For thousands of years, the Evolution of the Earth has been studied in an array of streamlined branches like Science, History, Sociology, Archaeology and more – with these branches being divided into further twigs for specification. Famous theories like the Gaia Hypothesis, Survival of the Fittest, Oparin Haldane Theory, Fermi Paradox, Panspermia etc have formed the foundation of what we know today about our planet’s geology, composition, organisms and functioning along with extraterrestrial fundamentals of the universe that go beyond the tales of Terra.
An underrated aspect in these studies has been that of Technology and there is not enough emphasis on it’s evolution from the days it became a phenomenon. As modern day users of Technology, it is easy to believe that “Tech” has existed only in the 20th/21st century, contrary to factual occurrences of the prevalence of Technology even three million years ago. Stone tools used by cavemen and ancestors of homo sapiens, the discovery of fire, the utility of wheel, agricultural equipment, marine voyage equipment, utility of iron, harnessing wind energy, printing of paper, transport and then digital computers – all of them comprise of Technology. The term Technology is of Greek origin, like several other English words. It is a combination of the word “technē” meaning art/craft and the word “logos” meaning speech. Together, the two words defined Technology as a systematic way of making and doing things, assigning roles to objects via a range of processes and the means by which human beings brought change to the environment.
Extra Terrestrial Influence on Technology
The Panspermia Theory, which suggests that life on Earth did not originate on our planet and was transported here from somewhere else in the universe doesn’t seem so far from reality given the evidences on Earth that have been uncovered over the years. Archaeological markers show us that not only did different species from the Universe walk the Earth, they also contributed to the rise of ancient civilisations that were technologically more advanced than us – they possessed remarkable technology that finds a place in researches on unsolved mysteries, especially those pertaining to architectural marvels. What if water on Earth really did come from Mars as hypothesised by researchers studying meteor showers dating back to billions of years ago, and what if the creatures that exist in extreme climatic conditions today are actually from a different planet harbouring similar extremities?
The future we call “Artificial Intelligence” allows human beings to function on a higher level, it blurs the lines between (wo)man and machine. It provides enhanced capabilities to human systems and creates enhanced machines at the same time, which is quite similar to the process of Evolution if you think about it. Human beings thrived on highly efficient ancient technology which is far superior to the kind we have today, created further Technology as well and evolved with enhanced capabilities at every step. What if, the technology we pioneer today will help us birth new kinds of human-mechanical species, communicate with the universe far better than our ancestors did, and eventually leading to cohabitation of species here and beyond?
The controversies of Area 51 are plenty in number and after several ones surrounding the location’s operations were clarified by former scientists, it emerged that they were working on reverse-engineering extraterrestrial flying saucers. It also paved the way for the secret knowledge of chemical elements that were used on those flying objects hundreds of years ago but didn’t actually exist on Earth until the 21st century. Declassified documents also contained a section on Unidentified Flying Objects which sheds light on an Area 51 project called Operation Blue Book. Why blue? Hollywood and Avatar inspiration much? What if, futuristic technology will actually stem from reverse engineering the equipment that was found hundreds of years ago?
The space technology that we take so much pride in as a planet, is so similar to carvings of spacecrafts found in the caves of Australia, Africa and Asia which were made thousands of years ago. Not only did these carvings depict creatures arriving from the sky in round machines which look exactly like modern day spacecrafts, they also showed creatures wearing helmets exactly like the space suits we have today. What’s more baffling is that a lot of these carvings in every continent can be seen only by specific equipment or aircrafts. How and why did people create such designs centuries ago that can only be viewed by modern equipment? What if ancient civilisations were closer to the multi-dimensional realms that we seek today but have failed to truly encounter – in terms of communication with other beings of the Universe, way of life, technological equipment, scientific knowledge and more?
Extra Terrestrial Influence on Spirituality and Religion
For almost a millennium, the concept of spirituality has revolved around acknowledging and enhancing the power within us, channelising physical/universal energies and aligning our system with the cosmos. Religion as a whole on the other hand, talks about praying to a higher power in the universe. What if the higher power in the universe that is responsible for phenomenons like Creation, Fate and Destiny is extra terrestrial? Could “aliens” possibly be controlling our lives? Some branches of Spirituality speak of the world being an illusion, a Maya – an illusion for us to live in but not to be confused with our reality. The age-old theory of Dualism – reality or maya, wave or particle nature, yin or yang, man or woman, to be or not to be is strikingly similar to the modern day technology of binary computer systems stemming from 0 or 1. What if the world is really an illusion and the technology we bring into it today is controlled by extraterrestrial powers from a different dimension who use ancient theories as a building block for the technology of tomorrow?
Today, Artificial Intelligence is en route to hosting multi-dimensional aspects of Personality. Simply put, it can enable a (wo)man or a machine to have different personalities, it can assess different personalities in different scenarios and at different times and accurately recreate the ever-changing nature of human beings. What if this futuristic concept has roots in today’s African, South American and Asian religious beliefs in a single God having multiple versions in different dimensions?
