History of aliens

[Lincoln]

I was reading Carl Sagan's "Demon Haunted World." In it, he hypothesized that the psychology that makes people claim they see UFOs and aliens is the same as the psychology that made medevial people claim that they saw demons.

So I got to thinking about when aliens became an idea in our culture. I'm familiar with the canals on Mars of the late 1800's. And Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom books and War of the Worlds was only half a century later.

Does anyone know anything about when aliens entered the popular culture? I'm not so interested in anything after the 20's or so...then it's an explosion of science fiction. I'm interested in early speculation....the earlier the better. I did a cursory web search and decided I needed to go to the library for this one. But maybe somebody knows something that will help with the historical research.

[Sisyphus]

This is the earliest example I can think of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blazing_World

[Fuqin]

Probably the transformation from demons to alien simply follows cultural and technological change it would be hard to find the first belief in aliens as we think of them today, even if any of it were true'
the ancients would have still seen demons or gods regardles .
i.e. Elijah was taken to heaven in a chariot of fire these days he would have been abducted by aliens , and if there were witnesses he would have been having an epileptic fit ,
I think when these things happen ‘unexplained phenomena’ people jump to the first subliminal culturally befitting safety net ,
what puzzles me more is why we do mythmatize ourselves as a society,

[spazo]

I guess this depends heavily on what people might define an Alien as what's to say that in the 1800's a demon was the definition of an Alien.

Just a thought..

[Forest_Dump]

There is something to this. Strange "people" from strange, other worldly places is very old. The question is really when those other worldly places became other planets or stars, etc. Of course the wild and weird von Daniken suggested there were very old references to "aliens" but these generally have other interpretations in the anthropological lit. So the question might be more of when the "aliens" etc. became from other planets. But "aliens" were always around. Usually they were just attributed to other sources like demons, etc.

[realcomfy]

Were they ever depicted as burning flames?

[Lincoln]

You should read Sagan's "A Demon Haunted World." It is well worth the time on this subject.

[Forest_Dump]

Were they ever depicted as burning flames?

Interestingly I have seen a lot of rock art that some say looks like variations of stick people with flames. The elders, however, call these flames just emanations of supernatural "power" (a common part of animatism) and not flames per sey although in many ways it is not that dissimilar to the burning bush idea. It looks like a glow or aura and can be described as being like flames or burning but is not the same as fire that consumes. There have been some recent arguments made that rock faces for this art were chosen because the exposure and face of the rock allows for certain kinds of shimmering that would add to the effect. I don't know much about these newer ideas but I suspect they would be very difficult to scientifically support, etc. Far too much variation in where this rock art is and isn't, dating is rarely possible (so how do you know what things were like then, etc.) but there are some interesting ideas being kicked around here.

[Terry]

Some interesting references:

Book: Chariots of the Gods?

Ancient Aliens 2010 Series:
The Evidence
The Visitors
The Mission
Closer Encounters

Pls comment after watching.

[Lincoln]

For whatever it's worth, I was thinking more recent ideas of aliens. The von Daniken stuff is a retroactive study, projecting aliens into the past, rather than the contemporary vision people had, when they thought they were aliens.

Demons being reinterpreted as aliens is different than society's changing depiction of extraterrestrial life.

[linford86]

As the moderator in these parts, I'm going to trash any more irrelevant posts about von Daniken bunk should they appear. If someone wants to discuss that topic, and its questionable validity, they can post either in the "Mythbusters" section.

[kudayta]

Myth Busters. Please don't post von Daniken stuff in the Alternative Theories forum.

[Sisyphus]

The Blazing World also features what might be the first alien invasion.

[linford86]

Myth Busters. Please don't post von Daniken stuff in the Alternative Theories forum.

Okay. I changed my post to reflect your wishes.

[Sisyphus]

I'm not sure why my other post was given its own thread, but I've found that flying machines are part of Indian and Hindu mythology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimana

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushpa_Vimana

[linford86]

I'm not sure why my other post was given its own thread, but I've found that flying machines are part of Indian and Hindu mythology.

Because it sounded like another Von Daniken reference and I said that I would move all of the Von Daniken stuff to Mythbusters.

[Forest_Dump]

I wonder if you aren't being a little hasty. I am not sure anyone here, particularly Sisyphus (and certainly not myself, who first mentioned von Daniken, or Lincoln), takes that stuff seriously (I am as agnostic about aliens as anything else). But at some point, people did start to take the possibility of alien life a bit more seriously and it entered pop-lit. Lincoln, I think, was just trying to figure out when that really began and it is an interesting question. I would suspect it is correlated with broader popular interest in sciences but it may also correlated with other things. (I do remember an interesting study many years ago on trends in sci-fi movies and tv shows linked to politics - the enemy hidden among us, the cold war, etc.) Von Daniken is an interesting (but extreme) example and there were others from around those times (Barry Fell, Robert Ardrey, etc.) that are not taken seriously anymore but make interesting case studies (although an interesting book on frauds, myths, etc., in archaeology barely covers von Daniken - he is that much discredited).

