, and other stuff that could be considered as ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY perse'. Then about 3-4000 years later they built cities, ziggurats, towers, learned math, sciences, medecine, mold bricks, extract metals from the earth and other stuff that so absurdly they weren't ready for. HOW ON EARTH DID THEY ACCOMPLISHED SO MANY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY IN A VERY SHORT SPAN OF TIME??????????

Please give me detailed explanation, because you claim that they are geniuses!

 

Doing the math on what we do know, the amount of planets with life in our galaxy is maybe, being generous, 10,000 out of 500 billion stars. The amount with intelligent life is maybe, being generous, 100 out of 500 billion stars, all most likely at least 1,000 light years away.

 

There is no such thing as faster than light speed travel, no wormhole travel, etc.

 

Originally posted by Moontanman

 

 

Ok so 10,000 years ago the early humans were CAVEMEN and did not know mathematics, engineering, and other stuff that could be considered as ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY perse'. Then about 3-4000 years later they built cities, ziggurats, towers, learned math, sciences, medecine, mold bricks, extract metals from the earth and other stuff that so absurdly they weren't ready for. HOW ON EARTH DID THEY ACCOMPLISHED SO MANY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY IN A VERY SHORT SPAN OF TIME??????????

Please give me detailed explanation, because you claim that they are geniuses!

 

Aliens did not help us do anything. It's called ingenuity (it takes a long time) and massive manpower. Aliens did not help us build this:

 

Enlarge it and read the caption. I like the part about the 15 feet tall, iron-plated wheels.

 

http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=6814&d=1127659359

Edited October 23, 2008 by agentchange
multiple post merged

[I_Pwn_Crackpots]

Wrong. The Ahmes Papyrus dates to ca 1650BC and Ahmes states that he is copying a text some 200 years old, hence the original is from ca 1850 BC. Problem 48 of that text deals specifically with finding the area of a circle with pi working out at the 3.16049 I quoted. Where do you think the ancient Greeks went to for an education?

 

Ok, I'll give you that one.

 

Really? How is our crap different?

 

They didn't use industrial waste back then. Neither were there the wastes of tens to hundreds of millions of people to deal with. There's quite a bit more waste in sewage now than just human and animal. I'm not surprised they would be self cleaning, there were no dedicated water treatment plants back then either, it all just went down stream. The Romans didn't even bother putting that underground, it just went parallel with the local roads until it found a stream or a pit. I can only imagine the types of diseases that they had to endure, since there was no sanitation either. Sure, the elite (where you get most of our written accounts from) might have had the best the ancient world had to offer and had pretty decent health and sanitation, but everybody else was certainly in bad shape, especially during the Middle Ages.

 

You were doing real well up to that statement. Dig a bit deeper and you'll find it is indeed a big feat. How many sides does the Great Pyramid have?

 

It has 4 sides (5 if you count the bottom). But so what? Take a look at the interior

 

It's hardly more than a pile of rocks. The Aztecs and the Mayans could do a much better job.

 

Yet when Abu Simbel was moved to prevent it's destruction, we got the alignment wrong. So a people for whom "Engineering principles were quite undeveloped, and they just simply didn't have the philosophical and logical principles necessary to gain any significant scientific or mathematical knowledge" did a more accurate job than the best engineers using the best equipment of the 20th century. You don't need the "good stuff", you need the "right stuff".

 

If you paid any attention, they were never destroyed. Thousands of tons of ancient rocks were moved successfully without so much as a scratch. So I don't know why you brought this up, since this proves that modern methods do pwn ancient methods. The fact that the alignment was wrong is besides the point. This was probably due more to sloppiness than as a deliberate action, since they were only worried about saving the structures.

 

In ancient times, a margin of error would have made the entire structure useless or worse, collapse on itself; that's why they stuck with using very simple and very conservative principles. And they didn't move whole structures at once.

 

The best that the Romans could do was move Obelisks, while we can move old, rotting, and/or heavy structures without breaking them. They managed to move an old lighthouse in Cape Cod not too long ago.

