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Ancient Aliens debunked..

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I do not watch Ancient Aliens to get a clear understanding of history, I watch it because I find it entertaining, and as a want-to-be fiction writer with a massive desire to script comic books, I find that the series serves as a pretty neat inspiration for my stories. But, I have never viewed the show as Gospel truth.

Speaking of Gospel truth, I believe I have heard that Chris White is a fundamentalist Christian. I do not feel that his religious beliefs should completely negate his documentary, but it is important to keep this in mind while watching it. I have no problem with religious people, I feel that everyone is entitled to their belief systems as long as they do not infringe upon my own rights, but I would like for Mr. White (no relation that I know of) to be a little more up-front about his motivations...
 
I do not watch Ancient Aliens to get a clear understanding of history, I watch it because I find it entertaining, and as a want-to-be fiction writer with a massive desire to script comic books, I find that the series serves as a pretty neat inspiration for my stories. But, I have never viewed the show as Gospel truth.

Speaking of Gospel truth, I believe I have heard that Chris White is a fundamentalist Christian. I do not feel that his religious beliefs should completely negate his documentary, but it is important to keep this in mind while watching it. I have no problem with religious people, I feel that everyone is entitled to their belief systems as long as they do not infringe upon my own rights, but I would like for Mr. White (no relation that I know of) to be a little more up-front about his motivations...

I listened to an interview with him on Skeptico (not sure how I feel about that podcast yet) and while he seems otherwise reasonable when you get into his religious beliefs the critical thinking he applied to debunking ancient aliens disappears. The question for me becomes as it always does recently for me is, is his research into ancient aliens still sound despite his biases. Does his beliefs invalidate his research? Or at least does it make his research suspect?

I was actually going to post a thread on this very subject. You beat me to it :)
 
It's hard to imagine a metal making, tool using civilization that would not have left traces of itself, even after hundreds of millions of years. I also like the idea of applying a kind of modified Drake equation to this topic.

One of the claims for technology out of time I find especially interesting are some of the smaller ancient Egyptian artifacts cut from very hard stone and mineral with machine precision. An example does not come to mind. But if pics and accounts are valid it would seem that very complex curves and shapes were produced in some of the hardest natural stuff on earth by processes that should not have existed back then.
 
I am watching the debunking video now. Amen Goggs! I totally agree. I think we are a much more fascinating race than the "Ancient Aliens" folks give us credit for. I like this debunking movie, and it has revieled a lot that I didn't know when I first watched the Ancient Aliens series. It give much more to sink your teeth into.
 
You could
We need something like the Drake Equation for estimating the probability that an ancient civilization with our "level" of technology once existed on this planet. Or we could assume that at least one civilization has come and gone (with a level of technology greater than or equal to the nuclear age) in the whole of the earth's history (about 4-5 billion yrs) and then compute the probability that a recoverable artifact exists.

My guess is that probability would be pretty low even if one such civilization did exist at some period of Earth's history. Would be an interesting question to answer.

I think the ancient alien hypothesis is pretty weak in explaining such things as the pyramids or other megalithic structures found on Earth. More likely, any alien intervention would be more subtle, in the form of stories, purposeful mythological constructs, or even a certain 13-14 line document known as the "Emerald Tablet." Eric von Daniken took a shot-gun approach to fit observations into the AAH, assaulting the reader with the brilliant, the mildly plausible...and the absurd.

Ironically the attempts by religious individuals to discredit AAH are dubious, when the alien-mistaken-identity-god explanation is--by leaps and bounds--a much better hypothesis for the biblical than any supernatural existent bearded omnipotent deity concerned over the affairs of a speck of dust (around some dim yellow star in a distant galaxy).

You could rule out the last 600 million years or so, because we have a decent fossil record of that, and no sign of any land dwelling animals or animals that could have developed technology.

There are some Precambrian strata, and no sign of technological artifacts in them.
 
Well not sure if I can agree with the assumption that we even start off with a "decent" fossil record.

Organisms are only rarely preserved as fossils in the best of circumstances, and only a fraction of such fossils have been discovered. This is illustrated by the fact that the number of species known through the fossil record is less than 5% of the number of known living species, suggesting that the number of species known through fossils must be far less than 1% of all the species that have ever lived.


