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Chrononauts: An Evolutionary Angle
By Jeff Barris
From an evolutionary standpoint, some enthusiasts and researchers
consider the notion that if today’s pop, iconic aliens really do
exist, then they are likely our own descendants from many thousands
of years in the future. In this case, they may or may not still be
technically extraterrestrial, if only because some of our
indeterminably distant grandchildren may well be born on another
planet.
People frequently put forth the idea that "visitors" or "grays" are
quasi-humans with inter-dimensional maneuverability of some kind.
Without entirely ruling out ideas involving alternate or additional
realities, focus, however, on certain consistently purported
continuities of physiological traits between them and ourselves.
These suggest a relatively simple origin much closer to home -- one
in which time, itself, presents the only real space separating this
"alien" civilization from our own.
On the subject of their having come from another star system all
together, the whole "astronomical time & distance to the nearest
possible source..." argument becomes moot on an evolutionarily
backlit stage. Extraterrestrial hypotheses regarding humans’ own
beginning are not very viable, either, considering the
ever-expanding paleoanthropological evidence from our fossil record.
Despite positive likelihood of ET life somewhere, the chances of us
and our first and only contacts, together, exhibiting such similar,
convergent anatomical evolution seem staggeringly improbable. These
creatures are depicted as being more physically like ourselves,
even, than a bat is like a bird, or a dolphin is like a shark.
Examples of parallel evolution between virtually unrelated species
right here on this planet pale in comparison to these aliens’
uncanny resemblance to us.
Notice the apparent succession of contour facial features from
archaic Homo sapiens all the way through the so-called aliens. Any
humanoid could initially appear to have a grossly exaggerated
cranium and eyes if, in actuality, the surrounding structures were
considerably undersized in proportion, including reduced (in
thickness, not necessarily in definition) brow ridge, cheekbones,
shoulders, neck, plus especially dwarfed jaw and teeth. The cranial
capacity may be little larger (if any) than our own -- perhaps
illuding upon first impression.
There is reason to assume that, in the future, there may be even
further shrinkage of our own vestigial Cro-Magnon-like protrusions
or buttresses -- continuance of the going trend. This applies to the
entire postmodern physique, hypothetically making us a veritable
missing link in ourselves.
Although scientists speculate that humans may evolve an even larger
nose to adapt to airborne pollution, it is easy to envision
standardized residential air filtration of some sort becoming a
vital norm in the relatively near future. In a quite typical
evolutionary response to increased reliance upon man-made apparatus,
the nose may gradually recede, possibly even being a consequence of
subterranean or submarine living with such respiratory support.
Although environmental conditions which influence human evolution
are undoubtedly different today than they were thousands of years
ago, one consistent and prevalent phenomenon which began long ago is
the de-evolutionary effect which intelligent advancements inevitably
have upon us.
With the advent of culture, we developed clever new ways of using
the things around us to protect us, assist us, and even compensate
for individual shortcomings. One endowed with, for example, less
fracture resistant bones could avoid or survive problems associated
with such a vulnerable condition, provided some degree of personal
skillfulness is used and/or empathy from others is in effect.
These usually harmless, though gradually more means-dependent
traits, in turn, eventually homogenize into the available gene pool,
so long as examples like the said individual typically survive and
breed. Marked reductions of structural robusticity of the body are
largely byproducts of social progression toward lifestyles which
tend to be either safer and more forgiving, or somehow provided for
along these lines.
Physiological characteristics which are no longer critical for
procreation may be subject to eventual recession. This could (or
has) lead to the fading of certain characteristics found desirable
or convenient, despite their not being essential to actual survival
or reproduction in modern environments.
Some people, even today, would be suited for a better quality of
life, were they to have less fragile skeletons or stronger muscles,
like were more common among our predecessors. Imagine the results of
our virtually entropic condition prolonged over hundreds more
generations, and then review the more compelling alien encounters.
Considering technology’s relationship with human’s current wide lack
of natural selection, traits which would go sorely missed may fall
prey to an almost iatrogenic genetic atrophy. Things could be
punctuated as such especially after becoming debilitative or
burdensome in any way.
Given possibility of time travel, hypothetical victims of this
erosive dwindling due to time and dependency upon science may
eventually turn back toward the relatively archaic genes of a period
like ours. Much like domesticated animals with bloodlines too far
removed from nature’s more well-rounded selectivity, reintroduction
of ’earlier’ genes might be healthy for them in the sense that it
can help compensate for traits which have drifted (a known practice
among animal breeders). If even moderately durable bone mass, for
example, remains practical for accidents’ sake, this and other
waning qualities might no longer be taken for granted and, instead,
be greatly valued in future retrospect.
