The first Mimzy we can identify with an event in history was apparently sent to twelfth century Tibet.
The identification of this particular Mimzy is open to debate. What we know is that Noah made a drawing nearly identical to a mandala dated from this time and place, which itself was said to be connected to time and space. Noah's drawings are part of his rapidly advancing understanding of the concepts of temporal engineering he will need to send the Mimzy home. It thus seems likely that we are supposed to connect his drawings of the ancient mandalas with similar drawings by someone who was in contact with an earlier Mimzy, who drew this image and described it as related to time and space, which then was embraced by the mystical Buddhists as insight into the nature of reality. On the other hand, Noah's teacher Larry White says that that same image had recently invaded his dreams, and the mandalas are brought into the movie by Larry and his fiance Naomi in the context of a strong Eastern religions/New Age package, which includes mediation and palmistry. It thus might be argued that the Tibetan monks gained their insights which led to the creation of the mandalas through meditation, perhaps in dreams like Larry's, tapping into the deeper realities. In this case, the mandalas would be part of Noah's experience because they are an image of a reality the monks perceived which he must understand to cross spacetime with his bridge.  As Mayans and Egyptians both built pyramids because these are architecturally stable, Noah and the Tibetans might independently have recognized the same fundamental concepts. It would also mean that we have one fewer traceable Mimzy.
Historically, it appears that mandalas may have Indian Hindu rather than Tibetan Buddhist origins, although the matter does not appear to be clear. If we are allowed to know that, it would mean that the impact of the Mandala Mimzy was not to bring about the creation of the earliest mandalas but only to cause there to be a few new ones that happen to be relevant to temporal engineering. If, however, we are supposed to think that the Mimzy introduced concepts in Tibet that resulted in the original creation of mandalas, it changes history significantly.
It is difficult to assess the impact of so subtle a change over so many centuries. Hindu and Buddhist mandalas are used as aids to meditation. They undoubtedly are helpful to some adherents, who might not be as effective in their meditations absent this particular form of aid. Some might never be attracted to meditation, or might abandon the practice. That would be a significant change in individual lives, which would divert attention elsewhere. It might then result in changes in lifestyle, which in turn impact marriages and thus descendants, and the world changes because the people in the world change. The scientist in the future may have threatened his own existence by making such a subtle yet drastic change in history, introducing a major feature of religious practice into a major religion.
In mitigation, Tibet is a particularly insular section of the world. Even a complete genetic reshuffling of its population would take centuries to spread even so far as India and China, cultures themselves relatively insular. Eurasian marriages are very uncommon prior to the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That isolation is deteriorating, though, and we do not know how many generations lie between our heroes and our scientist. There is a risk that he would undo his own existence, creating a grandfather paradox in which the cause in the future undoes its own basis in the past.
We can further mitigate that risk if we conclude that the Mandala Mimzy did not introduce mandalas to Buddhism, but that Buddhism already having some from Hinduism added those brought by the Mimzy to its collection. Thus although Noah drew several such images many of which had been drawn before, mandalas would have existed absent the earlier Mimzy's interference--it is only these particular mandalas that would be missing. That reduces the impact the earlier Mimzy had in Tibet, and resolves our problems significantly. The risk is at least reduced, and the story remains possible.
There is another Mimzy about which we know a bit more, which we will examine next time.
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