(ORDO NEWS) — With extraterrestrial civilizations, we clearly got some kind of blunder. Research shows that there are about 300 million potentially habitable planets in our Milky Way Galaxy alone.
According to mathematical logic, intelligent life should have arisen on at least some of them. However, frankly speaking, we were waiting for the guests. Where is everyone?
2 seconds is a lot or a little?
One explanation is that aliens have actually visited Earth. But in the distant past. After all, if we imagine the history of the Earth in the form of one day, then people appeared when the clock was 23.58.
This is where we parted ways. It is useless to look for material traces of the aliens’ stay, it is unlikely that representatives of a highly developed civilization would begin to litter at a party.
However, descriptions of the visits of green men may remain in myths, legends and even in written sources, the first of which appeared 5500 years ago.
After Schliemann excavated Troy, guided only by the text of Homer’s Iliad, it would be somewhat stupid to look down on the records of the ancients.
What would such records of alien sightings look like? This question was asked in their books by such respected scientists as the Soviet astrophysicist Iosif Shklovsky and his American colleague Carl Sagan.
Reconstruction of contact with an extraterrestrial civilization is fraught with great difficulties, – said Carl Sagan.
A simple story about the appearance of a strange creature that works miracles and lives in heaven is not enough.
Such records can be given a completely reasonable alternative explanation. The author could engage in hoax, be guided by fiction or religious considerations.
There is a contact!
Then what features should a story about a real contact have? Surprisingly, the true evidence of such an acquaintance of the two civilizations has been recorded and studied by scientists.
Naturally, we are not talking about aliens, but about the contact of representatives of European civilization and, for example, the Tlingit, a tribe of American Indians.
This case was described by the ethnographer George Emmonson, who at the end of the 19th century served as a naval officer in Alaska.
In 1786, the expedition of the French navigator La Perouse first met representatives of the Tlingit. La Perouse described this meeting in his diary: the savages were friendly, their canoes were surrounded by French ships, and a brisk trade began. The Indians exchanged fish, meat, skins for copper and iron.
Moreover, they stole everything they could, climbed into the cabins and even stole the dress uniform from the officers – the armed guards did not help.
Then, for exactly 100 years, these Indians never saw Europeans again. Until Emmonson and his comrades came to visit them.
And he wrote down a story about the contact of civilizations from the lips of the leader of the Tlingit Kovi, a descendant of La Perouse acquaintances: “Once two strange objects appeared in the bay.
They looked like big black birds with huge white wings. The Tlingit believed that the world was created by a huge bird, which often turned into a Raven.
According to legend, a person who looked at the Raven turned into stone. The Tlingit rushed to hide in the forest.
After a while, a couple of brave men got out of the forest and began to watch big birds through tubes of rolled cabbage leaves.
They believed that such a trick would prevent them from turning to stone. Soon, huge birds folded their wings, and small black insects poured out of their bodies, who began to crawl along the plumage.
Then the old half-blind warrior, who was about to die anyway, decided for the common good to swim to the Raven.
But the old man did not turn to stone, but said that he was visiting on a giant canoe made by people.
After that, the Tlingit sailed to the ships and exchanged their furs for iron and other things, which were lying around uselessly with the aliens, with great profit.
Signs of a visitor from Alpha Centauri
Based on these kinds of examples, Sagan formulated three features that distinguish real contact from fiction.
1) The report will be recorded in writing shortly after the event.
2) major changes are taking place in the contacted society.
3) the contacting civilization makes no attempt to hide its extraterrestrial origin.
Credibility of the story could give:
– Description of the structure and anatomy of a rational being.
– A clear presentation of astronomical realities that primitive people could not acquire by their own efforts.
– A transparent statement of the purpose of the contact.
And under the fish head he grew a human
According to Carl Sagan, these contact criteria are met, for example, by the legend of the ancient Sumerians about Oannes, a creature that spread the foundations of civilization among the inhabitants of Mesopotamia.
Here is how the Babylonian historian Berossos described the contact with this creature: “In the first year, a terrible creature named “Oan” appeared from the sea, his body was all fish, and from under the fish head, another head grew and in a similar way human legs grew next to the fish tail. His voice was human.
This creature spent days among people without taking any food, and taught people to read and write, and mathematics, and to master the arts of various kinds, taught them to live in cities, found temples, establish laws, and taught geometry, and showed how to collect grain and fruits, and generally taught everything that relates to cultural life.
Some peoples have such evidence, in particular, the Aztecs have a similar legend about the pale-faced, bearded god Quetzalcoatl – the Feathered Serpent.
Stories about creatures sent to transfer technology and important scientific knowledge to people can hardly be called 100 percent evidence. However, they deserve at least careful study.
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