This agenda of reintroduction neatly accounts for procedures
allegedly performed upon those claiming abduction, specifically
tissue sampling or reproductive physiology related tampering. Also,
’primary examination’ reports have frequently included procedures
eerily analogous to things such as scoliosis screenings.
Humanoid extraterrestrial visitation can seem even more far-fetched
than chrononaut theories involving the stretch of time travel,
especially after wrestling with the incomprehensible difficulty of
the mingling of our genes with those of a genuinely unrelated
extraterrestrial, as suggested in hybrid scenarios.
The term "human being" has previously defined us as highly adaptable
and thus exhibiting few limiting specializations. If there is any
truth to abduction lore, however, it may be that our anatomically
postmodern descendants eventually prove otherwise, requiring us to
either redefine ’human’, or exclude them as such.
Go Back
Humans... Among us!
By Clayton Rumley
Early in my youth, I was fascinated by UFOs and alien visitors. In
grade 3 and grade 4, I would often believe that I was seeing
unidentified objects in the sky (of which the majority were probably
terrestrial aircraft, and one may have been a blimp, which I
would’ve been less familiar with), and every few nights or so, I’d
have frightening nightmares about UFOs landing in my yard, or making
people “fall asleep” right where they were standing (like in so many
UFO reports). These were simply nightmares, and not repressed
memories or anything of that ilk. I studied just about everything I
could on the subject and wrote childish science-fiction stories
about it.
As I got older, however, UFOs started to lose their charm. As I read
more “not for children” accounts, UFOs changed from being strange
sights in the sky to grey-skinned, big-eyed, sinister aliens, whose
sole purpose seemed to be to abduct humans for bizarre sexual
experiments. A skepticism that I never knew I had suddenly asserted
itself.
I stopped reading about UFOs and alien abductions. Curious visitors
from another planet seemed plausible to me, but not this shadow
government, human-alien hybrid stuff. It just didn’t make any sense.
Later on (around the time I was thirteen), I was watching a
made-for-TV movie (I can’t recall the title or the actors in it),
about women who had been abducted and experimented upon all their
lives only to have recalled during a hypnosis session. The
non-believing psychiatrist examining them turns to a believer, based
on the evidence they uncover.
Back then, the movie seemed very scary, but it inspired in me a new
way of thinking. At the end of the movie, the psychiatrist and his
girlfriend (one of the abductees) are discussing the alien
abductions and the human-alien hybrid experiments, and asks (I’m
paraphrasing here) “Why are they trying to create a new race?” To
which the psychiatrist replies, “Who knows? Maybe to save an old
one.”
Obviously, the “old race” the psychiatrist referred to was the
“ancient” alien race in the movie. But I thought about his last
statement, and came up with an idea totally revolutionary to
anything I had ever heard about: What if “aliens” were really
time travelling humans from the future? Amazingly, though I was sure that
I couldn’t have been the only person to postulate the time travelling human hypothesis, several years passed before I was aware
that others had similar ideas.
There is only one book that I’ve personally read (and own) that
mirrors my suggestion: J. H. Brennan’s Time Travel: A New
Perspective. For all the UFO books that I’ve read (and I’ve read
quite a few, though definitely not all), I don’t recall any author
ever entertaining this notion.
For the last eight years, I’ve tried to sift through all my
knowledge on UFOs, and the minimal knowledge that I have of the
physics of time travel, to support my hypothesis, and cast doubt on
the extraterrestrial hypothesis. And, over the years, I’ve come up
with some interesting conclusions.
Travel -
One of the main reasons cited against extraterrestrial
involvement is the extreme distances they would have to cross in a
reasonable amount of time. If “aliens” are time travelers, then no
distance to cross is required.
The counter-argument to that is “if the universe is expanding, the
position of the earth in the universe in 1999 is going to be greatly
different than it’s position in 2004. Thus, time travelers would
find themselves millions of miles off course”.
My response to that would be in the form of an analogy. Take a
balloon, and imagine that it represents the universe, and the
surface is the fabric of space and time. Make a dot on the balloon.
This dot represents a particular point in space at a certain time
(say the present). Now inflate the balloon (if the universe is
expanding, you’ve just moved into the future). Not only does the
mark stretch a bit; it also changes position in three-dimensional
space. However, since the entire balloon stretched the same amount,
that mark still refers to the exact same point on the balloon as
when it was deflated.
