Scientists tell us that the Universe is about 13.8 billion years old, here's a link to a site that attempts to explain how this date was arrived at; http://www.space.com/24054-how-old-is-the-universe.html.
Now, the Earth is believed to be about 4.5 billion years old, and humanity itself is just a “blink” in cosmic time or “arrived the last minute of the last hour on the evolutionary calendar”,as I kind of half remember Carl Sagan telling us that on Cosmos.
Recently, I stumbled upon this article and it caught my attention because I had written down some thoughts on this very idea about a month ago https://www.quora.com/If-the-Earth-is-4-5-billion-years-old-and-humans-have-only-been-around-for-a-few-hundred-thousand-years-how-do-we-know-there-have-not-been-many-many-more-civilizations-and-species-before-us), after one of the many chats I've been having with my mother and her personal beliefs regarding the origins of human kind. Like many, many other people, she believes that humanity was deposited here long ago. A sort of biology experiment conducted by superior beings from another world, out there, somewhere in the vastness of space.
Since my family never forced any type of religious training on me, my mind was unfetter and receptive to the countless possibilities regarding the origins of life. Thus paving the way for keeping an open mind regarding other people's beliefs. As a youngster I loved to read about all the mythologies from all the different cultures around the world. Later on, when I read Joseph Campbell's “The Hero With a Thousand Faces”, and saw the interviews he did with David Frost about his book “The Power of Myth”, I started seeing similarities, connections, Jungian archetypes, etc., etc., linking up all those stories I had read as a child. Not surprising, it was an easy matter to accept the idea of humanity originating from one source. But I never concerned myself from where that source might have originated from.
In 1969, a nine-year-old me, was glued to the TV watching Neil Armstrong strut his stuff on the face of the moon (I believed it was real then and still do to this day). I still remember the rumors that Armstrong had taken a pistol with him, “just in case”. Half joking, half serious, we expected to be greeted by “little green men”. Space travel was now more truth than fiction, and if we could leave the confines of our planet, surely others, more advance could do the same and travel even further.
Humanity's obsession with aliens has been around ever since someone learned how to splatter paint on a rock wall and make a picture. Later on, when I got older, I learned about the Roswell incidenabduction watched a lot of alien abduction movies on TV, like the one about the Barney and Betty Hill abduction, and of course, who hasn't seen “Chariots of the Gods”? After watching that you could find “evidence” of visitors pretty much anywhere you looked.
I dont mean to mock anyones belief in aliens, alien visitors or even alien abduction. I have no doubt that “we are not alone”.
Or maybe we are? What if we are the end of the line? What if we, this human race, is all that's left of a vast civilization of countless of beings on hundreds, thousands, millions or even billions of planets throughout the universe?
Going back to that link I started this article with and inspired by conversations with believers (including dear 'ol mom), and years and years of reading articles, journals, books, etc... I started asking myself, what if the human race is much older that what we think it is? The oldest human DNA found is 400,000 years old, http://www.ibtimes.com/oldest-human-dna-400000-years-old-why-do-scientists-call-discovery-irritating-1495796
And yet the earth is 4.5 billion years old. What if the human race has many more zeros attached to its age? We know for a fact, whether through science or religious teachings, that the earth has been destroyed many times, wiping out many life forms, only to have new and sometimes improved ones show up after the disasters. What if our ancestors, already highly evolved and technologically savvy somehow survived those catastrophes? We've heard about the “myth” of Atlantis, haven't we? New Agers swear by it.
So if we allow ourselves to consider that the human race is actually considerably older than what we believe, then certainly we can assume that we would have reached some sophisticated level of technology with the ability to travel the stars. And that's just what we did. After all, humans love to explore, its in our DNA (among so many other things we have in common with each other). We like to roam, see what's over the next hill, or on top of the highest mountain, or visit the moon.
We left home world to colonized other worlds. Im guessing it was a one-way ticket. When one considers that the light we see from a star tonight, died millions of years ago,staying in touch might have been challenging. Especially if nobody was picking up the phone anymore on our end.
But some stayed behind.
They (we), stayed to keep the home fires burning, just in case our children tried to make it back some day. Memories of who we were recorded into the DNA of humanity, a kind of “cloud backup” in case the hard drive ever got corrupted. And it did, eventually. Environmental disasters froze the earth, scorched it, tore it apart. Heavenly bodies crashing into the earth left it in darkness for so long that thousands of species were wiped out, with only the most adaptable surviving. Humans are very adaptable. Seems we can survive just about anything nature throws at us. Hundreds of thousands of years, throwing the human race into savagery and barbarism, forcing it to evolve, afflicted with a collective amnesia, that made us forget who we were, left only with vague memories stored in our genetic coding to make sense of.
I believe that WE are THEM. Naturally, millions of years of evolution on different worlds would change physical features. Like I said, humans are very adaptable. And maybe they too are driven by the same vague collective memories stored in their genetic makeup as well. Maybe they are looking for something, without consciously knowing what it is they're looking for. Guided by crop circles, carvings on the sides of mountains, giant statues, pyramids, radio signals, all of it, calling them home.
This is what I believe. And when I look up at the stars, it's comforting to know that my ancestors are out there.