We Are the Children of the Stars

by Otto O. Binder

  In 1956, a new green area about the size of Texas was observed. It was located in an area that had shown only reddish desert hues before.

  It is not surprising that, when a U.S. scientist undertook to grow lichen, it was in a partial vacuum that simulated, as nearly as possible, the conditions and gases that are understood to exist on Mars. The lichen grew and prospered.

  The astounding conditions under which this lichen grew should be examined.6 The temperature ranged from approximately minus 100°F to plus 80°F, and the pressure was approximately 0.75 pounds per square inch. (The pressure on Earth's surface is about 14.7 pounds per square inch.) The only moisture was vapor in the form of dew. The oxygen was very low – so low that Man would die in it.

  Yet this lichen grew and seemed to thrive.

  There is a most happy agreement between the spectroscopic observations that indicate there are lichen-like plant growths in the green areas of Mars, and the astounding ability of Earth lichen to grow in a simulated Martian atmosphere.

  Now, how does this information apply to the Earth-colony theory? In this way: It might well be that when the starmen first came to the solar system, ages ago, Mars had more atmosphere and water, thus offering them a liveable colony-world.

  Or Mars may simply have been used as a convenient base of operations for the starmen in making visits to nearby Earth during their grand experiment in creating Hybrid Man. Either possibility is valid.

  If Mars was their base in the past, it still may be that today. This would account for the continued phenomenon of probable green-lichen crops sprouting each year and spreading widely over the planet, and particularly for the surprising new areas that suddenly turn green for the first time.

  It is unlikely that natural vegetation would so successfully encroach into territory that had apparently been arid and lifeless before. It is far easier to think of starmen agriculturists using advanced techniques to prepare the soil, furnish irrigation, and increase their edible acreage as needed.

  We might also mention briefly, just for the record, that there seems to be a correlation between the oppositions of Mars to Earth (nearest approach) every twenty-six months, and the increased numbers of UFOs sighted around the world.

  Second, strange radio-signals seem to be periodically picked up from Mars, according to claims that are unsubstantiated or, at least, rejected by scientists. Still, such famous electrical wizards as Tesla and Marconi firmly believed they had tuned in alien radiomessages from Mars.

  And still today, stubborn reports come in from ham-radio operators of inexplicable shortwave signals from the same source.

  Can they all be wrong?

  It is hardly likely that the starmen at their presumed Martian camp are trying to communicate with Earth, but it might be that the signals picked up are simply “leaks” in their own communications links on Mars or from Mars to Earth – if they are acting in modern times as watchdogs on their Earth colony.

  Again, we will not pursue the above nebulous speculations but will point out that if the Earth-colony/Hybrid Man theory is correct, all those points someday might well turn out to be close to the truth.

  At any rate, we may soon find out if the spreading greengray mystery of Mars represents plant life or not. In 1976, U.S. Martian-landers, aboard Viking spacecraft borne there by rockets, investigated the surface at first hand (perhaps preceded unfortunately by Soviet landers who will steal the glory).

  Both Russian and American lander vehicles (unmanned, of course) will be equipped with one or more life-detection systems, ingenious, if tiny, “chemical labs” that will draw in Martian soil or air and analyze it for key life-ingredients. If something like nucleic acid is detected, or DNA, RNA, phosphates – there are a dozen similar key organic substances – that will do it!

  Biologists will instantly announce that there is something alive on Mars, even if they haven't the slightest idea what form of life, whether primitive plant or protozoan representative of animal life.

  But nothing more will be necessary to establish the fact that there is extraterrestrial life, from which will come a thundering series of “therefores.”

  Therefore, there can and must be life on staggering millions of other planets of other solar systems.

  Therefore, by certain overwhelming statistical data, there must be evolved life on countless worlds, including intelligent beings.

  We will add one special “therefore” of our own.

  Therefore, the concept of starmen visiting Earth long ago to start a colony, and creating Hybrid Man, should take a strong position as the most likely theory as to the origin of mankind on Earth.

  Yes, the discovery of life on Mars, or intelligent signals picked up by radio-telescopes, or the observation of organic space-clouds forming protein, or the presence of fossil protein molecules in meteorites, or perhaps the unexpected arrival of a spaceship itself, any one of these can infuse tremendous vitality into our theory of colony Earth and Hybrid Man.

  And one of these signposts to universal life can come to fruition any day, or may have occurred before this book is published. (In fact, if the Russian claim of picking up alien outer-space signals in October 1973 has been verified, then the radio-astronomy people have won this “exobiology race.”)

  A word should also be said about the so-called canals of Mars, a controversial feature of the Red Planet for almost a century, since Schiaparelli in 1877 first announced the intricate pattern of lines he saw on the face of Mars through his telescope.

  The pros and cons over whether the canals were real or optical illusions raged for over half a century, with the negative forces slowly gaining ground. They have seemed fully vindicated through the U.S. Martian Mariners, the flyby and orbiting space vehicles that, since 1967 have taken many thousands of pictures and TV scannings of the planet's surface. The photos first of all turned up the rather jolting surprise (except to Immanuel Velikovsky, who predicted them in 1950) that the Martian surface was pitted with craters much like the Earth's moon.

