Imagine you've never seen someone riding a horse before.

Not in person, not in videos, not in photos, not in pictures.

Imagine you lived in, say, the South American Inca Empire during the early 1500s.

The only large domestic animal you've seen is the llama, and the most advanced weapons you have are made of copper and bronze and stone.

A group of strangers arrive out of the woods.

They appear to be wearing wool on their faces, because among your people, beards don't exist.

Their skin is so pale, it's like they've been drained of blood, and they're

covered in armor that reflects the sun harshly into your eyes. They look like they're glowing.

And, most stunning of all, more blinding than their armor, is that they appear to be half man,

half beast, for at their waist, their bodies seem to merge with a massive,

horrifying-looking creature that weighs over a thousand pounds and stands on all fours as tall as you

stand upright. This creature has a head of its own, and yet it seems capable only of following

the mind of this strange, hairy-faced, shiny creature riding atop of it.

This beast submits entirely to the rider as they share a common will.

This is undoubtedly the most surreal moment of your life.

Being the first person in your empire to encounter a monster like this

would be like being the first human to encounter an alien. This alien, the hairy-faced one,

wanted the Inca to take them to their leader.

Naturally, they did, and unfortunately, things went downhill from there.

We can leave the story of the Inca's behind it.

It has a sad ending, as the aliens of the story end up performing an invasion of guns, germs, and steel,

worse than any sci-fi alien movie you could imagine. But the reason I share this part of the story, though, is because I want to reawaken attention that we have

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