Fossil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Source cited:
Prothero, Donald R. (2007). Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-13962-5.
 
The whole ancient alien theory in many cases really comes down to the theory that Native people of the past could not have been able to create their structures and have knowledge such math and astronomy. This is especially popular to explain away Mayans and Mezo-American cultures. Really this is insulting to many Native American cultures, and as a former archaeologist I find it laughable that they try to find ANYTHING that cannot be explained, as being "alien in nature". And archaeologists have a secret agenda and are keeping things secret. lol....so far from the truth. I would have loved to find ANYTHING out of the ordinary to break the monotony...but never did. And I worked extensively in 4 corners region and in Veracruz MX. Never saw anything alien...lol
 
Check out 'AncientAliensdebunked' - a film by Chris White.

It goes through ancient astronaut theories one by one and shows how they are fundamentally flawed with either mistakes or actual factual inaccuracies.
Most interesting is the inclusion of the first decent explanation I've seen for the construction of the great pyramid and sound reasons for the existence of the grand gallery etc.

While I am not at all against a theory of visitation by ET's to Earth back in the day, explaining every ancient wonder by ET's has always been a simplification at best and at worst, robs ancient mankind of the credit for achievements.

So whereas I agree on first looks with pretty much all this debunking, it doesn't address (in fairness, doesn't seek to) my main interest in megalithic structures etc - and that is that there seems to be compelling evidence the a culture or several were worldwide in nature, long, long before modern historians agree that men were crossing the oceans for trade and exploration.

My main gripe with historians is that I think there is often a reluctance to revise long-held theories and if there is any 'cover-up' it's not knowledge of ET's or whatever, in the past. The cover-up is not accepting we need new timelines for when certain technical practices and advances in mathematics and geometry happened.

In short, today, we seem reluctant to explain anything ancient that mucks up long-accepted timelines.

Good documentary - don't have a link but I'm sure it's easy to find.

Goggs


As a former archaeologist I have to emphasize how many controls there are in dating objects, sites and cultures. For example finding one object out of 'context" of the assemblage (from the overall association of the other functional materials) in itself cannot be used in the dating process. Dating is a science in itself and is controlled like a crime scene, anomalies are just that, not part of the dating of the associated with materials in the record. Carbon dating alone for one object or even multiple objects cannot change the "in situ" record of a given site or culture. Also...we have to be VERY careful in datings that were done before the 1990's when most of the more accurate dating methods and technologies were advanced. Dating is a very controlled science and simply getting a carbon dating of a burnt brick in wall, for example, that is dated thousands of years before the whole assemblage (the other features, artifacts etc) tells very little as there can be 101 explanations how that brick got there....not to mention the HUGE window of error that exists using only one or even two methods on only PART of a site or feature. That can be a HUGE mistake.
 
giorgio-aliens2.jpg
 
Good to see that there still are people who are interested in the UFO phenomena, and still have possession of their logical faculties. Because the AA crowd generally aren't. When it comes to issues that people here have pointed out as faults in the doc itself, the vast majority of those are issues that the people posting about them have overlooked, and the rest misunderstandings.

When it comes to Mr. White, and his religious orientation, while I personally am no fan of anyone looking at history with a preconceived notion of fitting it into their particular belief system, it has to be noted that everything presented in the documentary is based on facts. And in the one or two occasions where Mr. White suggests something related to his religious beliefs, he clearly states that they are his personal views. And when it comes to religious people studying history in general, apologists like White are the closest to critically thinking, scientifically minded people you can get, which is why I think all the hooplah about his views and background are overstated to say the least.

Now then, the argument about an undiscovered civilization, predating everything we know, I'm open to. Although VERY skeptical, since virtually all human settlements leave tell tale signs that you simply cannot miss, like trash in the form of pot shards etc. And to this day we have never come across anything that would date beyond the current consensus of the beginning of agriculture for example, although we can actually track roaming bands of people like the ancient Israelites. That suggests pretty strongly, that even if an ancient civilization would be so old, that the majority of its structures would be undersea these days, we still could easily track their trade routes for example.
 
my main interest in megalithic structures etc - and that is that there seems to be compelling evidence [that] a culture or several were worldwide in nature, long, long before modern historians agree that men were crossing the oceans for trade and exploration.

