Fashion Mode

Origin of the Universe

* Once upon a time there was this Big Bang.

* Since we are a part of the Universe, and since the Universe had an origin (the accepted standard model being the Big Bang event some 13.7 billion years ago), that alone of necessity means we have an extraterrestrial legacy since everything that makes you, you was born in that event, thereby in a manner of speaking making you 13.7 billion years old!

Origin of Our Stellar Solar System & Earth

* As it was in the beginning, well so too did our Sun and Planet Earth have a beginning.

* We are Star Stuff. Our solar system, our Sun, the planets, including Earth, were all formed out of the remains of extraterrestrial gas, dust and debris from older stellar systems, scattered to the four interstellar winds by supernovae explosions, over four and a half billion years ago. Thus, that too alone, no matter which way you slice it, means we (as beings part and parcel of our stellar system) are extraterrestrial in origin.

Origin of Life

* The terrestrial origin of life may have happened within that petrii dish/test tube called Planet Earth - Or maybe not. IMHO it happened way too quickly and way too soon post Earth's formation to probably have been a solely terrestrial happening. There's an alternative called panspermia which expands both the time and space available for life's origin by many order of magnitudes.

* Panspermia is the idea that Earth was seeded by cosmic spores or microbes that were expelled from some other planetary abode in some other stellar system and drifted across the gulf of space. An incredibly tiny fraction of these cosmic spores lands on suitable planetary environments, where they survive and thrive and evolve. Our Earth was one such place for their lucky landing. It's akin to a plant producing millions of spores - 99.999% of which fail to land on fertile ground; but that tiny fraction that does is all it takes to keep the species keeping on keeping on.

* Balistic panspermia is a slight variation on traditional panspermia in that the microbes or spores are inside the protective covering of a solid object - dust or tiny rocks, even massive rocks. These, alone with their microbial passengers get blasted off home turf by incoming ballistic objects (impacting meteors), escape their home planet and a few eventually, by chance land on another suitable abode. That Mars rock, ALH84001 that caused such a stir several years back is one such example of a potential case history of ballistic panspermia.

* Directed panspermia is yet another variation on the theme, only in this case there's intelligence behind the scenes, either sending out canisters of microbes willy-nilly in a shotgun manner, and/or directing that canister specifically at a chosen target.

* The upshot is if terrestrial life's origin was via a form of panspermia, then we humans, being a species of terrestrial life, ultimately had an extraterrestrial origin. If a Mars rock full of microbes impacted Earth billions of years ago, well, we might be the Martians transplanted from the fourth rock to the third rock from the Sun. Perhaps our origins were even farther a-field. Perhaps some cosmic gardener planted life here billions of years ago, maybe even stuck around to fertilize, cultivate, prune, and weed that garden.

Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, Civilization and Technology: The Fermi Paradox

* The Fermi Paradox can be summed up simply enough by pointing out that as long as you assume the existence of at least one other technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilization with the same sorts of 'boldly going' drives as we humans have (i.e. - plain old curiosity, the what's on the other side of the hill, if nothing else, then just as humans explored and colonized Planet Earth in a tiny fraction of the Earth's existence, technologically capable extraterrestrials would have explored and colonized the Milky Way Galaxy in a tiny fraction of its existence. In the case of humans, we don't need to ask "where is everybody?" We're everywhere. In the case of ET, we do ask "where is everybody?" They should be here. Scientists say they're not, never have been, and thus have to explain the paradox. On the other side of the fence, those who see evidence in those 'ancient astronauts' and in UFOs have no paradox with which to have to come to terms with.

* The 'Gods' arrive. Very few people today would try to defend the position what in the vastness of the cosmos we, human beings, are the proverbial intelligent 'IT' within that cosmos. Since we are the new boys on the block, having only existed as a unique species several hundreds of thousands of years at best in a Universe that's 13.7 billion years old, the odds are pretty good that our intellectually cosmic superiors are out there. Now on the likelihood that at least one such superior extraterrestrial intelligence will boldly go and explore the cosmos, let's define 'cosmos' and restrict that term to our ten billion years old Milky Way Galaxy, the time it would take that extraterrestrial intelligence to explore every nook and cranny of our Milky Way Galaxy is but a tiny fraction of the age of our galaxy. By analogy, Planet Earth has existed four and a half billion years; yet as noted above our 100,000 plus year old species crawled all over it in real quick-smart fashion, as did the bacteria, plants, insects, and other life forms as well. Translated, since there's nowhere to hide Planet Earth from the 'I spy with my little eye' aliens, we've been found! The extraterrestrials have arrived, not yesterday but millions of yesterdays ago. And since Planet Earth is a hospitable bio-friendly place, one with a pretty unique property - a biosphere - they decided to stick around and set up camp. Because these beings are high-tech, and because any sufficiently advanced technology is something supernatural to any sufficiently lower technological civilization (like us), that supernatural quality gets interpreted as beings who ARE supernatural - deities or 'gods' - not interpreted by the great unwashed primitives as flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials. Our cultural mythologies, worldwide, are full of references to 'star beings'; 'guardians of the skies'; 'sky gods'; 'gods in the heavens' and gods who come from the stars or who are associated with specific stars and constellations, most notably Cygnus, Sirius and Orion.

