Investigating Ancient Aliens
The History Channel
has a series titled "Ancient Aliens" that claims to explore the
controversial theory that extraterrestrials have visited Earth for millions of
years from the age of the dinosaurs to ancient Egypt and present what as we
will see can be described as a sensationalized
bricolage.
The series also veers into claims that Greek
stories dating to 2000 B.C. tell of the god Hephaestus refer to creating robots
to build weapons and the bronze giant Talos. In Egypt, the Pyramid Texts say
that the god Osiris was dismembered, reassembled, and brought back to life just
like a machine. And from there jumps to such questions as if sophisticated
robots really did exist in the ancient world–what function did they serve? Who
built them? And what happened to them?
Akin to books I highlighted in an earlier section that
involves pseudoarchaeology, and pseudoscience, left out (hence few
people know about it) is the actual history of the idea of Ancient Aliens
theory. This whereby science fiction fans will be aware of the work of the
English author H.G. Wells. And the fact that his most well-known story, War of
the Worlds (1897), is in part remembered for its 1938 radio adaptation directed
by Orson Welles, which caused widespread panic across the United States as
listeners who tuned in to only a portion of the show perceived as fact the
fictional news broadcast about a Martian invasion. The publication history
of War of the Worlds is typical of Victorian and Edwardian fiction: rather than
being issued as a single volume, it was published in a serialized form, in the
War of the Worlds in Pearson’s Magazine from April-December 1897.
Less known (and here we are getting closer to the
background of where the Ancient Aliens idea in the History Channel
series comes from.
Thomas Edison’s Conquest of Mars
As soon as the Worlds' initial publication of Wars
ended in December 1897, the American magazine New York Evening Journal began
publishing an unauthorized version of the story with the title changed to
Fighters from Mars or the War of the Worlds. The story was broadly similar,
although the Martian invasion setting had been changed from Surrey to New York.
A second unauthorized publication of the story, Fighters from Mars, or the War
of the Worlds in and near Boston, was published by the Boston Post starting in
January 1898.
Once the run of Fighters from Mars had been finished
in both magazines, a sequel to Wells’ story appeared. It was written by a
lesser-known sci-fi author, Garret P. Serviss (1851–1929), entitled Edison’s
Conquest of Mars (1898). It may seem somewhat incongruous to cast Thomas Edison
as the protagonist in a space opera. Still, Serviss was writing within an
established literary genre known as ‘edinsonades.’ These had
been born out of a fascination with science and engineering, which is also
visible in many works by the French author Jules Verne. In the same way that
not all ‘robinsonades’ focus on the character of Robinson Crusoe, not all
‘edinsonades’ focus on the character of Thomas Edison. However, a shared
element of all the stories explores new technologies, and the protagonist is
usually a brilliant inventor (sometimes Thomas Edison himself) who uses his
inventions to overcome various perils and explore unknown lands and worlds.
Edison’s Conquest of Mars is a direct sequel to War of
the Worlds and concerns the human response to the aborted Martian invasion of
earth. Humanity’s leaders (represented by the President of the United States,
Queen Victoria, the Emperor of Japan, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany) unite
the planet’s population to launch a pre-emptive attack on Mars. Leading the
assault is the American inventor Thomas Edison, who studies abandoned Martian equipment
to develop the necessary tools (including ray guns). During the attack on Mars,
the expeditionary force encounter a population of human slaves taken thousands
of years in the past by another Martian raid. The slaves tell their human
saviors that during this ancient invasion of Earth, the Martians constructed
mountains of stone-blocks and a large statue carved in their leader's shape. At
this stage, one of the earth scientists realizes which structures this ancient
legend alludes to:
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ he cried, ‘is it that you do
not understand? This Land of Sand and a wonderful fertilizing river – what can
it be? Gentlemen, it is Egypt! These mountains of rock that the Martians have
erected, what are they? Gentlemen, they are the great mystery of the land of
the Nile, the Pyramids. The gigantic statue of their leader that they at the
foot of their artificial mountains have set up – gentlemen, what is that? It is
the Sphinx!’1
In these sentences, we witness the birth of what
became an addition to the field of Pyramidology: the Ancient Astronaut theory,
which holds that ancient civilizations were visited by advanced aliens who in
various ways helped to develop their societies. In Egypt’s case, this theory's
proponents generally hypothesize that the Egyptians did not build the pyramids
and other monuments. Still, they were constructed – as Serviss suggested – by
an alien race.