One can ponder over why our Gods look like the way they supposedly do from interpretations of rock carvings belonging to civilisations all over the world – were they a form of advanced species from a different plane that walked the Earth once upon a time and brought advancements? Is this why they came to be revered by the people via mesmerising temples? Because they helped bring civilisation to the blue-green composition this planet had? Legends in temples of Asia, Africa and South America speak of housing doors to different dimensions, which is similar to the not-so modern day concept of time travel. What if the idea of Time is relevant only to life on Earth and doesn’t fit into other dimensions of the Universe?
Relevance of the Geological Timeline
Modern day Science also proved to us that the Earth can orbit around the Sun only under specific carefully balanced conditions which upon not being met, can cause the planet to fall away from the orbit. Surprisingly, this theory was already documented thousands of years ago in ancient scriptures which carbon dating, archaeology and civilisational study reveals today. How did these civilisations know? What if they were influenced by or in contact with extra terrestrial powers that taught them the way of life and the language of the Universe?
Climate Change was prevalent even during the early days of the planet, the weather and the ecosystem were constantly evolving just like it is today. Evolutionary processes millions of years ago included changes in the climate, the soil, oceans, forests, organisms, cellular structure and more – and these changes brought us to the present, to what we are today. What if the change in climate today is paving the way for a new dawn of civilisation tomorrow? The climate of a place played a huge role once upon a time, in determining the kind of technologies to be used – one harnessed wind energy at a place that was prone to high winds, one used different sailing equipment for rough seas and gentle waves. What if global warming today is preparing us all for a sea of change (pun intended) in our technology processes – be it higher utility of green computing, energy efficient systems, sustainable manufacturing units, net zero energy homes, reduced dependency on carbon emissions, futuristic tech and resourcing from Mars? Even the possibility of new organisms emerging from climate change cannot be ruled out, after all, the existing creatures are a result of evolutionary processes occurring over a span of millions of years – especially eccentric marine creatures belonging to the dark oceans of this planet.
Evolution is constantly evolving, be it nature, cells and organisms, homo sapiens, buildings or machines. With all the oil our modern civilisation has been drilling, someday the core and mantle of the Earth might see a shift too, causing a further shift in seismological patterns of plate tectonic movements.
Once upon a time when Evolution was being studied, primates were primarily split into neanderthals (similar to cavemen) and homo sapiens (human beings). The differences between these primates relied on anthropological, biological and linguistic factors among others. However, the primary distinguishing factor between the two was that Neanderthals sourced for their food by hunting and gathering and Homo sapiens chose a stable source of food by producing it from agriculture and domestication of animals.
The occurrence of the Ice Age wiped out neanderthals among other wildlife species but the homo sapiens survived. It is believed that homo sapiens survived because they were smart enough to switch to agriculture at the right time for survival during the latter half of the Ice Age and neanderthals couldn’t survive because they were primarily hunters who had nothing left to hunt anymore as animals had perished at the time – barring 2% of the world’s mammal population today.
What if the ice age hadn’t occurred and two distinct yet similar kinds of human beings co existed today, perhaps giving rise to a new species imaginatively called Neosapiens, or Homo Neaniens – a coexistence that thrived on borrowing from each other’s skill sets. What if there was no vegetarianism in the world at all, and a combination of agriculture and hunting was the norm. Would this solve the prevalent problem of malnutrition today?
Agriculture contributes to excessive land utility and degradation which is unfortunately needed for our sustenance too since not everyone can indulge in simple terrace veggie gardens to grow our own food. Constant agricultural practices also lead to a decline in soil quality over time, which often results in a reduced nutrition value of the fruit/vegetable produce. Genetically Modified Seeds came into the picture to solve this conundrum, along with aiming to enhance physical appearance of the agricultural produce. What if land degradation and harmful agricultural practices reduced greatly due to incorporating the neanderthal way of hunting for meat into our daily lives, thereby reducing the chances of poor soil quality and then producing better crop? There wouldn’t ever be a need to create food in a laboratory and Genetically Modified Seeds wouldn’t exist. What if this dangerously altered the Food Chain too?
