What If Ancient Civilizations Had Experienced Alien Life? | Unveiled

What If Ancient Civilizations Had Experienced Alien Life?

For many of us, space travel, and especially intergalactic space travel, is a hypothetical thing of the future. It’s something that hopefully we’ll live to see in our lifetime, with next generation humans jetting about the cosmos. But what if this planet had already seen it all before?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if ancient civilizations had experienced space travel and alien life?

How could it be possible for an ancient civilization to have had space travel? Of course, it’s a more than reasonable question, given that most widely supported accounts of ancient history don’t include it. Well, whenever these theories are seriously floated, and sometimes they are, the sheer vastness of the universe is usually front and centre, both in terms of time and space. Modern humans have been around for about 300,000 years or so, but Earth itself is around 4.5 billion years old, and the universe came into being almost fourteen billion years ago. Whether it’s the history of humankind, the history of this planet, or the history of the cosmos, we’re forever dealing with some truly epic time scales. And, when you consider how far humans have advanced during our time in existence, it can feel quite easy to imagine that some other civilization might’ve achieved all we have (and more!) in another time, another space, and another life.

For decades now it has felt that we, modern day human beings, are on the cusp of some serious space travel breakthroughs. And, therefore, it’s again perhaps easy to imagine that some other species or society might’ve gotten there already. Of course, we’re yet to discover any life on other planets, and we’ve only been able to physically explore a tiny portion of the universe. But a number of theories and models - from the Kardashev Scale to the Drake Equation - continually predict that there should be other civilizations out there. And this idea opens the door to many more exciting hypotheticals. What if, for example, there’s an intergalactic civilization elsewhere in the universe that’s visited Earth in the past? Importantly, there’s nothing by way of confirmed, solid, mainstream, or official scientific evidence to suggest that this is the case… but there are plenty of alternative theories out there. So, are any of them worth their salt?

One of the most often cited reasons for a belief in the existence of alien visitors long ago is the seeming sophistication of certain technologies built by ancient cultures on Earth. The Swiss writer Erich von Däniken, a leading figure within the generally regarded pseudoscientific Ancient Aliens theory, cites the Baghdad Electric Battery, the Moai Figures of Easter Island, and Stonehenge in the UK, as examples of these technologies at work. While another all too often cited theory is that the Great Pyramids in Egypt are so impressive that it therefore must have required some kind of extraterrestrial assistance to complete them. Finally, there are various instances of ancient art that some argue seem to depict non-ancient technologies like helicopters or spaceships, as well as apparently non-human, intelligent creatures. Do any of these things, then, truly stand up as serious documentation of an alien visitation in the past?

Ultimately… not really. While some aspects of ancient buildings, structures, cultures, and artworks do still remain mysterious and unknown… the Ancient Aliens theory in general isn’t supported by most scientists. With the Pyramids, for example, there are now multiple studies to show how regular humans alive at the time devised ingenious ramp systems to get the stones in place. With Stonehenge, there’s an ongoing effort to trace the path of the stones, and to work out how human beings moved and positioned them as we see them today. But, nevertheless, although the general scientific consensus is firmly that ancient humans weren’t visited by aliens, we can still imagine and hypothesise how such a meeting would’ve changed human history.

One possibility would’ve been that our ancient ET visitors were simply space explorers looking for excitement outside of their home galaxy. Human society, while still at the early stages of becoming a space-faring society, already it seems has an unquenchable thirst to explore the universe… so perhaps this is what any other alien civilization would feel, as well. And Earth might seem a reasonable destination of choice even without knowledge of the life that lives here, given various indicators of life - such as our planet’s position around its star, and the age of that star, too.

But, of course, any alien visitation (in the hypothetical past or the predicted future) could also be part of a more serious mission. Perhaps to determine whether humans could be friend or foe. A potential threat, or nothing to worry about. Were aliens to have visited Earth in the past, then a hypothetically militaristic alien group may have been scoping us out to determine if our planet or galaxy was worth invading and conquering… a decision which would no doubt have had a major impact on the evolution of the solar system. A compassionate alien group, however, may have visited to welcome us onto their higher level, and to offer us assistance as we advanced to our own space-travelling era. It’s this idea that usually forms at least part of the contemporary (and, again, contested) Ancient Alien theories.

The problem, of course, is that recorded human history in the real world only goes back so far. And so, it’s so often the human way to fill in the large gaps and things we don’t know with potential (if largely unfounded) explanations. Another of these involves the follow up question of, if aliens were to have visited Earth in the past, then where did they go? One answer often seen in science fiction and within various fringe theories is that they never left.

And, with a little imagination, there are a couple ways that aliens could have remained with us. In one option, they’re using their special alien technology to somehow hide from us. Perhaps they’re exceptionally long-lived and are still first generation, or maybe they’ve grown and reproduced since some long ago arrival time. Either way, a modern-day human is totally oblivious to them. You may have passed an alien this morning, seen one on TV last week, or you might even be an alien yourself. Regardless, the idea is usually that an alien presence on Earth would be quietly observing us. Sending data back to base. Or perhaps just treating this whole Earthly experience as though it were some kind of immersive safari trip.

Another hypothetical way that an alien presence could still be with us in a sense, would be by their camping just outside the range of our telescopes… and secretly observing our technological progression that way. If an alien species were ever advanced enough to travel to Earth at all, then we might safely assume that they’d also be able to observe us from beyond our reach. In this version of events, we’re being watched less like animals in a safari, and more like animals on a nature documentary. That said, this reality would still fall under the broader Zoo Hypothesis, which suggests that alien powers might be watching us until we develop and advance enough for them to reveal themselves to us. There are great distances at play here, and we just have to hope that in the meantime our proposed alien overseers don’t decide to stop watching and invade.

In general, the implications of the existence of an ancient space travelling civilization, and of one that might’ve visited Earth too, are amazing to consider. And, if it really were the case that early humans hundreds of thousands of years ago had crossed paths with them, then it would surely have altered the course of history. A meeting with an intergalactic species at an earlier point in the human story might’ve sped up our technological advancement, and it would almost certainly have had a major impact on the development of our art, culture, and language - far beyond even the most mysterious real-world examples, that are so often linked to the Ancient Aliens theory, already.

For now, aliens and space travel on ancient Earth is a hypothetical discussion only. A “what if” scenario, but one that most academic research says is much more likely science fiction than science fact. Past alien civilizations in general, however, is a much wider and seemingly much more feasible prospect. What with the universe being so incredibly vast, and having existed for such a long time, the growing consensus is that extraterrestrial life must exist somewhere… and could well have existed at some time before us. Perhaps one day soon we will discover it, and we’ll start building a momentous relationship with it… but for now, that’s what might’ve happened if ancient civilizations had experienced space travel and alien life.