Murmurs of Earth

by Carl Sagan

  73. Japanese Schoolroom

  This shows the important human activity of learning how to write; it also shows that we still educate children en masse rather than by private tutors or teaching machines—at least so far.

  74. Children with Globe

  Like picture 36, this was taken at the UN International School in New York City. Again, the children are shown in a circle, their eyes directed to the hands on the globe. The portion of the globe shown—Africa and the Mideast—is the same portion shown on picture 12 of Earth from space. If recipients make the connection and realize that the children are looking at a globe of their home planet, they may notice that the land on the globe is broken up by a complex pattern of lines. Perhaps they will deduce that these represent some sort of political or territorial boundaries, boundaries that are concepts, not real markings on the planet.

  75. Cotton Harvest

  We felt we had to have a picture of mechanized agriculture, and these cotton pickers were chosen because the white cotton shows up the swath of the harvester clearly. In fact the cotton can be seen, tossed into the air above the machine. There is enough similarity in appearance between the field of cotton and the field of daffodils (picture 50) to make it obvious that something growing is being picked. The following pictures show how we obtain and eat our food, and this picture serves as an introduction, even though cotton is not normally thought of as a food (unless you are Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22).

  76. Man with Grapes

  Originally selected as a close-up of hands and a face, this plainly shows a human being stuffing his mouth. Functional anatomists may note that three very different functions of the hand are also shown. The things he is eating look as if they may be of natural origin, suggesting that we don’t yet produce food in factories. (Photograph by David Moore: Grape Picker)

  77. Supermarket

  Here is another person eating grapes, but this time in a location that adds more information—namely, that we don’t all get grapes from the fields; some of us buy them in markets. There are a variety of other foodstuffs in bins in the background, some marked numerically with prices. A recipient society with an economy that involves money, buying, and selling might even deduce that these are in fact prices. Frank Drake had decided that we had to have a picture of a market or food store, and it was easier to take our own picture than to spend days looking for one. Five of us, including Herman Eckelmann, the NAIC staff photographer, trooped off to the local supermarket. With Frank in the lead, we began loading up carts with foods. Eckelmann ran around taking photographs. The other shoppers soon gave us a wide berth. Predictably, the manager came over and politely asked what the hell we were doing. Frank did the talking, and while the rest of us tried to look appropriately serious, one of the world’s great astronomers explained to a suspicious store manager that we wanted to send his supermarket to the stars. We put most of the food back on the shelves (causing more bewilderment), paid for the grapes, and left.

  78. Diver and Fish

  [Unfortunately we were unable to reach a satisfactory arrangement with the photographer to include this picture in this book. It was chosen to add more information on the undersea environment.]

  79. Fishing Boats

  It may be deduced that the nets these Greek fishermen are pulling in are for catching the fish, since the next picture shows fish being cooked. The boat is primitive in relation to the technology in some other pictures, showing various stages in our technological development.

  80. Cooking Fish

  The fish are being broiled on an open grill in Portugal. On one side of the grill the fish are raw and wet (looking very much like the fish in picture 78). They become progressively more cooked (and carbonized) along the grill. The message is that we catch animals and then cook them. (From The Cooking of Spain and Portugal, a title in the Foods of the World series. Photograph by Brian Seed. Courtesy Time-Life Books, Inc.)

  81. Chinese Dinner Party

  We wanted to show a group of people eating together. The fact that this party is sitting in a circle around a table echoes the circles of pictures 36 and 74. Several of the people are holding utensils; some are dipping into their bowls, and some are raising their spoons to their mouths. Plates of food and a bottle of liquid appear on the table. This is also one of the few pictures that show people in typical modern dress. Westerners may find the man’s gesture puzzling. He is playing a table game common in the Orient, in which players have to guess how many fingers a person will hold out. The women are evidently amused. (From Chinese Cooking, a title in the Foods of the World series. Photograph by Michael Rougier. Courtesy of Time-Life Books, Inc.)

  82. Demonstration of Eating, Licking and Drinking

  We wanted to make sure that the eating and drinking functions of the mouth were clear. The mouth performs a variety of functions in eating, and we could not find one picture that made them all plain, so Amahl Shakhashiri suggested that we take one of our own. She envisioned three people—one drinking water from a jug, one eating a sandwich (to show how we bite), and one licking an ice cream cone (to show the tongue, which doesn’t appear elsewhere in the photographs). It was an inspired and efficient suggestion, resulting in a highly informative (if somewhat bizarre) picture. Under Amahl’s direction, the three principals—Wendy Gradison, Val Boriakoff, and George Helou, a Cornell graduate student—gathered in Eckelmann’s studio. Wendy got her ice cream cone, Val was handed a sandwich made with tuna fish (which he loathes), and George got his jug. The first results were disappointing. The white bread of the sandwich made it impossible to see the shape of the bite, and the stream of water spilling out of an opaque earthenware jug could be mistaken for a silvery pipe leading into George’s mouth. On the second try Val had a sandwich made with dark rye toast and George had a glass pitcher so that the water could be seen pouring out. George had to be actually pouring water into his mouth while the photographer focused, checked reflections and took a few shots; he swallowed half the pitcher before Eckelmann was finished. Although the picture is somewhat comic to us, it presents a great deal of information about how our mouths work. It also tells the galaxy that we live by bread, water and ice cream.

