Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication

by Douglas A. Vakoch (Editor)

This publication is available as a free download at
http://www.nasa.gov/ebooks
Description from NASA's official website:
"Addressing a field that has been dominated by astronomers, physicists, engineers, and computer scientists, the contributors to this collection raise questions that may have been overlooked by physical scientists about the ease of establishing meaningful communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence. These scholars are grappling with some of the enormous challenges that will face humanity if an information-rich signal emanating from another world is detected. By drawing on issues at the core of contemporary archaeology and anthropology, we can be much better prepared for contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, should that day ever come."

Genres: Science, Anthropology, Nonfiction, Space, Research, Archaeology

300 pages, ebook

First published May 20, 2014

Reviews

[Thea · Rating 5 out of 5]

საინტერესო წიგნია..უფრო სწორად სახელმძღვანელო იმ სიტუაციისათვის,როდესაც კაცობრიობა არამიწიერ ცივილიზაციასთან კონტაქტს დაამყარებს.
დაწერილია არქეოლოგიური და ანთროპოლოგიური კვლევების საფუძვლებზე და ყველაზე საინტერესო ისაა ,რომ ამ მონაცემების მიხედვით გამოყავთ სიგნალის გაშიფრვის მეთოდები,აანალიზებენ კომუნიკაციის შესაძლებლობას უძველესი ცივილიზაციების გამოცდილების საფუძველზე,განიხილავენ არამიწიერი ორგანიზმების ევოლუციასაც კი.
ვფიქრობ, ყველას დააინტერესებს ვინც SETI-ს საქმიანობას დროის და სახსრების ფუჭად ხარჯვად არ მიიჩნევს..

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating but uneven collection of scientific articles about SETI. Several chapters (eg chapters 1, 8, 10, 12, 14) seem to have been included out of respect for the authors rather than for their relevance or accuracy. These chapters are often waffling, laden with jargon, repetitious, and factually incorrect. For instance, the only chapter on biology incorrectly states the number of animal phyla, the number of extinct human species, and the scientific designation for humans and their relatives (the correct term is hominins, not hominids, which was outdated well before this collection was published).

Reading these chapters one gets the feeling that the editor reached out to high-ranking SETI workers and solicited any old paper they had handy on the theme of history. As a result there is no consistent writing or footnote style between chapters, chapters contradict each other, and definitions of critical words like "culture" and "intelligence" vary from paper to paper.

Between these frustrating chapters, though, are gems of real interest. Nimble and information-rich prose characterise the best of these chapters, especially chapters 2 and 9 (chapter 2 also handily covers the same ground as chapter 1, only much faster and in a more interesting style). Considering the collection is free, the quality of these chapters is impressive.

Even the dullest of chapters still contains some interesting fact or concept, and overall this is a decent book on a fascinating topic. Greater consilience between chapters, tighter writing, more rigorous fact-checking, and more time spent on biological and cultural topics than historical and hard-science topics, would endear it to a wider audience.

[Diego Pino · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never expected a free book could be so good.

I always had an interest in astronomy. Pursuing that interest led me to reading many books and magazines about astronomy when I was in my teens. Eventually, a few years ago, still cultivating that passion for astronomy, I picked a book which was a compilation of several essays by Carl Sagan. One of them covered the origins of the SETI project, founded together with Frank Drake, and the search for extraterrestrial life, either by using radio astronomy or by sending a probe (pioneer plaque). Likely if I had not read that essay this book would have passed unnoticed to me.

I remember in that article Carl Sagan made a parallelism between establishing contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life and past experiences of cultures reconnecting with ancient civilizations from the past and benefitting from their knowledge. It's a one way communication separated by centuries or millennia. If we ever manage to tune a radio station or a TV channel from a planet orbiting Vega or Alpha Centauri, this experience could be as enriching as XV century Europe reconnecting with the lost works of ancient Greece from VI b.c via Muslim world. This idea made me look at the SETI project with new eyes.

I expected to find something similar to what Carl Sagan described in his article, and I was not wrong. But what I found in this book, which is a compilation of essays on the challenges for the search of extraterrestrial intelligent life, was more than I expected, in a very positive sense.

