Invisible conquistador ships

[Tarbicus]

I saw a documentary at the weekend that had a surprising story about the first European landings in America. The docu was discussing how the brain interprets what it's sent from the eyes. Apparently, when the American indians first saw the ships approaching they couldn't actually see the ships, only the disturbance in the water around them. This was because the ships were so completely alien that their brains couldn't interpret them and therefore erased them. They knew something was out there, but it took a shamen a couple of days of staring at the disturbed water before he could see the ships. Because he was trusted and could describe the ships, that was when everyone else sarted to see the, too.

I just want to see is this can be verified, and wondered if anyone knew of any references to this?

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

UFO's ....... hock:

[Memmia]

Weird!

I've never heard of anything like this before. hock:
I'd love to find out more though.

[Tarbicus]

I think it's similar to how hallucinations work, so not weird at all really. How the brain processes the 'inputs' can be pretty wacky, I believe. If it can't make any sense whatsoever of what's right there, then it might blank it out or turn it into something more understandable. We might say schizophrenics imagine things, but they don't - they are actually physically real to them, which means to all intents and purposes they exist, regardless of whether or not we can see or hear them.

[Paullus Scipio]

So....invisible ships, eh? Does that mean that the eye refused to process the shapes of previously unseen horses too? Did Indians perceive the riders in mid-air? Does your eye "refuse" to process something you've never seen before?

Something tells me you are not going to get verification of this phenomenon from any credible source.... :wink: :wink: :roll: :roll:

[Tarbicus]

Actually, Paul, the documentary itself included groundbreaking scientists, so I wouldn't be so skeptical.

Didn't the Aztecs initially think the horse and man were one animal? I'd say that was exactly what I'm talking about. The Aztecs were familiar with four-legged hooved animals, but had never seen one ridden before.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

probably where the idea of centaurs came from....

[john m roberts]

The Mexican Indians described horses as "like huge deer, but without antlers." Others called them "big dogs," since the dog was their only domestic animal. Always using a familiar image to describe the unfamiliar. Of course, the Europeans responded in kind, calling all the inhabitants of two entire continents "Indians," even though they had nothing to do with the India the Europeans were looking for.

[Dan Diffendale]

Sounds like a Somebody Else's Problem field:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_E ... blem_field

[Robert Vermaat]

This was because the ships were so completely alien that their brains couldn't interpret them and therefore erased them.

I wouldn't begin to judge if this was possible, but how do they reason that the ships would be so alien to the indians? I mean, it's a big ship, but still a ship, like a very, VERY, big canoe or something. It's not a plane, a zeppelin or an attack robot!

Sounds like a Somebody Else's Problem field

Exactly!!

[Tarbicus]

Well, I guess no-one's able to help with my original question, but I found more on the subject anyway.

[Carlton Bach]

It sounds to me like this is a rather extreme take on the Constructivist position - we create pour own reality from the evidence of our senses very seklectively. I'm willing to believe that to an extent, but I strongly doubt that it ever goes *that* far.

A similar argument was framed that the only reason firearms worked on Australian Aborigines was because they already had a concept of magically 'shooting' a rock at someone. Not sure how much store to put by it.

[Tarbicus]

It sounds to me like this is a rather extreme take on the Constructivist position - we create pour own reality from the evidence of our senses very seklectively. I'm willing to believe that to an extent, but I strongly doubt that it ever goes *that* far.

I think it's more to do with perceptual blindness, otherwise they'd have surely called the ships 'canoes' or 'islands', similar to how they called unmounted horses 'stags'.

It doesn't matter anyway, I found other leads. Thanks.

[Marcus Cassius LegioXIV]

It sounds to me like this is a rather extreme take on the Constructivist position - we create pour own reality from the evidence of our senses very seklectively. I'm willing to believe that to an extent, but I strongly doubt that it ever goes *that* far.

A similar argument was framed that the only reason firearms worked on Australian Aborigines was because they already had a concept of magically 'shooting' a rock at someone. Not sure how much store to put by it.

Well, it's a bit off subject, but along the lines of brains, concepts, ect. I've heard that some took an Australian Aboriginal and put him in a cold room or ice room or something like that. But since it's so warm down under and the fellow had never know what cold was, nor his ancestors for what, 5-10 thousand years at least, so he was unaffected by the cold at all!

I've also heard that about the ships not being seen, I think it might have been the sails that made it even odder, since they didn't have sails at all in the Americas.

[Paullus Scipio]

Sean wrote:-

But since it's so warm down under and the fellow had never know what cold was, nor his ancestors for what, 5-10 thousand years at least, so he was unaffected by the cold at all!

...... :lol: :lol: :lol: ...sorry Sean, that's just an "urban myth", or semi-plausible yarn......temperatures in the Australian desert ( as in others) regularly go sub-zero at night, and in parts of Australia there is plenty of snow ( and ski resorts!)....... D 8)