[linford86]

Well, certainly Von Daniken, et al, were not the first people to mention aliens. They did so long after that kind of thing had entered popular culture. As far as I am concerned, Von Daniken was discredited from the get go; his archaeological theories are non-starters and are, what we in physics would call, "not even wrong". Therefore, being as Von Daniken's writings are heavily pseudo-historical and his references to aliens are most definitely not the first time that aliens were referenced in popular culture, I will state again that Von Daniken - and all of the other ancient astronaut literature - is irrelevant to the question being answered in this thread. Lincoln asked what the first cultural reference was to extraterrestrial life. This is the question that will be addressed here, and, again, all other questions can be taken up elsewhere. All issues regarding ancient astronauts will continue to be re-directed to Mythbusters where they rightfully belong.

Forest: In the future I would appreciate it if, in the future, you would place your disagreements about my moderation in the Feedback section. Thank you.

[Sisyphus]

Oh. I've never heard of Von Daniken before. I only actually watched a couple minutes of the History Channel show. It was just enough time to see some ancient artwork of Indian people flying around in weird machines, and hear the talking heads mention how it might have something to do with alien visitors.

[linford86]

Ah, I see, Sis. History channel has a lot of weird stuff floating around on it and shouldn't really be trusted as a reputable source of information. They're much more about sensationalism than they are about science. Von Daniken is the guy who made famous the idea that aliens visited the Earth in ancient times. This is him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken. Notice that the dude was arrested on fraud charges and wrote his second book from in prison. He's bad news.

[Lincoln]

I am mostly interested in the perception of the aliens by the culture thinking about aliens. It is somewhat interesting to me to have people look back at (say) Ezekiel and call that an alien, but I'm thinking more of "War of the Worlds", canals on mars, Barsoom, UFOs, ET, SETI, that sort of progression.

[Lincoln]

Well the topic did wander.

I'll bet the Egyptians didn't think that the big headed guy was an alien. They probably thought of it as a god.

My interest is the story of humanity's growing awareness of aliens as people from other planets. First they need to know that there are actually >>are<< other planets. And so on.

I am >>not<< interested in things that we humans have retroactively called aliens. (von Daniken need not apply.) If the contemporaries of the pictures, evidence, whatever, didn't think of them as from another planet, this is outside my topic intent.

[Forest_Dump]

More or less ditto. The alien interpretation in these cases is entirely a modern one. I think the closest you could get to an alien idea from that far back is "earthly" gods and heroes becoming constellations.

[mtbturtle]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_life

wiki gives a brief account of some of the historical references of possible other planets with lifeforms on them.

[Lincoln]

Thanks mtb...

I'm looking for a broader and more scholarly perspective than the wikipedia. I was just wondering if a reader had this as a hobby. Kind of like my interest in early middle eastern civilizations, if you read many dozens of books, you know a lot more trivia than can be incorporated in a wikipedia article.

However, I do appreciate the post.

[mtbturtle]

Thanks mtb...

I'm looking for a broader and more scholarly perspective than the wikipedia. I was just wondering if a reader had this as a hobby. Kind of like my interest in early middle eastern civilizations, if you read many dozens of books, you know a lot more trivia than can be incorporated in a wikipedia article.

However, I do appreciate the post.

Well the wiki gives a number of names and possible references that could be tracked down for those interested. From the wiki though it appears that the idea of other planets with lifeforms has been around for quite a long time. It became more popular it seems and widespread with the advent of things like the telescope.

[mtbturtle]

One of the references given on the wiki is to Michael Crowe who is a professor of History and Philo of Sci at Notre Dame. Don't know anything about him or his scholarly work but he has written several books on this topic. I found this pdf which seems to be an earlier paper. Haven't read it all, but it might be the kind of more "scholarly" source you are looking for. It has some interesting quotes.

[Lincoln]

Yeah, I've bought several books by Steven J. Dick, who has written similar things. I'll look into this new source. Thanks.

[linford86]

I'm starting to wonder how many times I need to say that ancient astronaut posts are not relevant here. Lincoln has stated several times that he is not interested in cases where mythological beings were retro-actively referred to as aliens. I've also stated several times that those posts should be placed in Mythbusters. I've therefore moved Michael's post to the Mythbusters section.

[Lincoln]

Your editing does make things a bit weird though. After all, I keep repeating, "No I don't mean that retroactive stuff." It looks like I have Alzheimer's or a mental stutter or something without the off-topic intermediate posts.