ancient astronanuts???????

[guest]

I was recently looking at some very old cave paintings. Some
are not very impressive others are incredible. There is one
that shows a disc -like object sitting on a tripod. next to it
is a small alien with a fishbowl headgear on his head and rabbit ear antennae on top of the headgear. Some skeptics have said this is ancient science fiction.
I am not buying it. A primitive could no way understand even close
to what he or she was painting. On the other hand. I have a problem with it being real, the design of the ship and rabbit ears on the alien looks to be like
a 1940's cartoon of an alien landing not that of a super intelligent race. So I am asking anyone out there for opinions. What do ya think? Is it possible or just a bunch of B.S. Only serious people
please reply.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I think there's a lot of suspicious stuff on cave walls and in some cultures' mythologies. Hell, even the bible's got flying chariots, pillars of fire, an alien visitations (er, I mean "angelic"). And then you have the nazca lines, the excellent astronomy of many ancient civilisations...

I prefer to keep an open mind about the whole thing - I certainly wouldn't dismiss any possibilities, 'sensible' or 'otherwise'. Unfortunately a lot of people dismiss it out of hand, which is about as unscientific as you can get.

[-Shadow-]

I think they could run age test on the painting, to see if it really is real.
I have a very interesting book called Aliens: Encounters with the Unexplined filled with simmilar things.Some of them are; The Baghdad Battery used to geterate electricity in 250BC A model airplane found in an aztec tomb, and descriptions of a UFO from the book of Ezekiel 1:1-21, and 3.6 million fossilized footprints in volcanic ash.
I also found some 10,000 year old cave paintings from France in the same book.
I's atleast 100 pages about 30 cm long and 25 cm high, full color pictures too. Not bad for $4.

-Shadow

[Paul]

I've seen cave paintings that sound similar to those you mention. It always comes down to interpretation of the drawings. What look like antennae are ears, what looks like a helmet is a headdress, that sort of thing... our interpretation of such paintings is too often tainted by our own experience of popular culture.

Whey they find scientifically datable alien devices, I'll be one of the first to cry, "hurrah!". Until then, I'll maintain my healthy skepticism.

Cheers,
Paul

[abiogenesis]

Yeah, these things always have a simpler, common-sense, answer. In all likelyhood the cave people were just immitating pictures they found in a copy of Shadow's book that fell through a timewarp.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be correct. Aliens and UFOs are impossible. Timewarps on the other hand...

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be correct. Aliens and UFOs are impossible. Timewarps on the other hand...

Aliens and UFOs are impossible? How so? "We know things can't travel faster than light" is not a valid answer - that's assuming our knowledge about such things is complete, and I'm pretty certain it isn't. Heck, it wasn't all that long ago that people would have scoffed if you said that gravity could be bent by light, but it turned out that it could). As for aliens being impossible? There's no evidence to say either way, so closing one's mind to the possibility now only makes one blinkered about it. We know life turned up once somewhere in the universe (here), why shouldn't it turn up elsewhere?

[mrzee]

I'd have to agree with Evil Dr Ganymede here. Unless someone can come up with a solid mathematical proof why there can't be life elsewhere or why aliens couldn't have visited us then the answer is unknown and subject only to personal beliefs.

Here's a thought though; Some of these paintings are in excess of 20,000 years old. I can't remember how fast our solar system travels in our galaxy (which is debatable anyway) but our little solar system would have been in a totaly differrent position back then. Who knows how close the nearest star would have been since these paintings were done, for that matter, since life began on earth. We could very well be the aliens we are searching for!

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

In 20,000 years I don't think things will have changed that much (maybe Barnard's Star would be a bit further away, but that's about it)

Though you're right - when the earth formed, we weren't anywhere near where we are now, and neither were the stars around us (heck, some of them probably hadn't even formed) and the galaxy was a very different place back then anyway. For starters, the oldest start in the galaxy would have been about 8 billion years old.

[mrzee]

Raises a few interesting ideas that does. So has anyone looked at our current velocities and reversed the time line to see where we would have been back at the begining of life. Even close to that time? I understand this would be highly error prone but would be interesting to see none the less. Be interesting to know where we were about a few million years ago, about the time man appeared on earth too.