The first chapters cover how the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life came into being a new scientific discipline. It also covers, to a high extent, the birth of the SETI project. These topics, which might sound boring for many, were of great interest to me. Then, the rest of the book covers the anthropological, psychological, cognitive and epistemological challenges of establishing contact with other civilizations. Many of them cover these topics by establishing comparisons with previous experiences in human history. For instance, how can we decipher a language unknown? How did we manage to decipher hieroglyphs or the Mayan writing system? To what extent is it possible to decipher a language of which we have no references? Is it even possible?

There are also reflections as well about human and animal communications, and the challenge it represents to decipher language of a different species (we learned just 100 years ago that bees communicate through language). If we ever get in contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence it would be the first time we communicate with someone as intelligent as us, or more, but which belongs to a different species.

Some of my favorite essays in the book were the ones authored by the anthropologist John W. Trapaghan: "Culture and Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence" and "Anthropology at a Distance". The latter is an essay about the study that anthropologist Ruth Benedict did during the Second World War on Japanese citizens living in the USA. The results of those studies were put on writing in her famous book "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword".

I assume that only those ones interested in astronomy would consider reading this book. If you're curious or slightly interested in the topic, reading the first chapters might satisfy your curiosity and give you good reasons why searching for extraterrestrial intelligent life is not an useless task, but a human endeavor which is worth pursuing.

[Justinian · Rating 3 out of 5]

2018-04 - Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication. Douglas Vakoch (Editor) 2014. 332 Pages.

This book came in my box of books from NASA. It was the book that most intrigued me. Yes, this book is essentially about communicating with extraterrestrial life (Good idea -Bad idea – inevitable – never going to happen). It is a collection of essays and submitted papers. Traditionally this field of endeavor had been dominated by the natural and physical sciences. But early on some of the social sciences were brought in. This book brings up some fundamental questions about the search for extraterrestrial life. Questions like … should we actively seek out extraterrestrial life? What type of message should we send? How should we reply if contact is achieved? What happens after contact? Discussions about image, language, sound, and human experience dealing with the other. Initially there was an affinity for the rediscovery of ancient texts …i.e. the recovery of Greco-Roman thought into the western world. But, a growing section of the science felt that was a poor analogy because there were cultural similarities, language familiarity, and an existing shared heritage that made transmission of the ancient texts easy. Thus, leading to a false idea about being able to communicate with the other. What many of the newer studies were using is the encounter with, and attempts to understand the Maya. I tend to agree that this is a better frame of reference. We are still struggling to piece the Mayans together and understand their thought and civilization. The one fundamental truth of humanity’s experience though is …that it is better to be the finder than the found. The found tends to end up dead or colonized. To that extent we should keep investing and reaching out. All together this book is a bit beyond casual interest but still accessible. It left me with a deeper appreciation of the issues and thinking more about fundamental questions raised. One of them has to do with the nature of life … perhaps extraterrestrial life exists already here on Earth but we are not able at this time to recognize it.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a bit dry and academic, and I almost gave up after the first two chapters being all about the funding of SETI, the political machinations and whatnot, but after that it was really thought-provoking. Not just about how we might communicate with extraterrestrials, but also how we do and do not communicate with other earthlings.

[Stefan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A scholarly take on what intelligent aliens might be like, and what might be hard about communicating with them. If this doesn't make your mind wander with thought on the universe, I don't know what will.

[Cyber Killer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a collection of science papers, but it's roughly accessible for a hobbyist like me. There are a lot of interesting ideas on communication and human history here, really good stuff.

[Rich Bussom · Rating 1 out of 5]

A couple of worthwhile essays but not worth wading through the rest.