Origin of Humanity

* Just about every religious mythology, and every culture has one, well you'll find something along the line that the gods (or God) created human beings. Let's take that at face value. Now 'created' doesn't mean creating something from scratch. If you 'create' a plank of wood, you create it from an existing tree or log, not from your home chemistry set (though in theory you could do so since ultimately chemicals make up wood). You probably 'create' your meals from ingredients you got from the supermarket. Again, your home chemistry set had nothing to do with it, and even if you did grow your own vegetables and herbs and raise your own chickens and pigs, you still started from existing ingredients - seeds and other advanced biological products like eggs and baby pigs. That analogy equally applies to the case of the 'gods' creating humans. They didn't start from clay and dust and the gods' equivalent of a home chemistry set. They started work on pre-existing advanced ingredients.

* At this point of course, based on previous remarks, you realise that there are no gods. The 'gods' are of course just technologically advanced extraterrestrials with intellectual powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal humans.

The 'Gods' Create Humans

* What's common in mythology is not only do the 'gods' create humans, but we (humans) were created in their (the 'gods') image. Alien genetic engineering assists in providing an explanation. Now the 'gods' have a choice. They can do the hard work here on their new Planet Earth, their home-away-from-home abode, or else they can employ the natives to do the hard work for them. Unfortunately, when they arrived, there were no suitable native life forms they could employ to do that work, so, it's creation time - the 'gods' create, dada, the human species - all of them, one step at a time; there's no immediate creation of modern Homo sapiens. Fortunately, the 'gods' have some promising genetic material to work with - the primates in general and the chimpanzees in particular. Now what clues do we have that we're a part of this Planet, but at the same time apart from this Planet; that there's something slightly screwy about human beings.

* One item more than slightly screwy is just that super, ultra, amazing, coincidence that each and every one of our more than 20-plus hominoid ancestral species went extinct - each and every one. All the in-betweens bracketing chimpanzees on one side to Homo sapiens on the other - kaput. That really defies the odds and the natural order of things. Could it be that once an ancestor had been genetically engineered and given rise to the next generation that that species was no longer of any use and cast off to fend for itself yet not having evolved naturally, being unable to do so?

* The sudden arrival of culture about 50,000 years ago is puzzling. Around the parts of the world that were inhabited by various species of humans, culture arrived in a relatively short period of time. Things like cave art and petroglyphs; mother goddess 'Venus' statuettes; burials and grave goods (implying the concept of an afterlife). Why? Whenever something happens very suddenly, in diverse places to boot, one might look towards a guiding hand of outside intelligence.

* The sudden arrival of civilization about 8,000 years ago is equally puzzling. Once upon a time all humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Some human bands still are. However, many human societies, around 8,000 years ago give or take (6,000 BC or thereabouts) underwent a career change and developed agriculture and animal husbandry and settled down. We became 'civilized'. Small settlements became villages; some villages morphed into towns some of which in turn grew large enough to become cities. That transition happened in a relatively short period of time in various cultures that at that time had no cross-pollination. Why? The traditional nomadic to quasi-nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life, a way of life practiced by all other animal life forms (predators are the hunters; prey the gatherers) served us well too for millions of apparently natural evolutionary years. So what changed unless it was artificial manipulation from outside forces? It's either that or coincidence stretched to the breaking point.

* Human societies have creation mythologies, and not just of humans, but by all rights shouldn't since there's no obvious first-cause creations that have transpired within individual human memories and overall histories. Some external power must have clued our remote ancestors that there were such things as first-cause creations.

* Unique Human Traits

** Clues include the most obvious of the obvious that we come in breeds. We are one species but there are many racial/ethnic variations on the theme. How do we explain dog breeds and breeds of roses? - Human breeders. How do we explain human breeds? - Alien breeders!

