Extraterrestrial Civilizations Read Online Free PDF

word
aether
is from the Greek word meaning
to blaze
. The heavenly objects blazed and the Earth did not, and as long as that was thought to be true there was only one world; one solid, dark object on which life could exist, and many blazing objects on which life could not exist.
    Except that there is the Moon. The Moon is the one heavenly object that changes shape in a regular way and in a fashion that is clearly visible to the unaided eye. These different shapes of the Moon (its “phases”) are ideally suited to attract attention and, except for the succession of day and night, were probably the first astronomical changes to catch the attention of primitive human beings.
    The Moon goes through its complete cycle of phases in a little over 29 days, which is a particularly convenient length of time. To the prehistoric farmer and hunter, the cycle of seasons (the year) was very important, but it was difficult to note that, on the average, the seasons repeated themselves every 365 or 366 days. The number was too large to be kept track of easily. To count 29 or 30 days from each new Moon to the next, and then to count 12 or 13 new Moons to each year, was much simpler and much more practical. The making of a calendar that would serve to keep track of the seasons of the year in terms of the phases of the Moon was a natural result of very early astronomical observations.
    Alexander Marshak, in his book
The Roots of Civilization
, published in 1972, argues persuasively that long before the beginning of recorded history, early human beings were marking stones in a code designed to keep track of the new Moons. Gerald Hawkins, in
Stonehenge Decoded
, argues just as persuasively that Stonehenge was a prehistoric observatory also designed to keep track of the new Moon, and to predict the lunar eclipses that occasionally came at the time of the full Moon. (A lunar eclipse was a frightening “death” of the Moon upon which human beings depended for keeping track of the seasons. To be able to predict its occurrence reduced the fear.)
    It was very likely the overriding practical necessity of working out a calendar based on the phases of the Moon that forced human beings into astronomy, and from that to a careful observation ofnatural phenomena generally, and from that to the eventual growth of science.
    The fact that the phase changes were so useful could not help, it seems to me, but reinforce the notion of the existence of a benevolent deity who, out of his love of humanity, had arranged the skies into a calendar that would guide mankind into the proper ways of insuring a secure food supply.
    Each new Moon was celebrated as a religious festival in many early cultures, and the care of the calendar was usually placed in priestly hands. The very word
calendar
is from the Latin word meaning
to proclaim
, since each month only began when the coming of the new Moon was officially proclaimed by the priests. We could conclude, then, that a considerable portion of the religious development of mankind, of the belief in God as a benevolent parent rather than a capricious tyrant, can be traced back to the changing face of the Moon.
    In addition, the fact that close study of the Moon was so important in controlling the daily lives of human beings could not help but give rise to the notion that the other heavenly objects might be important in this respect, also. The face of the Moon may in this way have contributed to the growth of astrology and, thereby, of other forms of mysticism.
    But in addition to all this (and it would scarcely seem that if the Moon has given rise to science, religion, and mysticism, more should be required of it) the Moon gave rise to the concept of the plurality of worlds—the notion that the Earth was only one world of many.
    When human beings first stared at the Moon from night to night in order to follow its phases, it was natural to suppose that the Moon literally changed shape. It was born as a thin crescent, waxed to a