Reverse Archeology

An interesting mental exercise is what I call "reverse archeology". Suppose that people far in the future, or better yet, imaginary intelligent creatures from another planet, should find some objects, devices or, systems that we use today. What could they piece together about us? This is one of the finest illustrations that I can think of concerning thinking in patterns.

To demonstrate the technique of reverse archeology, let's imagine that beings from space make an exploratory landing on earth and then take off again. All that they find that might be an indication of intelligent life on earth is an unoccupied parked car. They take the car on board their spaceship and head back home. There, some of the brightest minds on that planet spend a long time analyzing the artifacts to try to determine what kind of beings created them.

By examining the seat and seatbelt, they would get a good idea of human body mass. The steering wheel and the switches and dials on the dashboard would tell them that we have movable hands. The gas and brake pedals would indicate that we also have feet. The car windows and mirrors would indicate that our most important sense is vision. The radio and horn in the car would reveal that hearing is also an important sense.

An analysis of the gasoline in the car's tank would give an idea of the gravity on earth and the energy involved in moving the car and also that we depend on oxygen in earth's atmosphere for combustion. The fact that there are four seats in the car may provide a clue to the size of the average earth family and that we are social and family-oriented. The fact that we make cars to move us would indicate that we tend to live and work in different places. The locks on the car would reveal that humans are not all good and that crime is a concern to us.

The aliens may determine that the car had been mass-produced and thus we must have workshops or factories and since we build cars, we almost certainly build other machines too. Since the shape of a car is designed to pass through air efficiently, they would probably determine that we build airplanes as well as cars. These conclusions are the most obvious.

But the aliens could apply insight to reveal more about humans. Since cars have an outer body supported by a frame, they may see that we adopted this plan for our cars because our own bodies have an inner skeleton and an outer skin. The car has a strong passenger cage to protect it's occupants and so we may have skulls to protect our sensitive brains from harm.

Since the grill of the car is above the wheels and the windshield is above the grill, they may decide that our mouths for breathing is above our feet and our eyes are above our mouths. Because the car has two headlights, it may seem as if we probably have two eyes. Likewise, it may be obvious that we modeled the car's radio speakers after our vocal cords.

Because the car moves us, it will be obvious that we are mobile creatures. They will see that we put tires on the car and may think it probable that we also put shoes on our feet. It will be obvious that humans cannot walk anywhere near as fast as a car can move or it would make no sense to build cars.

The car wheels turn to steer the car and it will be clear that we designed it so because our feet turn at our ankles. Likewise, the car's drive shaft and axles come from our thighs and calves. It's U-joint is modeled after our knees. The operation of the pistons in the car engine will show the insightful creatures the way that human beings walk.

The way the car burns fuel with air for energy will give them a clue as to how we burn food for energy while we breath in oxygen. The gas tank is a model of the stomach and the cylinders of the intestines. They may determine by the energy stored in gasoline that humans can store energy as fat.

As the aliens continue studying the car, the internal structure of human beings may become obvious to them. The logical place to get ideas for the design of a car is from our own bodies, at least subconsciously.

The car uses oil so we probably use blood. There are several pumps in the car so we must have hearts. The car has air, oil and, fuel filters so we probably have kidneys and a liver.

The car has a firewall that may be a model of the diaphragm between our stomach and lungs, which must collect air using the same kind of negative and positive pressures used in the car's cylinders. The car has exhaust so we exhale and have a waste-removal system. The car has a radiator to cool it so, we most likely have a body cooling system too, using sweat.

The aliens may determine that not only our internal body operation but also our whole society operates in the same way as the car. This is why we designed the car as it is, because the patterns are already so familiar to us.

The engine's pistons operate on a four-stroke cycle; intake, compression, power, exhaust. Likewise, there would be four basic types of worker: those who make things, those who move things, those who fix things and, those who run things. By examining the operation of the car's flywheel, they may even determine that humans use money as a repository of value just as the flywheel is a repository of angular momentum in the engine.

Now let's suppose that in the trunk of the parked car was a computer system. Some of the most brilliant minds among the aliens spend a long time examining every detail of the computer just as they have the car in an effort to discern as much information as possible about the beings that created and used it.

Since the computer is enclosed in a protective case, they may conclude that humans come in protective bodies. They will get an idea of the size and scope of the average human by the keyboard and monitor screen of the computer. Seeing that the computer has a fan, they may take it as confirmation that we must breathe.

Since the primary functions of a computer are communication and management of information, they would conclude that exchanging data is very important to humans. The box that the computer is in would suggest that we live in a throw-away society that produces a lot of trash.

