Two unusual and relevant events took place near the end
of this month of May, 2014.
One of them is the
availability through internet to obtain a free copy of the NASA publication
entitled ARCHEOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND INTERSTELLAR COMMUNICATION – Edited by Douglas A. Vakoch.
The credits of this publication
belong to the Office of Communications Publick Outreach Division - History Program Office - Washington, DC2014- The NASA History SeriesNASA SP-2013-4413
Douglas A.
Vakoch, Ph.D., is
Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute, as well as
Professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology at the California Institute
of Integral Studies. He serves as chair of both the International Academy of
Astronautics (IAA) Study Group on Interstellar Message Construction and the IAA
Study Group on Active SETI: Scientific, Technical, Societal, and Legal
Dimensions.
This is a book
of a total of 300 pages, with 252 of text. The others are dedicated to the
Index, references and introduction of the authors of each of the 15 Chapters,
an Introduction and an Epilogue.
Dr. Vakoch
points out to the fact that increasingly, what begun as a matter and concern for
Astronomers (namely SETI – the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) has
come along the time as a multidisciplinary task where Anthropology, Archeology,
Psychology, Biology and other disciplines have their place.
Within the
particular scope of this book, Dr. Vakoch explains in the Introduction under
the sub-title of Reconstructing Distant
Civilizations and Encountering Alien Cultures that:
“As we search for analogies to contact at interstellar
distances, archaeology provides some intriguing parallels, given that its
practitioners—like successful SETI scientists—are charged with reconstructing
long-lost civilizations from potentially fragmentary evidence………………The analogy
is an apt one for contact between Earth and the extraterrestrial civilizations
being sought by SETI, because if we do detect information-rich signals, they
may come from civilizations long since dead.” (Pages XVII y XVIII).
But this book
will probably become a paradigm about how much we can trust the press and how lightly
and sensationalistic it could come to be.
Because of all
the pages written in the book, only one
paragraph –which is just an expression, a way to say something in
English— written on one Chapter, was used by some media, but mostly by biased
web pages and the choir of their believers, to say that in this book NASA was
recognizing the presence of the so-called Ancient Astronauts.
Dr. William H.
Edmonson is the author of Chapter 15, and the paragraph that appears on pages
241 to 242.
He is
Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. His research
interests include topics in linguistics, human-computer interaction, ubiquitous
computing, and novel SETI search strategies and methods of data analysis. At
the University of Birmingham he has been actively involved in the Artificial
Intelligence and Cognitive Science Group, the Advanced Interaction Group, the
Natural Language Processing Group, and the Linguistics Group. As former
Admissions Tutor for Computer Science at the University of Birmingham,
Edmondson was responsible for undergraduate admissions for one of the leading
programs in computer science in the United Kingdom.
And here is the
paragraph:
“Consider again, therefore, the desirability of
establishing symbolic/linguistic communication with ETI. It is helpful to review
some parallels from human existence that pose problems for us today. One of
these is “rock art,” which consists of patterns or shapes cut into rock many
thousands of years ago. Such ancient stone carvings can be found in many
countries, .…..We can say little, if anything, about what these patterns
signify, why they were cut into rocks, or who created them. For all intents
and purposes, they might have been made by aliens. Unless we find a
readable exegesis of them produced at the time they were made, we will never be
able to say with certainty what the patterns mean.”
That phrase
that I underlined is the one and only mention of aliens in this context, and it
is the equivalent to say for instance:
“for all intents and purposes, they might have been made by my uncle”. Because
the real fact is that so far, we don’t know who did them or what they mean. And
that is all!
Enough about
this book whose reading we sincerely recommend.
Lic. Milton W. Hourcade