However, Serviss’s story was fiction. There is no
evidence he seriously believed the notion that aliens had visited earth in the
ancient past, no more than Jules Verne believed that an obsessive submarine
captain cruised around the Seven Seas in an electrically
powered submarine. It would be nearly half-a-decade before anyone proposed
the Ancient Astronaut theory in earnest.
The man credited with bringing Serviss’ fictional
creation into the realm of factual publication was the British journalist
Harold T. Wilkins (1891–1960). Wilkins published a broad catalog of books on
pseudoscience, borrowing liberally from previous authors (and in fact
plagiarizing some of them word for word). He created a hodgepodge of
pseudoscientific ramblings centered for the most part around the notion of
White Gods in the context of ancient civilizations in Mesoamerica. Wilkins
claimed that the great monuments of the Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs had been
built by a now-vanished white race who had been worshipped as gods (and
who were also associated with Atlantis). The Italian writer Peter Kolosimo
would later adjust this idea of the White Gods in his book Not of This World
(1969), suggesting that they were not human but alien in origin. In rapid
succession from 1954–1955, Wilkins published three books: Flying Saucers on the
Attack, Flying Saucers on the Moon, and Flying Saucers Uncensored. Despite
their rather sensational titles, these books were intended to be taken as
serious factual contributions. While Wilkins did not overmuch discuss ancient
Egypt, he was among the first to seriously propose that aliens had visited
ancient races and influenced human history:
Maybe, there is life on some other planet; for, how
otherwise, shall we explain, what may not necessarily be total legend and myth
in the strange stories, of ancient South American prehistory, about fire
falling from the sky, seemingly by design and not an accident, and not as the
incalculable explosions of great meteorites, aerolites, comets or planetoids
upon ancient South American cities? 2
Wilkins’s theories were so outlandish that they were
not taken seriously by the academic establishment. However, they did find a
willing audience among the general public in the UFO-obsessed aftermath of the
famous Roswell Crash in 1947. However, true widespread acceptance of the
Ancient Astronaut theory as fact among huge swathes of the Western world population
did not begin until more than a decade after Wilkins published his book.
More than anyone else, the man helped perpetuate the myth of alien beings
visiting the Earth in its ancient past – a man who makes most archaeologists
and Egyptologists sigh and roll their eyes – is the Swiss author Erich von
Däniken. Däniken, a
convicted thief and fraudster, began his crusade to spread his theories
about ancient aliens in the late 1960s. In 1968, he published the hugely
influential Chariots of the Gods, a book that continues to sell throughout the
world. Where his inspiration Wilkins only hinted at ancient encounters with
extra-terrestrial beings, Däniken made these encounters a cornerstone of
his life’s work. The pyramids in Egypt, the Easter Island statues, the Nazca
Lines; there is almost no end to the (non-Western)3 monuments which, according
to Däniken, could not possibly have been constructed by humans without the aid of
alien visitors.
Däniken’s theories are based on a mixture of willful
misrepresentation of data, an extremely biased selection of evidence, and a
downright refusal to engage with anything that challenges his basic narrative.
His theories about the Great Pyramid of Giza provides an excellent case study.
In essence, Däniken claims that the Egyptians could not possibly
have built this structure because:
There is no evidence of the workers who worked on it.
1. The Egyptians did not have the tools required to construct
the pyramid.
2. The Egyptians built the Great Pyramid perfectly in
their first attempt.
All three conditionals are, to Däniken, evidence that
the Egyptians had outside helped to build the Great Pyramid, that they simply
followed the instructions of a technologically advanced alien race.
So far, so good. The issue with these three tenets of
Däniken’s theory is that they are completely incorrect. Over twenty years,
Excavations conducted on the plateau near the Giza pyramids at Heit el-Ghurab
has revealed a vast town built to house the workers who constructed the
Great Pyramid. Discoveries at Wadi el-Jarf of an account of the transport of
stone blocks for the building site, written by Merer,
one of the officials involved in constructing the Great Pyramid, provide
further evidence for the pyramid workers and their organization. Chisel-marks
found on the blocks used to build the pyramid and the vast scars in the nearby
limestone quarry at Tura show beyond a doubt that the stones were quarried
using very ‘Earthly’ bronze chisels. And finally, the idea that the Egyptians
built the Great Pyramid perfect from the word go is a complete fallacy. The
earliest pyramidical structure is the so-called Step Pyramid of Djoser, built a
century before the Great Pyramid at Giza. After constructing the Step
Pyramid, the Egyptians built no less than three pyramids for his successor,
Sneferu: the Meidum Pyramid, the Bent Pyramid, and the Red Pyramid. These
structures show clearly how the idea of pyramid construction evolved from a
fairly simple idea of putting gradually smaller mastabas (flat rectangles of
mudbrick) on top of one another to achieve a stepped effect, and even show the
trial and error process experienced by their designers: the Bent Pyramid was
originally built using a wrong angle, which had to be rectified half-way
through construction, giving the finished pyramid a decidedly lopsided
appearance.