Noting that computers have both long-term (hard drive) and short-term memory (RAM), they may conclude that the minds of human beings operate in a similar way. By the programming, they will see that a computer can be a very wide variety of things according to what is programmed into it and discern that humans must be the same way with a broad division of labor. Also by the way the computer is programmed they will get insight into our reasoning and that we are accustomed to logical thinking and the scientific method.

The basic structure of the computer may give the aliens an idea of the houses that people live in. The computer's outer case will seem to be a model of a dwelling place. The computer's ports may seem congruent to the doors in houses. The BIOS would seem to be a reflection of the basement or utility room of the house. Indeed, the maintenence required on the computer will seem akin to keeping house.

It may become clear to the aliens what our cities are like by examination of the computer. First DOS and then windows usage resembles the navigation of streets, such as the sequential drop-down menus in Windows. They may determine that our houses have addresses in our cities just as there are memory addresses programmed into the computer.

A SCSI chain of peripherals would give a further clue to the street addresses of humans. They may conclude that the internal workings of the computer is a model of the telephone network and traffic light system in the cities of humans.

The way the computer's hard drive is formatted must give a clue to the way humans parcel land in and around cities into real estate. The systemboard (or logicboard or motherboard) of a computer works in the same way as a mall or a lobby. If the aliens can see that the computer is designed to be set up as part of a network, they may decide that there must be a server computer and that may lead them to conclude that humans must have cafes, pubs, social clubs and, bars as meeting places.

If the aliens see that the computer is designed for periodic upgrades they may conclude that fashion in such things as clothing and cars is important to humans. it would seem logical that human history has gone through a number of progressive steps, or upgrades.

In a leap of insight, they may determine that the slots for computer cards resemble parking spaces that humans set aside for their cars. They may conclude that we got the idea for rows of pixels in the computer monitor from the fields of crops on farms. And because the computer is obviously set up to receive additional peripheral devices that we have mastered the art of grafting and breeding plants.

The interchangeability concept will be obvious, that one machine such as the computer, can be an almost infinite variety of things according to how it is programmed. They would almost certainly determine that we use mass-production techniques in factories and are adept at materials science and mining.

When the aliens see that humans must have an internet, it will seem obvious that we also must have had telephone, mail and, extensive travel as a preliminary step to the development of the internet. From the monitor on the computer, it will be fairly obvious that we have television and thus almost certainly movies and radio.

They will decide that humans not only have factories but also offices that administer the factories. The files, folder and, tabs in the softward will be obvious electronic versions of earlier filing cabinets. It will be fairly obvious that mechanical typewriters must have preceded computers. The computer's desktop, files and RAM will give a clue to how an executive's desk operates while running the factory.

Since we store data in bits and bytes (8 bits), it will be clear that we are very familiar with atoms and molecules. The installing and uninstalling that computers are designed for may suggest that humans are accomplished at surgery. The computer's keyboard may suggest to them that we may have musical instruments such as pianos.

It is possible that they may even wonder if we had phonograph records and that is where we got the idea for hard drives and their read/write heads. Since the aliens also have a car of ours, the similarity between using a computer and driving a car will be obvious.

There will be clues in the design of the computer to how society operates. If they determine that the computer has parts by different manufacturers, they may decide that we practice competitive economics, or capitalism. The central processing unit (CPU) of the computer will suggest that we live in ordered societies run by governments.

But the direct memory access (DMA) channels and the interrupt requests (IRQs) may suggest to them that our governments are not all-powerful, in fact that we practice democracy. The computer clock will suggest that we live parcelled lives and are very time-conscious and the BIOS may suggest that we live by laws and a written constitution.

The basis of these observations and conclusions is that any beings will logically resort to the patterns with which they are most familiar in whatever they do. The idea that any being designing a technology, or facing some such task, will instinctively resort to the patterns with which they are familiar. The resulting technology will manifest the same patterns, but in a different way.

Suppose that the aliens made another trip to earth. They still did not see a human being. But this time, they had landed near an airfield and brought back a small, private airplane (aeroplane in Britain) with them. What could the aliens add to their knowledge about humans gained from their analyses of the car and computer with the aircraft?

First of all, it would be very obvious once again that the humans that had built the plane were very adept at such things as mining and manufacturing and had a good knowledge of their environment. It would be clear that the plane was made in the same general form as the car, but was made to fly through the atmosphere. We would have to be a large-scale society to want to fly from one place to another and our world would be well-explored.

The wingspan of the plane relative to it's weight would give the aliens a clue to the density of our atmosphere and by figuring in gravity, the approximate size of the earth. They would conclude that we probably also use jet planes that would be more efficient that propellor planes that are limited to denser air at low altitudes. This would lead them to believe that we probably have explored space or are in the process of doing so.

