Painting is sometimes as good as words when describing something you don't understand.
I have been watching the TV series “Ancient Aliens,” which I find fascinating. One episode considered how early man viewed Gods as super-humans. They witnessed things far beyond their capabilities and perhaps beyond their imagination and needed some kind of justification for what they experienced. How do you justify that which you don’t understand? They did the best they could with what they had.
I can imagine why what they witnessed could fill them with both fear and wonder – I think we would probably behave the same way today given the same understandings about the universe. Today, however, we have much greater understanding, yet we are still filled with wonder and awe at the universe – and many misconceptions! Further, we immediately believe that any creature capable of space travel must be light-years ahead of us technologically – perhaps an unwarranted assumption based solely on our limited frame of reference (our biases and beliefs).
Our ancient ancestors probably came face-to-face with things that were incongruent with what their senses were trained to accept as reality. Such events must have been so terrifying that they had to record their experiences in the best way they knew how, through a primitive form of art (the first language). But what if the art on the cave walls was done by extraterrestrials rather than by humans? What if symbolic lithography was introduced by aliens? What then?
How do paintings show up deep in caves where no carbon is detected on any of the walls of the cave? I’ve been deep in caves – they’re very dark! So dark I can’t see anything at all – much less paint on a cave wall by any means. Add a torch to light the cave walls and they get “dirty” with carbon (smoke residue) – that lasts forever, locked into the structure of the limestone. But by using a flashlight, I can do something that approaches what some would consider artwork on those walls – without smoke residue. But wait! There were no flashlights thousands of years ago… unless…
Awesome! I especially like the idea of “what if aliens did the painting?” Yeah, what if some extraterrestrial life form intervened here? Certainly that is the contention of Erich von Daniken fans. It’s a VERY popular meme in the US (finally) – after years of denial, government missteps, and outright lies (probably based on the perhaps erroneous idea that in telling people the truth about extraterrestrials, they will panic as they did after H. G. Wells scared the crap out of folks in the 1930s). Americans are incredibly easy to scare – and notoriously paranoid about their government.
Having worked for the federal government for many years I can tell you, the government is made up of people – people who are FAR too human to keep something a secret for very long. You can always find somebody incompetent enough, easily tricked into divulging, or so desperate for attention, or just plain careless enough, that they will spill the beans, release little understood evidence, say something revealing, or sell out. Humans make lousy secret-keepers – especially when they think they are in authority over others.
But if, on the other hand, aliens are guiding certain of us along – then governments would basically be irrelevant, unless they could be used as a ruse or distraction – perhaps unintentionally, due to their irrelevance – but since most humans trust and believe in their governments, they could make a suitable distraction, I suppose.
Although I seriously doubt that “the government” is covering up anything – the US government is far too incompetent to keep a secret of that magnitude, there could be individuals who “know” or are “in contact” – groomed if you will. I doubt I’ll ever know who they are, if they are… and if I were one, I wouldn’t be telling you! …unless you’re one, too! Hey, I worked for the federal government…
And then again – what if we are ALL “one of them, too”… what then?
Within our brains is a mechanism for gating memory on and off – and sorting it when gated on. That’s right – I am capable of forgetting things! I’m also capable of remembering, too! It’s as easy as flipping a switch in a simple brain microcircuit – all I need is the right CODE. All creatures have this mechanism – even those without a brain – which suggests that the code is very ancient, indeed.
I wonder just how “ancient” those ancient aliens were/are…
Perhaps it’s true, maybe governments are as relevant as we think. Perhaps our CODES are not the right CODES.
Whoever did the cave art must have intended that others of its kind or those who would understand the symbols would somehow be able to see the messages after those who created them were gone. Did they know we would have the capability of seeing their work?
I like the idea of a CODE, perhaps they are hoping that someone will figure it out or maybe someone has. What if we all know the CODE but just have blocked it out waiting for the right key to unlock it.
Even if the CODE is being unlocked and the message is leading us to do exactly what we are doing?
“Leaving a note” sort of does automatically connote that the writer expects there to someday be a reader. How about the golden disk on Voyager I? hmmm…
What if we are now receiving communications via crop circles, the real ones? The fake crap (crop) circles, the ones humans have made, may be confusing to those who want to understand the real ones. We have so much to learn about our own human languages and communications, let alone those of alien or other species.
Hopefully, our fake crop circles aren’t communicating some kind of threat or being offensive by abusing a language we don’t yet understand. It would be terrible, indeed, if we had to defend ourselves because of some unintentionally offensive prank.
Perhaps our attempts at extraterrestrial communication may actually be humorous to those who can read them – fingers crossed!.
OMG and LOL! Love the “fingers crossed!” bit. Let me respond with a middle finger raised alone.
Uh, based on using the very same communication medium as you did (fingers), did I make a kindly or nice gesture in response? Or do you feel like punching my lights out?
Boy, have you hit a nail on its proverbial head on this subject. Now I feel like praying my heart out to my gods to preserve us against an alien-caused mass human extinction event. Egad, what have we done?!!!
Fingers crossed!!!!!!
LOL… Seriously!