1596. Astral arm waving

The Diddly-Squat Auralians were the inhabitants of a distant exoplanet thousands of light years away from Planet Earth. Diddly-Squat Auralians was the term used by Earthlings to describe the aliens, as no one had a clue what the Diddlies called themselves. There was reason for this.

Not only did the aliens have seven tentacles rather like a septopus, but they had no perception of sound. Earthlings had tried at some stage to communicate with them, but without sound it was well-nigh impossible. Nature had not evolved them with ears, or the equivalent. Sound to them was a little like Dark Matter was to Earthlings: the existence of sound was deduced but never experienced.

The Diddly-Squat Auralians had a complex system of communication involving the waving of all seven tentacles, so they were equally bemused by Earthlings as Earthlings were of them. In fact, Professor Mathilde Hussey of a university somewhere in Colorado had worked out the meaning of the Diddlies’ tentacle waving, but the Professor was regarded as a crank and lost her tenure not long after she published a Diddly Dictionary. In the dictionary, the eccentric professor claimed that the Diddlies had been unable to decipher the Earthlings’ hand and arm movements. They concluded that the Earthlings were rather backward and suffered from an extremely limited vocabulary. In fact the Diddlies had concluded that the nose and other protruding anatomical features of Earthings were undeveloped tentacles so rudimentary in their formation as to render them useless for communication.

On the other hand, the Earthlings had little inkling as to the highly developed intelligence of these Septopuses. Not only did the Earthlings regard them as inferior because of aural unawareness, but, despite earlier suppositions, they bore no resemblance at all to calamari when used for gastronomic purposes.

And so it was that this mutual distain of the Earthlings and the Diddly-Squat Auralians led to an astronomically lengthy period of peace. If they had been able to communicate, imagine the wars that would have ensued. And to think! The Diddlies would have been able to pull seven triggers at once.