The Founder Hypothesis was put forward in 2018 by the author of the book Wellmann (2023) while he was working on the manuscript. The hypothesis is based on considering the strategic goals of advanced extraterrestrial civilisations. It comprises several sub-hypotheses that were already put forward by other authors several years ago.
These sub-hypotheses are:
The members of this technologically advanced civilization are called the "Founders". The Founder Hypothesis goes one step further and also postulates the following:
The history and current state of research on each of these core propositions will now be examined in detail.
Existence of interstellar civilizationsAs early as 1909, the engineer Nikola Tesla speculated in his article "How To Signal To Mars" that extraterrestrial life must exist at all stages of development:
"Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these there must exist life under all conditions and phases of development."
Nikola Tesla
In 1950, the physicist Enriko Fermi was also convinced that there must be technologically advanced civilizations in our galaxy. He concluded that such a civilization could have colonized the entire galaxy within a few million years. In all probability, this should already have happened. The fact that the Earth and its immediate surroundings were nevertheless not colonized seemed paradoxical to him and prompted him to question either his assumptions or his observations. This paradox is known as the Fermi Paradox.
An initial approach to estimating the number of technologically developed, intelligent civilizations in our galaxy was the Drake equation, which was presented by the astrophysicist Frank Drake at a conference in 1961. However, the problem with this equation is the great uncertainty of the values that the parameters of the equation take on. This is why the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations remains an unsolved problem to this day. Initial evaluations of this equation resulted in high estimates for the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy.
The idea that interstellar civilizations must exist prompted scientists to look for ways to prove their existence. The physicist Freeman Dyson assumed that an advanced civilization would require large amounts of energy. In 1960, he speculated that such a civilization could build a solar power plant surrounding an entire star to maximize the energy yield and thus darken it. Such a solar power plant, also known as a Dyson sphere, could be detectable from Earth and reveal the existence of an advanced civilization.
Another approach to detecting intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations assumes that they communicate using radio waves. This is why various scientific projects have been conducted since 1960 to scan the electromagnetic spectrum for possible signals from advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is known as SETI research, where SETI stands for "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence". Unfortunately, the search in space has so far been unsuccessful. However, its failure does not prove the absence of highly developed extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy. This is because on the one hand only a part of space has been searched so far and on the other hand a highly developed civilization could have other ways to communicate and generate energy. In addition, it could be necessary for a highly developed civilization to keep the position of its home planet secret.
The unsuccessful search for extraterrestrial intelligence led scientists to reconsider the parameter values used in the Drake equation. Sandberg et al. (2018) came to the conclusion that much more pessimistic assumptions could not be ruled out, which allowed them to derive a prior probability of only 50% for the existence of numerous extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy. However, around the same time their article was published, the most promising result in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence was obtained. This was the sighting of the interstellar object Oumuamua in 2017. As the object had no tail or coma, it could not have been a comet. The acceleration it experienced when leaving our solar system could therefore only be explained by the radiation pressure of the sun. In 2018, Shmuel Bialy and Avi Loeb therefore came to the conclusion that Oumuamua must have been an extremely thin object with a large surface area whose trajectory was influenced by the radiation pressure of the sun. It is therefore likely to have been a solar sail originating from an extraterrestrial civilization.
Contact with extraterrestrials in remote historyThe ancient astronauts theory denotes the hypothesis that members of an extraterrestrial civilization visited Earth in the past, made contact with humans and acted as their gods.
Although there is much weak evidence that humans in prehistoric and ancient times actually had contact with extraterrestrials who claimed to be their gods, this evidence is insufficient to prove the hypothesis. The reason is that the findings presented by the researchers can also be explained in other ways.
Examples of evidence supporting the ancient astronauts theory are statements made by the Sumerian mythology about the Anunnaki, or the reptilian-like figurines (see Figure 2) that were used as grave goods in Mesopotamia during the Ubaid period. Further indications of the influence of extraterrestrials on human culture are developments that took place independently in different parts of the world at roughly the same time, although they could just as easily have happened thousands of years earlier. These include the development of administrative systems and the invention of money.
The explanation provided by ancient astronauts theorists is that extraterrestrials came to Earth in prehistoric times to accelerate human technological progress and that they had a plan for when which inventions should be made. It is therefore assumed that prehistoric humans were incapable of initiating these developments themselves.
The alternative explanation provided by conventional historiography includes the following:
Whether one should believe conventional historiography or the ancient astronauts theory ultimately depends on which assumptions one considers a priori to be more probable. The hypothesis that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization visited Earth in the past is a priori likely based on the Drake equation and is supported by the other sections on this page. The probability that the assumptions of conventional historiography listed above are correct, on the other hand, can be regarded as low.
