Well this isnīt a good example but its the best I can do for now:
Before the Last ice age there were at least 3 differet species of humanoids living on Earth. People usually think that Homo sapiens evolved in a linear fashion from "lower" humanoids but what they tend to forget is that parallel to us several other species evolved (also from lower humanoids) that were in no way (mentally or physically) inferiour to us. But as you can see apparently only one of those species survived to this day (ok, forget about Big foot, the Snow man and the Easter bunny
)
So one can resonbly conclude that (at least on Earth) similarily evolved intelligent species (although related) didnīt really like each other very much and there is evidence that over the passage of time one species took over teritories that belonged to another only centuries ago... not a very encouranging thought concidering that "the aliens" wonīt even be distantly related to us.
And encounters of a technologically superiour culture with one less developed (in a militarily and sientific way!!!) also donīt tell a hopefull story. just look at what 200 Spanish soldiers did to the Inka indians back in the 16th century (I think it was the Inkas... or the Aztecks later on... same story
I donīt think E.T. will attack Earth to steal our water
(since they have a quadrillion times as much freely available in those ice asteroids orbiting not far away from Mars
Maybe our small and unimportant planet is what will safe us in the end. Because what could they possibly want from us... I mean there are millions of other planets with the same (or better) mineral composition as Earth... and besides it doesnīt make sence for a space-ferring culture to mine planets ... it makes more sence to mine asteroids where you donīt need to bother with this annoying gravity we keep hearing about :-) I mean why would you mine gold on Earth and then have to haul it up at enormous costs of energy to space when you have a few rocks with .0000% g already in space that are loaded with the suff. (no really there is an asteroid orbiting near jupiter that has more gold and platinum on it that our enitre planet *ka-ching*
[ August 08, 2003, 12:23: Message edited by: JurijD ]