Däniken’s theories, despite their serious flaws,
however, continued to go from strength to strength. As is known, Von
Däniken later became a co-founder of the Archaeology, Astronautics and SETI
Research Association (AAS RA). He designed Mystery Park (now known as Jungfrau
Park), a theme park located in Interlaken, Switzerland, that opened in May
2003.
Various authors echoed his theories and have inspired
movies and TV shows, including the hilariously kitschy Canadian sci-fi series
Stargate SG-1 and its successors. Däniken’s books still sell like
hotcakes, and since 2009 he has served as one of the producers on the
above-mentioned History Channel’s Ancient Aliens, a show which now seeks to
spread the pseudoscientific and pseudoarchaeological theories of Däniken and
his disciples as far and wide as possible. And to the horror of many
archaeologists, it appears to be working. Chapman University conducts an annual
survey of supernatural beliefs and conspiracy theories prevalent among the
American public. Among these, they measure how many percent of the population
believe that aliens visited the Earth during our ancient past and influenced
human history. In 2015, that number was 20.3 percent; in 2016, it had grown to
27 percent; in 2017, it grew again to 35 percent; then in 2018, it had grown to
a whopping 41 percent. Another benchmark – belief in the existence of
technologically advanced ancient societies such as Atlantis – grew from 39.6
percent in 2016 to a majority of 57 percent in 2018, and so on.
The beliefs of the general public about the effect of
extraterrestrial contact have also been studied. A poll of the United States
and Chinese university students in 2000 provides
factor analysis of responses to questions about, inter alia, the
participants' belief that extraterrestrial life exists in the Universe, that
such life may be intelligent, and that humans will eventually make contact with
it. The study shows significant weighted correlations between participants'
belief that extraterrestrial contact may either conflict with or enrich their
personal religious beliefs and how conservative such religious beliefs are. The
more conservative the respondents, the more harmful they considered
extraterrestrial contact to be. Other significant correlation patterns indicate
that students believed that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence might
be futile or even harmful.
On top of this, the inherent racism and colonialism in
most current pseudoarchaeological theories cannot and should also not be
denied. One of the central themes of many of the theories dreamt up concerning
the origins of the Giza Pyramids was that the Egyptians themselves could not
have possibly built them. To John Taylor (The Great Pyramid: Why Was It Built
and Who Built it?) Joseph Seis ( Great Pyramid of Egypt,
Miracle in Stone: Secrets and Advanced Knowledge) and Charles Taze
Russell (God's Stone Witness and Prophet), their architect, could be found
among the Biblical patriarchs. To Ignatius L. Donnelly, Newton Hall, and Edgar Cayce, the origin of the pyramids could be
found in Atlantis's study. To later writers like the above-mentioned
Wilkins, Peter Kolosimo (pseudonym of Pier Domenico Colosimo), and
von Däniken, they were built by ancient astronauts, aliens, and White Gods in
various guises. In fact, one can be forgiven for thinking that certain white
and mostly Western scholars and pseudo-scholars would rather tie themselves
into fantastical and illogical knots than just admit that non-European people
were perfectly capable of undertaking grand construction projects long before
the advent of what we refer to as Western Civilization.
So why do people believe weird things?
Expert opinion is not always taken as valid. Many
people are less likely to make a specific decision if experts, or the dreaded
Establishment, are perceived to order it. And the fight against the
Establishment is a central building block of any pseudoarchaeological theory.
Watch any episode of Ancient Aliens, and one notices the ‘them-versus-us’
narrative often perpetrated by the show. With their revolutionary theory,
the pseudo archaeologists are a scrappy underdog who is mocked by the
scientific establishment and whose research is foiled by forces in academia or
government who refuse permission to – for instance – dig up a national
monument. Of course, the Establishment does not make this decision because
digging up national monuments based on a fabricated theory would be a bad idea.
No, it makes the decision – it is implied – because it knows that the scrappy
underdog is right and wishes to protect its position.