Thus, a point in space is the exact same point in different times,
even if the universe expands. If the time travelers are using
wormholes fixed in space but not in time, and the wormhole is
anchored to a position in space a few miles away from the moon,
then, whatever time they go to, they will always be the same
distance from the moon (provided the moon hasn’t changed it’s
position in the universe).
Space -
What about all the sightings of UFOs that are either (a) in
space, or (b), appearing to fly off into space? I can give a couple
of reasons as to why time travelers would want to do this.
Firstly, there aren’t enough people in space to witness their
appearance and disappearance on a regular basis, thus allowing them
to arrive and vanish undetected.
Secondly, their method of travel may employ a wormhole (which I am
in favor of), and they may not wish to draw portions of our
atmosphere with them to their time (for reasons concerning
contamination).
And thirdly, I’m probably not up to date on all the advancements
concerning our theoretical understanding of wormholes and black
holes, but I’ve never read anything stating that wormholes couldn’t
have gravitational pull, similar to a black hole. It may be a
physical requirement (or simply, for safety’s sake), to only open
wormholes in a vacuum, space being the most convenient for time
travel. Opening one on earth or in its atmosphere may cause
problems.
Physiology -
The descriptions of “aliens”, as being grey-skinned,
thin-bodied, big-headed beings definitely doesn’t sound human. But I
believe it’s human enough.
Since most abduction claims involve medical experiments, one would
imagine that everything on board the ship would be sterile. Also,
human travelers from the future would most likely not want to expose
modern-day humans to potential viruses from the future, as well as
they themselves not wanting to put themselves at risk with all of
our germs. If you traveled back in time to Europe during the days of
the black plague, how long do you think you, with your
twentieth-century immune system, would survive?
The “alien” appearance of these time travelers may simply be
contamination suits. Modern-day suits are particularly bulky, but
they may evolve to be more form fitting over time as new materials
are invented. The funny shaped head could just be a mask or helmet.
The bulkiness of that could be attributed to some sort of virtual
reality system built into those large, black view-ports that allow
the “aliens” to perform medical procedure with the aid of a
computer.
Interestingly enough, the movie “Fire In The Sky”, which was based
on a true story (supposedly), involved an abducted individual who
woke up on the alien ship, and discovered space suits that looked
just like those “grey” aliens. If any of this is true, it lends
credence to my hypothesis.
The reports that aliens speak without moving their mouths (generally
believed to be telepathy, of which I am skeptical) may simply be a
speaker system between the human’s head and helmet. Also, keep in
mind that aliens didn’t always have an “alien” appearance.
Until the popular “grey” alien concept emerged into society’s
consciousness, the UFOs of yesteryear often had human occupants.
During the airship flap of the last few decades of the nineteenth
century, several airship sightings were reported containing
individuals who appeared to be, and claimed to be humans. If we are
to take these reports as anything but a hoax, we must be willing to
accept that these might have been time travelers from the future,
having fun with some of the locals of that era. Most of these
airship sightings took place in the United States, which is
important to my hypothesis later on.
Motivation -
Why are extraterrestrials travelling vast distances so
that they can covertly abduct human beings and produce bizarre
crossbreeding experiments? If they have such a disregard for human
life, why not just conquer and cage us for use later? Why would they
bother forming pacts with the American government for the permission
to abduct its citizens?
Now, the answers to the last two questions are generally given as
follows: A UFO crashes and is retrieved by the military. The aliens,
knowing that their secret is out agree to supply the military with
alien technology provided that the military look the other way when
they do their abductions and keep their mouths shut.
I find problems with that answer immediately. If the aliens can just
“turn off” people (as is reported during abductions), why not just
turn off all the military personnel, retrieve their crashed ship,
and continue the experiments? Why not make everyone in the military
that knows the truth forget about it, just like they seem to make
abductees forget about their experience? If their goal is to do
their work without interfering with the natural evolution of our
planet, then they screwed up royally. For starters, they have to
give technology to the leaders of the planet (if you follow that
hypothesis). Secondly, their methods of making people forget is
faulty; people remember their abductions, and as a result, our very
culture has been irrevocably changed by their presence.
Now, if these “aliens” are time travelling humans, things make a
little more sense. Humans have a romantic fascination with doing
things covertly, and I imagine that it will not change in the
future, thus, the “alien” need for secrecy, etc.
