The Gold of the Gods by Erich von Däniken Read Free Book Online Page B

formula for the length of oscillations in electric oscillatory circuits and the thermo-electric effect named after him. As clearly emerges from these brief biographical data, Lord Kelvin was an important figure in the exact natural sciences; he is held up to students as one of the really great men in his field. But nowadays we do not hear anything about Kelvin’s conviction that in the very beginning “life” did not originate on earth, our tiny planet, but came wafting from the remote depths of the universe in the form of spores. Kelvin was convinced that these unicellular vegetable spores—asexual germ cells, from which new life could originate—were so resistant to the intense cold that they landed on earth still capable of creating life, together with meteors or meteoric dust, and developed under the life-giving power of light so that finally higher organisms could emerge from them. I advocate taking the whole Kelvin seriously, including the man who so many years ago rejected the arrogant assumption that life could only have originated on our planet. Even in these realms, which strictly pertain to natural science, we constantly come across the limits imposed by religious (= orthodox) thought. As life is finite, it must also be finite in the universe. Until natural scientists have
proved
that this conviction of Kelvin’s is false, they should give it a privileged place in the broad spectrum of opinions about how life originated on earth. The noble Lord has earned that much.
    I myself would never risk introducing such an audacious theory into the discussion. But I have come to the conclusion that the kind of speculative ideas for which I am attacked can be found by anyone who is prepared to do a little diligent reading in existing scientific literature. Comforting for me, discomforting for my critics.
    For example, and this is important for my theory of war in the universe, I meet with scepticism if I try to use reproductions of cave drawings to prove that the recognizable accessories of space travel (spacesuits, antennae, supply systems, etc.) point to visits by intelligences from other stars. Nonsense, I am told. If equipment like that used today could be confirmed in such early times, the alien intelligences must have developed quite differently from ourselves. I never hear precise arguments, but—what must not be cannot be. Amid the vast sea of speculations there are some logical conclusions that give quite solid support for my theory that alien intelligences must have been the same as
homo sapiens
, or very like him.
    Professor Roland Puccetti, a contributor to such well-known periodicals as
The Philosophical Quarterly
and
Analysis
, writes in his book
Extraterrestrial Intelligences
from the Philosophical and Religious Point of View
that he made his study “because after all the amateurish conclusions I felt it was high time to investigate the latest scientific findings in this field quite impartially, from the point of view of a philosophical and religious scholar.” Puccetti shares his opinion that intelligent beings throughout the universe must be more or less like
homo sapiens
with other eminent natural scientists. As early as 1964, the well-known biologist Dr. Robert Bieri published the same conviction in “Humanoids on Other Planets,” a contribution to the
American Scientist
. After 15 years of research into enzymes, Dr. Joseph Kraut, a biochemist at California University, came to the same conclusion.
    But how can it be “proved” that intelligent extraterrestrial life developed similarly to man? The “proof “ can only be a logical sequence of conclusions based on demonstrable facts.
    Professor Puccetti starts from the premise that similar external conditions lead to the formation of similar forms and organs in genetically different beings. This tendency exists on all earth-like planets where suitable conditions for complex forms of life occur. Therefore the differences in the evolution of beings