In the Beginning: Mars Origin "I" Series Book I (18 page)

Fisk
University

Archaeology
101

About seventy-five students gathered in
the large lecture hall, PJ 120, for the second class of the Winter semester for
Introductory Archaeology. The professor, William Carey, began the day’s
lecture.

“Over the years in teaching this class I
have come to realize that many of you consider archaeology a boring field.
However, how one could come to that conclusion, especially after taking my
class has always been a mystery to me,” Muffled chuckles and feigned coughs
came from around the hall. Even the Professor smiled at his old, well used
joke.

“I know many of you have only taken my
class to fulfill University requirements but whether you want to pursue the
field or not I’m here to show you that archeologists are definitely the ‘movers
and shakers’ of the day, no pun intended.”

“Archaeology can be mysterious and
intriguing. Certainly, it is filled with ancient mysteries and lost
civilizations. And that’s the part that pulls people in. So, today, for fun,
we’ll talk about that.”

“But first, let’s have a quick little
review. You should remember that Archaeology encompasses discovering our
origins and then using what we learn and the artifacts we find to reconstruct
history. Last time we talked I defined interdisciplinary research as the
collaborative effort of various professions working together to come up with
feasible answers to questions of our history and to help determine our past
correctly.” He spoke slowly so those interested students could write down what
he was saying. “Some of these professions are medicine, astronomy, psychology
and etymology.” He wrote them on the board.

“In addition, the field of archaeology
itself has branched off into several specialized areas. Several are listed in
the text. Anyone read that far and can tell me some of the different areas of
specialization?”

A light brown-skinned girl, with straight
shoulder length hair, dressed in a brown T-shirt and blue jeans raised her
hand. “I didn’t read about it in the textbook, but my mother is an
archaeologist who specializes in a field.”

“Really? She’s an archaeologist?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

“Courtney Dickerson.”

He scanned down his class roster.

“Okay. And, what’s your mother’s name?”

“Justin Dickerson.”

“Justin? J-U-S-T-I-N?”

“Yeah, all the girls have boys’ names in
my family.”

He wrote the name next to Courtney’s on
his roster. “Okay, tell us, what is your mother’s specialization?”

“She’s a Biblical archaeologist.”

“A Biblical archaeologist? Now there’s a
good one. I don’t think that field is even listed in the textbook. Do you know
anything about her work?”

“When I was little, my mother used to take
me and our family with her to excavation sites.”

“So, you’ve had firsthand experience?” She
nodded. “Wow, in all these years, I think you’re the first student who had an
archeologist in their family. What’s your major, Archaeology?”

“No.” Courtney let out a chuckle. “It’s
Education. My mother made me sign up for this class.” A light laughter echoed
off the walls of the hall.

“Oh, I see,” he smiled. “Well, good,” he
repeated. He seemed pleased with her comment about her mother.

“So let’s get to these slides.” He walked
over and dimmed the lights in the room. He lowered the projection screen and
clicked on the first slide.

“After man started traveling the world, he
found striking resemblances between the artifacts and the ancient remains of
civilizations that were thousands of miles apart. And, as far as we know, civilizations
that never came in contact with each other.”

“Here, you can see the similarity of the
pyramids of ancient Egypt and those in South America.” He clicked to the next slide.
“Two distinct and separate civilizations separated by oceans and centuries, yet
they have similar architecture, legends, myths and even languages. So here is a
mystery for you. How is it that ancient architecture and languages of South
American tribes are similar to Hebrew and the language of the Phoenicians, and
to the structures in Egypt?” He looked around the room. “The answer? We don’t
know.”

“Let’s look at another mystery.” He
clicked on the next slide. “One of the most impressive and largest works of art
in the world, done sometime between 200 B.C. and 600 A.D., are these mysterious
lines found in several Andean regions of South America. They weren’t detected
until 1939.” He clicked to the next slide.

“You can see here the ruler straight
lines, strange curves and patterns depicting birds, spiders, monkeys all
engraved onto the desert floor of southern Peru in the plains of Nazca. No one
knew they were there because they can’t be seen from the ground not even when
standing next to them. The only way to see them is from the air. So until man
learned to fly they remained invisible. No one knows why or how they got there.
Maybe an ancient irrigation system. Maybe a part of some kind of ritual. We
don’t know. So the question is, how could a people that lived hundreds of years
ago that couldn’t fly, make these markings?” He cleared his throat before he
spoke. “Again the answer is, we don’t know.”

The instructor clicked to the next slide
as a student spoke from the back of the room.

“I’ve heard that those lines are like
landing strips, and like aliens or something in ancient times landed there.”

 “Aliens?” The professor took a deep
breath. “I don’t think so. And stories like that make it difficult for real
historical analysis to happen because scientists then need to take time to
dispel the erroneous information. It’s really too bad that people don’t think
that early man was both intellectually and technologically advanced enough to
let’s say, build the pyramids. But if you learn nothing else in my class, know
this, the designers and builders of our ancient past was us. It was man. Not
aliens.

“Here, let’s switch gears for a moment.”
He clicked off the projector and went over and turned on the lights. Let’s look
at the scientific evidence for the possibilities of life on other planets - of
aliens.”

“First, for man to form on this planet it
took an asteroid striking the Earth’s surface at the instant exactly prior to
our development to weed out the huge land animals and not totally destroy the
planet so that mammals could survive. This is an asteroid that would have
missed hitting Earth altogether if it had been say fifteen or twenty minutes
earlier or later.

