◆ SpookStack

in the eyes of his subjects? Once again without being able to distinguish what is the product of the natural and Spontaneous search for the legitimacy of power from what could actually only be the result of an opportunity seized by inveigling, we are forced to note that history abounds in god- kings or king-gods (pharaohs: Assyrian kings; Hellenic epiphanic kings; Roman, Chinese, or Japanese emperors; sons of the Sun of Central or South America, etc.). 13.2.2 Impacts on Industrial-A ge Civilizations Industrial-age civilizations are more skeptical than they formerly were and have more difficulty envisioning what is not a product of the immediately explainable or the simply measurable. However, it is certain that the furnishing of irrefutable proof of the existence of extraterrestrials would leave a profound mark on populations such as ours today. This issue is at the heart of our report. 13.3 Phase Three: Influences on Local Civilizations The third phase would be that of the influences that we would consider appropriate to exert on the environment and the civilizations encountered with a view to causing them to evolve in our fashion. It goes without saying that the advantages and risks would have to be studied carefully. 13.3.1 Influences on Preindustrial-Age Civilizations We might consider it necessary, in certain Cases, to influence the environment in a specific manner and the evolution of local civilizations in a subtle way. It might seem necessary to us, upon completion of our observations and our analyses, to modify, bit by bit, the natural environment and the ecosystem by, for example, seeding or introducing select plants and organisms that are lacking. Likewise, the course of indigenous civilizations could be gradually modified by influencing, either from a distance or directly, the qualities or defects of select individuals, accentuating their intellectual and moral tendencies and their scientific knowledge, or by causing genetic mutations by different processes that are yet to be invented. In this case, it would be a matter of playing the role that these populations would have willingly reserved for gods, who, by providing sacred texts, would reorient, for example, their sense of morals, their religiosity, and perhaps their laws and their political institutions. The use of elements likely to terrify and impress could be appropriate in some cases. And, with all due reverence, nothing would prevent one from thinking of different episodes in the Old Testament, the conditions under which the laws of Manu were instituted (10) or even the Koran given. The influences relate back to a certain number of enigmas in history, including, perhaps, the concomitant appearance of the great civilizations of the Indus, Mesopotamia, and Egypt (cities, architecture, writing, calendar, astronomy, etc.). They also call to mind the extraordinary map of the Antarctic, which was drawn almost free of ice by the Frenchman Oronce Finé in 1531, nearly three centuries prior to the discovery of this continent in 1820 (11). 13.3.2 Influences on Industrial-A ge Civilizations