We Are the Children of the Stars

by Otto O. Binder

  Why, then, did nature go wild and double the brain between the Hominid phase and the Homo phase? Why did early Man need a brain twice as big as he formerly had?

  Certainly not to make better flint tools and hunting weapons—Hominids had done nicely with their crude ones, thank you.

  Certainly not to invent or discover fire, the wheel, and smelt copper? Nature, or natural selection, is a blind force, not an intellectual “planner” who deals with abstruse concepts like bigger and better stone or bronze-headed clubs. Certainly not – and even more unthinkable – in order to allow Man to invent language, speech, writing, mathematics, engineering, and science!

  It is entirely off-limits for classical evolutionary processes on Earth to produce a brain of this immense caliber.

  Hence, every brain jump from the earliest Hominids of a million years ago, to Erectus' already double-sized brain to the mighty modern brain is sheer, unmitigated, incredible overendowment.

  Natural selection stopped short of overendowing any other species in any way, so as to keep the “survival race” on a fair and even keel. Nature does not have “favorites.” Why, then, did natural selection make this one great and wholly unbelievable overendowment in one sole case, and present mankind with a brain of ten times the capacity needed for daily survival?

  We could lay a bet of a million to one that the evolutionists cannot, and never will, give a scientifically satisfactory and foolproof answer.

  On the other hand, there are dozens of authorities who will openly declare that Man is the great “Misfit of Evolution.”

  One such statement goes, “Man is a mathematical improbability. [Earth] has produced a current crop of perhaps a million species [of all creatures]. Of them, one may be loosely described as sapient [intelligent]. . . . Were we not so evident [real], an impartial observer would be forced to conclude that we could not and do not exist.”11

  No mincing of words there!

  Man is a “mathematical improbability” and should “not exist” under evolutionary law. Therefore, Man only becomes “probable” if we look for the origin of his magnificent mind out in space, where the starmen came from.

  Perhaps the true clincher is this further statement by the same authority: “New in humans [their brains] are such areas as the speech center in the third convolution of the temporal lobe [Broca's area], and close to it the center for knowledge and its practical application, which is important in technical skills.”12

  Two new areas that exist in no other earthly animal's brain, not even in rudimentary form. And those areas have little to do with brute survival, for how could speech, abstract knowledge, and technical skill in any way aid Man in defending himself against predators, in gathering nuts to eat, in hunting down game?

  What is the real “necessity” to Man's bare survival in discovering the law of gravity, tabulating the chemical elements, inventing the radio and combustion engine, in utilizing atomic power?

  Any brain capable of achieving those brobdignagian feats simply could not come out of Evolution's prime concept – survival of the fittest. For those things did not in the least “fit” mankind for the primitive battle of life.

  They only added a postsurvival kind of life of infinite grandeur to human existence.

  If evolutionists are still stubborn and insist there must be some evolutionary explanation, we might quietly point out that a million other creatures – and dozens close to Man in general physical terms – did not evolve this sort of superbrain. Why should one species, and only one, gain this unparalleled mental ability denied to every other living creature?

  Mankind is then, in a sense, the “chosen species.” But not chosen by Evolution, which cannot overendow, but by Starman, who could.

  As a matter of fact, we believe the anthropologists are wrong in lumping modern Man (Homo sapiens sapiens), as only one species out of others, in the genus Homo. (Homo sapiens sapiens classifies Man as a creature who thinks and also knows he thinks.)

  A genus is a group of animals with mutual characteristics of a general type, a subdivision of a broader class. Within the genus are the various species. Different members of a genus cannot interbreed, only the individual specimens of a single species.

  Now, not only can Man not interbreed with apes (a different genus), but it is doubtful if today's Homo sapiens could have crossbred fertilely with Homo erectus. Modern humans might not even be able to breed with Neanderthal Man, although Cro-Magnon Man (who is also Homo sapiens sapiens) of 35,000 B.C. definitely would have been mutually fertile with current humans.

  Take this interbreeding factor, add to it the “isolated splendor” of Man's incomparable brain, plus all the physiological changes from Homo erectus to Homo neanderthalensis, and it is then our contention that modern Man should be in a separate genus of his own, not merely one of several species within the genus homo.

  Man might well be promoted to his own sole genus as sapiens supremis (or any suitable term), in which the “sapiens,” meaning intelligence, automatically lifts him out of the Homo genus that includes poor-brained Erectus and places him in his own niche, never to be confused anthropologically with his lesser relatives.

  Neither Homo erectus nor Neanderthal Man could ever have broken down the atom into protons and electrons, or even invented the battle-ax.

  But above and beyond all that, we believe mankind should be elevated to a new genus for another cogent reason – because he is not purely earthly in origin. If he is Hybrid Man with part parentage from starmen, as we maintain, then certainly he cannot fit into any ordinary genus produced exclusively on this Earth.

  Man's genus name could then quite appropriately be sapiens stellar.