We forget how many historical discoveries have been made by one person being convinced that something could and would be found and finding it. Case in point - Heinrich Schleimann finding Troy in the 1800's. He started with an idea - not empirical indications - something empiricists side-step when cataloguing discoveries.

Very exciting is the discoveries regarding the city of Z in the Amazon. If you haven't read the story of the British surveyor and explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett in the early 1900's it's well worth an evening's perusal. Again, this is about someone with an idea who will not take 'no' for an answer. LINK: Lost City of Z - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I personally have always harbored the hunch that there was a world wide civilization once - at least once (and I'm open for more than once) - even when I was laboring away in my archaeology lab class in college. It just seems 'right' to me. Why? What empirical evidence? None, it's a hunch based on indications here and there. (Like the Nazca Lines - this is from an earth civilization that had flight - of a kind - hands-down imo). I have always imagined that it's loss was catastrophic and reduced humankind to a hand-to-mouth existence. I don't believe there were aliens involved - because that scenario does not explain what we see in the earth's record with the same degree of elegance as a world-wide human civilization.

My main gripe with historians is that I think there is often a reluctance to revise long-held theories and if there is any 'cover-up' it's not knowledge of ET's or whatever, in the past. The cover-up is not accepting we need new timelines for when certain technical practices and advances in mathematics and geometry happened.

Absolutely - but no cover-up. Just politics. Just human nature. Not wanting to travel outside a comfort zone. I recall being in Geology class bringing up the possibility of an asteroid strike on the earth - absolutely not, total no-go. There was an attitude of having to 'suffer' the intellectually deficient student. The same atmosphere is currently afoot with other ideas. "The more things change the more they stay the same."

Ancient astronauts is an excellent idea to throw around - it's fun - but one doesn't have to go that far a-field to find a 'solution' for the anomalies. In some ways the idea of 'ancient spacemen' is an idea that is 'inside the box' (it was floating around on the fringes, in science fiction stories, etc., way before Von Daniken) - because it accepts the established time-line of human development (its' actually not very creative in that way), and very much uses our current 'stuff' to overlay on the past (it's like reading Jules Verne and recognizing the Victorian parlor in the Captain's 'cabin' transported to the submarine). Very suspect. If there are 'aliens' they were us humans in that long ago time. Who were we? Is it possible that we were very different? Yes - and there has been good work in past decades analyzing the evidence that ancient man perceived the world very differently from us in the current day: Such as Julian Jaynes' "Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" - a book I am not advocating just giving as an example of alternative theories of the nature of mankind's past.

In short, today, we seem reluctant to explain anything ancient that mucks up long-accepted timelines.

As long as one stays focussed on mainstream academia, yes. But there has long been alternative explanations and histories.
 
It's hard to imagine a metal making, tool using civilization that would not have left traces of itself, even after hundreds of millions of years. I also like the idea of applying a kind of modified Drake equation to this topic.

One of the claims for technology out of time I find especially interesting are some of the smaller ancient Egyptian artifacts cut from very hard stone and mineral with machine precision. An example does not come to mind. But if pics and accounts are valid it would seem that very complex curves and shapes were produced in some of the hardest natural stuff on earth by processes that should not have existed back then.

Positing aliens to account for those 'anomalies' - and they are only anomalies because they vary from the prevailing narrative, which makes it a simple matter to re-think the prevailing narrative - is a 'solution' that comes out from no where. There are so many other ways to re-think the past to account for the anomalies. Oddly, the theory of Ancient Aliens becomes a dogma into which everything gets to 'fit'.

We have perfectly decent theories that serve us well - like the theory of evolution, that clearly explains a great deal and is an elegant refinement applied to our observations - but we risk being bound by such, like a dogma (evolution came to mind though I know it has political stuff swirling around it - sorry). There can be such uniformity in that scenario - as with Geology's 'uniformism' at one time - that it is a straight jacket that 'forbids' deviation in the same way belief in ancestors 'forbid' a people to disturb a grove of trees. One never goes beyond the supposition and possibilities are lost.

