Neolithic (Agricultural) Revolution
It is the beginning of the evolution of human societies which cumulated in the one we inhibit today. Before the Neolithic Revolution humans, which had evolved into what they are over millions of years, were hunter gatherers. But domestication of crops and livestock allowed for the establishment of settlements and subsequently all sorts of developments and innovations.
Before the Neolithic Revolution the human population of the planet was pretty much stable for thousands of years, hovering around the 4 to 5 million mark. After the Neolithic Revolution, in a period of a couple of thousand years, the population increased something like a thousandfold. To sum it[1] up:
During the Neolithic Revolution plants and animals were deliberately altered at a genetic level by human hunting gatherer cultures in various locations worldwide to fit their needs.
But wait a minute. 'deliberately genetically altered'? By people in the stone age?
Crops were genetically altered so that there is now an distinct difference between the wild species and the domesticated species. For instance, the wild species has a thick hard shell and a very small core or seed, which holds the nutrients and domesticated species had a very thin shell, easy to remove, with a large core or seed and thus lots more nutrients which were easier to obtain or digest. That is a pretty radical change. And this is supposed to have happened by a process of selection, which takes many, many generations of this crop, even if you get it right the first time and know exactly what you are doing. Cross breed the ones with the thinnest shell with others with the thinnest shell and remove the ones with the thicker shell so they don't reproduce.
That's a truly remarkable achievement. And this happened all over the planet, not quite simultaneously but in a relatively short time span (if you compare it with the time we needed to evolve into the species, for instance) and with al kinds of crops.
One of these domesticated crops is barley[2], with a "genome [that] contains about the same number of genes as the human genome, [but] it’s twice as big as ours". And wheat, one of the other domesticated crops, has a genome 3 times as big as that of barley. The barley genome got sequenced late in 2012 and “Once we have the sequence, we can zoom in on those lines that confer specific traits—like drought tolerance. You can identify types of genes important for different traits, and then assess them in standard field trials.”
So how the fuck, if you'll excuse my French, did some some bunch of stone age wildemen pull that one off? All over the planet? With a variety of crops? Armed with sticks and stones, dressed in leather skirts and trading shells and polished stones? Running around hunting and gathering and, en passant, altering the genetic make up of species? Oh, come on, seriously?
Aliens.
The Alien Interlude
Look, I didn't plan to embark on explaining why I think Aliens have visited our planet in the past, I have bigger fish to fry. But now I've dropped it I need to at least give some pointers that comply with Occam's Razor[3] more than other solutions.
The first pointer is, obviously, that Neolithic Revolution. I find it easier to believe aliens swung by, pulled that stunt and moved on than that some primitive bunch of stone age cave men practically simultaneously, all over the planet, changed populations of animals or plants on the genetic level.
Why would Aliens pull that stunt? Oh, various options:
a) Pity. They saw us struggling and thought, these poor bastards, give them a hand.
b) Food. There's just a couple of millions of us before the Neolithic Revolution and a 1000 fold after. And just like we would put out pigs and such on islands we passed while sailing across the oceans discovering the world isn't flat after all, to have fresh food on subsequent travels, the Aliens made sure there was enough to harvest, might they return.
c) Brainpower. Crop domestications leads to innovation, societies, technology and thus eventually brain-machine interfacing and hyper intelligence (unless we blow ourselves up, well, no big loss) which can then connect to the great galactic hive-mind and join civilisation.
Why don't we see any evidence of these Aliens?
Because we refuse to look at it as evidence but go out of our way to find alternative solutions for our observations, that are less preferable according to Occam's Razor but still selected in consensus, just like we for a very long time in consensus were convinced the Sun revolved around the Earth or that black people weren't human and could be traded like animals.
Three examples:
a) Elongated Skuls. There have been many finds of skulls that were artificially elongated. They look like alien skulls but everybody falls over each other to explain they are not alien, but human, just artificially elongated. This was done to establish or show some status of power or another. Why the fuck do elongated skulls (in a particular part of the world) represent power and status. They just woke up one morning and thought, hey, elongated skulls seems like a cool idea?
b) Nazca Lines, which are a series of ancient geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. I'm aware you can not only see them from flight but also from adjacent hills (I can *read, damn you) but why would a civilisation go to such length and effort for something to watch from a hilltop, depicting things on a massive scale that they could pick up and carry home, as mundane as flowers and shit?
c) mythology: Demeter, Persephone and Triptolemus
"Demeter's greatest gifts to humankind were agriculture, particularly of cereals"[4] Her Roman name is Ceres and the origin of the word Cereal.
She gave this to a dude named Triptolemus [..] the son of Gaia and Oceanus, another way of saying he was "primordial man". And this dude "flew across the land on a winged chariot while Demeter and Persephone, [..] cared for him, and helped him complete his mission of educating the whole of Greece in the art of agriculture."
What does (especially a and b) this point to?
To a Cargo Cult[5], "the religious practice that has appeared in many traditional pre-industrial tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures."
c) mythology: Demeter, Persephone and Triptolemus
"Demeter's greatest gifts to humankind were agriculture, particularly of cereals"[4] Her Roman name is Ceres and the origin of the word Cereal.
She gave this to a dude named Triptolemus [..] the son of Gaia and Oceanus, another way of saying he was "primordial man". And this dude "flew across the land on a winged chariot while Demeter and Persephone, [..] cared for him, and helped him complete his mission of educating the whole of Greece in the art of agriculture."
What does (especially a and b) this point to?