  But nary a canal showed up, except very vague streaks that could be some shadowy distortion or other geological formation.

  That is, all black-and-white photos and TV transmissions (the only kind there are so far) show no canals.

  Yet the authors wish to state firmly that we believe the canal controversy cannot be resolved until color pictures are transmitted from Mars-orbiting vehicles for a period of at least two years.

  Why two years? Because the Martian year is almost twice as long as Earth's. Therefore, it takes two Earth years for Mars to go through one complete cycle of the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

  And only by photographing from space this complete cycle in full color, to bring out the advance and retreat of the gray-green areas, can we then get a glimpse of the still-possible canals. For the green color will be most “alive” and thriving along any waterways that are filled, in the spring, with melting polar ice.

  Earth's biggest telescopes could never photograph the canals that the human eye apparently detected on Mars. Neither can black-and-white cameras aboard orbiting vehicles detect them, for they are probably very narrow channels. Only by capturing the intense new green pathways of plants invigorated by fresh water can the implied presence of canals be registered – in color. The canals may be far too shallow to cast any shadows or give any direct hint of their presence.

  There are certain clues to that possibility. For one thing, many observers through the years, independently of one another and without knowledge of the others' work, drew sketches of the canals they believed they saw.

  And some of those canals were in precisely the same places in various drawings. Furthermore, certain photos that showed vague canal-like markings, when superimposed over the hand-drawn sketches also fitted in a way that seems beyond coincidence.

  Still, why are those canals, if really there, not visible to the sharp lenses of space probes orbiting nearby?

  There is one possible explanation. As is now
established, Mars is not a “quiet, dead world” as once thought but is in a dynamic phase of constant “storms” and geographical changes. Among its most spectacular and regular weather features are huge dust storms of such a violent nature that they cover half the globe at a time.

  The 1971 Martian probes met this kind of storm of yellowish dust, which obliterated the surface for months before the atmosphere finally cleared.

  Dust? Yes, dust. And what does dust do when it is blown around over a planet's surface with many pits, craters and cracks in it? It fills or partially fills them, as proved by various Mariner photos.

  Therefore, it is not at all unreasonable to suspect that those dust storms, operating for almost a century since Schiaparelli first saw his sensational lines across Mars, have filled in the canals. And just as high-altitude space satellites above Earth's surface have detected the outlines of subsea formations and, on land, of various kinds of terrain unseen in any other way, it may be that only from the distant vantage point of Earth can the dust-clogged canals of Mars stand out. It may even be that Martian orbiting probes with color cameras will in the future also trace out those buried canals, whose existence is so far denied.

  Let us put it that the last word has not yet been said on whether the canals of Mars are myth or reality.

  Canals aside, the Martian pictures that came back from the orbiters in 1971 and 1972 showed other gross features that stood out with sharp clarity. If the pictures did not show canals as such, they did show many signs of abundance of water on Mars in ages past, and other clues that indicate water may still exist on Mars today in free form, in greater quantities than expected.

  Erosion, for instance. The photos clearly show faults, ridges, and sand dunes, all definite signs of erosion by water, nothing else.7 And such erosion signs could not all freeze into eternal surface features lasting for millions of years. Some of them must be recent erosion effects, in line with the current dynamic model of Martian meteorology.

  Volcanic structures on Mars, and striated sediment layers, also proclaim the past or present action of water in considerable quantities – enough, in fact, to discard the old bone-dry Mars theory (as we discarded the dust-covered-moon theory after our astronauts landed there).

  That Mars once had extensive water-resources is highlighted by a report from the U.S. Geological Survey after their experts pored over the Mariner photos from Mars.8

  “All along the northern edge of the high plateau,” says [Harold] Masursky, “one can see stream channels that vary in size from very small to a kilometer in width and thousands of kilometers in length. They are highly braided tributaries. These sinuous channels [sic!] could be the result of ubiquitous water, or a fantastic series of volcanic channels that we do not understand.”

  Another great puzzle in Martian topography is the “canyonlands” bordering the Nix Olympica region in the planet's east.9 “The canyonlands are a real puzzler,” reports Masursky. “They seem to be a series of innumerable fissures, some of which may represent cracking of the crust by itself.” But, he goes on, “Something else has gone on there. What that something is, is the biggest mystery at the moment.”

  The report goes on to give another hypothesis, that the precession cycle of the Martian poles might mean that alternately, every 50,000 years, one pole gains a greater ice cap than the other. “In between these periods, weather on Mars would be unstable, producing lots of rain.”10

  Interesting, indeed, for a planet supposedly as arid as a desert! Furthermore, “water may be trapped and frozen in the form of permafrost and released episodically into the atmosphere.”

  A space scientist who has thoroughly studied the Mars-Mariner photos also states he believes that water-ice (as distinguished from frozen carbon dioxide) is present as tiny crystals in two other areas – in the clouds that appear in the afternoon, and in two higher layers of haze (thin clouds) over the planet.11

  Each report seems to find more evidence of water or ice or water vapor on the Red Planet.