I've heard a couple of theories going round that life is sprinkled through the galaxy from destroyed life bearing planets etc. If this is so, couldn't we back track to find where earth was seeded and check if other systems were near by about that time. Might raise the probability of finding life by concentrating on those systems as they would most likely have a similar life path to our own. Pretty wild idea I know but if we are already looking for life anything to raise the probability would help.

Back to the topic at hand.
Many races still practice wearing head gear even today, go to any horse race on ladies day to see some really weird ones.
People are also very vain, can't see this being differrent back then. Put the two together and it could be a painter doing a portrait of the chief of the tribe in full dress uniform! Sounds silly but people have done some pretty stupid stuff in the name of art. Come to Melbourne an take a look at Federation Square for example.
With the tripod, it's the easiest way to balance something and it's not too hard to work out. What was being balanced is more the question. Could be anything from the latest hunting expedition to the head of the leader of another tribe.
Sorry but I'm very sceptical about the whole thing.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Questioning it is fine - that's scientific. But many people make the mistake of believing that the 'obvious' answers to their questions must be the right ones. It could be a headdress, sure. But just because it's a likely option doesn't mean it is supposed to be a headdress. It's important to remind oneself that one's assumptions about things like this are just that - assumptions. They're probably correct, but you can't be 100%sure.

As for where we were... well, remember that the sun orbits the galaxy once every 250 million years or so. So 4.6 billion years ago is 18.4 'galactic years' ago, so according to that we'd probably have formed somewhere that's on the other side of the galaxy today. Though remember that all the other stars are moving too, and some are in eccentric orbits around the core, so it's not like we'd have the same stars near us then as we have today (assuming they were around at the time). More to the point, we wouldn't be able to check for other systems nearby that could have seeded us because we'd have to track every other star back in time for 4.6 billion years, and that's impossible enough to do for our own sun!

A few million years ago is another matter. I dunno if we can accurately track the movement of the sun that far back though, but I'd imagine we'd have been a couple of degrees of galactic longitude from where we are now. But again the stars around us would have moved in different ways.

[guest]

I am getting a headache from all this talk. Your getting away from my question. Paul, I disagree that it is a headdress
and the antennae were mistaken for ears. I will try to find this image on the web and link to it. Iwill describe what alien has on his head in more detail. The helmet looks
similar to a deep sea diving helmet with to two black holes for eyes. It covers his entire head to the neck The antennae forms a V on top of the helmet. No way they could be mistaken for ears.
I have seen many strange paintings that
could be interpeted either way, but this one is detailed as if the painter actually saw this. Believe I am a skeptic, but like Evil Dr. Ganymede says you have to keep an open mind. I saw this painting on a T.V. show about U.F.Os so the image must be on the web. Hopefully I will find it. If I do some of you skeptics might
change your mind, at least a bit.

[Paul]

Paul, I disagree that it is a headdress and the antennae were mistaken for ears. I will try to find this image on the web and link to it. Iwill describe what alien has on his head in more detail. The helmet looks
similar to a deep sea diving helmet with to two black holes for eyes. It covers his entire head to the neck The antennae forms a V on top of the helmet. No way they could be mistaken for ears.

Ears, antennae, headdress, mask, whatever! He could be dressed up as a termite or something. We know almost nothing about their culture. For all we know, they just randomly thought up a costume design that would look weird!
The point is, there's a multitude of plausible explanations for this sort of thing, and to cry "aliens!" is not one of them.

Cheers,
Paul

[Rassilon]

I think Roger Corman stole all his ideas from the cavemen

I think what we would be looking at is in thier primitive mind a representation of superior beings...Its not at all impossible that the earth at one stage in its evolution was as advanced or possibly superior to the technology we have today with part of it still in the frindges of primitiveism (as we are today in fact)...if you accept the biblical history...there was the great flood...something tells me that something similar to the fabled city of atlantis could have existed during this time before that great calamity...

Or we could have been visited by green men wearing fishbowls on thier heads...who knows...