 

The only monuments that have survived were the ones that were built correctly, whether they were Pyramids or Medieval Castles. Which, by the way, shows that you don't have to have great engineering skills in order to produce something that can survive, because the Medieval engineers were worse than their Roman counterparts. Only the ones that happened to be built correctly will give the impression that the methods used were "accurate".

 

Now, how many failures do you think were made? Take a look at the Pyramids themselves, you'll notice that there were a bunch of rounded ones before they made the perfect Great ones. Or Stonehenge, there are stones scattered all over the place built much earlier. Now how many different imperfect "prototypes" of CN Towers or Space Needles were there, before we built the "right" one.

 

How many slaves do you think died while building those "advanced structures"; building the Great Wall took a toll on more than 2 million lives. Millions of slaves died building Rome's metropolises, and tens of thousands died building the Colosseum alone. Compare those figures to the number of people who died building Fenway Park, or the Empire State Building. Or compare those figures to the number of people dying building the mega-cities of China and the U.A.E. today (sure, their conditions aren't as good as they should be, but they are certainly much better off than the slaves that built the puny Greek and Roman cities, or the ones that jump started the American economy 300 yrs ago).

 

How many oddly shaped building like this one were around in ancient times? Or how about bridges like this one. Until you get into at least the Middle Ages, there's not a whole lot of structures that stray from a conservative design.

 

So, please tell me again on how much more "superior" their engineering skills were to modern ones? Please, I would love to hear some more, it's very entertaining

 

I think I've just shown this statement to be in error.

 

Nope.

 

Are you assuming I support the ancient astronauts theory? If so, why?

 

No, I did not assume that.

 

I think you need less Hollywood and more Archaeology. Dependance on slaves was nowhere near as great as you think. (Depending on the period, of course.)

 

How ironic . We get all of these misconceptions that the ancient engineers were all that great because of Hollywood. I have shown everybody here that they were completely overrated and nowhere near as great as modern achievements.

 

Dependence on slaves was much greater than you could have possibly imagined. Much of what they did would have been impossible without the use of slaves, and the use of slave labor did not really start decreasing until we starting building mechanical machines like wind mills toward the early Middle Ages, and this happened only in Europe and China. Their dependence on slave labor is never really mentioned much because we don't like to admit that as humans, we were hardly more than amoral savages. And they are still used today in third world countries.

 

We like to romanticize the Romans, the ancient Chinese, the Greeks, etc. But they were a brutal and ruthless people. Much of what they did was not possible without exploitation, simply because they didn't have the technology or the scientific and mathematical knowledge necessary to do all that much without it. Not that it bothered them back them, because according to them, the slaves were an inferior people.

 

The ancients were able to do some things better than we can. Not due to technology, but due to body physical conditioning. For example, Roman triremes could be rowed at an average of 7 knots for 6 hours non stop. Modern researchers have manned replica triremes with olympic champions and found they could not keep this speed up for more than 30 minutes.

 

Superior body conditioning is reported in historical documents for Roman gladiators, and for Spartan soldiers. Perhaps some of the great ancient accomplishments were due to extraordinary physical abilities. Dragging bloody great rocks up earth ramps to build pyramids would require outstanding strength and stamina.

 

 

That is true, and a good point. This underscores the fact that they had to make up for their lack of technology by superior physical training. However, I should note that Roman triremes did not survive for more than a few months because of the physical strain put on them and disease... Which means that they probably weren't necessarily superior, but were forced to push themselves over the edge.

 

I will try to find out more about this, not sure, but I heard somewhere that humanity has used animals for a very very very long time.

 

 

hehe jk, let me find more about this.

 

We have, the earliest use of domestic animals dates back to about 10,000 B.C.. But using animals for labor as opposed to humans presents it's own logistical problems, large animals in particular require lots of food. And you can't necessarily whip them in order to force compliance, you have to train them from a young age, or tame them (which also takes time). So their use was much more limited.