  14

  Cerebral Clues

  TREMENDOUS ADVANCES HAVE been made in laboratories throughout the world since the termination of World War II. The details of these advances need not be mentioned, but certain fields have seen fantastic developments.

  First, of course, is the program of space exploration. Then come the completely new fields that include magneto-hydrodynamics, the laser, Project Deep-Sea Drilling, open-heart surgery and heart transplants, color television, tape recorders, the transistor, and a host of hardly lesser science marvels. It is an “explosion” of science technology.

  It is apparent that in every field of human endeavor, a real effort is being put forth today to make giant strides forward on all scientific fronts.

  It is also true in medicine and in one special branch of medicine – the study of the brain. In England, where there was ample reason to study brain damage due to war injuries, a number of laboratories have recently struck “pay dirt” in the highly specialized field of electroencephalography.1 A brief review of what has been done in this field since World War II will enable us to appreciate more fully the truly startling revelations that have been uncovered in the last few years, and that relate directly to our Hybrid Man theory.

  First, the standard electroencephalographic (or EEG) techniques were extended infinitely further by the development of a device termed an “averager.”

  In the usual technique, a pen was made to trace out the variations in the cranial-current's intensity occurring between two electrodes placed at various locations on the exterior skin of the live human skull. A graph resulted that was “jerky,” having a great number of vibrations occurring in it within a few seconds.

  In the standard EEG recording five such complete setups operated five pens, and the paper tape record that resulted produced a completely individualistic pattern of five “traces.” There was no way of correlating these five records until the “averager” was invented. This device manages to determine the total current amplitudes occurring in any given moment of time in all five pens simultaneously.

  The “averager,” then, produces a record that is entirely unlike the usual electroencephalogram. These records, taken from the brains of many individuals, produced some startling new discoveries when analyzed.

  First, it was found that ea
ch individual has a typical “vibration rate.” Each brain has pulses of current traveling through it that are slow when compared to the rapid variations described in the old EEG setup.

  It was found eventually that each brain produces four wavelengths of pulsations. Delta waves (0 to 4 hertz wavelength) occur in infants and sleeping adults. Theta pulses (4-8 hz.) are associated with creative moods, fantasizing, and daydreaming. Alpha waves (8-13 hz.) represent tranquility with eyes closed and lack of visual imagery. Beta waves (13-26 hz.) are released during times of tension and anxiety, also during intense concentration.

  Second, it was found that the brain changes its pulse rate when the eyes are closed, during light sleep, and at other stages of slumber.

  Finally, it was found that this pulse rate could be used to actually determine whether or not an individual was imagining something! The very act of “imagining” could be accurately detected, simply by noting when Theta waves radiated from the brain during the waking state.

  The measurement of such an exotic faculty was further enhanced by a newly discovered technique known as “flicker,” where an extremely bright light is flashed repeatedly and rhythmically in front of the patient's eyes. This flashing or pulsing is synchronized, exactly, with the slow Theta pulse occurring in the patient's brain.

  Entirely new discoveries about the brain resulted from the use of the flicker technique. The exact location in our brain of the mental screen (the screen of “imagination” on which we project the picture in our “mind's eye”) was determined, and the probable method by which these pictures are produced was revealed.

  Television tubes and radar screens display characteristics similar to the human brain's ideation activities.

  In conventional TV, the “trace” or moving electron-beam starts at one edge of the screen, the upper corner, then proceeds across from side to side. On each pass, it drops downward a tiny fraction of an inch. This, in receiving sets of the United States, occurs 550 times a second before the trace has reached the bottom of the screen. It then flicks back to the upper corner to start all over again.

  In radar, however, there is a beam that is pivoted at the center of a round screen, which sweeps like the hands of a clock, around and around, “painting” the picture upon the phosphor of the tube face.

  It has been established without question that the human brain operates like a radar set, and the mental screen upon which we project our imaginary pictures operates like a radar screen – in short, there is a radial “sweep” arrangement.2 It was further established that such an arrangement does not exist in any other mammal brains on Earth.

  It is exclusive to Man.

  Let us return for a moment to two of those mysterious pulsations, the Alpha and Theta pulses that occur in the human brain. Researchers were astonished to discover that the speed with which the radar sweep went around the human radar screen was exactly the same speed possessed by the Alpha and Theta rhythms.

  Again we repeat that the data most important to this book's study is the statement that Man is the only mammal with such a “radar” brain. Restated, this means that the most careful research has failed to discover anything more than a faint trace of the ability to imagine things in the minds of any animal except Man.

  Thus, humans are the only creatures who can plan ahead, imagine possibilities, and discard those deemed unwise. No other creature can mentally create such vast mechanisms of future actions before the time to carry them out – except Man. No other creature can imagine a walk in the woods or conjure up the dear face of a loved one long departed.

  This leads us again to a familiar point that we have made before, for this amazing discovery fits in very well with this book's basic contention that Man is a hybrid and that his marvelous mind came from outer space.

  Just how does the human brain “visualize” or see clear-cut images on the mind's “screen”? Much more research will have to be done before that miraculous ability can be pinned down.