** Our nakedness relative to our furry primate ancestors and current primate 'relatives' is another clue - there are multi-dozens upon dozens of primates; only one 'naked ape' (humans). Why did we alone lose our fur? I mean when the outside temperature drops much below the comfort threshold, we require in no uncertain terms clothing. When it hits freezing point, we can't survive without clothing, yet our furry animal cousins seem to manage A-OK. There's many an image of a furry mammal surviving, even thriving in the snow. Quite apart from the fact that fur is a better regulator of temperature than just sweating (our main means of temperature regulation), loss of fur resulted in other highly negative evolutionary rock and hard place restrictions. We've exchanged temperature regulation via fur for control via sweating. Humans of all the mammals are the species that sweats the most. The retrograde step of temperature control via sweating instead of fur imposed two additional restrictions on us. We were forced to stay close to reliable sources of fresh water and it also makes us way more dependent on supplies of salt since salt is excreted from the body via sweat. Salt supplies in the natural environment are rare - so rare that once upon a time salt was extremely valuable and you got paid in salt. It's were we get our word, salary from. If only we'd kept our fur. Now the relevant issue here is that Mother Nature doesn't tend to select for traits that decrease survival value. Therefore, perhaps something other than Mother Nature is at work here, maybe like Mother ET.

** Then there's our bipedal gait relative to the rest of the mammals. Name me one other mammal that routinely walks on two legs. That's probably because there are many negatives to a bipedal gait, like loss of stability and strife if you lose the ability to use one leg. Again, it's not like Mother Nature to encourage evolutionary features that have more negative implications relative to alternatives. We should have evolved as a traditional quadruped but with two additional arms!

** We show way more signs of visible aging than our animal cousins. Our cats and dogs don't tend to get grey hairs and wrinkles. Is this another sign of genetic tampering?

** Animals don't seem to have the same sort of need for bathroom/sexual privacy that we have - animals are hard to embarrass. They do what they have to do and don't give a damn who's looking. Did we inherit a sense of embarrassment from our creators?

** On the other hand, we also have a sense of humour that even the 'higher' animals seem to lack.

** There's our very high IQ relative to the rest of the animal kingdom, a comparison that's not even remotely a close contest. While that's not an evolutionary negative (well not so far at least), the awesome gap between us and our nearest intelligent rival species l is, well, just awesome.

* Why is the human species so vastly different in so many different ways from the rest of our animal kin? Might it be our extraterrestrial 'gods' that made it so? Then there's our ability to mate with the 'gods' and produce viable offspring.

The 'Gods' Mate with Humans

* We should be no more able to mate and be fertile with an extraterrestrial than we are with a species that's even far closer to us in terms of terrestrial ancestry, like felines say, unless aliens and humans are much closer in genetic similarity than is even remotely suspected. That therefore should put the kybosh on that alien-human possibility. As to the feline-human combo however, one could in theory manipulate the DNA and other genetic bio-molecules of the feline and of the human to be compatible enough to produce a cat with human features or a human with feline features. If you're advanced enough in genetics and biotechnology, just about anything goes. No doubt extraterrestrials that can traverse the depths of interstellar space will also be technologically advanced in other areas - like genetics. Regardless, mythologies are full of the 'gods' having their wicked way with Earth women (sometimes the reverse - 'goddesses' have their wicked way with terrestrial males), but in any event it gives a whole new meaning to that phrase "close encounters".

* Demigods are an obvious product of a 'god/goddess' mating with a mortal of the opposite sex. So by my reckoning at least demigods and demigoddesses like Gilgamesh, Brahma, and Shiva as non-Greek examples, and Achilles, Helen of Troy, Heracles, and like [King] Minos [of Crete] were really human-alien hybrids. For all you Christians and religious types, there are those Sons of God/Daughters of Men unions noted and logged in the Bible. Since many of them in turn mated with mortals and produced offspring, and they in turn ditto right on down the timeline, that means that most of us have probably a tiny percentage of our genetic makeup that is ultimately extraterrestrial in origin.

* Miraculous Births: if ET is a master at genetics, maybe ET is also a master at other anatomical wonders, or at least biotechnology..

** Much significance has been made of THAT virgin birth as recorded in the New Testament. However, Jesus isn't the 'lone ranger' when it comes to being born of a virgin. In addition to Jesus, there's the Assyrian/Babylonian Marduk; Zoroaster too was born of a virgin and a shaft of light! Many more examples can be found in mythologies from around the world. Of course what was miraculous back then isn't quite so miraculous now. They obviously hadn't heard about, or any conception of, artificial insemination, invitro fertilization way back then.

** Apart from virgin births, there's records of those giving birth way, way beyond their childbearing years, like Old Testament Sarah (born Sarai) giving birth to Isaac via Abraham, who, given his advanced years probably had a hard time getting it, well hard.

** Moses was born circumcised and was able to walk-the-walk and talk-the-talk immediately after being born.

** The Greek Goddess Athena was born fully formed and clothed when born from the head of Zeus; Aphrodite, like Athena, had a rather odd 'birth'. She was also 'born' thanks to some weird biology between seawater foam and those severed private parts of Zeus's grandfather, Uranus. Zeus also gave birth to Dionysus from his thigh. Helen of Troy, daughter of Zeus, was apparently hatched from an egg.

