Astroarchaeology: Lost in Space
The British learnt about modern rockets the hard way when they began falling on their heads in the late stages of World War II. The man who did more than anyone else to launch the V2 rocket, Wernher Von Braun, commented ‘A good flight but the payload landed on the wrong planet.’ Having changed masters, Von Braun subsequently targeted the Moon. So should archaeologists follow in his wake to seek signs of intelligent extra-terrestrial life? They have, of course, in fantasy. Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey portrayed astro-archaeologists excavating on the Moon to locate a black monolith - a kind of giant iPod left by benevolent extra-terrestrials to kick-start us humans into the next stage of civilisation. A similar close encounter, at the beginning of the film, boosted Australopithecines towards the weapons and wisdom of Homo Sapiens. The idea for 2001, of intelligent life directing us from beyond our galaxy, came from the imagination of the science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke. The physical look of the film’s spacecraft and astronauts was the work of Harry Lange, who previously worked with Von Braun at NASA. Harry, who died in 2008, was a frustrated archaeologist and like many who are committed to the exploration of space, was also entranced by the possibility of extra-terrestrial civilizations.
From aliens to archaeology
Celestial superiority is an old idea: the medieval church accepted Aristotle’s model of a finite, earth-centred, universe and the heavens populated by God, archangels, seraphim, cherubim and the serried ranks of spiritual beings. The Copernican revolution replaced theology with physics but nevertheless the belief persisted that superior beings inhabited the heavens. Scientists are not necessarily hard headed; they sometimes come hard-wired with ancestral beliefs. In the 1960s, the radio astronomer Frank Drake was the first person to attempt to pick up radio messages from aliens. Drake said, ‘A strong influence on me, and I think a lot of SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) people was the extensive exposure to fundamentalist religion.’ Drake hoped to find celestial super- beings who might teach humans ‘how to live forever'.