As for the bizarre experiments? I could suggest any number of
reasons. Perhaps, some sort of disease has swept through humanity in
the future, and mankind’s only hope is to procure untainted genetic
samples from humans in the past. Maybe all the countries on Earth in
the future are attempting to find a cure first and save their
respective populations, thus there may be some sort of “time race”
(like our “arms race”) between them, explaining why abduction is a
world-wide phenomenon.
Let’s suppose that these time travelers are Americans from the
future. They’d love to make a deal with their government of the
past, as would the government love to make a deal with the America
of the future, especially if it involved obtaining knowledge of the
future. The possibilities are endless, but I believe there is only
one answer to the reason behind these activities. And it’s probably
something that only a select group of people from our time know.
That some people believe aliens have abducted them is not
questionable. Whether or not these events take place exactly as the
abductees remember them is subject to question. If, though, they are
accurate recollections, I suggest that everyone consider the
possibility that these “aliens” are in fact time travelling humans
from the future. A prospect, as far-fetched as it sounds, is only as
far-fetched as the notion that aliens from a distant world have come
here to steal sperm from men, impregnate women, and form secret
pacts with our governments.
Sources:
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Brennan, J. H. Time Travel: A New Perspective. St. Paul, MN:
Llewellyn Publications, 1997.
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Clark, Jerome. Unexplained!. Detroit, MI: Visible Ink Press, 1993
Go Back
4-th Dimensional Life Forms
My thoughts on things of other worlds
This is just a theory that I thought up that cannot be yet
disproved, so I offer it when talk of extra terrestrial life arises.
It is no mystery that there are probably other planets in the
universe that can sustain human life. Scientists have examined a
relatively small section of space (approximately the size of making
a circle with your pointer finger and thumb and looking through it
at arm’s length) and found billions of galaxies at intermittent
depths. Each galaxy has billions of stars, and these stars have
planets. Even if one out of every billion planets were sufficient to
sustain human life, there would be billions upon billions of such
planets.
It is no secret that we are depleting natural resources to dangerous
levels while increasingly populating the world. Do the math: if the
world does not end, as some extremists believe, then we will be
forced to look elsewhere to sustain our growing population. There
are plans to colonize the moon and Mars by the middle of the next
century, and who knows what technology we will develop by then, such
as cold fusion to facilitate travel. Who is to say that we cannot or
will not look to the system of Alpha Centari and beyond? If trends
continue, over time (perhaps thousands of years) we will
overpopulate our nearest planetary neighbors and their moons which
could feasibly sustain human life. We will be forced to expand
outward in the galaxy, just as humans on this planet are believed by
scientists to have branched out from somewhere in Africa.
To sum up my theory: as of now, there are no “aliens,” just empty
planets waiting for us to land on and colonize. Does this mean that
there are no “people” on those planets now? Or are there? Please
read on…
Here is where we take a leap of imagination. What if along with our
vast advances in interstellar travel, our future generations develop
time travel? That would mean that if in A.D. 4399 a scientist
discovered how to manipulate time on a planet somewhere in the Orion
system that he could go back to A.D. 1999 and visit his planet. If
this happened all over the universe, no matter what time (since time
would be a small gap separated only by the dial set on whatever
contraption is invented), there would be people on these planets
now. It is awkward to think four dimensionally, but this could
happen theoretically.
This would explain “visitations” that are being reported across the
world. Perhaps years down the line future humans do adapt to their
environments and fit the description of extra terrestrials that are
all reported to be rather scrawny (it would be a machine-labor world
requiring little physical strength), large eyed and pigment-lacking
(effects of little light due to possible air pollution of the future
or distance of their home planet from their “sun”), having rather
large heads and not orally communicating (possibly because of
increased brain use). Perhaps these humans of the future want to
look at their beginnings, just as any one of us would probably like
to see the first human civilization. Thus we have encounters with
“aliens.” This would explain why they appear to come from other
planets in spaceships: they really do.
This is a rather brief look at a theory that encompasses many ideas
that exist only in theory. It makes us think and ponder what we
would come up with as a people if there were no limits. I believe
that there are no real limits that we cannot overcome in time, and
therefore all described here is possible.
Go Back
Time Travelers from the Future
by David Anderson, Ph.D.
Our legends and folklore are filled with stories about UFO sightings
and contacts with aliens from other worlds... is it possible that
these stories are not about time travelers from a distant world...
but instead... that they are time travelers from our own future!
In these alien sightings the creatures have many human
characteristics... is it possible that they are time travelers from
our own planet... visiting us from thousand of years in the future?!
History is filled with many stories and legends about visitors from
time, and also of experiments in time.
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