However, some proponents of the ancient astronauts theory, such as Erich von Däniken, make additional assumptions that are likely to be incorrect. These are that the extraterrestrials visited Earth as biological life forms and that they helped the humans of the time with their superior technology to build monuments. If the extraterrestrials had ever visited Earth as biological life forms, they would surely have contaminated the Earth with the bacteria living on them. These additional assumptions of ancient astronauts theories are not part of the Founder Hypothesis.
Current presence of extraterrestrials on EarthWhile the evidence for the presence of an extraterrestrial civilization in prehistoric times allows for many interpretations, the evidence for their current presence on Earth is far stronger. This evidence includes the sighting of UFOs.
Even if most unknown flying objects turn out to be natural phenomena or man-made flying objects, the data from a single sighting of an unknown flying object is sufficient to prove the existence of extraterrestrial drones on Earth. Of course, this object would have to perform flight maneuvers impossible for humans. There have indeed been such sightings. They include the UFO sighting of the USS Nimitz in 2004 and the UFO sighting in Puerto Rico in 2013. The latter incident was investigated by the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies. Since most of the credible UFO sightings have taken place near the ocean, it stands to reason that UFOs are at the bottom of the ocean when they are not sighted.
Telepathy and channelingIf such a thing as telepathy actually exists, then this would be clear evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial technology on Earth that enables telepathic information transmission. The only alternative explanation would be that humans have acquired telepathic abilities in the course of their natural evolution. If this were the case, then there would certainly have been strong selection pressure for this ability, meaning that today, telepathy would be part of every human being's everyday life. However, this is not the case. Consequently, the existence of telepathy would imply the existence of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization on Earth that has developed the necessary technology. Moreover, since telepathy, if it exists, requires the involvement of extraterrestrial technology, it can be predicted that telepathy is generally not replicable.
Both the existence of telepathy and its non-replicability have been proven with a high degree of certainty in scientific studies. The fact that it is nevertheless dismissed as pseudoscience is due to the fact that the term "pseudoscience" is often defined in such a way that it encompasses all non-replicable objects of investigation. The existence of telepathy was statistically proven, in particular in the meta-analyses by Storm et al. (2010) and Cardeña (2018).
Receiving information through telepathy is called channeling and the person receiving this information is called a medium. The beings who send this information often claim to be the spirits of the deceased, angels or extraterrestrials. However, as can be seen from the content of channeled texts, these beings are generally not interested in transmitting true information. Nevertheless, one can draw conclusions from the content of the texts about the world of thought of these beings, as well as conclusions about the motivation that these beings had to carry out the channeling.
Manipulation of human thoughtsWhen Wellmann (2023) investigated the strategic goals of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, it quickly became clear that one of their main objectives is to direct the developments of technological civilizations on other planets to their advantage. Therefore, they have a strong interest in being able to control the thought processes of members of other species. The advanced civilization would therefore seek to develop technology that would allow them to record and generate electromagnetic signals in the brains of other species, as well as break unwanted neural connections. This technology would allow the extratererstrials to rewire the brains of members of other species with the aim of taking away their free will.
Wellmann (2023) hypothesized that the advanced civilization causes a mental disorder when it learns to rewire human brains. In the course of this disease, the human brain would be shifted from its baseline state to a new configuration that is more controllable by the extraterrestrials. During this process, affected individuals would suffer from self-disorders such as thought insertions and external control. Mental disorders with these symptoms do indeed exist, namely schizophrenia and demonic possession, although the latter is not considered a disease in its own right.
Wellmann (2023) went on to show that such a mental disorder cannot arise through natural processes. The argumentation, which takes up a substantial part of the book, is based on the following arguments:
Natural neuroplasticity is limited. It is not possible to recover from a naturally occurring disease that significantly reduces the structural connectivity of the brain.
Complex mental processes that have not emerged in the course of evolution cannot occur spontaneously in the course of a naturally occurring mental disorder.
It is highly unlikely that all the diverse neuronal disorders that a civilization would have to induce in order to learn to rewire people's brains would emerge simultaneously as symptoms of a naturally occurring disease.
In Wellmann (2023), it was shown, first, that the probability is negligible that certain symptoms of mental disorders have natural causes, and second, that an advanced civilization with the above capabilities would be highly likely to produce a mental disorder of this type. A Bayesian analysis at the end of the chapter therefore concluded with a very high posterior probability that the Founder Hypothesis is correct.
LiteratureE. Cardeña (2018). The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena: A review. In: The American Psychologist, 73 (5)
A. Sandberg, E. Drexler and T. Ord (2018) Dissolving the Fermi-Paradox. In: arXiv preprint arXiv:1806.02404
L. Storm, P. E. Tressoldi and L. D. Risio (2010). „Meta-analysis of free-response studies, 1992-2008: Assessing the noise reduction model in parapsychology“. In: Psychological Bulletin 136 (4), p. 471-485
R. Wellmann (2023). Rewiring the Human Brain: How Extra-terrestrials Shape Humanity. Austin Macauley Publishers. ISBN: 9781398484061