Alternate Perceptions Magazine, November 2018
The Most Compelling Argument For Ancient Aliens
by: Dr. Greg Little
Chapman University conducts an annual poll on American’s beliefs about “paranormal” events and one of the most rapidly increasing beliefs in the general population relates to the idea of ancient astronauts visiting Earth. Their survey reveals that from 2016 to 2018, belief in ancient aliens visiting Earth went from 27% to 41.4%. At that rate, by this time next year about half of all Americans will believe in ancient aliens. Some self-described “skeptics” who lack a scientific background bemoan the increase as being due to the popularity of the History Channel’s long-running series Ancient Aliens. The show has partly focused on ancient archaeology sites that are seemingly inexplicable, and the focus of the show on these sometimes obscure but impressive archaeology sites is part of its mass appeal. The vocal skeptics also attribute a concurrent rise in beliefs about Atlantis and advanced ancient civilizations on Ancient Aliens’ focus on archaeology. According to the Chapman poll, nearly 57% of the population now believes in ancient advanced cultures like Atlantis.
While Ancient Aliens is definitely an entertaining and often provocative show, to scientists, the most compelling evidence for both Ancient Aliens and the existence of now-destroyed advanced ancient civilizations isn’t from the show. Instead, the most compelling evidence for ancient visitations to Earth by extraterrestrials doesn’t come from any alternative theorists. Instead, it came from the most revered and honored skeptic of all, astronomer Carl Sagan. You don’t see skeptics discussing Sagan’s argument about it very often, and they usually just ignore what Sagan wrote in the hopes the masses won’t become aware of it.
In 1963 Sagan published an article entitled “Direct contact among galactic civilizations by relativistic interstellar spaceflight” in the scientific and peer-reviewed journal Planetary and Space Science. Sagan began the article by admitting that the evidence (even known in the early 1960s) was that “a large fraction of the stars in the sky have planetary systems” … and that “life is a pervasive constituent of the universe.” He went on to statistically calculate the number of planetary systems that would have developed life before life evolved on Earth and also “attained a technical capability substantially in advance of our own.” He calculated that in the visible sky, “0.001 percent of the stars in the sky will have a planet upon which an advanced civilization exists.” He then went on to calculate the probability that these advanced civilizations could have developed the capability to make interstellar travel within the lifespan of a human. He concluded that, “other civilizations, aeons more advanced than ours, must today be plying the spaces between the stars.”
Sagan then went on to make calculations about the frequency of contact these advanced extraterrestrials would have visited other planetary systems and noted, “Planets of extraordinary interest would be visited more frequently” than planets without intelligent life. He estimated that planets such as Earth would be visited an average of once per thousand years when life first developed there and an increased frequency as evolution progressed over time. Sagan proposed that starting about “one or two million years ago” visits to Earth by extraterrestrials began with an initial “sampling” taken of Earth’s civilization progress about every 10,000 years. As human life developed and evolved, the rate of visitation to Earth by aliens increased dramatically to monitor the emerging civilizations and cultures. Sagan then described a series of historic and written accounts, which could have been extraterrestrial in nature. In summary, in his final estimate of extraterrestrial visits to Earth, Sagan proposed that various extraterrestrial civilizations had probably visited Earth an astonishing 10,000 times! These visits took place over the past 2 million years with frequent contact occurring as humankind made rapid advances.
Of even more interest is the fact that Sagan suggested that the dark side of the moon would have been an ideal staging base for the extraterrestrials monitoring Earth. Finally, Sagan mentioned that serious archaeological attention should be given to ancient Sumeria and the accounts of civilization being impacted by “an advanced, nonhuman and possibly extraterrestrial society.”