 

On the other hand, it is trivial to find large numbers of criminals or war prisoners to enslave, and they didn't have to worry so much about their safety or their health, or their wages. Plus, they could do things much more delicately when it is needed, so they were a much more flexible resource than large animals.

Edited October 23, 2008 by I_Pwn_Crackpots
multiple post merged

[Moontanman]

Originally posted by Moontanman

 

 

Ok so 10,000 years ago the early humans were CAVEMEN and did not know mathematics, engineering, and other stuff that could be considered as ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY perse'. Then about 3-4000 years later they built cities, ziggurats, towers, learned math, sciences, medecine, mold bricks, extract metals from the earth and other stuff that so absurdly they weren't ready for. HOW ON EARTH DID THEY ACCOMPLISHED SO MANY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY IN A VERY SHORT SPAN OF TIME??????????

Please give me detailed explanation, because you claim that they are geniuses!

 

 

Did you not read my post or are you just being obtuse? I didn't say our ancestors were cave men 10,000 years ago, i said people ten to think our ancestors were stupid and living under rock over hangs. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you want cave men go back a few more tens of thousands of years.....

 

UFO are an invention of the US Military as a cover for testing experimental aircraft.

 

Aliens capable of space travel are too intelligent to come here.

 

Now that's the smartest thing I've heard so far

[JohnB]

I_Pwn_Crackpots, just to be clear. The ancients were not superior in every way to us, but some of their systems were.

 

I happen to think that a self cleaning sewer that doesn't block is a superior system for the removal of human waste than one that does. To me, this is axiomatic. This doesn't mean they were superior, just that bit of what they did is. There is a difference.

 

Concerning the Great Pyramid. It has 8 sides. The centre of each face is indented ca 8 inches, this is a deliberate construct, not a flaw.

It's hardly more than a pile of rocks. The Aztecs and the Mayans could do a much better job.

This statement shows you know somewhat less about engineering than they did. It is far more than a pile of rocks. A monument of this size, even one made of stone will collapse under it's own weight if not built properly. The initial construction of the "Bent" pyramid was too steep and the base started to crack. Hence the slope was changed to lessen the pressure.

 

The above is hard enough, but when you put passages into the things the problems really increase. Look at the phenomenal ceilings of the Ascending Passage and the Queens Chamber, and the relieving chambers above the Kings Chamber. What we are looking at is nothing short of architectural and engineering brilliance, which is why I said;

Given the tools and technology of the times, the cities of the ancients were at least as impressive as modern ones.

Although in retrospect, I perhaps should have said "monuments" rather than "cities".

If you paid any attention, they were never destroyed. Thousands of tons of ancient rocks were moved successfully without so much as a scratch. So I don't know why you brought this up, since this proves that modern methods do pwn ancient methods. The fact that the alignment was wrong is besides the point.

Bulldust. The whole point of the Abu Simbel monument was the lighting of the sanctuary statues by the dawn sunlight of the Solstice. The god Ptah was not to be illuminated because as god of the underworld, he was to be left in the dark. By screwing up the alignment, Ptah is now illuminated.

 

They got the alignment right, we got it wrong. Fact. Ergo, they did a better job of aligning than we did. We got pwnd.

This was probably due more to sloppiness than as a deliberate action, since they were only worried about saving the structures.

Wrong. We tried to get the alignment right, no sloppiness involved. We tried and failed. Although the actual deconstruction, movement and reconstruction of the monuments virtually without a scratch would have to rank as one of the great feats of the 20th Century. A great example of modern engineering brilliance.

Which, by the way, shows that you don't have to have great engineering skills in order to produce something that can survive, because the Medieval engineers were worse than their Roman counterparts.

Ah, something we agree on.

Only the ones that happened to be built correctly will give the impression that the methods used were "accurate".

Not quite true, but I see your point. There is no other way to describe the measurement and alignment of the major pyramids except as "accurate". Frankly, they are more accurate than many modern buildings. However when comparing medieval castles to the Egyptians you are comparing something less than 1,000 years old with something 4,500 years old. Come back in 3,500 years and we'll see how those castles have held up.

