What First Contact Would Really Mean

In this Wired article, anthropologist Kathryn Denning of York University in Toronto Canada, discusses what first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization would mean for us. Here are some great quotes...

"...many people hold outdated ideas regarding scenarios of contact. We have our iconic case studies, such as Columbus landing in the Americas or Cortez and the Aztecs. But most of those have been revamped with additional historical work in even just the last 30 or 40 years.

"So when I hear that standard model of Columbus or Cortez, frankly I want to roll my eyes. For example [Steven] Hawking says — interminably and repeatedly — that when Columbus showed up in the Americas, well, that didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans. And therefore we should similarly be worried about trying to attract the attention of an alien civilization.

"The problem is that it tends to misrepresent Earth’s history. These stories get invoked in models of contact with an alien society, but it’s a biased retelling of Earth’s history and it’s usually not a very good one.

"The underlying narrative there is that it went poorly for the Native Americans because they were the inferior civilization. And, by extension, it would go poorly for us because the other party would be the superior civilization."