For a deeper understanding of humans, the aliens would next consider the patterns manifested in the plane, just as they did with the car and the computer. A leap of insight may lead them to find that we must have had boats on a liquid such as water before the development of aircraft. The plane's wings, tail, rudder and, ailerons would be clear adaptations of a ship's sails, keel and, rudder.

We almost certainly would not have designed a propellor to pull the plane through the air without the experience of using a similar propellor to push a ship through water on our planet. The idea of sails would also tell the aliens that our planet has wind and thus must heat unevenly, meaning that our planet's surface has areas significantly different from each other, such as land and sea and that we have precipitation and weather.

The plane's engine is somewhat similar to that of the car but operates with the cylinders in a radial pattern. This may give them a clue that humans spent long centuries grinding grains that we grew under grinding wheels, making this radial motion a part of our "pattern vocabulary". Our skill in designing wings that the air flows over to lift the plane may indicate our familiarity with water power being used in our mills.

Knowing what they know thus far about humans and, knowing that we live on a planet with water, it would become obvious that human beings can swim in the water. A plane, with it's outstretched wings and tail does bear a resemblance to a human being swimming with the arms and feet. In a similar way, the plane kind of "swims" through the air.

The ailerons, or control surfaces, on the plane controlled by cables may give the aliens a clue that human bodies move by means of muscles moving bones. All of the indicator gauges in the plane's cockpit that receive data by wires would, in the same way, give the idea that we obtain information about our environment via senses and nerves.

The next logical conclusion would be that we have birds in our atmosphere that gave us the idea of flying in the first place and also fish in our water that showed us how fins and tails can guide a body through a fluid, whether it be water or air. Since they know there is wind on our planet, it would also be apparent that our first step toward flight was wind-operated devices such as kites.

This demonstrates that humans have a limited "pattern vocabulary" and whenever we devise new ideas, we inevitably revert to the patterns we are familiar with. Any "new" ideas that we come up with are invariably rearrangements of the existing patterns contained in this vocabulary.

The aliens still have not seen a human being and decide to make yet another trip to earth. Once again, they happen to land in a place where there are no people around. But they do find themselves near an unoccupied house that humans obviously have built.

Just as they did with the car, the computer and, the airplane (aeroplane), they take the house apart and carefully record every detail before returning to their home planet to analyze the data to see if it yields more information about those mysterious human beings on earth.

Quite a bit of direct information about humans is easily found in the vacant house that they would have occupied. The stairs, door and, doorknobs, as well as the beds, give the aliens a very good idea of the scale of human beings. The windows reinforce what they know already, that our visual sense is our most important. The mirrors make it obvious that we care about our appearances.

But to really increase their understanding of us, the aliens look for the patterns we have designed and built into the house. Just as an artist or writer leaves a bit of himself in everything he creates, the aliens know that the design of the house contains a wealth of subtle information about us.

The patterns we must be most familiar with are, of course, those of our own bodies. The rafters in the roof, the joists in the floor and the studs in the walls cause the alien scientists to surmise that we must have ribs. The ridgeboard which forms the peak of the roof to which the rafters are attached make it obvious to them that our ribs are attached to a central sternum.

The concrete foundation of the home gives the aliens the idea that since our bones form the structural "foundation" of the body, they are probably composed of some concrete-like material. Upon analyzing the hinges in the doors of the home, they realize that our bones must move on hinges in a similar way. By the way the wooden structure of the home is joined to the concrete foundation by anchor bolts and the boards to each other by nails, the aliens realize that our muscles are probably joined to our bones by tendons that function in this way.

The way rooms are set up in the house so that a person moves from one room to another, the aliens conclude that our digestive process must operate in the same way, from the esophagus to the stomach to the two intestines. Upon analyzing the two plumbing systems in the house, the supply and the drainage, the aliens conclude that we have a similar way of taking in water and expelling it after use. The water heater that takes in cold water, heats it and then sends it out, makes the aliens think that we probably have a heart that pumps our blood in a similar way through arteries and blood vessels.

The electrical wiring in the home makes it clear to the aliens that we have a nervous system to control bodily functions and also that it is our arteries carrying blood that distributes energy to the different parts of the body. The operation of the furnace, heating air and then replacing it with air from the cold air return shows the aliens how our lungs must operate.

They may conclude that since we keep a room in which to store food, the kitchen, that our bodies must have a way to store food or it's energy as fat. The insulation in the walls of the home may signify that we have hair for insulation. The awnings on the windows and the movable curtains inside may even lead them to conclude that we have eyelids in order to close our eyes.