Where did the concept of aliens originate? By aliens, I mean

>>1613790

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon

>>1613790
The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, when people figured there must be people living on other planets.
There are earlier references to extraterrestrials like the Princess of the Moon and shit but they were definitely supernatural/mythological.

>>1613790

Lucian humorously depicted alien civilizations in his "True History" written in 2nd century AD.

The concept of alien inhabited worlds must have therefore been toyed since times immemorial.

>>1613798
The difference is that Lucian didn't believe they existed.
Well, Voltaire's didn't believe his Micromegas was any more real than Gulliver's Travels, but he and other intellectuals of his time did seem to have believed aliens really existed.

File: 100px-Lucianus.jpg (6KB, 100x160px) Image search: [Google]

6KB, 100x160px

>True Stories or True Fictions (Ancient Greek: Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα, Alēthē diēgēmata; Latin: Vera Historia) is a parody of travel tales, by the Greek-speaking Assyrian author Lucian of Samosata, the earliest known fiction about travelling to outer space, alien life-forms and interplanetary warfare. Written in the 2nd century, the novel has been referred to as "the first known text that could be called science fiction"

>In True Stories, Lucian and a company of adventuring heroes sail westward through the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar) in order to explore lands and inhabitants beyond the Ocean ... they are lifted up by a whirlwind and after seven days deposited on the Moon. There they find themselves embroiled in a full-scale war between the king of the Moon and the king of the Sun over colonisation of the Morning Star, involving armies including such exotica as stalk-and-mushroom men, acorn-dogs ("dog-faced men fighting on winged acorns"), and cloud-centaurs. Unusually, the Sun, Moon, stars and planets are portrayed as locales, each with its unique geographic details and inhabitants. The war is finally won by the Sun's armies clouding the Moon over.

>>1613811
>The difference is that Lucian didn't believe they existed.

Difference from what?

The question is, where did the 'concept' of aliens originate. The concept was present even in antiquity.

>>1613826
Fair enough, but the idea that non-magical aliens actually exist is much more recent.

>>1613834
>here's an example of exactly what you were asking about
>w-well that's not really what I meant...my original opinion is still fine

>>1613790
Giordano Bruno spoke of them, he said other creatures and probably humanoid ones lived in infinite worlds, I think Lucretius (Roman author contemporary ro Cicero) said something similar too, Lucianus spoke of them in a Fantastic novel but I don't remember much about it.

>>1613856
He's not OP, i am.

The idea of beings who come from worlds beyond the sky is indeed ancient. But I am wondering in what era this entered the realm of serious consideration and not just mythology.

In the 20th century it was certainly possible to think of aliens as real, living entities that we could interact with. Does this predate the 20th century.

The earliest Hynek scale 3 event I can find is the wave of 'mystery airship' sightings and attempted abductions during 1896-97.

These were directly attributed to extraterrestrial beings:

>He [Colonel H.G. Shaw] estimated a diameter of 25 feet and said the vessel was around 150 feet in total length. Three slender, 7-foot-tall (2.1 m), apparent extraterrestrials were said to approach from the craft while "emitting a strange warbling noise." The beings reportedly examined Shaw's buggy and then tried to physically force him to accompany them back to the airship. The aliens were said to give up after realizing they lacked the physical strength to force Shaw onto the ship. They supposedly fled back to their ship, which lifted off the ground and sped out of sight.

>Flammarion was one of the first people to put forward the idea that extraterrestrial beings were genuinely alien, and not simply variations of earthly creatures.

>>1613879
>During the Scientific Revolution and the later Enlightenment, cosmic pluralism became a mainstream possibility. Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle's Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds) of 1686 was an important work from this period, speculating on pluralism and describing the new Copernican cosmology.[8] Pluralism was also championed by philosophers such as John Locke, astronomers such as William Herschel and even politicians, including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. As greater scientific skepticism and rigour were applied to the question it ceased to be simply a matter of philosophy and theology and was properly bounded by astronomy and biology.

>>1613790
Probably as soon as we figured out we're just a single rock out of billions flying through space around a random star

The victorian era

are we seriously replying to this shit bait

>>1613903
>we shouldn't discuss the social phenomena of UFO and alien sightings because they aren't real

>we shouldn't study the writings on Greek Olympian gods because they aren't real

>>1613790
Don't know about Aliens.

But ancient Indians sure knew about nuclear weapons:

>"a single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame As bright as the thousand suns Rose in all its splendour…

>"a perpendicular explosion with its billowing smoke clouds… the cloud of smoke rising after its first explosion formed into expanding round circles like the opening of giant parasols…

>"it was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes The entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas. …The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. The hair and nails fell out; Pottery broke without apparent cause, And the birds turned white. After a few hours All foodstuffs were infected… to escape from this fire, the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment."

>>1613949
Maybe this atom bomb blew up all of their toilets

>>1613949
You realize the text you quoted is a fabrication, right? It's based on a real religious text but rewritten to make it seem like it's talking about an atomic bomb, when the original was clearly talking about something akin to a volcanic eruption.

>>1613970
Sure thing buddy.

>>1613979
I repeat, your text is a fabrication.

>>1613790

This is what you're looking for, OP:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_pluralism

tl;dr:
>philosophical hypothetical in ancient greece
>some fringe thinkers promote idea in medieval eruope and arab world, to the point where the the catholic church declares it heresy
>becomes mainstream in the enlightenment era (john locke, benjamin franklin, etc.)
>in 19th century people start talking about truly alien worlds, not just "more earths"

>>1613983
Prove it.

>>1614004
Read the fucking Mahabharata it's pretending to quote.
And if you google the passages you posted, you end up ONLY on ancient alien blogs, and it can be traced as far back as some /x/ magazine from 1992.
It's a fabrication, deal with it.

>>1614014
>this much damage control

>>1614034
>damage control
You're the one who can't source his own text.

>>1613811
You don't need to believe they exist to believe that it's possible they exist, or imagine a world in which they do, though. Actually this makes me think. It might be kind of a stupid or ignorant question, but how far back does the idea of a fantasy world go?
People in ancient times produced a shitload of stories, but did ancient Greeks or early Christians or whoever ever come up with stories set in hypothetical alternate worlds where the Greek gods/Christian God/etc. didn't exist, that had their own explicitly fictional gods/cosmology?

>>1613790
Mormons

>>1613937
Is that what I said? Is it perhaps possible I'm taking exception to the idiotic idea that American pop culture created the concept of extraterrestrial life?