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Notes -
That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of intelligent life theories. Some of my personal favorites are:
5. Intelligent life exists, but not in a form that is at all comparable to life as we know it. Perhaps it exists on some other combination of dimensions, leaving only strange occurrences when their "dimensional plane"* temporarily intersects ours. Perhaps they communicate in ways that are nonsensical to us, or seem to violate laws of physics, but this is only because they are 4 dimensional, or something like that.
6. There is a highly advanced species of subterranean-dwelling creatures that occasionally surface for reasons unknown to us and occasionally kidnap or observe people. Bonus points if you can tie this to Martin Van Buren's attempted expedition to the center of the earth and the Mammoth Cave Network.
7. A second intelligent species co-evolved with humans here on Earth and is controlling us or parasitically reliant on us for some reason. Could be lizard people, could be whatever else, but the idea is usually that they maintain secret control of all the world's important institutions while the actually-human-humans are basically livestock. Opens up exciting options for baby-eating and body doubles as well.
8. A second intelligent species evolved alongside but separate from humans here on earth and is still hanging around somewhere or is extinct. This would include all the weird theories of a giant-race still living in Afghanistan, a historical race of giants that once lived in the Basque region of Spain until the Romans worked them to death, a historical race of giants that existed in the Amazon rainforest, weird goblin people that used to occupy Ireland and are now the weird goblin people that live in the caves of the Appalachian region, and so on.
* Not really sure what the term is for "the set of dimensions on which something exists." Like if something is 2D+time vs something that is 3D+time,
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