Humans are obsessed with the past.
Three million people visit the pyramids at Giza every year.
Annually, somewhere between four and ten million people visit the Great Wall of
China. Thus far, a million people have seen the World Trade Center Memorial
each year since it opened in 2011. The Battle of Gettysburg reenactments draws
thousands of viewers each year – in 2013, the 150th Anniversary
reenactment drew an estimated 120,000 people.
Machu Piccu, Stonehenge, The Roman Baths, Hadrian’s Wall,
Ellora Caves, Chichen Itza, Hieropolis? A million a year. Teotihuacan, The
Acropolis, Pompeii? Two million a year. The Terracotta Army, The Forum, and the
Coliseum? Three to seven million.
We love our history. We love our past. WE LOVE DRAMA! Think
about what happened at each of those places! Think of the pain, the weeping,
the joy, the victories!
Think of the movies. I cannot find a number that even hints
at the number of historical films that have been made – and NOT just in the US!
Russians make history films. So do the Chinese. Bollywood goes without saying.
But the Israelis do, too. And the Brazilians.
Humans are stuck in the past, doomed to relive it so many
times and in so many ways that eventually it becomes legendary, then mythical,
then finally mystical. Anne McCaffrey wrote in 1968: “When is a legend, legend?
Why is a myth, a myth? How old and disused must a fact be for it to be
relegated to the category: Fairy tale? And why do certain facts remain
incontrovertible, while others lose their validity to assume a shabby, unstable
character?”
Will aliens have the same obsession as Humans? Will their
obsession be greater? Less?
At Diversicon in 2013, the discussion was “Aliens + Alien
Ruins + Human Past”, and while not moderating, Jack McDevitt’s work was the
launching point of the session. ANCIENT SHORES, ETERNITY ROAD, the entire
ACADEMY series, which deals with the origin of the mysterious Omega Clouds; and
the Alex Benedict series, that deals with both Human and (possibly) alien antiquities
are firmly based in this “future’s past”. In his third novel, THE ENGINES OF
GOD, Humans find an ice statue that at least one intelligent alien left behind on
Saturn’s moon, Iapetus. The assumption then is that they must think something
like us because leaving a statue of yourself behind for posterity is a very “Human”
thing to do – sort of an “ice sculpture selfie”.
Who’s to say this is a ridiculous assumption? Who’s to say what aliens will and will not think
about? Others argue that “different ways of thinking” accounts for The Great
Silence, ie: “Our Galaxy is so old that every corner of it should have been
visited many, many times over by now. No theory to date has satisfactorily
explained away this Great Silence, so it’s time to think outside the box.”
The fact is that we have no evidence for aliens. Expressed
in his book, CONTACT, Carl Sagan’s argument that “If we are alone in the
Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space.” (This is a paraphrase of
Sagan quoting Thomas Carlyle: “A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a
scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.”),
and is differently iterated in his narration of the original COSMOS TV show
when he says, “...absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
So, the question is, do YOU think that aliens will have
their own version of “Antique Road Show”? Why or why not? What other responses to the past might an alien have?
Me? I think aliens will be alien and probably
incomprehensible – and have attitudes that won’t support Carl Sagan or any
other preacher on Earth. Except maybe having an idea of God. I’m pretty sure
that will be a part of any aliens we ever meet.
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