Xenoarcheology

When one travels across the stars, it is inevitable that you find the ruins of those who failed to pass the great filter. Perhaps they exist in some tangential fashion, evolving away from the rigors and responsibilities that come with sapience. There are even some instances where civilizations do so willingly through ritual suicide, systemic degradation, or genetic alteration.

But when you see an eroded structure on a planet with no sapient life, it is more likely that the species who made it are long dead, having succumbed under the weight of their own failures.

It is the xenoarcheologist who must pick up the pieces and reconstruct the cultures of the species. We are those who remember, those who help our own learn from the mistakes of others. To do so, we must borrow from many other fields of study.

I will discuss a xenoarcheological site that has baffled and confused many of my peers. It has remained a subject of hot debate in many circles and inciting schisms in several fields of conventional science.

Nobble-3.

Nobble-3 is a planet much like our own: the third planet from its star, a magnetic core, a tilted axis, and water rich. All the requirements necessary for life like ours to propagate. Indeed, life persists on the rock, and in stunning varieties.

Most importantly, evidence of sapient life is abundant. A few artificial satellites remain, ancient subroutines guiding them in a carefully calculated dance that outlived its creators. Structures over ten millennia old still stand on the surface. Roads of stone and steel run through every continent, untended irrigation feed wild crops, and vehicles in many shapes and forms dot the abandoned landscape.

Nobble-3 was alone for at least a thousand years before we found it. When our explorers first found this lonely planet, once home to hundreds of billions, they were stricken with a terrible sense of loss. For its green and blue surface reminded them of home. Reminded them of what could have been, had we been less wise, less aware.

For all its similarities to our own planet, it sowed dissent between specialists in different fields. This is due to the incredible amount of data that allows us a greater insight into their truly alien culture.

Buildings confused our architects, noting that even the most recent structures were inefficient in their design, though there were stunning bits of insight. Most larger structures have escape routes for emergencies, and many take advantage of their star’s movement and local weather phenomena for passive heating and cooling. Yet the inefficiencies remained unexplained. A large portion of the Nobblings’ resources were wasted on structures that were neither shelter nor industry.

Expert geologists confirmed that this civilization spent its infancy on Nobble-3; everything is made from native materials. In fact, there were trace amounts of a unique material that they excavated for energy. Not fissile materials, biological matter, nor even ethanol springs like on Sirios-2, but biochemicals made up of densely packed polycarbon chains. Geologists estimate these materials would release toxic or even radioactive byproducts if used for fuel. The infrastructure implies they were reliant on this dangerous resource.

Biologists remark that the Nobblings had large brains, large enough to put strain on their bodies and consume massive amounts of calories. This was because most fauna on Nobble had evolved their brains to be at a tip of a bony node, where most of their sensory organs were located. The Nobblings had grippers at the ends of all their limbs, though there is much debate about whether they used their lower ones. Interestingly, they have dentition that matches a Nobble predator. Many biologists claimed it was vestigial because local fauna shows signs of intense genetic manipulation. A predator would have no need to modify prey species; by the time they achieve the technological prowess to do so, they would have long moved onto mass-produced synthetic foods. Yet some biologists asserted that there were signs of genetic tampering predating the oldest structures on the planet.

Xenopsychologists and historians have poured over the texts the Nobblings left behind, struggling to navigate their strange languages. The few things we could piece together point to a fragmented civilization, hypertribes organizing themselves into dozens of societies with different codes of ethics, languages, responsibilities, and cultural adaptations. These hypertribes would frequently engage in war, during which swaths of land and important cultural relics were destroyed.

Everything so far hints at a massive civilization, constantly fracturing and buckling with inefficiencies and contradictions. Many gave up the search for more information and declared it was a statistical improbability that the Nobblings got as far as they did. Much initial evidence showed us a self-destructive species incapable of escaping their solar system. But when we dig deeper, we find more. We find hints of a passionate people that strove to be more than they were.