  83. Great Wall of China

  This was another suggestion made by Philip Morrison. The Great Wall is one of the most tremendous engineering achievements of man, and it is also a product of one of the oldest and most important human cultures. It was difficult to find a shot that showed both the scale of the wall and a view of it close up. The National Geographic Society helpfully provided us with a number of photographs to choose from.

  84. Construction Scene (African)

  This picture shows a man building a four-sided walled structure out of brick, the same material used to construct the Great Wall. Another man holds bricks ready. The structure is clearly something human beings can be inside. A completed structure is in the background for comparison.

  85. Construction Scene (Amish)

  This picture of a barn raising shows construction as a cooperative activity. On the right-hand side, the first planks of the walls are being nailed to the frame of the building.

  86. House (Hut)

  We decided to show human dwellings—and immediately found it hard to decide what a typical human dwelling was. This picture and the two that follow show a few of the many kinds of houses we live in.

  87. House (New England Frame)

  A typical North American house. The picture may seem a bit dated to us, but that shouldn’t matter too much millions of years from now.

  88. House (Modern)

  This house, in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, is the residence of John V. Evans, a well-known solar astronomer.

  89. House Interior

  We selected this picture primarily because it had a fireplace, and we thought fire had to be shown somewhere. It is made possible by our oxygen atmosphere, described in picture 13. The photograph happens to contain a lot of other information as well—how we sit on a stool, for instance. Perhaps th
e activity of the man might be connected with the paintings already on the wall, showing something of our creative drives (at least in landscape painting). This picture was sent in color to show the fire most clearly.

  90. Taj Mahal

  Pictures 84 through 88 show some typical buildings. We also wanted to show some more impressive architecture, and the variety of buildings we build. Out of a host of possibilities—the Eiffel Tower, a Gothic cathedral, a Mayan pyramid—we chose the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is a monument not to religion but to love, and thus was an appealing choice. It is also generally regarded as one of the world’s most beautiful buildings.

  91. English City (Oxford)

  The next few pictures show several kinds of human cities. The information from other pictures (101 and 102) should help recipients identify the objects seen in the street. (Douglas R. Gilbert, from C. S. Lewis: Images of His World, Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.)

  92. Boston from the Charles River

  This represents the skyline of a modern city, showing skyscrapers. From the sailboats on the river it may be deduced that we like to live along rivers and coasts and that we use them for transportation (again emphasizing the importance of water on our planet and in our culture).

  93 and 94. UN Building, by Day and by Night

  We wanted to show how we light our cities, so we looked for a shot of a city taken from the same angle by day and by night. This shot of the UN building was the best one we could find. It also seemed an appropriate structure to show, symbolizing to us (though not to the recipients) that we hoped this message would represent global humanity, not just Western humanity. The night scene was sent in color.

  95. Sydney Opera House

  Frank Drake urged us to include a shot of this Australian building as an example of modern architecture substantially different from that of any other building shown (i.e., involving shapes other than rectangles and domes). The picture was taken while the opera house was still under construction, as the crane and scaffolding may indicate.

  96. Artisan with Drill

  This picture is the same kind of hands-and-face close-up as can be found in pictures 63, 64, and 68, but here we show the use of hands in an industrial process involving a machine. (Bill St. John of the Whittier [CA] Gem and Mineral Society, operating a drill machine, designed by Sol Stern, a fellow member. Photograph courtesy of Frank Hewlett. From the book Gem Cutting by John Sinkankas, Fig. 72)

  97. Factory Interior

  Just as the construction pictures 84 and 85 show first individual construction, then construction by a group, this picture follows naturally from picture 96. A group of men operate machines in a modern factory that makes precision instruments. It was necessary to send this picture in color to show the incandescent glow of the electrical equipment. (Photograph by Fred Ward: Factory Interior)

  98. Museum

  Here is a group of people looking at the bones of ancient animals in a museum. Behind them is a mural that shows the animals as they were when they were alive. The anatomy overlays (pictures 18-25) and the following picture (99) may help recipients recognize the bones in this picture.