But what fuels beliefs in pseudoarchaeological and pseudoscientific
theories? It is not by chance that the Chapman University team in their surveys
include belief in pseudoscience and various conspiracy theories under the same
banner because they share a lot of common denominators. Fundamentally, both
rely on a basic them-versus-us dynamic: those who are enlightened versus the
‘sheep’ who conform to the Establishment narrative. In a 2017 article in
Current Directions of Psychological Science,5, a team from the University of
Kent asked themselves why people believe in conspiracy theories? By conducting
a survey of previous psychological literature on the topic, they came up with
three fundamental reasons: epistemic motives, existential motives, and social
motives. Let us examine these motives in the context of belief in
pseudoarchaeological theories.
Epistemic motives:
Epistemic motivation is essentially the willingness to
expend any effort to gain a richer understanding of the world, slake curiosity,
or reduce confusion and bewilderment about the world and our place within it.
Like pseudoscientific theories, they are speculative in nature; they maintain
that a full explanation cannot be forthcoming because some relevant information
has been hidden or is not available to the public. Furthermore, both conspiracy
theories and pseudoarchaeological theories: ‘postulate that conspirators use
stealth and disinformation to cover up their actions – implying that people who
try to debunk conspiracy theories may, themselves, be part of the conspiracy.’6
Existential motives:
Conspiracy theories and pseudoarchaeological theories
produce a sense of control, understanding, even safety in their believers.
Their belief allows them perhaps a sense of superiority, the fact that only
they know the whole truth, that they are more knowledgeable than any professor
of archaeology. In the words of the team from the University of Kent: ‘For
example, people who lack instrumental control may be afforded some compensatory
sense of control by conspiracy theories, because they offer them the
opportunity to reject official narratives and feel that they possess an
alternative account.’7
Social motives:
The final category, social motives, maybe the most
persuasive. Belief in both conspiracy theories and pseudoarchaeology (and
pseudoscience more broadly) are fuelled first and foremost by a sense of
belonging to a community.8
The thousands of online boards on which millions
debate and discuss specifics of crystal power, lay-lines, pyramid power, and
alien encounters constitute a network and a grouping of like-minded
individuals who confirm one-another’s beliefs. They allow their followers to
exert a positive self-image, to consider themselves more knowledgeable than the
‘enemies’ in academia and the Establishment. In the case of conspiracy theories,
this motive can be viewed almost as a defensive mechanism. It is a way for a
group of people to shift blame from their own culpability in a given situation
and transfer it onto another grouping – be it immigrants or those with opposing
political viewpoints. If the reasonings and motives behind belief in
pseudoarchaeology and pseudoscience are so like belief in conspiracy theories,
might we not address the issue? Outright aggression or derision is clearly not
an effective strategy when dealing with conspiracy theorists. Calling someone
an idiot to their face might be personally satisfying at times, but it simply
entrenches already-held positions. It shifts nothing, except the aggression
level. No one has ever changed their deeply held views because someone else
repeatedly called them a moron. Instead, we firstly must at least acknowledge
the allure of pseudoscientific theories and pseudoarchaeology. The attraction
is undeniable: It creates a world wherein you, despite your lack of credentials
and relevant experience, are more knowledgeable than the group which is
traditionally viewed as knowledgeable. It provides you with a sense of
understanding complex issues. It places you within a like-minded community –
not dissimilar to Facebook groups about ancient Egypt and amateur
archaeological societies. Of course, many of the most popular
pseudoarchaeological theories are – at their deepest level – good stories. One
should never underestimate the allure of a good yarn.
1. G.P. Serviss, 1947 (book edition), Edison’s
Conquest of Mars, Carcosa House.
2.H.T. Wilkins, 1954, Flying Saucers on the Attack,
London, 159.
3. Interestingly, to my knowledge, Däniken and his
acolytes have never suggested that aliens descended to help the Greeks build
the Pantheon, or the Romans build the Colosseum. Nor did little green men help
the various Italian architects build St Peter’s Cathedral. And they arguably
could have used the help – the construction of the basilica took 120 years
(from 1506–1626). Stonehenge appears to be the only monument in Western Europe
to have received widespread attention from the ‘Ancient Astronaut’ contingent
of the pseudoscientific community. Evidently white people, on the whole, don’t
need help from alien beings to build stuff, according to Däniken’s flock.
4. B. Arnold, 2006, ‘Pseudoarchaeology and
Nationalism: Essentializing Difference’, in B. Fagan (ed.), Archaeological
Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the
Public, Psychology Press: London, 157.
5. K.M. Douglas et al., 2017, ‘The Psychology of
Conspiracy Theories’, in Current Directions in Psychological Science 26/6,
538–42.
6. Ibid, 538.
7. Ibid, 539.
8. Ibid, 540.
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