 

Re slaves. I think we need to be clear about exactly which period in history we are talking about when discussing them. The Egyptian Pyramids were not built on slave labour but by paid workers. Also the laws and treatment of slaves differed greatly from society to society and period to period.

 

Much of what people think is coloured by the treatment of slaves in the 18th and 19th century in the west. ("Galley" slaves have always been badly treated.) For example the child of a slave in the US was a slave, contrast this with Law 175 of "The Code of Hammurabi"

175. If a State slave or the slave of a freed man marry the

daughter of a free man, and children are born, the master of the slave

shall have no right to enslave the children of the free.

(From the translation by L.W. King.)

You'll note the use of "freed man", demonstrating that slaves could become free. In some societies, slaves could own slaves.

Compare those figures to the number of people who died building Fenway Park, or the Empire State Building.

How many died or were permanently disabled by "Caisson Disease" building the Brooklyn Bridge?

 

BTW, you really shouldn't use the Sydey Opera House as an example when talking to aussies not from Sydney. Most of Australia views the thing as a perfect example of the result of an Architectural MMS. It's not large, it's not particularly attractive and cost way too much.

 

However, if you like the arches of the roof so much, you might like to ask "Who invented them?" Damn those pesky egyptians.

 

BTW, the Donghai Bridge is awesome.

 

I ask you to remember my original comment re the abilities of the ancients.

Given the tools and technology of the times

On this basis, 200 people piling up 20,000 tons of rock is a feat, 1 man on a forklift doing it is not. See the difference?

 

Life in most if not all those ancient societies could be best described as "Nasty, Brutish and Short". This doesn't mean that they didn't have some really good ideas (you might have heard of Democracy?) and weren't tremendous engineers.

 

2,000 years from now, in a world of contra-gravity lifters and god knows what, someone will be saying about us "Given the tools and technology of the times, those 21st Century guys were amazing engineers." And someone will reply "Nah, we totally pwn them."

[Realitycheck]

It's hardly more than a pile of rocks. The Aztecs and the Mayans could do a much better job.

 

Hey, I've been to Teotihuacan and I would definitely have to rate it at the bottom of the barrel in difficulty and near the bottom along with Stonehenge when it comes to style. At least the Egyptians got their lines straight. These channels are there for some reason. Definitely beyond the scope of abilities of the Aztecs.

[lancelot]

Intersting speculation about DNA at the beginning of this htread. The imagined scenario is that some time ago an 'alien' power genetically modified proto-humans to produce a radically higher level of intelligence in humans. Why? A 'lab experiment'? A philanthropic act?

 

All speculation, and a scenario which 20 years ago would have seemed wildly ridiculous.

 

However it is interestiing to look at how our knowledge of DNA had progressed over that period. It is now perfectly possible to modify specific behavioural traits in animals by gene manipulation. DNA was only discovered fifty years ago. What will our knowledge be in a thousand years?

 

If there are other intelligences, which seems statisitcally probable, they could well be a million years ahead of our knowledge. So manipulation of DNA now seems much less ridiculous.

 

I am NOT putting this forward as a probable scenario! But as a hypothesis, it has to be granted a level of possibility. It would certainly provide a neat explanation for certain human abilities such as articulate speech!

[tomc]

The aliens would have to be technologically advanced if capable of interstellar travel.

By extension, they would probably have seen/visited other planets in our galaxy or other galaxies.

 

What makes earth so special? Why would they bother? Maybe they stumbled across us by chance thousands of years ago and found evolution on earth worth studying. That might explain the ufo sightings over the years.

 

In my opinon, however, the occurrence of such a chance encounter with earth would be astronomical (no pun intended).

 

Tomc

[SkepticLance]

To lancelot

 

The fossil record and the large number of prehuman fossils, showing a slow transition from small brain to large brain, makes the alien intervention theory seem unlikely. It is certainly pointless. No need for it to understand simple evolution.

 

To tomc

As to the likelihood of an alien species 'stumbling' across Earth - it is not a vague possibility. For an actively expanding civilisation, and given sufficient time, it is a certainty.