IMO - Ancient Aliens is an extreme solution.
 
I think it's hard to argue, based on evidence, that an ancient technological and global civilization existed.

I have one big reason to champion the ETH and it's the same reason I don't give too much thought to stories about hidden civilizations on Earth and so forth, I ask myself: Where are their mines? Where are/were their factories? Etc etc. They are not there.

I know Michael Cremo and others say that stuff is found which doesn't fit the pattern. But after looking into it a bit more, I found that they are on shaky ground. Rule number 1 imo: If you find some strange artifact embedded in ancient rock, you don't pry it out and return with the object, you bring the lab to the object. So, to make a long story short, I'll be impressed the day they actually find something, and let it sit! :)

Another thing: A global civilization would have to be technological. I don't think you can maintain global power if you don't have the means to communicate and travel long distances fairly efficiently and in short time. We don't find traces of such technology.

Finally, wrt. ancient humans leaving Earth: It's not credible. Who in their right mind would leave this earthly paradise, and who would not leave anyone behind? Who would leave the Earth and not create a permanent record of it, a titanium mega-monolith on a mega-pyramid or something, with illustrations and so forth, something that would 'always' be?

In any case, there are so many difficult questions that I don't think it's reasonable to imagine a human civilization comparable or more technologically advanced than ours.

Also, there are genetic records which trace human migrations. These records don't show signs of a previous global civilization, instead they confirm all humans come from one place, and only later started spreading out across the globe. In fact, it's not that long ago, all things considered.
 
I think it's hard to argue, based on evidence, that an ancient technological and global civilization existed.

My ruminations posit a civilization that would have looked very different from our 'advanced technological' one. Projecting an advanced civilization would look like ours is a kind of ethno-centricity.

I have one big reason to champion the ETH and it's the same reason I don't give too much thought to stories about hidden civilizations on Earth and so forth, I ask myself: Where are their mines? Where are/were their factories? Etc etc. They are not there.

Never heard of that one. :confused:

The way I fancy the scenario, it was a pretty far long time ago, and 'evidence' was destroyed over millennia, if not mostly in the ka-boom that wiped it out to begin with.

I know Michael Cremo and others say that stuff is found which doesn't fit the pattern. But after looking into it a bit more, I found that they are on shaky ground. Rule number 1 imo: If you find some strange artifact embedded in ancient rock, you don't pry it out and return with the object, you bring the lab to the object. So, to make a long story short, I'll be impressed the day they actually find something, and let it sit! :)

I had to look up Michael Cremo. LINK: Michael Cremo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Interesting. At some point I will read him, but in the write-up I am at once leery because he is claiming a 'cover-up'. :rolleyes: Geez Louise, as someone said.

Also, just to say, I would not preclude there being a couple - maybe many - global civilizations in the past. I mean, why not? Like looking at the cosmos and saying there has to be other life out there, I would look at earth's timeline and say there has to be more than just 'us' - meaning as in a global culture.

Some things are not known simply because no one has looked. For an example, for as long as I can remember - certainly when I was growing up and being taught Medieval history, the situation of the serf was viewed as pretty static. If one was a serf, one was born and raised and lived out one's (very brief) life on the self-same spot more or less. Saying someone was a serf was akin to slavery in the general view and in any history book one picked up. [I am referring to Medieval European serfdom, not the serfdom found in, say, Russia.] That changed dramatically with scholars deciding to go into the bookkeeping records - or what amounts to such - and meticulously analyzing transactions. Something as simple as that. What they discovered has completely changed our view of serfdom - from a fairly static and un-free station in life, to a position in which serfs were mobile in more than geographical ways. In general, our view now of Medieval life is that it was a very dynamic society, with movement here-to-fore disallowed as probable or even possible by the then prevailing bias.

In what I am saying - and I am not speaking from Mr Cremo's perspective because I have not read his book - is that a world civilization could have existed in the sense that there was travel on a world-wide basis - but that does not mean that it had to look like our 'technologically advanced' civilization. It could have looked very different.