  Scientists are also baffled by the enormous system of rills (cracks) existing elsewhere on Mars. They are parallel fissures (many drawings of Martian canals show them as two parallels!) extending more than 1,800 kilometers and up to 1.6 kilometers wide. These too could be evidence of long-enduring action by one-time bodies of water in the ancient past of Mars.

  Thus, even if our camera-eye space vehicles saw no canals, they did even better and showed that Mars was once well-watered and even today may exhibit actual small streams as the polar icecaps melt – when more and better photos are obtained. And the possibility of life on Mars has thus been enhanced a hundredfold, canals or no canals.

  Scientists who disbelieved in Martian life have become very quiet.

  4

  Fossil Clues

  AS SOME WIT in anthropology has said – down from the trees but not out of the woods, bipedal mankind must go back to his prehistoric ancestors for knowledge about his origins.

  Anthropology is the study of mankind from ancient, extinct species into the present day, and much of it is based on fossil finds of early men, overlapping somewhat with paleontology, the search for fossilized bones of any and all creatures. In fact paleoanthropology is the combination of the two that deals with manlike fossils.

  Anthropology is one of the most fascinating fields into which the human mind is today making inquiries. Some of the finest contemporary work is being performed within this science discipline, and some of the most talented men available to science are attracted to the field. No one reading through the great number of excellent publications in this field can help but admire the ingenious means by which these researchers have managed to wrest information from the silent and buried records of the past.

  If, in the following pages, we seem to be severely critical and sometimes outspoken against orthodox views, it is not the anthropologists personally we are jumping on, but their theories. And then only if the theory deserves castigation for being speculative, misleading, or downright unscientific.

  This means no lack of respect for the fossil-hunters themselves, nor for their hard and often dedicated work; but we reserve the right to analyze and, if necessary, reject or even tear apart any concept or theory that is patently untenable. There will probably be a few hardnoses with arrogance and inflexibly orthodox attitudes, who will react only with scorn and even rage at our criticisms of so-called established facts in the field.

  But the “facts” of one generation often, in the light of new knowledge, are the discards of the next.

  And who can set himself up as a guarantor of such facts, which are often tentative and short-lived?

  Let us remind the anthropologists in general that their greatest authorities for some forty years proclaimed the Piltdown Man's fossil bones as being unquestionably authentic before the blatant hoax was exposed. Anybody can be wrong – anybody. There are few absolutes in anthropology, and all is subject to change, review, reinterpretation.

  Perhaps it might be considered impertinent for laymen like the authors to cast doubt on the theories and testimonies of the experts and authorities, but we do so only with honest intent to point out fallacies, inconsistencies, and below-par postulates, insofar as they can be reinterpreted as supporting a totally new theory – namely, the one we champion in this book.

  And if we are “amateurs,” we must reiterate that Darwin himself was a “rank amateur.”

  If the gentlemen of anthropology will be unbiased and examine our suggestions on merit alone, without prejudgment or partiality or condemnation out of hand, we feel that perhaps a whole new avenue of research into Man's origin can be revealed, to their own eventual benefit. We ask only for a fair hearing.

  We, the authors, are not anthropological “authorities,” but we do quote and present the comments of very authoritative experts whenever possible. We submit that even the amateur can have sufficient discrimination and common intelligence to point out errors and misdirections that crop up in any area of scientific en
deavor. The important thing is for the authorities not to isolate themselves haughtily as unassailable, thereby protecting false premises and sterile concepts as well as the body of valid material.

  Although anthropologists on the whole probably cannot readily accept the quite radical theory proposed in this book, it will undoubtedly have some impact on the field in ways unforeseen as yet. We do not claim all our ideas are correct, any more than all presently accepted anthropological data are correct, but only that some ideas may hit the truth and thereby earn some respect for our new theory.

  Certainly, we do not expect and cannot accept a blanket denial or wholesale rejection of our entire work.

  We feel that the same respect we have toward the anthropological experts should in all fairness be reciprocated and extended to the two nonexperts who have compiled this book and its – admittedly – blockbuster theory.

  One thing we would like to emphasize should give pause to any reader, authority or not, before our theory is “laughed off” the stage.

  If Man, unknown to himself, is a colony of hybrids of men from the stars, then it naturally follows that the anthropologists (who are part of the same colony) would be just as unaware of this fact as anyone else. No special or divine knowledge of theirs allows them to state categorically that no such colonization of Earth has happened.

  They will have to examine all the anomalies we have listed, which do not fit the general anthropological milieu and, indeed, throw it out of kilter, and prove that those anomalies do not exist. It would be quite unscientific of them, and crassly arbitrary, to try to ignore all the unexplained and baffling mysteries of Man's origin, in order to hang onto their pet theories and consign ours to the scrap heap.

  That is our measured and respectful challenge, in the interests of truth.

  Now, if Earth is unknowingly a colony of starmen, there may have been acts committed in the dim and distant past expressly designed to prevent our present-day anthropologists from guessing the truth.