 

The speed of light is absolute, and an advanced alien species would probably cross between star systems at a large fraction that that speed - perhaps 0.1c. (this figure is based on a Scientific American article written by a couple of NASA scientists). To travel from Earth to the opposite side of the galaxy at 0.1 c by the most direct route would take 700,000 years.

 

How long would it take an alien species to explore and colonise the entire galaxy? Assuming a population that doubles in size each 100 years (minimal by human standards) and can travel between stars at 0.1 c, then depending on various assumptions, it would take somewhere between 1 and 10 million years. This is a mere eyeblink in evolutionary or geological time.

 

If the galaxy had spawned even one advanced alien culture that was able to survive and grow for a few million years, and if this had happened some time in the past 100 million years, the aliens would already be here.

[granpa]

Has anyone heard of Zachariah Sitchin, Lloyd Pye, or Eric Von Danniken?

 

Their explanations seemed plausible.

 

never heard of them. but regarding most such people I think they're just a bunch of crackpots and nutcases telling made up stories that just happen, through pure random chance, to actually have a tiny bit of truth to them (maybe).

[Sayonara]

If the galaxy had spawned even one advanced alien culture that was able to survive and grow for a few million years, and if this had happened some time in the past 100 million years, the aliens would already be here.

If I recall correctly, and I do, we had quite a long discussion in which this was shown repeatedly to not necessarily be true.

[SkepticLance]

Sayonara

As hapens quite often in these debates, we kind of agreed to disagree.

[Sayonara]

Although you don't "agree" with the other arguments, you could at least acknowledge their existence by saying something like "if this had happened some time in the past 100 million years, the aliens would probably already be here." Allow for the possibility that it might not be true.

 

You know, instead of a post which projects an air of dismissive arrogance by making an absolutist statement which is actually founded on nothing but your own certainty. I am quite sure that "dismissively arrogant" is not how you generally intend for your posts to come across.

 

Also, I recall that a great deal of that thread dealt with aliens from such a civilisation having visited Earth and leaving no traces which are currently detectable. Despite reams of posts from various members explaining how this is entirely possible, you simply ignored all of that and continue to post as if it is not the case. That is why certain people have a problem with your posts on the odd occasion Lance; you misinform.

[SkepticLance]

Sayonara

I think the word is 'disagree', rather than misinform.

 

I have argued before, and I absolutely believe that aliens presense on Earth, if at all significant, would have to leave traces. If aliens had visited, taken a quick look, and departed, they might leave no trace. However, if they colonised, there is no way they could fail to leave traces. If pre-Cambrian jellyfish leave fossils, which they do, an alien colony would leave traces.

 

If you, or anyone else, wishes to disagree with me, that is fine. I am not going to convince anyone else to believe my logic if they are committed to an alternative idea.

[Sayonara]

You are absolutely within your rights to disagree Lance, and I can understand your reasoning. But there is at least one alternative view which has been discussed in depth on this site and of which - with 7 posts - Mr Want2know is likely unaware.

 

Why not give him a link to the thread and let him decide for himself, instead of stating your opinion as a flat fact? THAT is misinforming.

 

Mr Want2know - the prior discussion is here.

 

Also Lance, I'd like to point out that you have changed your argument since that thread to make it more restrictive. In the other thread you state:

 

A lot of reasons have been put up on this thread as to why no intelligent species ever got to the Earth. (They were stay at homes' date=' died off early etc.)

All these are possible, but ONLY if the number of intelligent species that have evolved over the past 6 billion years is small.[/quote']

 

As well as:

 

The arguments Sayonara etc have put forward are valid, but only if the numbers of intelligent species are small.

 

And the really good one, after stating five ways to justify the conclusion you had already decided on:

 

All this logic falls apart if the number of aliens is small. However, if the number is massive, then at least one species must have come to Earth, colonised, and left traces.

 

You "conceded" that a small number of such species might exist despite the pummelling that each of your arguments received from some of this forum's most accomplished members (which you mostly ignored, even after being repeatedly called on it), and despite the contradictions in your own theory (such as expansionist species being more likely to employ space cities and mining space debris, effectively removing the need for planetary colonisation).