Scientists in the past considered viewing the Earth as one single living entity in the 1700s. Geologist James Hutton while speaking at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, said that he thought of Earth as a “superorganism” that functioned like a single organism. He corroborated this by comparing it to the human body and asserting on similarities between the various systems that work interdependently in both. He used Harvey’s theories of circulation of blood in a human body to compared it to Earth’s nutrient, water and existential cycles. He compared the human body’s nerve system to the intricate river system on Earth which is actually quite similar when satellite images of interlocked rivers are observed and found to be like the human nervous system. He also spoke of how the Earth is similar to a human body in terms of oxygen-carbon synthesis, cellular composition, temperature and accumulation of toxins. In the 1970s, a British scientist named James Lovelock hypothesised that the Earth is a single organism and the living organisms on the planet interact with their physical/chemical surroundings to operate as a self-regulating intricate system that gives rise to synergy and co-evolution of life on Earth. Lovelock believed that evolution and organisms on Earth were part of a close-knit process in Nature and were not exclusive or parallel to one another. He went a step further and believed that the Earth’s habitable nature, the global aspect to it’s temperature, the abundance of life-giving Oxygen, the salty nature of oceans and the pattern in which climate functions are steadily maintained internally, physically, and chemically (homeostasis) along with abiotic processes under natural laws of life that were governed by the organisms which were evolving everyday and by Gaia (Earth) herself as a super-organism. The hypothesis was initially ridiculed due to lack of scientific evidence but today, it has been formally recognised as “Gaia Theory” considering that it can now be backed by several experiments. What if the Earth is really one big organism being controlled by extra terrestrial powers in the universe?
Circles have been a representation of Infinity both mathematically and culturally, long before the symbol of an inverted “8” took over. Mathematics is the language of the Universe, there is a rhythm in everything we see and touch. Perhaps the ever-expanding infinite Universe functions on the principle of “circle of life” too – we do find ourselves going back to basics for the purpose of interpreting and solving modern-day conundrums, to the same stories that were told thousands of years ago, to actions in history which would hold relevance even today and to science. The circle of life also explains that we come into this world some day and finitely depart from it, albeit keeping our energies alive.
Today, in an attempt to create sustainable housing, we’re going back to the same hut-like structures that were prevalent throughout the globe, consisting of cooling materials (wood, mud and more) and are being constructed with an aim to keep temperatures naturally low. These “new” eco-homes are being fancily marketed and only aware individuals realise that these structures have stemmed from our ancestors. Our ancestors used bamboo stems and charcoal for oral hygiene before flashy plastic changed the market – today, when “Sustainability” has become a fashionable word in the world, Earthlings are going back to eco friendly bamboo and charcoal to brush their teeth. Copper/steel utensils too are gradually being used for the benefits of their chemical properties, properties which our ancient civilisations were well aware of thousands of years ago. Countries have begun to adopt leaf-packaging and leaf-utensils over plastic just like our ancestors ate and packed their food hundreds of years ago. How did “primitive calendars” from across the world predict a degradation of the Environment thousands of years before it actually started happening? Considering the brevity with which world leaders and organisations are addressing climate change today, we might just be on the verge of incorporating the ancient way of praying to Nature once again. What if all this is just a manifestation of the circle of life, taking us closer to the system we came from?
A Social Circle
There are numerous examples of our ancestors being more advanced than us not only in technology as mentioned earlier but also socially – be it through the scientific lives they led or the way society burgeoned. There are evidences of Asian, African and South American women being more empowered physically, mentally and existentially in terms of the respect they garnered, the chores they equally shared with a man, the clothes they wore and the multiple partners they chose. As the LGBTQ movement rises around the world, research and documentation from ancient civilisations has come to light that show the high regard in which Transgenders and Homosexuals were held. They were more socially empowered than the queer community today. What if we aren’t actually progressing as a species and are just going back in time? What is time after all, if not a social construct?
Travelling today holds more importance as a hashtag on social media than the purpose it once served in history. Human beings travelled for survival, sustenance, occupation and livelihood once upon a time. It became socially exploratory in nature only later when technological advancements permitted (wo)mankind’s imagination and ideas to manifest. Borders never existed, a person was free to roam the jungles of Earth for food and livelihood without being asked for a passport and certainly without being shot for “trespassing”. Passports became the norm in Asia and the Middle East around the 3rd century BCE when a permit slip from the King became mandatory to cross the land citing geographical markers like “beyond the river”. Perhaps the term “passport” comes from the phrase “passing a port”, a document issued when one crosses a port/ocean/land mass/river. These permissions were often issued on Papyrus with a seal which later evolved to sophisticated paper versions. In the near future, these passports will probably be replaced by biometric/digital versions. But centuries later, what if conglomerations of all the countries that come together under the same roof today is a step towards going back to the same way of life yesterday? Could present-day destructive warfare get so saturated at one point that we would lead our civilisation to a new dawn where not only would the lines between races be blurred but the cartographical lines would not hold relevance either? What if borders were to not exist in the future and we as a species had been able to rid ourselves of our differences allowing what little of human beings have been left after mass destruction, to settle wherever we wanted?
I’ve always felt Science “Fiction” and real Futuristic Technology are so appealing because of the actual possibility of it all and the congruence they both hold – with several movie plots borrowed from ancient mythical tales of untapped civilisations, history might just be a gateway into the Future. After all, it’s happened once, what if it happens again? What if this is where the circle of life takes us? What if the things we evolved from are what we are evolving back into?
