Jed sez: ...
> IF we postulate some other species seeded earth with life > in an artificial (or intelligent) manner THEN we have to > ask how that other life form appeared. > > Did some other form of life seed that one? Bad answer. > Somewhere back in the chain, at some point, some form of > life had to appear on its own, without artificial > assistance from any pre-existing form of life. > Just a side comment here. One of the best SF authors I can think of that has delved in the mythos of the original species to populate the galaxy is David Brin and his series on the Uplift Wars. He has written a series of books, most of them quite good reads, that deal with species that "uplift" non-sentient species to the domain of intelligence. For such a privilege, the "uplifted" species must then serve their masters for a period of time (thousands of years) before the uplifted species can gain their own true independence, to then begin their own practice of uplifting other non-intelligent species for their own purpose. This practice of "uplifting" non-sentient species, of course, brings much ado about intergalactic politics and intergalactic ethics, into the equation making for some lively story telling at times. On rare occasions, a non-sentient species that had been uplifted to sentience decides that it really DOESN'T to remain remain sentient and requests to go back to its original animal state. The decision is made to leave the species alone on their home world where they are allowed to slowly go feral over thousands of years. Their world is banned from being visited by other races for a very long period of time - hundreds of thousands of years I believe. This happens when the uplifters bungled the job and caused too much genetic harm to the uplifted species. When this happens it is considered a great boo boo in the galactic community and the uplifter species is usually penalized quite severally for their misjudgement. They can, once again, find themselves unwillingly indentured to an older species as penalty for their sins. On rare occasions a species, called "Lone Wolfs" somehow mange to uplift themselves all on their on without any outside genetic manipulation. In Brin's universe Homo Sapiens turns out to be one of those rare species that mysteriously made it to sentience all on its own. This, of course, tends to piss off most of the other species in the galaxy since nobody can claim them for a period of indenture. In Brin's novels there are legendary stories of the "progenitors" who were the original species to populate the galaxy BILLIONS of years ago. Nobody knows who they were or where they went to. Nobody knows HOW they came into existence (sentience) in the first place since, presumably, there was no "uplifting" going on. There are only legends that can be extracted from the vast galactic "library" - what we could call the Internet in which one can retrieve all sorts of valuable data if one knows how to perform the correct google searches. ;-) I love Brin's sense of epic proportions. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com
