What was the first speculation of extraterrestrial life?

Factual Questions
1

What is the first published work, fiction or otherwise, which considers the possibility of extraterrestrial life?

Thanks,
Rob

2

Stories about people living on the Moon go 'way back. Lucian’s Icaromenippus has such, and he’s second century AD. His is a work of fiction and satire, and his speculations don’t seem to be a direct outgrowth of Greek/Roman mythology.

Others wrote similar works in later years, otably Kepler in his Somnium (1625).
Voltaire has extraterrestrials from other worlds and other stars visiting Earth in his Micromegas.

I’m certain there are a great many other such works as early or earlier, but I’m not with my reference books now. The earliest case I know of that’s trying to be a coherent story and not just setting for philosophy or satire is Washington Irving’s The Conquest of the Moon (1809), which anticipates Wells’s War of the Worlds by many decades to make the same point about technologically advanced civilization taking over a weaker one – us. But, of course, even those books have a polemic point.

3

The Greek philosopher Epicurus (died 270 BC) speculated on the existence of infinite worlds, which might have life like that found on Earth:

Earlier philosophers like Anaximander (died c. 546 BC) also speculated on the existence of multiple worlds, but it is somewhat unclear what kind of worlds they envisioned.

4

Ezekiel’s “UFO” vision is from around 592 BC.

5

If instead of fictional accounts, you’re interested in belief in exterterrestrial intelligence, I’m thinking that the first might be Percival Lowell’s insistance that the “Martian canals” were evidence of superior intelligence.

I can’t recall anything earlier than that which posits a superior extraterrestrial intelligence, prior to post WWII airplanes encountering UFO’s. See, thing is, the extraterrestrials have to be only slightly more advanced than contemporary humans, for the story to be understandable.

6

In 1690 Christiaan Huygens wrote the book The Celestial Worlds Discovered, subtitled Theories about Inhabitants, Plants, and Products of the Celestial Worlds. He also thought the four big moons of Jupiter were navigational aides to the “people” on Jupiter.

7

The bible - angels, demons and God itself are by definition ‘extra-terrestrial’.

8

Though the Bible isn’t the oldest religious text, either, if that counts.

9

However, as spiritual creatures I wouldn’t exactly call them “life.”

10

Hardly. The likes of Fontenelle and Huygens had written works on the possibility of extraterrestial life in the 17th century. Granted, all they could do was speculate, but these were scientific works of speculation, not fictions. By the 19th century, there was a whole literature on the biological implications of the “plurality of worlds” by the likes of Alfred Russell Wallace. I’d even guess that Camille Flammarion’s 1862 book Pluralité des mondes on the subject sold far more copies than Lowell’s later ones.

Lowell is important because he claimed he had evidence. But it was a commonplace scientific idea long before that, with some people arguing that intelligent extraterrestial life was extremely probable, even inevitable. In other words, they believed in it in much the same way that, say, Carl Sagan did.

11

How about Thales of Miletus?
He died ~ 547 BCE, and was one of the first to speculate on the existence of other habitable worlds.

Or so I seem to remember…
A bit of research indicates I may be mistaken.
All of my useful books on philosophy are at home.

Yeah… that’s the ticket… they are at home.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it