  Scientists have determined, however, that certain areas of the brain have control over such mental imagery. When those areas are stimulated by the touch of a fine wire through which a mild electric current is projected, mental images leap vividly into the subject's mind. Images are conjured up from either past memories or from recent events in that person's life. There seems to be some complex “feedback” system that taps such “stored” images and releases them to sensory visualization centers.

  This ability to visualize mentally is abundantly possessed by Man but is only fleetingly displayed by the higher apes, as determined by ingenious scientific experiments with chimps. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine by skeletal remains alone whether any manlike creature in Man's ancestry did or did not possess the means to visualize.

  Did Homo erectus think in “pictures” too? It is rather dubious, because it seems to be a function of brain quality that is involved.

  No one has yet been able to deduce brain quality with any degree of exactitude from skeletal remains, but the strong probability is that the brain structures of Erectus and possibly of Neanderthal Man were both inferior to modern Man's, to the extent that mental imagery was either absent or of sporadic occurrence.

  In fact, we will make the educated guess that the full-blown ability to “see inside the brain” did not come along until Homo sapiens came along, which would include Cro-Magnon Man as well as modern Man.

  It is well known that as long as 15,000 or 20,000 years ago, Cro-Magnon Man painted exquisite pictures of animals and objects on cave walls. Since he could not very well drag a woolly mammoth down into the caves, he must have depended on his memory to draw the creatures. But to do the scenes with such remarkable excellence and in faithful detail – and in color – the Cro-Magnon “old masters” must have relied on vivid mental images carried along within their brains.

  The above pioneering brain research has blossomed into a new mental therapy for the ill, and, for the healthy, it offers a new way of achieving mind-expansion without the use of dangerous drugs like LSD.3

  The new therapy technique is called “biofeedback,” meaning that the subject is shown his brain waves in action via the electroencephalograph or EEG machine. His brain waves can either be visually reproduced on a screen as a series of wave motions, or as sound vibrations of a certain pitch. The wave-pattern changes before the patient's eyes or the pitch to his ears as his brain switches from one to another of the four types of mental waves that always emanate alternately from the human brain, day and night, waking, or sleeping.

  The Alpha waves are the most fascinating, in that they usually come into being when the subject goes to sleep. But now experimenters have “coached” their subjects to produce the Alpha pulses in the waking state. Some inner control mechanism in the brain is triggered off to do this, after intense practice.

  This Alpha-pacing, as such research is called, has given psychiatrists a new therapeutic tool for relieving disturbed patients. Once they are taught to consciously produce the Alpha rhythm while awake, they go into a state of relaxation or half-sleep that is somewhat akin to hypnosis. In this state, their anxieties and other mental aberrations can be more easily treated by the doctor.

  But further research indicates the Alpha rhythm is far more versatile and is indirectly related to creativity, pleasure, and meditation. It looks promising that when this brain-wave-control technique is perfected, it will offer a cure for insomnia, bring more happiness or content, improve memory, and in general increase mental and physical health. In short, it may become a sort of “mental medicine” quite as potent as those used in chemotherapy.

  And this newly discovered “biofeedback” mechanism of the human brain is again something that could never follow from the limited species-improvements offered by natural selection.

  It could only come from a hybrid brain tailored by the starmen to perform the EEG wonders.

  Now let us take up another aspect of Man's mental makeup that is taken for granted in the human race, yet is so
remarkable when one stops to think of it that we can only marvel at the phenomenon.

  Namely, human genius.

  Where does it come from? And how can humans be so diverse in mental attainments that one person can be a dozen or a hundred times more intelligent (in the intellectual sense) than the average Man on the street?

  True geniuses, such as Einstein (with his probable 200 IQ) occur so rarely in the human race that they seem to have little or no relationship to the common laws of heredity.

  Digging into the laws of genetics, however, brings out one rather odd bit of information regarding recessive genes. This is the fact that recessive genes can, under certain circumstances, persist in a family under such conditions that many, many generations will show no trace of that particular recessive characteristic.4 Then, due to some marriage by pure chance with another carrier, it may show up many generations later.

  For example, there are many people (mainly women) who are carriers of recessive genes for color blindness, but they show no trace of it themselves.5 Also, blue eyes are due to a recessive gene, while brown eyes have the backing of a dominant gene; hence, there are many more dark-eyed people on Earth than light-eyed.

  Getting back to our topic, true genius does display some of the strange occurrence phenomena as to rarity that are displayed by recessive genes. So could it be that true genius is – when it occurs – the extremely rare “cropping up” of a characteristic given to us long ago by our outer-space ancestors? Even if that is not the answer, Evolution doesn't have any answer at all.

  Let us first of all recall the concepts of Alfred Wallace, codiscoverer of Evolution along with Darwin, over 100 years ago. Wallace stated quite flatly: “Exceptional intellectual activity cannot by any stretch of the imagination have become part of Man's mental make-up through the process of natural selection – for natural selection never overendows a species with any particularly desirable characteristic.”6