A TALE OF 2 ANALOGS - LEARNING AT A DISTANCE FROM THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND MAYA AND THE PROBLEM OF DECIPHERING EXTRATERRESTRIAL RADIO TRANSMISSIONS

The transmission of ancient Greek learning and science to medieval wes tern Europe via the translation of Greek and Arab texts is often cited as a terrestrial example of ''learning at a distance'' that could occ ur by means of the decipherment of radio messages from advanced extrat errestrial civilizations. However, the translation between such closel y related languages as Greek, Latin and Arabic and the decipherment of radio messages from an extraterrestrial civilization to the point whe re humans could understand them are only nominally analogous tasks. A terrestrial example of such ''learning at a distance'' from an ancient civilization that perhaps better prepares us for thinking about the i mmense task inherent in any interstellar knowledge transmission is pro vided by the lengthy and troubled efforts of western scholars to decip her the inscriptions left by the ancient Maya and to learn from them a bout this ancient civilization. Only recently, with the rejection of t he ideographic fallacy that Maya:glyphs symbolized ideas directly with out the mediation of language and with the application of linguistic k nowledge of Maya languages has it been possible to decipher the Maya i nscriptions and learn from them about their science and culture. This experience suggests that without any knowledge of languages in which e xtraterrestrial messages might be composed, their decipherment could b e most problematic. The Maya case is also relevant to the common sugge stion that advanced extraterrestrials would deliberately compose messa ges not in their own natural languages but in artificial ones using lo gic, numbers, and scientific constants presumably shared among all int elligent civilizations, or at least those in their radio-communicative phases. Numbers and calendrical dating system were the first parts of the Mayan inscriptions to be translated, albeit with the aid of parti al ''Rosetta stones'' left by the Spanish conquerors. This success ser ved, however, to reinforce the ideographic fallacy, and led to rather fantastic notions that the inscriptions dealt only with mathematical, astronomical and mystical domains, when in fact most deal with dynasti c history. Examination of the Maya case suggests that if we are to emp loy terrestrial examples to help us think about extraterrestrial knowl edge transmission, we should explore the range of human experience and not just focus upon those examples which support our hopes. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.