The human epiphany

To support this you'd have to go with the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia"]Panspermia[/ame] hypothesis.

It's not that mysterious. It was a proto ape. Our near cousins are the Gorillas, Chimps, and Bonobos. Well before that was the Ape/Monkey split. We're over on the Ape side. If you want to go back before that, there was a proto mammal that all of the contemporary mammals come from. We're on the mammal side. We don't have every tiny detail, but the rough outlines are clear.

I can't document the exact guy/gal who is the link between my family line and the Navaho nation, but there is one back there somewhere, even if I can't give you their exact name. You don't really need to bring in space aliens to bridge every tiny gap in my knowledge.

We could have come here from somewhere else, but we would have been some kind of unicellular little green microorganism at the time. Our highest ambition at that time would have been to develop advanced wriggling skills.

Er, no. You would have a better chance of mating with a turnip than an alien. The turnip is related to you, has a similar metabolism, is adapted to the same environment, uses the same DNA/RNA setup and already shares some of the same genes. An alien would have none of these advantages.

burritos

...If I remember correctly, it was loud.

hyo silver

You're even older than I thought. And your ears must be very unusual to pick up those wavelengths.

Ken McE,

burritos is actually a lesser Elder God, posting here to help while away the weary eons. His auricles and auditory meati were considered state of the art at the time, and still have considerable nostagic charm.


hyo silver

Thoughts of recreating Earth's incredible (biological) complexity and interdependence... are just fantasies.

Ken McE

The best work on that to date would be the Biosphere II people. What they found is that, as you suggest, it's d*mn hard.

Dogs are bright by animal standards, but their minds run along the lines of a human childs. admirable, but not the equal of a grown adult. With the dolphins, they have a big honking brain, but they may use a lot of it just for navigating in three dimensions, we don't know. Squids could be real contenders in the IQ department, but they have such short lives that they have no real chance to accumulate knowledge.

Animals are brighter than we sometimes think, particularrly about practical matters, but they don't really seem to go into the same range and depth of thought that we do.

I'll answer your question, but first you need to tell me what a soul is.