In the Wiki article: "Forbidden Archeology has been criticized for failing to test simpler hypotheses before proceeding to propose more complex ones (a violation of Occam's razor); and for cherry-picking outdated evidence." I would say the same of the Ancient Aliens idea - and I can't believe that I appear to be arguing against such a cool idea. :p

Another thing: A global civilization would have to be technological. I don't think you can maintain global power if you don't have the means to communicate and travel long distances fairly efficiently and in short time. We don't find traces of such technology.

Who says? Why? I would argue that you are using a rhetorical tautology.

In any case, there are so many difficult questions that I don't think it's reasonable to imagine a human civilization comparable or more technologically advanced than ours.

If one can imagine one from outside the earth, it would seem a baby step to imagine one on the earth.

Besides which, I don't find the 'evidence' for an advanced civilization visiting us from elsewhere credible for the very randomness of their actions. Like it is said from one quarter - if there is a God, why does s/he/it allow suffering? If there are advanced aliens - what level in hell do they come from to allow the insanity on earth to continue without doing something a bit more 'advanced' than just flying around like teenagers on a weekend using the family saucer?

Also, there are genetic records which trace human migrations. These records don't show signs of a previous global civilization, instead they confirm all humans come from one place, and only later started spreading out across the globe. In fact, it's not that long ago, all things considered.

Complicated that one is. Recall the Black Death, the pandemic outbreak of the Bubonic plague in Europe, that wiped out one third of the population and initiated such a social break down that we need to add to that one third by a considerable amount. That one event significantly reduced the gene pool. Europe would not be unique.

LATER: Realized I stopped posting in mid-thought - my intention was to comment on the variables at play with genetic evidence. Sounded good at the time but I petered out there and no time to elaborate now. :(
 
You could

You could rule out the last 600 million years or so, because we have a decent fossil record of that, and no sign of any land dwelling animals or animals that could have developed technology.

There are some Precambrian strata, and no sign of technological artifacts in them.

It's not necessary to go back 600 million years or anywhere close to that period to contemplate the artefacts being discovered worldwide that do not seem capable of explanation outside someone's relatively high technology. The evidence at Puma Punku seem to be the best current anomalous evidence. I would also say that the advanced astronomy and mathematics developed by what we still think of as relatively primitive human cultures are anomalies in themselves.
 
Precisely what, if any, seeming high technology evidence are you referring to at Puma Punku? The levitation of the stones themselves, or?

Not related, but for the heck of it...

 
My ruminations posit a civilization that would have looked very different from our 'advanced technological' one. Projecting an advanced civilization would look like ours is a kind of ethno-centricity.

An astute observation, and one that I might add, inspired me to ponder the notion further. More or less, A Guns, Germs, and Steel sort of thing.


The way I fancy the scenario, it was a pretty far long time ago, and 'evidence' was destroyed over millennia, if not mostly in the ka-boom that wiped it out to begin with.

This is typically my stance, but one has to admit that it really does not fit the speculative archeology model too well. It's the quirky nature of these "lost", yet very real pieces of anomalous archeological evidence, to turn up amid a typical archeological whitewash in utter lonely contrast. That's just plain odd...




Besides which, I don't find the 'evidence' for an advanced civilization visiting us from elsewhere credible for the very randomness of their actions. Like it is said from one quarter - if there is a God, why does s/he/it allow suffering? If there are advanced aliens - what level in hell do they come from to allow the insanity on earth to continue without doing something a bit more 'advanced' than just flying around like teenagers on a weekend using the family saucer?


Frankly, this about sums it up for me and the ETH. I think to myself, "You can't have it both ways. The Aliens from outer space cannot be just like us on one hand, and yet NOTHING like us at the same time." It's just not logical in the least. Nothing about the behavior of UFOs, or their encountered occupants, is anything like us, apart from the occasional "human" or Nordic appearance . I contend that there's bad juju in what seems like less a speculation, and more a projection, if not an outright fiction. Frankly, I think that's exactly where the ETH originated, and from there has served to further inspire the notion itself.
 
Precisely what, if any, seeming high technology evidence are you referring to at Puma Punku? The levitation of the stones themselves, or?

Not related, but for the heck of it...


I'm referring to the evidence of high-level machining of the shaped stones at Puma Punku, without available evidence of the tools used to accomplish it.
 
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