No, I think "god" figured out what happened in our solar system and told our ancestors in terms they could relate to and re-enact with ceremonies and rituals. People all over the world claim their knowledge of creation came from sky people, gods, culture bearers. Probably the same beings responsible for some of these UFOs.
*snicker*
Yes, people of many cultures have sky-based creation myths. Others have underground myths. UFOs have never been proven to be of alien origin.
So what?
How else do we explain our solar system repeatedly showing up in religion and myth? Not a system of 5 planets and the Sun and Moon, but a Heaven and Hell comprised of 9, 12 or 13 objects or levels. You say they couldn't have seen the outer planets, so why did they account for them in their cosmologies?
Gee, that's tough... Carl Sagan explained it by saying (paraphrased) that "hunter-folk" (hunter-gatherers) would gather around their fires at night, and some of them would be inspired by the stars - some to curiosity, some to artistry, and some to storytelling in order to explain what they didn't actually understand.
In short, they made it up. No space aliens or UFOs required. They told stories about what they saw. Some were fantastically imaginative. But it didn't mean they were right.
As for the outer planets... GMAB. The ancients made up gods and goddesses to explain various aspects of life - love, war, harvest, death, volcanoes, seas... They didn't name the god Pluto after a planet. The planet was named after Pluto. Ditto Neptune. Neptune was the Roman name for the god of the sea. When the MODERN astronomers confirmed discovery of Neptune, they continued the tradition of naming the planets after the Roman gods.
I've seen 2 explanations for the hand bag, it carries the "Me" - instructions for society and /or the physical laws
Lucky them. My purse contains money, bus coupons, cards, keys, and kleenex. It doesn't instruct me on anything, except if I make use of the watch that's clipped to one of the rings (useless at the moment since it needs a new battery).
Or the ancient alien angle is its something required for space flight, like how we see images of astronauts carrying a bag that connects to their suits. The handbag appears related to flight in at least 2 of those images. But notice how even the gods were subject to these 'laws'.
I hope you've emailed the astronauts aboard the International Space Station to make sure that they took their handbags with them. You never know when a traveling salesman might wander by.
I wonder how the researchers hunting for the 9th planet feel about Sitchin. Have any of them read his work? I believe ancient peoples have seen this 9th planet when it draws near, the Sumerian divine year was 3600 and Sitchin says thats the orbital period. When people saw this 9th planet they would have erected monuments charting its path across the sky. Now they're just another unexplained alignment.
I think it's quite likely that they don't think about Sitchin at all.
It's hilarious how you believe in this mythical planet when you don't even believe in the Oort Cloud, where we KNOW the long-term comets spend most of their time.
Its amazing how people all over the world tried to mimic what they saw in the sky. Okay, I look up at Orion and imagine a warrior with a club. Cool. But I dont build a bunch of cities or towns in the shape of Orion. I dont build 3 pyramids at Teotihuacan or near Cairo to mimic Orion's belt stars.
Do you see a warrior because you thought of it, or do you see a warrior because you were taught about the Greek myths in school (or wherever; most of what I know of astronomy was learned through private study because the school system here cares zip-all about astronomy)? Different cultures created different constellations, or had different explanations if they came up with sky pictures for the same stars.
The brightest stars in Orion are used as guides to find other stars. I'm sure you know how to use the Belt stars to find Sirius, which was critical to the ancient Egyptians for agricultural purposes.
Its orbit takes 84 years and traverses the average zodiacal constellation in 7 years. People knew it was a wanderer (planet), but the knowledge of Uranus didn't disrupt religious and cosmological institutions because ancient people knew there were other worlds out there we cant see. They weren't limited to a belief in 5 planets, we did that to them.
Since time travel hasn't been invented yet (wishful thinking on my part admittedly, since current scientific thought is that time travel might be fun science fiction, but it's not really possible), it's nonsensical to say we "did" anything to the ancients.
It's also nonsense to say they "knew" about planets we can't see. They did NOT have telescopes, and you've never provided one shred of absolute, definitive proof of aliens at all, let alone aliens who told both the Babylonians and North American Indians about Pluto.
All you do is move goalposts around.
When I first looked at the panel I thought the upper row depicted the Fremont's cosmology (sky) and all the other stuff below was a terrestrial scene. But I've reconsidered that, now I think the stuff below the horned deity is its celestial army and the smaller archers are the moons accompanying the large archer with the erection. Thats another indicator this is a creation story and not a depiction of hunting sheep.
I count 4 bows firing arrows. That also jives with the Sumerian/Babylonian version of creation, Marduk employed a handful of weapons to slay Tiamat. There's one creation story and many many hunts, which one would you commemorate in rock?
Y'know, I bet if we managed to bring those ancient hunters forward in time, they'd probably laugh themselves silly and say, "Dude, it was a hunting trip. We had good luck and brought back more meat than usual, and wanted to remember it."
We demoted it, not the people who recorded these stories. The relevant question is not if Pluto qualifies as a planet in today's nomenclature but if it has any connection to Saturn. In the Enuma Elish Anshar (Saturn) sent Kaka on a mission to inform the other gods of Marduk accepting the challenge to face Tiamat. When Pluto is close to the Sun Saturn's rings point at it.
I read that Saturn's rings aren't going to be around forever. The ring system is going to vanish (gravity works), so what will "point" at Pluto then?
I wouldn't disagree the notion of a heavenly paradise helped people cope with death, but they had knowledge of the solar system. If anything, their cosmology would be strictly based on what we can see with our eyes. So why didn't everyone inherit a belief system centered around 5 planets?
If you took two churches of the same denomination of Christianity (for example), put them side-by-side, and reviewed the sermons over a period of a decade or so, you'd find them to be different (assuming the same clergymen didn't run both of them and they had unique congregations).
So why would you expect everyone on Earth to have the same interpretation of the night sky?
Here's Ptolemy's cosmos:
11 spheres surrounding the Earth, there's our number 12 again.
The image is broken. You shouldn't try to hotlink.
Attributing advances and understanding in early civilisations to "aliens" is pretty harmful to those civilisations that achieved those things, really.
Exactly. It's elitist, really, to assume that ancient civilizations needed aliens to help them achieve remarkable things. The Egyptians, for instance, had a fantastically sophisticated culture, with knowledge of literacy, math, engineering, medicine, and while I'm not fond of bureaucracy, it does indicate a complex culture.
