Time Capsule
 

Time capsule to be beamed from Mexican pyramid
Tue Oct 10, 2006 7:48am ET

By Cyntia Barrera Diaz

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's Teotihuacan, once the center of a sprawling pre-Hispanic empire, is set to become the launch pad for an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life.

Starting on Tuesday, enthusiasts from around the world will have a chance to submit text, images, video and sounds that reflect human nature to be included in the message.

Those contributions -- part of media company Yahoo's "Time Capsule" project -- will be digitalized and beamed with a laser into space on October 25 from the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, now an archeological site near Mexico City.


Archeologists say a culture centered in Teotihuacan, known as the City of the Gods, dominated Mesoamerica for hundreds of years during the first millennium. It is unclear what led to the society's collapse.

"We have this incredible ancient site and from that site we can project contemporary content," Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo's editor in chief, told Reuters. "What is new is the ability to capture this information in such scale."

In the 1970s, astronomer Carl Sagan compiled a record with sounds and images, including a mariachi band and greetings in an ancient Sumerian language, to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

His record was sent out with the Voyager spacecraft in the hope that extraterrestrial life forms would eventually find it.

I have no problems with beaming things into space in hopes of finding intelligent life. I have my doubts as to whether we'll find anything, but there's certainly no harm in trying.
When I first read through the article, it seemed to imply that Teotihuacan was built with the assistence of extra terrestrial life. A second read through showed that I was looking into it a little too much.
On an unelated note, one must be careful about crackpot theories. Saying that aliens built the pyramids of Mesoamerica or Egypt, or suggesting that great monuments built in mysterious ways must have been the work of E.T.s is also to imply that those people's weren't intelligent enough to do it themselves. Especially in Egypt (according to Zahi Hawass, the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities) this can be seen as outright offensive to the Egyptian people.

It's not only offensive to 'those people'... It's offensive (Or it should be) to all humans, to denegrate our past like that.... Saying we couldn't have done the things that clearly we did, without the aid of E.T.s....

"I have no problems with beaming things into space in hopes of finding intelligent life."
I'd have less problems with it if we had more examples of intelligent life on Earth in the first place.... If there are space aliens, can you blame them for giving us a wide berth?!?

"digitalized and beamed with a laser into space"
Interestign idea, but I bet that money would have been better spent putting shoes on chindres feet, or food in their bellies.... But that's just my opinion.

Your mileage may vary.