Answer me this...

I'm not sure where this came from - but if someone can give me any kind of answer, I'd be much obliged.

Concerning Mars and the inordinate amount of films/books/TV series that claim Mars was once populated by highly intelligent beings, who 'seeded' life on our own planet.

(You do a lot of thinking when you can't do much during an illness...)

Keeping in mind the amount of time it took our own planet to reach a point of evolution where a sentient creature could begin to evolve, considring the disasters that obliterated various ages of 'dinosaurs', the false starts and extinctions, the point in time where life apparently exploded, but only one out of that huge amount of life was the ancestor of all Vertebrate life and could easily have been wiped out - but wasn't - as well as our ancient ancestors killing off their own 'siblings'.

Allowing for all the random occurances of both extinction events and explosions of life, our fight from the simple mammal form to the sentient beings we now are. Also allowing for the fact that our Solar system is (in the extreme lengths of time needed to form such a thing) formed of planets that are relatively the same age.

Is Mars old enough to have evolved a life form far superior to our own, which then faced extinction to such a level, that there is now no visible evidence of it ever having existed?

Mars would have been subject to all the same problems as Earth; extinction level events on a semi regular basis, false starts, ancient ancestors killing each other off and so on. So in the given amount of time, would it have been possible for such a race to exist, reach a god-like level of technology and then be wiped out? And then for enough time to pass, that all evidence of this civilisation would no longer be visible?

Other solar systems, I am willing to allow for such a thing to happen - I am perfectly willing to allow for god-like races on other planets in other solar systems. But the idea of Mars, a planet that was once very similar to our own, at relatively the same 'age' as our own - I have problems accepting the scientific fantasy that a race of technologically superior beings could have existed.

Can anyone else give me any thoughts on this - is Mars old enough to support such a theory?

H