To a Cargo Cult[5], "the religious practice that has appeared in many traditional pre-industrial tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures."
It's the answer with the least possible assumptions, just one. Aliens paid us a visit and we were in absolute fucking awe.
Am now posting this because some new moon has been discovered with a 6 mile radius and a volume of thus some 1000 miles.And I'm hoping they're back. :)
Am now posting this because some new moon has been discovered with a 6 mile radius and a volume of thus some 1000 miles.And I'm hoping they're back. :)
It's all fun and games mind you, don't lock me up in an asylum quite yet.
footnotes
[1] Neolithic Revolution
"The Neolithic Revolution or Neolithic Demographic Transition, sometimes called the Agricultural Revolution, was the world's first historically verifiable revolution in agriculture. It was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement which supported an increasingly large population.[1] Archaeological data indicates that various forms of plants and animal domestication evolved in separate locations worldwide, starting in the geological
epoch of the Holocene[2] around 12,000 14C years ago (12,000–7,000 BP).[3]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution
Domestication
"Domestication (from Latin domesticus) is the process where by a population of animals or plants is changed at the genetic level through a process of selection, in order to accentuate traits that benefit humans."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication
Cultigen
"A cultigen (from the Latin cultus - cultivated, and gens - kind) is a plant that has been deliberately altered or selected by humans; it is the result of artificial selection."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultigen
[2] Barley genome? Done
Professor makes news as genome-mapping is completed, opening doors to drought- and disease-resistant crops and tastier beer
http://www.parkbugle.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1739:barley
[3] Occam's Razor
Occam's Razor states "that among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter
Especially look at the lowest picture on the right hand side, see how tiny the human is compared to the two godesses who hand him the wheat?
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triptolemos
"Demeter chose to teach Triptolemus the art of agriculture and, from him, the rest of Greece learned to plant and reap crops. He flew across the land on a winged chariot while Demeter and Persephone, [..] cared for him, and helped him complete his mission of educating the whole of Greece in the art of agriculture."
[5] Cargo Cult
A cargo cult is a religious practice that has appeared in many traditional pre-industrial tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures. The cults focus on obtaining the material wealth (the "cargo") of the advanced culture through magic and religious rituals and practices. Cult members believe that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors. Cargo cults developed primarily in remote parts of New Guinea and other Melanesian and Micronesian societies in the southwest Pacific Ocean, beginning with the first significant arrivals of Westerners in the 19th century. Similar behaviors have, however, also appeared elsewhere in the world.
Cargo cult activity in the Pacific region increased significantly during and immediately after World War II, when the residents of these regions observed the Japanese and American combatants bringing in large amounts of matériel. When the war ended, the military bases closed and the flow of goods and materials ceased. In an attempt to attract further deliveries of goods, followers of the cults engaged in ritualistic practices such as building crude imitation landing strips, aircraft and faux radio equipment out of bamboo or whatever materials they had at hand, and mimicking the behavior that they had observed of the military personnel operating there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
Nazca Lines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines
footnotes
[1] Neolithic Revolution
"The Neolithic Revolution or Neolithic Demographic Transition, sometimes called the Agricultural Revolution, was the world's first historically verifiable revolution in agriculture. It was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement which supported an increasingly large population.[1] Archaeological data indicates that various forms of plants and animal domestication evolved in separate locations worldwide, starting in the geological
epoch of the Holocene[2] around 12,000 14C years ago (12,000–7,000 BP).[3]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution
Domestication
"Domestication (from Latin domesticus) is the process where by a population of animals or plants is changed at the genetic level through a process of selection, in order to accentuate traits that benefit humans."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication
Cultigen
"A cultigen (from the Latin cultus - cultivated, and gens - kind) is a plant that has been deliberately altered or selected by humans; it is the result of artificial selection."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultigen
[2] Barley genome? Done
Professor makes news as genome-mapping is completed, opening doors to drought- and disease-resistant crops and tastier beer
http://www.parkbugle.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1739:barley
[3] Occam's Razor
Occam's Razor states "that among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter
Especially look at the lowest picture on the right hand side, see how tiny the human is compared to the two godesses who hand him the wheat?
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triptolemos
"Demeter chose to teach Triptolemus the art of agriculture and, from him, the rest of Greece learned to plant and reap crops. He flew across the land on a winged chariot while Demeter and Persephone, [..] cared for him, and helped him complete his mission of educating the whole of Greece in the art of agriculture."
[5] Cargo Cult
A cargo cult is a religious practice that has appeared in many traditional pre-industrial tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures. The cults focus on obtaining the material wealth (the "cargo") of the advanced culture through magic and religious rituals and practices. Cult members believe that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors. Cargo cults developed primarily in remote parts of New Guinea and other Melanesian and Micronesian societies in the southwest Pacific Ocean, beginning with the first significant arrivals of Westerners in the 19th century. Similar behaviors have, however, also appeared elsewhere in the world.
Cargo cult activity in the Pacific region increased significantly during and immediately after World War II, when the residents of these regions observed the Japanese and American combatants bringing in large amounts of matériel. When the war ended, the military bases closed and the flow of goods and materials ceased. In an attempt to attract further deliveries of goods, followers of the cults engaged in ritualistic practices such as building crude imitation landing strips, aircraft and faux radio equipment out of bamboo or whatever materials they had at hand, and mimicking the behavior that they had observed of the military personnel operating there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
Nazca Lines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines
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