** While dealing with Greek mythology, it seems King Minos pissed off Zeus's brother Poseidon. Poseidon, ever inventive, caused Mrs. Minos (Pasiphae) to lust after a bull (and presumably the bull to lust after Mrs. Minos). The end product of this sexual union became that human-bovine hybrid, the Minotaur (and that's no bull!).

* All this is just barely scratching the surface. No matter the culture, you'll find something in the annals of their register of births that are quite out of the ordinary.

The 'Gods' Other Genetic Engineering Experiments

* Animal-Animal Hybrids: Why ancient cultures around the world depicted a menagerie of imaginary or mythological animals in their artwork, on their everyday utensils, clothing, jewellery, etc. as well as real animals is quite beyond me. You'd think there would be more than enough real animals to represent if they wanted to depict the images of animals. Or, of course, maybe their imagery of their imaginary zoology wasn't quite so imaginary. For example, imaginary beasties, animal-animal hybrids, often had an attachment of wings placed on common animals like horses (Pegasus) and lizards (dragons) and lions (Griffins). This was, well, commonplace. But surprisingly, as if lacking imagination, there are no winged cows or zebras or frogs or mountain lions. Not even common domesticated animals like cats and dogs were depicted with wings. Very selective, which suggests that which was so depicted was real. And how can you get a winged lizard (dragon)? Well it has to be genetic or bioengineering of some sort.

* Human-Animal Hybrids: Where does one start here since there are thousands of examples? You name the animal, and I'm certain somewhere, at sometime, that animal's head was depicted on a human body; or a human head was depicted on the animal's body. Any textbook on the gods of ancient Egypt will provide examples. Apart from that, there's the Minotaur (noted earlier), the Centaur, the (Greek) Sphinx, etc. Is this all human imagination on overdrive or something else?

* Shape-Shifting? While you might like to turn into a fly-on-the-wall that's impossible since said fly would have your mass and thus be unable to defy gravity. Oh, and even if you could figure out how to nullify gravity, you can't shape-shift into a fly so the problem is moot. However, that doesn't detract from the massive mythological literature that selected individuals can indeed shape-shift - Zeus is well known for that trick and not just from one organic form into another, but from organic into an inorganic form as well. The Mesoamerican Olmecs had a were-jaguar cult. Now shape-shifting is known in the biological world, albeit not sudden transformations. Tadpoles shape-shift into frogs; seeds into plants; babies into adults; flatfish (flounder) alter to have their eyes on one side of the head. Thus, it's not totally beyond the pale to suggest that shape-shifting totally belongs in the realm of science fiction, fantasy and horror (like werewolves). Either the concept of relatively sudden shape-shifting is nonsense, and there are myths and legends that say otherwise from all over the globe, or else some sufficiently advanced technology - super-science - is operating behind-the-scenes.

The 'Greys'

* Thus far I've been pretty much addressing the past - ancient mythologies and associated 'gods'. However, the pattern continues. Extraterrestrials are still, apparently, very much interested in biotechnology, genetics and genetic engineering. Enter, the 'Greys'.

* Genetic Harvesting: There are two separate areas suggestive of aliens in the here-and-now highly interested in terrestrial biochemistry, reproduction/sex and genetics. Animal mutilations are in no doubt a reality as something tangible. UFO abductions of humans being subjected to various medical / genetic / reproductive tests is equally reported, but not as equally validated. Still, it's not good policy to throw babies out with their bathwater and one really does have to come to terms with the question that revolves around why would anyone in their right mind make this stuff up? It's certainly not for fame or money!

** Animal mutilations are certainly well documented, and the cause(s) are mysterious to say the least. If human culprits, why hasn't anyone been apprehended, tried and convicted of violations of animal welfare laws, destruction of private property (if livestock) and trespass? If natural predators are to blame - well that should be bloody obvious if true and no controversy should therefore ensue. If extraterrestrials, well that explains a lot that natural predation can't like precision incisions and lack of blood and no hoof/paw prints and no signs of a struggle, though it also leaves mega-questions unanswered. Presumably, it has something to do with ET interest in terrestrial biochemistry and genetics.

** Human-Alien Hybrids: If UFO abduction accounts are taken at face value, then extraterrestrials are mightily interested in the creation of more hybrids - not animal-animal hybrids like the Chimera, or human-animal hybrids like the Mesopotamian Shedu (winged bulls with human heads) but human-alien hybrids, something perhaps akin to those alien-human ('gods' mating with humans) referred to above in all things mythological.

In conclusion, we have an extraterrestrial legacy because 1) we're a child of the Universe - a child that originated out of the origin of the Universe; 2) we're star-stuff; 3) the origin of life was probably 'out there' somewhere and migrated to Earth; 4) ET exists and the Fermi Paradox says ET must also exist here; and 5) there's just too much damn weird stuff around that falls better into place by assuming those 'ancient astronauts' and extraterrestrial UFOs.