[Munqith Gharib · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagine a 15 year who has a crush on "the girl next door".
That 15 year old, upon frequenting that girl's favorite coffee shop, stumbles upon an aged man with a brown tweed jacket, messed gray hair, and long beard. He was reading a newspaper before the empty cup of coffee he finished an hour ago still on the table with lip marks visible on the top rims.
Looking at the man, and thinking of the girl, the teenager gets all sorts of ideas. The number 1 idea that struck his head was to go over and talk, not to the girl, but the old man.
The teenager says hi, and so does the man. And what follows is an endless torrent of philosophical meanderings, conjectures upon the relation of the girl to a supernatural deity, and her thoughts on anthropomorphism. But well into the exchange of this great wisdom a few important points precipitate relating to the appropriate manner the young man should behave in and the scenarios that follow suit which are:
1- The teenager could stay put and think it more deeply in order to better understand the girl's personality. This option, if followed, would mean paying attention to the endless number of cues, movements, and looks the girl might make.
2- The teenager could go over immediately and tell her how much he's infatuated with her. This option however carries the risk of getting slapped and kicked in the balls if the girl had violent tendencies, which is likely.
3- The girl might come and approach him herself, but that possibility is very small and even if it did happen it would mean that the girl is so technologically superior that most of her violent tendencies have disappeared and she has matured into a one state international community of contending... wait what??!
The book is a collection of essays primarily on endeavors of SETI by a number of scientists in multiple fields. If you've reached this point then you're well prepared to jump into the book, which will oftentimes feel like a cacophony of different insights on an all too hypothetical matter, with perhaps the most valuable of which only briefly paid heed to, i.e., that of the biologist. Too much spot light is put on the Drake equation that is 80% wishful thinking, 10% multiplication dots, 5% equal sign, and 5% actual science, as was pointed out by Stephen Jay Gould in the book. Only until much later is the assumption that's been carried all along appropriately elaborated on. That assumption is the probability of [intelligent] life springing up in close galactic quarters- which is astonishingly small.
But this is not meant to discourage you from reading the book, or get excited about SETI, which is beneficial to the world in a number of ways. I myself participate in SETI@Home, which uses computing power donated by the public to analyze the signals received at Arecibo observatory.
SETI, however mentioned, captures all minds. I was just hoping for something more from this book.

[Bob Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of papers deals with possible insights that the study of our human past can contribute to the efforts to detect and then communicate with extraterrestrial life. Since the papers and their authors are diverse, their quality and the interest I had in each differs. The first three papers, on various histories of SETI and a broad look at how anthropology might contribute, are wholly uninteresting to me, though of course your mileage may vary. In chapter 4, the authors make an interesting case that decipherment of Mayan mathematics did not lead to any insight into the rest of their written language. Chapter 5 has a nice piece on the differences between the indexes, icons and symbols that people leave behind (an index is a direct physical consequence of the thing, an icon a representation of it, and a symbol an unrelated thing with an understood meaning). Other notable pieces are chapter 7, which deals with how we interpret evidence as having been produced by intelligence, chapter 8, which uses a WW2 study of Japan via Japanese Americans to point out how interpretations may not come close to the truth, and chapter 10, which deals with the cultural specificity of things that seem as simple as counting. Many of the essays deal with interesting subjects such as the disunion of our own planet and the assumption of union in a culture that contacts us, and the likely of other cultures evolving in similar ways and wanting to make contact. The book closes with a warning not to view other civilizations in a “mirror of our assumptions”, a very rich phrase. Over all, the book has many interesting points of view on display, is cogently written, and worth reading if the subject interests you.

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled across this book, and thought, "ok, I'll bite." I was refreshingly surprised. When I first looked at what it was going to cover I couldn't help but wonder, how is this book, from a respected scientific organization, going to handle a seemingly outlandish idea in reasonable, and informative way. Every essay was enlightening, and presented real, and legitimate scholarly work on what is ultimately a difficult issue. If you're interested communication, I would suggest this book.

[Daniel Beck · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting book at the history and problems associated with trying to find evidence of intelligent life over interstellar distances, and how you'd go about deciphering such evidence. I really enjoyed it, though a couple of chapters are a bit repetitive (e.g., repeated explanations of the Drake Equation).

[Siva Kumar S A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting read for SETI enthusiasts

[Tommy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat repetitive. Chapter 4, "A Tale of Two Analogues", is the best article in here.