“Then it took blue-green algae 1.4 billion
years of photosynthesis, without any other devastating incidents occurring, to
change the atmosphere permanently so oxygen-breathers could emerge. All chance
occurrences that had to happen for humans to evolve. Could the exact same thing
happen somewhere else? Probably not.

“Now, add to that the fact that during the
history of this planet there have been over fifty billion different species
that have existed. Fifty billion,” he emphasized. “But there is a ninety-nine
percent extinction rate on this planet. In other words, humans are lucky to be
here because it was about a one in fifty billion chance that they’d survive.
And of those fifty billion species that have lived on the planet Earth we are
the only ones that are intelligent enough to even contemplate that other beings
may exist.

“On the other hand, if you’re inclined to
believe that God created the Earth and its inhabitants, then, you should be
convinced that if He had placed man somewhere else He would not have given man
a second chance after the flood. Why care if they’re wiped out if you have
other humans living somewhere else. Right?

“Sure, ancient man made great advancements
in science, mathematics and architecture, perfected thousands of years before
we – modern man ‘discovered’ them. And, yes somehow such technology was lost. A
global loss, no less, of intellectual ability, but that doesn’t mean man, at
some point, wasn’t able to do it.”

“If they have all this evidence that
proves against this idea of visiting aliens,” a student asked, “why would they
say that lines on the ground or pyramids were made by spacemen in the first
place? I mean, they must have had some evidence to come to that conclusion.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“They didn’t have any evidence?” the
student repeated.

“No,” Professor Carey said and brushed his
hands over his hair. “They just needed a way to explain something that had no
explanation. People wanted to know how and why the pyramids were built. What
the relationship between the pyramids of Egypt and those built in Mesopotamia
and the New World were. What happened to the technologically advanced people
that built them? Did they just vanish?”

“So, they concocted alien stories.
Certainly, we need to ask these questions. How did they get their skills? Did
these architects of ancient time emerge out of nowhere, without the influence
of other civilizations? Why the similarities in cultures separated by time and
distance? Were the skills derived from the influence of a single, original
people that were split up because of some cataclysmic event? This is why being
able to correctly piece together history, using all of our resources, is so
important so that we don’t come to conclusions like ‘the aliens did it.’

“When I was in college I read a book,” the
professor continued, “that tried to show how ridiculous it is to take small
pieces of evidence and make a determination of a people or culture. The book,
called
The
Weans
, by Robert Nathan, tells about a fictional
archeological excavation of our United States in the future when it is a
desolate and uninhabited wasteland. The book is meant to be a humorous,
satirical look at the mistakes and assumptions made by archaeologists, who
didn’t take the time to look at all the facts.

“It’s called
The Weans
because the
archeologists in the book found many references to “U.S.” as they excavated,
which we know stands for “United States.” They didn’t know what it stood for
and associated it with “us” or “we” and so they named us the “Weans.”

“The assumptions they made from our ruins
were ludicrous. These archeologists decided that we were very religious people
and worshiped a goddess who gigantic statue was found partly submersed in a
large body of water. The goddess’ name was ‘Lib’ or ‘Libby’ or as we know, the
Statue of Liberty, which of course we didn’t worship as a goddess.”

“This is exactly how the story of spacemen
got started. Bits and pieces of archeological evidence are put together and a
story is created that does nothing but sell books and get people confused about
our real history.”

“Understand that we cannot take one piece
of information, like the Statue of Liberty, and determine that an entire
population worshipped the Goddess Libby. By the same token, we can’t take a set
of lines on the ground that go nowhere, and couldn’t support a heavy vehicle of
any sort, and assume that we had an alien invasion.

“Today, scientists have thoroughly
debunked those notions. And I don’t want you leaving my class believing that
aliens are responsible for the remarkable, although mysterious, remnants of
ancient Earth.”

Professor Carey glanced around the room,
wanting to make sure he got his point across. “Now before we go on, let me pose
a question to you. If there were once ancient visitors to our planet, where are
they now? Why haven’t they ever come back?

“And consider this,” he continued. “You
would think there would be a story of the events of the arrival of spacemen, if
it had any truth to it. A story that perhaps was passed down. Some legend of it
at least, wouldn’t you? Some manuscripts? Some markings? Something. But there
isn’t.”

“This is prehistory, right? Prehistory
isn’t written down.” A student interjected. “Maybe that’s why nothing is
written down about it.”

“That’s a good point, but wouldn’t that be
a hellava story to get lost? The one that tells us aliens built the pyramids.”
He laughed. “We still have non-canonized books of the Bible around, the writing
of Plato and ancient Egyptians. We didn’t lose those. How in the world would we
lose a writing describing aliens descending from outer space?”

“A lot of these alien stories came from
people seeing wall markings and painting in ancient Indian civilizations.
Paintings that they decided looked like men in some sort of spacesuit. But when
you listen to Indian oral stories there is no mention of space visitors. The
erroneous conclusions come from outsiders, not from those that passed down the
history.”

“It has been hypothesized that a
technologically advanced people did live as far back as 100,000 years ago,
making them older than we believe man to be. Some believe that they had the
technology and were responsible for our ancient mysteries. But just like there
is no archaeological evidence of aliens, there is none of a people that lived
that long ago. Plus, how can a people hundreds of thousands of years old
explain ancient structures that are no more than 5,000 years old?”