  99. X-ray of Hand

  The versatility of the human hand has played no small part in our cultural evolution, and we showed hands performing a large variety of tasks—we felt we had to stress their importance by repetition. We also wanted a picture that gave some hint of medical technology. It occurred to us that an X-ray photograph of a human body might indicate that we could direct our technology toward our own biology. And we decided, after looking at various X-rays, that a human hand showed up best and would be a part of the human body that recipients should recognize easily. Herman Eckelmann and I went out to the Tompkins County Hospital and took this picture in their radiology department. Teresa Cima, a radiology technician, is holding up her hand for comparison.

  100. Woman with Microscope

  If Voyager is ever recovered by extraterrestrials, they will find actual examples of some of our automatic scientific instruments on board the spacecraft. We wanted to show a scientific instrument being operated by a human being. If the evidence of other pictures suggests to recipients that eyes are our organs of vision, and if the function of the spectacles in picture 68 is guessed, then the function of the microscope may also be inferred. The light source under the microscope may give an additional clue. The photomicrograph of dividing cells (picture 17) will prove that we’ve discovered microscopy. Carl Sagan deduced that the microscope in this picture couldn’t have been the one that took picture 17. Nevertheless, recipients will know that we have microscopes, so they may figure out that this is an example of one. The woman is wearing earrings. We hope that these will be recognized as jewelry and not, say, a miniature radio a la Star Trek, or a name tag.

  Pictures 101 through 108 show various forms of human transportation.

  101. Street Scene (Pakistan)

  This picture may have the highest information density of any in the whole message. Frozen in a busy rush to somewhere are automobiles (four- and three-wheeled), bicycles, motorbikes, horsecarts, and pedestrians, going in both directions along a two-way street, while sacred cows idle lazily along the median strip. This is a virtual cross section of short-range ground transportation, and an ambiguity that may exist throughout the rest of the sequence is cleared up. Some of the pictures show people in primitive or at least pretechnological situations. Others show sophisticated machinery and technology. Recipients might think that we are showing various stages in our history, and that the world is now completely technological. This picture makes clear that the advanced and the primitive exist at the same time, that human beings at the time Voyager was launched used both powered vehicles and vehicles drawn by draft animals. This could indicate that we are a very young scientific civilization with uneven technological development.

  102. Street Scene

  Rush hour in India. A subtle point that extraterrestrials from crowded cities may note is that there are four lanes of traffic going in one direction and only one in the opposite direction, suggestion that a majority of people go to or come from some place at the same time.

  103. Highway

  Eckelmann took this picture on Route 13 in Ithaca. Unlike the other street scenes with vehicles, the setting is rural, not urban. This shows that ground transport is used for long-range movement of people and goods (the logs in the truck) and not just for transport within a city.

  104. Golden Gate Bridge from Baker’s Beach

  Philip Morrison suggested that we include a picture of a suspension bridge, since its form so directly follows its function and its shape is determined entirely by the laws of physics. Both these facts make it a structure that extraterrestrials ought to recognize and understand. It also shows that our roads span rivers. This photograph was taken by Ansel Adams. (Photograph by Ansel Adams: The Golden Gate and Bridge from Baker’s Beach, San Francisco, California, c. 1953)

  105. Train

  A turbo train on the Boston–Washington run. The second set of tracks indicates the nature of the vehicle and distinguishes it from the trucks and cars of previous photographs. A face is visible in the front window.

  106. Airplane in Flight

  Frank Drake took this photograph on the runway of Syracuse airport, one jump ahead of the security guards, who undoubtedly wondered what he was doing there. Anything for science! The jet is plainly taking off, and smaller airplanes of different types are visible on the ground.

  107. Airport

  An aerial view of Toronto International Airport showing planes of various sizes and types. Recipients will recognize the airplanes as the same vehicles they saw in the previous picture. This shot informs them that our transport system involves terminals—centralized points of arrival and departure—and therefore we use airplanes extensively, not just for exploration or some limited purpose. Smaller ground vehicles can be seen servicing the aircraft.

  108. Antarctic Sno-Cat

  Well, we’re not perfect. This pictur
e, which concludes our transportation sequence, was taken on Sir Vivien Fuchs’s trans-Antarctic expedition of 1958. A crevasse has opened in the ice beneath the sno-cat, which totters precariously, unable to move either forward or backward. The explorers stand around in a “What do we do now?” stance. We could justify inclusion of this picture by pointing out that it shows polar terrain and a vehicle with treads. In fact it’s a joke—the only deliberate humor in the picture portion of the Voyager record. The more we looked at this picture, the funnier it seemed. The vehicle almost looks embarrassed, dangling helplessly, with the expedition’s name in bold lettering on its side (painted for whom to see, we wondered, the penguins?). The crew of the starship that salvages Voyager may have had their own experience with ships, tractors, or sleds stuck in the unimaginable muds of distant planets. Freeing stuck vehicles may be an experience we share with alien explorers, no matter how advanced. These explorers, incidentally, managed to pull their sno-cat back from the lip of disaster with another sno-cat, and continued on to cross Antarctica overland.