Bouncing ideas!

[Expendable]

If they're aliens but only a little more advanced than us, then they've had to travel a long time just to get here. And they had to be desperate. They're probably not in great numbers and so they would want to be subtle.

If they're ancient humans - why did they leave? Wouldn't it have made more sense to find another place on Earth? If I remember right, Atlantis sunk beneath the ocean due to massive earthquakes. There are stories that suggest that some of the Atlantians went west to Central and South America. Others may have wound up in Egypt.

And Palenval's right - there's been odd ancient relics found but no proof humans ever went into space. So how did your ancients ever develop enough to get there? Or did they have help?

If they had help, there still remains the question of why did they leave?

[Drew]

Ok, let's continue, class! Hehe! Really this is going good!

I don't know if I had mentioned it before, but I have a few drafts going right now that are quite dramatically different from one another.

I am takign an Astronomy class right now at the university and I am learning a bit too. So, I am slowly factoring in those concepts.

I will expound upon another draft here and we can see if it makes better sense or sounds like a cooler idea.

Ethan Wells is an archaologist who is investigating a series of caves spread abroad. Marked with strange drawings, it is believed that they are remnants of humanity's past, but dating much further than our known history.

This still presents the questions that we are discussint though... How did the ancients leave? Where did they go? How are they returning?

I am thinking now of a theory that a friend of mine used to always talk about. According to the theory, humans used to have psychic abilities. When someone falls, we reach out as if to grab them even when we are at a distance... Old habit of telekenetic grabbing? The ancient humans could have had psychic abilities that have allowed them to create much more advanced marvels as we could at our current technological level. Perhaps they could have formed a system of distance travelling using their powers? Worth a bit of thinking I suppose.

Of course, we would have to think now of why they left their new homeworld to return. And seeings how it would take years for them to arrive, it would have had to have been something that happened long ago for them.

What are we thinking now?

[Palenval]

There is no reason to say that the ancient people weren't better equipped to go to space than we are. Maybe they were more fascinated with space than we are. Say they had managed to get people to Mars and back. That is not terriblely beyond our tech level right now. Then, maybe they figured out where there was another planet that they could inhabit(or so they thought) within reach with their ships. Suddenly, just when they were finishing their colony ship(or ships) in an orbital station(colony ships would be too large to construct on the planets surface), a meteor strikes the ancient people's home area, killing millions. They get no radio contact and fear the worst. With no means of returning to the planet(the last shuttle had left before the impact and the colony ships are on a timed launch sequence), the station crew sets a message in the stations computer, boards the colony ships with the crew of the ships and leave the planet. On the planet, when the dust settles, most of the advanced civilization has been destroyed by the meteor. Those survivors disperse into the primitive civilizations of the world. Fast Forward. The Colonists have just recently been able to send a ship back to the planet. They have advanced technologically well beyond us and are able to travel much faster than their old colony ships, but due to fuel shortages, they couldn't send a ship this far. They are returning to their homeworld.

Of course, I am assuming that the advanced civ isn't the only one on the planet at the time. They tend to be isolationist and are in a fairly small area(urbanization).

Anyway, this is just something I would try to use as the explanation for the history. I am just trying to give you some ideas to think about or maybe to help inspire you.

[Wildeblood]

Drew,

The way I can see this working is as one those "am I going mad?" psychological thrillers. Rather than come up with elaborate explanations for why, if there were ancient hi-tech humans, there are no obvious hi-tech ruins, leave those obvious holes in the story as proof that the hero is not really being taken over by an "alien", but just a garden variety paranoid schizophrenic.

Since you've said that the "aliens" are infiltrating positions of influence in society, it is obvious to the hero that the doctors who say he is schizophrenic are actually aliens trying to silence him, etc....

If you want to end with the revelation that he was sane all along and there really are aliens among us, you want a nice simple elegant explanation for the lack of ruins, not a twenty page infodump either at the very beginning or very end of the story. Something like... er.. they hated concrete and matter how big their cities grew they still built everything out of wood. Er.

[Jay232]

wildeblood has a point. It is good to have an understanding in the story, but 20 pg explanation of why this and why that might not excite readers as much as the story itself will. Make some mystery while keeping the needed details to develop the story. I've read plenty of wonderful ideas on this thread, and nothing to diss them, but maybe you should keep it simple enough while still being very creative. I don't think every book needs to have every detail explained. Just my opinion, I'm sure you're story will be awesome no matter how you decide to write it.

[Expendable]

...This still presents the questions that we are discussint though... How did the ancients leave? Where did they go? How are they returning?

I am thinking now of a theory that a friend of mine used to always talk about. According to the theory, humans used to have psychic abilities. When someone falls, we reach out as if to grab them even when we are at a distance... Old habit of telekenetic grabbing? The ancient humans could have had psychic abilities that have allowed them to create much more advanced marvels as we could at our current technological level. Perhaps they could have formed a system of distance travelling using their powers? Worth a bit of thinking I suppose.

Of course, we would have to think now of why they left their new homeworld to return. And seeings how it would take years for them to arrive, it would have had to have been something that happened long ago for them.

What are we thinking now?

Psionics gives you a lot to work with.

If you used telepathy to link minds together, complex problems might be worked out in minutes rather than years, everyone contributing a part to the whole. You could even pass everything you know to someone else in a moment's touch.

Levitators could lift things.
Teleporters could move objects from one place to another.
Clarvoyants could look ahead.

Put it all together.
A telepath links everyone together.
Levitator(s) lifts the vessel they're in.
Clairvoyant sees where they have to jump to and passes it to the telepath.
Telepath passes the clairvoyant's location to the teleporter(s).
Teleporter(s) teleports the ship and themselves to that place.

A teleporter might have to make a series of jumps to get to where they're going. And it might call for more than one teleporter to help move the ship, just as it might call for more than one levitator to lift the ship off of the ground.

other psychic skills would allow for other things to be done that would need technology. A pyrokenetic could forge steel while everyone else is still working with bronze - or set a fleet of warships on fire before they came close enough to attack.

The others are right. You can work this stuff out and know it yourself but to really catch your readers up in the mystery, this is stuff they're going to have to learn when your main character does.