Clarity of thought is sometimes difficult to obtain within the UFO and abduction research community. For example, many researchers think that the abduction phenomenon is very old, perhaps beginning hundreds (or thousands) of years ago. They find evidence for it in cave paintings, folklore, myth, art, and so forth. Although it is basically impossible to know whether the aliens actually existed on Earth in ancient times, recently developed theoretical arguments about the abduction phenomenon have given us a new possibility to more accurately date its origins.

We have very strong evidence that the abduction phenomenon is intergenerational. Budd Hopkins first discovered this in 1981. If a person is an abductee then the possibility that his her mother or father has had abduction experiences is extremely high. Unfortunately, this means that all of the children of an abductee and a non-abductee will be abductees. Because of this, we can, with reasonable assurance, trace the phenomenon backward through the generations. By interviewing family members about their parents’ and grandparents’ unusual personal experiences, we can date the phenomenon back to the late 1890s and then we lose sight of it. This techniques gives us indications that the abduction phenomenon is most likely around one hundred years old.

But there are other indications as well. Because of its intergenerational quality, the phenomenon spreads, cone-like, into the population through the generations. If it continues long enough — based on the initial number of people who were selected to be abducted — eventually everyone in the United States (or the world if the beginning populations was widespread and large enough), will be an abductee. If the phenomenon started in the U.S. with, say, one million individuals, how long would it take for everyone to be an abductee? The answer, according to relatively straightforward population statistics, is seven generations. Obviously the time would be longer if the initial abductee population was smaller. If the number was substantial, however, it would not take long for it to spread throughout the population.