"We Are The Aliens on Planet Earth": Essay by Yijia Chen

Where do we come from? It's a question that has caused debate among humans since the dawn of time. In this essay, Yijia Chen (Year 12) has a theory - we were once 'aliens'! 

By Yijia Chen
​
Boom! A tiny dense fireball exploded with an unimaginable force, it expanded, it stretched, which led to the formation of stars and to the creation of life. 4.6 million years ago earth formed, and when it gradually cooled down, it provided the perfect conditions for single-cell organisms to appear. Those cells evolved and developed from arthropods to land animals to the first primates. That is our origin story. No, but that’s what the scientists want you to believe. In reality, 2 million years ago aliens arrived on earth and they were us.

Humans being the most developed species on Earth, possess the ability of speech, and are capable of dominating the ecosystem. It is just ironically surprising that we are so ill-suited, unequipped and also have numerous defects that other animals in our supposed  “home” habitat don’t have. This, therefore, suggests that we do not come from our believed mother planet.

If the earth is our so-called “mother” planet, our natural environment, then why do we need to wear wide-brimmed hats, sunglasses and slab sunscreen all over our bodies to protect ourselves? Being located on a planet that receives the third most sunlight, approximately receiving 340 watts of sunlight per metre (noting that the earth’s total surface area is 510.1 million km^2). It is exceptionally odd that the sun blinds our eyes, dries and shrivels our skin, along with sabotaging our skin cells. According to SkinCancerFoundation, around one in three Americans reports suffering from sunburns annually, and one in five people will develop skin cancer by seventy years old. You may argue that humans get sunburned because we do not have body hair, however, that furthermore proves my point that we are abnormal. Animals that are native to planet earth have feathers, fur, or scales that provide protection against UV rays. The only good explanation for us to not have thick body hair to protect us from the sun’s dangers is if we live underwater or underground. But, we do neither of those things. How odd.

Along with that, no other species on the planet suffers from chronic illnesses as much as we do. As claimed by the Centres of Disease Control and Prevention, close to 62% of American adults had at least one chronic condition, and 28% of them have numerous chronic diseases. Strangely enough, the majority of the chronic illnesses we experience only affect humans or are extremely scarce in other animals. These examples include but are not limited to cancer, heart attacks, asthma and arthritis. Furthermore, only five per cent of people in the world are perfectly healthy. Therefore, it is clear that there are more than enough differences between earth and our real home planet to have body maladjustment. Our incompatibility makes it natural that our bodies will be unhappy, weak and unsuited on earth. 

Moreover, humans are practically defenceless in the wild. Other than obvious features vital for survival like advanced sensing abilities, attacking mechanisms, a camouflage appearance and so on.  This is also especially evident through our process of giving birth to our offspring, and our extremely weak infants. It is a fact that human child delivery is one of the most complicated and painful in the animal kingdom. Unlike any other native primates, we are the only animal that gives birth assisted, yet still, have one of the longest deliveries and tremendously high maternal mortality rates. According to researcher Lead Albers from the University of New Mexico, in her study of 2500 full-term births, first-time mothers’ labours lasted on average for nearly nine hours. In contrast, our “closely related” apes and monkeys tend to give birth in under two hours. This is mainly because our babies have big brains which is a trait not visible anywhere else on earth. 

Without modern medical care, we will have soaring maternal death rates. This is seen In the middle ages when one in eight women died due to childbirth. According to researcher Lead Albers from the University of New Mexico, in her 1999 study of 2500 full-term births, first-time mothers’ labours lasted on average for nearly nine hours. This is largely due to our offspring having big brains which is a trait not visible anywhere else on earth. Around one in 1000 babies have heads that are too large to fit through the human mother’s birth canal, meaning that a caesarean section is needed, and that does not exist in the wild. Furthermore, without modern medical care(which there is no possible way mother nature would have foreseen us to develop) In contrast, our “closely related” apes and monkeys tend to give birth in under two hours. Even if our newborns arrive successfully from their mother’s body, unlike the majority of mammal offspring, our babies have highly matured brains yet a pathetically inept body that is unable to stand up, feed, and walk around like a foal. Along with that, we humans have relatively long childhoods, animals on average take 4 years to reach adulthood, whereas we take around 26 years to fully mature. All of this makes us immensely vulnerable in the wild. in comparison to other species which have adapted to their surroundings as they originate from earth. 

At last, no other species on the planet suffers from chronic illnesses on a scale as much as humans do. As claimed by the CDC (Centres of Disease Control and Prevention), close to 62% of American adults had at least one chronic condition, and 28% had numerous Chronic diseases. Strangely enough, the majority of the chronic illnesses we experience only affect humans or are extremely scarce in other animals. These examples are cancer, diabetes, heart attack, asthma, insomnia, depression, arthritis, autism, gastritis and many more as I am only scraping the surface of chronic conditions we endure from. In addition, only five per cent of people in the world are perfectly healthy. There are more than enough differences between the earth and our home planet to have body maladjustment. It proves that our weak immune systems are not suited for the earth.  Due to the fact that humans were never supposed to be living on this planet. Our incompatibility makes it natural that our bodies are so unhappy, sick, and weak on earth. 

Ultimately, the imperfections we own, including our paper-like fragile skins, weak incapable build, incredibly difficult childbirth and high rates of chronic illnesses establish enough evidence to show that Homospaiens are the foreign creatures here, that we are the actual aliens and that we do not come from the earth.