The One
8th December 2010, 09:18
Xenoarchaeology is a hypothetical form of archaeology concerned with the physical remains of past (but not necessarily extinct) alien cultures. These may be found on planets or satellites, in space, the asteroid belt, planetary orbit or Lagrangian points.
Xenoarchaeology is currently only hypothetical science that exists mainly in science fiction works and is not practiced by mainstream archaeologists. Although some fringe theories of alien archaeology exist, and several attempts at observing extraterrestrial structures at common Lagrangian points in our solar system have been made, most serious archaeological work has been in refutation of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoarchaeology
Xenoarchaeology is the study of past alien cultures from their physical remains. The prefix xeno- is from the Greek xenos, stranger.
Alien, in this instance, refers to members of any species other than that of the hypothetical xenoarchaeologist. A human studying martian ruins is a xenoarchaeologist, as is a martian studying human ruins.
The term alien always sounds a little pejorative to me (how about non-human person), but I use it here instead of ‘extraterrestrial’ which could be taken as a spatial designation, and because in the future there could conceivably be terrestrial nonhuman cultures (say, from uplifted animals or artificial intelligences). Despite its connotations, the word alien conveys the otherness of the culture to be studied.
If xenoarchaeology is the study of past cultures from species other than one’s own, and if you define ‘human’ in a narrow sense to refer to modern Homo sapiens, then archaeologists who study other hominids are already conducting a sort of xenoarchaeology.
Interpreting human, and perhaps hominid, minds and cultures is one thing, in fact we all do it in our everyday lives. But a special set of skills will be needed to study alien cultures without anthropomorphising them.
Xenoarchaeology fascinates me.
Xenoarchaeology is currently only hypothetical science that exists mainly in science fiction works and is not practiced by mainstream archaeologists. Although some fringe theories of alien archaeology exist, and several attempts at observing extraterrestrial structures at common Lagrangian points in our solar system have been made, most serious archaeological work has been in refutation of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoarchaeology
Xenoarchaeology is the study of past alien cultures from their physical remains. The prefix xeno- is from the Greek xenos, stranger.
Alien, in this instance, refers to members of any species other than that of the hypothetical xenoarchaeologist. A human studying martian ruins is a xenoarchaeologist, as is a martian studying human ruins.
The term alien always sounds a little pejorative to me (how about non-human person), but I use it here instead of ‘extraterrestrial’ which could be taken as a spatial designation, and because in the future there could conceivably be terrestrial nonhuman cultures (say, from uplifted animals or artificial intelligences). Despite its connotations, the word alien conveys the otherness of the culture to be studied.
If xenoarchaeology is the study of past cultures from species other than one’s own, and if you define ‘human’ in a narrow sense to refer to modern Homo sapiens, then archaeologists who study other hominids are already conducting a sort of xenoarchaeology.
Interpreting human, and perhaps hominid, minds and cultures is one thing, in fact we all do it in our everyday lives. But a special set of skills will be needed to study alien cultures without anthropomorphising them.
Xenoarchaeology fascinates me.