A biology blog said that engravings from the Tiwanaku civilization in Bolivia are unlikely to show an ancient astronaut because, even with an aquatic tail, the creature still looks too much like a human. The main point of the argument was that life has evolved in so many different ways that it is very unlikely that an alien would look even remotely like us. In a way, this is the other side of the pendulum from how Hollywood always makes aliens look like people.
The biologist didn't care about the Tiwanaku artists' use of decorative and symbolic images, and he didn't think about the idea that an aquatic alien was wearing a helmeted space suit. So, I have to assume that the biologist noticed that the creature had two arms and two eyes. Since humans also have two arms and two eyes, the biologist reasoned that this could not be an alien.
What should intelligent aliens look like? Or, to put it another way, what should we expect aliens to look like when they come to Earth? This is not a total mystery. If aliens can travel between stars, it's clear that they have more advanced technology. What do you need to do to get technology? From my point of view, a life form would need a complex brain and the ability to see and move things in order to make technology. This means that it has eyes, fingers, and maybe a head that is bigger than the rest of its body. All of these things are true about the Tiwanaku alien.
The biologist might say that it's not that aliens have eyes, but how many eyes they have, that's the problem. Higher animals here on Earth developed two eyes. Mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and insects all have two eyes, but this would be different on another planet. There, the living things might have one, two, three, four, or even ten eyes. That right? Is the number of eyes a random thing that happened during evolution?
Astronomers looking for extraterrestrial intelligence look for planets with the same temperature and chemical makeup as Earth. This is because they know that life evolved on Earth, so it makes sense to think that it could also evolve on other planets that are similar. Also, if the history of those planets is similar to ours, we might expect the evolutionary process to go the same way there as it did here.
Was the evolution of animals with two eyes on Earth so random that we should expect life on other planets to have a different number of eyes? I doubt it. Why? It's called natural selection or "survival of the fittest." At least two eyes are needed to see depth and keep your attention on something. There may have been animals on Earth in the past that had five or ten eyes, but their brains were too small to help them find their way in five directions, so they died out quickly. Only two eyes are still around. Should we think that another planet like Earth will be very different? No. It makes sense to think that intelligent aliens would have two eyes, like people.
It's also possible to think of alien life forms based on the variety of life on Earth, both in the past and the present. The Tiwanaku alien looks like a fish because it has a fish mouth that seems to be breathing inside a water-filled helmet. It also looks like a lobster because it has two hands in front that it can use to pick up and move things (large head and fingered upper appendages). The Tiwanaku drawings only show four fingers instead of our five, but this is a very likely result of evolution. The alien's three-pod aquatic tail is also something that could have happened over time.
I think it's great that the biologist knows there could be a lot of different kinds of life in the universe. But it is likely, not impossible, that life forms with more advanced technology will have something in common with humans.
This article talked about what Bella Online Biology said on the CrypticThinking.com website's Tiwanaku Alien pages.