 

Yet in this thread you summarily decide that the number of candidate species should not be small, but instead it should be zero.

 

Just... WOW.

[rueberry]

due to the unimaginable size of our galaxy let alone the universe, it would be vanity in the extreme to think that we are the only life forms that exist. or should i say, not to leave the possibillity open. it is another issue, however, to claim that we are the product of alien intervention without first having solid evidence to support such a remark. the point is well made, who created the aliens if they created us. it is more likely to suppose that they travelled along their own evolutionary path and, that it may have been similar to our own or it may be totally distinct and, pardon the pun, totally alien to ours.

[SkepticLance]

To sayonara

You are quite right. My statement a few posts back was careless, and I should have set a few more conditions. If we consider alien civilisations as possible colonisers of the galaxy, there are certain criteria that must be met. I stated three of them in my earlier post this thread.

1. Able to survive.

2. Able to grow.

3. Happened in the past 100 million years.

 

What I failed to mention in that post was the requisite psychological makeup of our hypothetical alien. To colonise the entire galaxy, they must want to colonise the entire galaxy, and develop the technological means. Call it aggressive expansionist tendency, if you like.

 

My feeling, expressed in the earlier thread, is that any single hypothetical alien species may not meet all the criteria. However, if the number of alien species is large, there will be at least one that does. If the number is small, then it is possible that none will meet the needed characteristics.

 

So you are correct, and you caught me in an error. My views are still the same, but I was careless in my communication.

[Sayonara]

Thank you Lance for your gracious acknowledgement of the error. We have finally avoided one of those protracted arguments!

[Moontanman]

...

 

Pushing.

 

I need to find that resource again, but I think that you're wrong about this (not sure though ) -- I think that one of the relatively early feats of humanity was using animals for stuff, be it riding on it or using it for lifting. You can also put lots of stuff on their backs.. it's not THAT hard to figure out how to get an animal to pull (or push!) something; it's just hard to get that animal to do it in a manner that we consider humane. I think that what 'evolved' later on was the ethical thinking part -- getting animals not to die while working.

 

I will try to find out more about this, not sure, but I heard somewhere that humanity has used animals for a very very very long time.

 

I mean.. seriously, haven't you seen Xena: Warrior Princess ?!

 

hehe jk, let me find more about this.

 

There were animals on Xena, Warrior princess?

 

Flares fired from military aircraft. Happens all of the time. Catch-all explanation for practically everything that happens at night.

 

That's a very simplistic and disingenuous conclusion, There are plenty of UFO reports that do not consist of lights in the sky at night. many of them are quite detailed by people whose testimony could put you in the electric chair and are inexplicable to say the least.

 

Doing the math on what we do know, the amount of planets with life in our galaxy is maybe, being generous, 10,000 out of 500 billion stars. The amount with intelligent life is maybe, being generous, 100 out of 500 billion stars, all most likely at least 1,000 light years away.

There is no such thing as faster than light speed travel, no wormhole travel, etc.

 

There doesn't have to be FTL for their to be aliens here, with slower than light technology not much more advanced than what we already have we could occupy the entire Galaxy in a few hundred thousand years. When you are talking about technology hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than ours it's a fools errand to predict what they could or could not do.

 

Aliens did not help us do anything. It's called ingenuity (it takes a long time) and massive manpower. Aliens did not help us build this:

 

Enlarge it and read the caption. I like the part about the 15 feet tall, iron-plated wheels.

 

http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=6814&d=1127659359

 

On the other hand I have to agree, humans did not need nor did they have any help from aliens, gods, or anyone else. They used their own native intelligence, trial and error and their own powers of observation and cooperation to accomplish these things, no alien intelligence required!

Edited December 14, 2008 by Moontanman
multiple post merged

[JohnB]

There is no such thing as faster than light speed travel, no wormhole travel, etc.

As we currently understand the laws of physics, no. But do we understand the Universe well enough to be certain?