Could Smokey And Other Stuff Have Been Brought To The Island

[husan101]

we all know about the moving the island, and its obvious the orchid involved somehow.

is is possible, that the smoke monster was brought to the island using the orchid? what about the statue?

[wednesd777]

I always personally thought that the statue was built on the island by the original inhabitants. Then again I guess it could have been a gift to the people kind of like the statue of liberty was a gift from France. I think before this season I would have thought that Smokey was some kind of entity that always existed on the island. After knowing that Ben can somehow control Smokey I think it's possible that maybe it was the creation of some scientific experiments. Heck, maybe he lives in a tiny jack in the box and when Ben turns the knob he pops out. Then I would say that said jack in the box could have been brought onto the island. Weird wild stuff.

[Peledonu]

Originally Posted by wednesd777

I always personally thought that the statue was built on the island by the original inhabitants. Then again I guess it could have been a gift to the people kind of like the statue of liberty was a gift from France. I think before this season I would have thought that Smokey was some kind of entity that always existed on the island. After knowing that Ben can somehow control Smokey I think it's possible that maybe it was the creation of some scientific experiments. Heck, maybe he lives in a tiny jack in the box and when Ben turns the knob he pops out. Then I would say that said jack in the box could have been brought onto the island. Weird wild stuff.

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Well, remember the door Ben ran into didn't look very Dharma-style. It's possible that the town was built on the ruins of something older and Smokey is living in it. He also seemed afraid of going near it after it was released. Doesn't mean that whoever built the older stuff didn't bring him/it though. On a side note, I wonder if the Swan Hieroglyphics tie in somehow.

[Pythagoras99]

Originally Posted by husan101

we all know about the moving the island, and its obvious the orchid involved somehow.

is is possible, that the smoke monster was brought to the island using the orchid? what about the statue?

Brought from... that other place that has smoke monsters? Seems like it makes more sense that Smokie and Four-toes have always been on the invisible island, and that's why the rest of the world has never seen anything like that.

[modkittn]

I've also thought that the statue was built by previous inhabitants of the island. I don't think Smoky is "original" to the island though. Someone mentioned Smoky possibly being a scientific experiment. I have other theories (one that includes aliens and is my favorite!), but either way I think Smoky was either brought to the island or "built" there.

[Gramski]

Well just for the record, I think the statue is from the distant future. They say humans will eventually loose little fingers and toes through the process of evolution, and by that time maybe we will have fallen out of love with technology, and gone back to carving stone statues.

[applejuicefool]

Originally Posted by Gramski

Well just for the record, I think the statue is from the distant future. They say humans will eventually loose little fingers and toes through the process of evolution, and by that time maybe we will have fallen out of love with technology, and gone back to carving stone statues.

I think the natural selection process among humans right now is creating evolutionary pressure more on things like physical beauty, height, extroversion, etc., more than on the loss of the odd body part. In other words, there's more chance of reproduction if you have all of your body parts intact than if you genetically don't.

-AJF

[augustwest]

Originally Posted by Gramski

Well just for the record, I think the statue is from the distant future. They say humans will eventually loose little fingers and toes through the process of evolution, and by that time maybe we will have fallen out of love with technology, and gone back to carving stone statues.

i just thought it was homage to the simpsons......D'oh!

[Pythagoras99]

Originally Posted by wednesd777

I think before this season I would have thought that Smokey was some kind of entity that always existed on the island. After knowing that Ben can somehow control Smokey I think it's possible that maybe it was the creation of some scientific experiments.

Whatever Ben did, he did from an ancient cave, not a DI facility. Smokey is definitely not modern technology.

People think of technology and culture as an linear progression, but it never has been. Sure, we have lots of technology now that has never existed before, but there's also been lots of technology that has been lost over the millennia, some of which was reinvented and some of which was not.

As a very minor example, modern technology is incapable of the caliber of bronze work that the Greeks were making 3 thousand years ago -- for example bronze helmets. We have plenty of examples of their work, but we can't reproduce it or figure out how they did it. Japanese swords are another example. We've only VERY recently learned enough about metallurgy to understand what makes them so superior (unfortunately for the Titanic, we didn't have an understanding of the role carbon plays in steel 100 years ago.). But if it weren't for the remnant of people in Japan still making them in the ancient tradition, even with modern technology and understanding of atomic structure of alloys, we wouldn't know how to go about making a sword that performs like one of those. Our technology, while it has knowledge of atomic structures, lacks knowledge of engineering principles for swords.

The Minoans were an example of a culture that had a general level of technology that wasn't seen again for at least 1,000 years. But just as we only relatively recently rediscovered our Minoan predecessors, we can only assume that for vast majority of ancient technology that has been lost, its history would have been lost along with it. Other than very large things made out of granite, it's very difficult to have any idea of the things that existed thousands of years ago. Most metal gets eventually reused, and most softer stone and wood, if it doesn't get reused, doesn't last.

All that to say, if the greatest culture from 10,000 years ago were somewhere still in existence today, having retained all its knowledge and technology, though they would be living in tents, I think would possess things that would confound us as much as Smokey does.

It's a pet peeve of mine how people, even some scientists, choose think of people living thousands of years before us as less intelligent than us. In all primates ever studied, brain size has correlated to intelligence, and the average brain size in our species has decreased over the last 35,000 years, not by a huge amount, but it has decreased. But more significantly, our average brain size is a very significant 13% smaller than the people who came before us, who we inherited our technology and culture from more than 35,000 years ago, who we call 'Neanderthals' and smugly portray as dirty, unkempt and stupid -- oh, and of course living in caves. (Of course, lucky for us, some did, from time to time, live in caves, just like some of us have from time to time. But in general, they lived in tents.)

[Gramski]

Evolution is'nt interested in fashion and current fads, it see's the bigger picture , and that picture has only four toes in it !