It was when we decoded their computers that we began to understand. We built the languages from there, recovering degraded computer cores and pulling the concepts that made these people into being. All from a language based on math.

I cannot emphasize enough to the court the magnitude of differences between us. They are alien to us, as we would be to them. Just like our planets, we share some similarities. Some.

They danced, they built, they explored, and they questioned. Just like us.

However, their brains developed an incredible advantage. They could intuitively find patterns, rather than learning about them through cultural evolution. This allowed them to develop a type of pseudo-philosophy they called aesthetics. Some colors, shapes, and patterns would be more pleasing to the eyes. They would arrange them using dyes and canvas, then stone, then steel and glass. Different tones of sound arranged and overlayed to create sonic aesthetics. Both would evolve into their written and spoken languages.

Their culture would develop from there, creating art from their mundane lives. What we thought were advanced pictograms were reproductions of the world around them and the ones they imagined. We couldn’t even distinguish them as such until we reconstructed some of their more advanced programs.

They programmed their computers to recognize these stylized depictions of reality, probably for optimal database management. Since their discovery, our own computer engineering fields have made massive leaps forward.

A part of what made their languages so difficult to understand was their sense of aesthetics. They dabble in rhythms called poetry, make up stories to liken concepts to phenomena with metaphor, and explore the unexpected and strange with humor. It is as if their language is more arcane…I suppose a Nobbling would say their understanding is akin to a topographic strata. It has layers; what is said, left unsaid, and everything in between. Implied.

Their sense of aesthetics is why their buildings are so inefficient…but also why they dance. Not for courtship, but for the act itself. For its beauty, grace, and skill. Is that not to be admired?

This pattern recognition also allowed them to selectively breed flora and fauna to better suit themselves, altering prey and predators to match physical aesthetics. Softer coats, more sociable animals, better meat and milk.

Furthermore, their social relationships were complicated. An individual could form over a hundred bonds, each different from the last. It is not merely the beneficial relationships members of a society share, but close courtship bonds, familial bonds, tribal bonds, and even bonds to completely different Nobblings, fauna, flora, and inanimate objects.

Yes, they could pack bond with inanimate objects. Draw two dots and a line, and Nobblings would find themselves making a connection to it. Note the pictogram constructed from toneless grammatical elements. An incredibly simplified reproduction of one of their 'face'. Combined with other aspects of their neurochemistry, one can see how such a species could fall apart.

Their highly developed emotion centers can explain their more violent behavior. One needs only to account the quantity of bonds they have and the statistical probability something would happen to someone or something they bonded with. A single incident can cascade into a positive feedback loop, much like a fission detonation, scouring a society like a sort of memetic plague.

We understand very little on how the people of Nobble-3 could have died. We don’t even know if they colonized other planets yet. What I know for certain is we have much to learn from what they left behind.

Which is why I am standing before you today. To terraform Nobble-3 would mean throwing away all the knowledge the Nobblings had worked for. It would mean destroying the cradle of a unique civilization. How much more could we know about singularity displacement if we had properly excavated Jalp-4? Where would we be without the wormhole stabilization technology of the extinct Pamki?

The natives had many names for Nobble-3. Dirt, earth, soil, ground. Fitting, isn’t it? With hydroponics, artificial gravity, and atmospheric scrubbers, our civilization has moved beyond the need for dirt. But life, rare as it is to sprout in our galaxy, will always need soil to take root.

There are other nearby planets we can terraform. It would be more inefficient, but I believe Nobble-3 presents a unique resource.

I am not saying we abandon Nobble-3 or bar any but scientists from visiting. There is a concept that the Nobblings used, one I believe we can apply here. They had connected to their planet like no other species encountered before. In doing so, they recognized the need for maintenance of natural systems, rather than developing technologies to replace them. We can use Nobble-3 as a ‘nature preserve’. A place where life continues to grow, unimpeded by the rigors and responsibilities of sapience.

The ‘Terra Nature Preserve’ sounds nice. It pleases me, aesthetically.