God, Ancient Aliens or Mother Nature?

Over the years here as a member of ATS I’ve read a wide array of members contributed opinions on Man’s history. As the title suggest it seems to boil down to those three, God, Ancient Aliens or Mother nature. I’d like this thread if at all possible not to focus on “Creation vs Evolution” in this thread. We’ve all read those threads and know how they always inevitably end up. I know I may be asking for the impossible but let’s proceed.

Where I’d like to focus on is the known history of man and his ancient related cousins. The geological timeline and record shows us evidence of a few variations of seemingly “Intelligent” hominids aka our ancient cousins. The debate still rages on just how closely we’re related. Were they genetic dead ends? Did we come from their lines? How often and closely did we interact and interbreed with them?

For me there is a real enigma in the human timeline. One which hasn’t been fully explained yet. Is that just a case of simply waiting for the sciences to develop in order for some day get a better understanding? Now some of the more open minded of the religious persuasion will speak of divine intervention with it’s guiding hand pushing the hominid line forward in development until a certain level of intelligence and self awareness was achieved thus begun [figuratively speaking] the story of “Adam and Eve” with all it’s various cultural and geographic variants.

Others of who believe in Ancient Aliens will speak of genetic manipulations and or stories of the Anunnaki and slave races which were created out of an older preexisting dumber hominid line or simple apes for manual labor and then suddenly we were left alone to fend for ourselves after having been taught [or genetically given] the ability to develop the basics in civilization etc.

Then there are those who will agree with the prevailing accepted scientific paradigm of slow evolution and hominid development with the various dead ends and relations among them and use of fire and cave paintings etc while slowly climbing up the ladder culminating in Plasma TVs and the latest Cell phone and gadget craze.

Now..

What we do know is that “Man” as we know him “Modern man” aka “Homo Sapien” that he has been around for a few hundred thousand years. We are to believe that we’ve only developed Civilization with all it’s various cultural aspects in roughly the last + / – ten thousand years with some areas developing earlier while others later to varying degrees.

Why was this the case? Where, why and how did this sudden explosion of development start? We were as a species doing just fine minding our own business bee-bopping through the jungles, forests and across the vast plains then something changed and we were rocketed into a seemingly mindless mad dash towards development. We are presently masters over the physical world around us. We have started our first steps out into the cosmos. We have developed the ability to split the atom, genetically manipulate ourselves our food and life around us and sadly also have been developing multitudes of ways to cause our own extinction.

Civilized man since the beginning

In conclusion:

We have also developed Laws, Art, Literature, Music, Mathematics, Science, Instant Microwave ovens and attitudes in our favor. So, as you can see it isn’t a complete wash out. What has driven us? Natural disasters and events which required biological and neurological adaptations and developments? Divine intervention or Ancient Alien manipulation? In reference to the latter two, and If so, whats the end game?

I’d like to know what others think and feel. Was it simply because of one of the three? Was it two of the three? Or All or none of the above? I’d like for members who are interested in this topic to chime in and if at all possible keep it civil and on-topic.