SUBJECT: ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE SEARCH FOR UFOs                 FILE: UFO1600 




                    MUFONET-BBS Network - Mutual UFO Network
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                              SHIPWRECKS IN SPACE
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By Donald Keith

[Note: Donald is a veteran of many maritime explorations, received his Ph.D. in
1987.  He is director of Ships of Discovery, a research and educational
institute based in Dallas, Texas]

     In 1980 a field crew excavating a Lucayan Taino site on the West Indian
island of Middle Caicos discovered a tiny brass object from the floor of a
house thought to have been occupied about the time Columbus arrived.  Since no
aboriginal American culture possessed the technology necessary to make this
alloy, principal investigator Shaun Sullivan hypothesized that the object,
which had been refashioned into a nose ornament, may have been salvaged form
the wreck of a European ship.  His speculation set me thinking.

     What did the Taino think when they went down to the beach one morning and
discovered a ship from another world? Did it inspire them?  Did it pique their
curiosity?  No, most likely they just cut it up for firewood.  Why?  Because
they didn't have an archaeologist on hand.

     If they had, they might have marveled at the joining of the timbers.  They
would have found the carpenter's tool-kit and realized that, with it, they
could build similar ships.  Eventually, they would have come to appreciate and
understand a vessel propelled by the force of wind.

     Unlike the Taino, we are not without archaeologists to help us decipher
strange phenomena.  We would not make the same mistakes.  Or would we?

     One principle of archaeology is that physical traces of technology far
outlast their creators.  Extrapolating this principle into the sea of space, it
should follow that we are much more likely to encounter the material remains of
intelligent extraterrestrial life-forms than we are to encounter the life-forms
themselves.  The sea of space has no continents, but solar systems such as ours
resemble the familiar island archipelagoes found throughout Earths oceans.
During the billions of years that our solar system has existed, voyagers from
outer space may have visited our little archipelago in search of important
minerals, places to establish frontier outposts, or souls to convert.  Or maybe
they arrived here accidentally and found themselves unable to return home.

     In order to investigate the planetary bodies within our solar system more
closely, alien visitors would likely approach our system on it's common plain
of the ecliptic.  between our third and fourth planets' orbits they would have
encountered the asteroid belt.  Would the asteroids have posed a
navigational problem to space voyagers similar to that posed by the reefs that
so often surround Earth's islands?  perhaps their voyage ended there quite
unexpectedly.

     One of NASA's future programs will send unmanned probes into the asteroid
belt to look for clues regarding the birth of the solar system and to do a
little prospecting.  Perhaps one of these probes will encounter the wreck of an
alien ship.

     What might we learn from such a vehicle sent to us by other beings?  In
the vacuum of space, preservation will be excellent, and the artifacts will no
doubt require specialized care.  There will be subtle clues to look for.  new
techniques for recording and analysis will be necessary.  In short, it will be
a job for archaeologists - extraterrestrial archaelolgists: people accustomed
to surviving and working in hostile environmenta and zero gravity, masters at
devising techniques to optimize the retrieval of data in a limited amount of
time.  And they will have to understand ships.  Sound familiar?  It's a perfect
job description for an underwater archaeologist.

     If we are not prepared, if the technological gap is too wide, we may find
ourselves unable to recognize or appreciate the technological advances of other
worlds.  Whether we comprehend extraterrestrial achievement or opt to make nose
ornaments out of what we find may well depend on how long it takes maritime
archaeologists to realize that the future of their discipline lies in the sea
of space.

     Is it so fantastic to suppose that 500 years from now no one will remember
that extraterra-archaeology began as a study of the people and vehicles that
plied the watery seas of Earth?  If we take this prospect seriously, maybe the
experience of the Taino won't be repeated by us.

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