Does Star Trek support Ancient Astronaut theory

[Christopher]

"Information Super Highway". I hated that term, glad it died quickly.

The irony is that it was misused. Al Gore coined the term "Information Superhighway" for his plan to improve the Internet through a federal program to expand and standardize it and treat it as a public utility, analogously to the federal program that built the interstate highway system and turned a bunch of poorly connected and inconsistently maintained road systems into a single unified network. But Gore's plan was never put into effect, so the superhighway he envisioned was never built; instead, people just co-opted the term for the existing Internet.

I didn't hate the term, but I hated that people took the word "superhighway," which had a very specific meaning, and just used it carelessly as vernacular for the thing it was meant to transform or replace.

 

[oberth]

"Information Super Highway". I hated that term, glad it died quickly.

called datenautobahn here - then chancellor and moron helmuth kohl determined that it falls into the minister of traffic's department

 

[carcinoGeneticist]

Nope! Star Trek's storylines have nothing to do with the beliefs of the writers of Star Trek (except when they do but that's a specific circumstance that isn't this one). This is due to the fact that Star Trek is a TV show.

 

[Darth Thanos]

Just to clarify, the "Ancient Astronauts" do not insert their nonsense into non-white civilizations for some nefarious agenda: they insert it everywhere, non-whites and whites equally, and just about anywhere they can. For example, our current technology level (computers, internet, cell phones, etc), it was so abrupt we must have stolen it from aliens. Except that it may seem that way for the layman, but it was not abrupt, and every single technological advance of recent years can be traced back to earlier stuff.

Even superhero comics (one of the most American pieces of pop culture), there's some mystery on who created them and perhaps they had encounters with aliens... except that there's no such mystery and we know exactly who created what and when, and they gave plenty of interviews explaining, among other things, how they got their ideas. And also, Green Lantern. If they had just some basic idea of the stuff they talk about, the Green Lantern Corps would have given them plenty of material to rant about for several minutes. And also, the Eternals, at least the originals. They are exactly the Ancient Astronauts theory in comic-book form.

And also, did you notice that they never have the stones to say "aliens build the pyramids" plainly and directly? They always frame it in complex ways, such as "is it possible, or likely, or even probable, that aliens built the pyramids? The scholars of the Ancient Astronauts think so", which suggests the idea, but if push comes to shove, they never actually said so.

 

[Christopher]

Just to clarify, the "Ancient Astronauts" do not insert their nonsense into non-white civilizations for some nefarious agenda: they insert it everywhere, non-whites and whites equally, and just about anywhere they can. For example, our current technology level (computers, internet, cell phones, etc), it was so abrupt we must have stolen it from aliens. Except that it may seem that way for the layman, but it was not abrupt, and every single technological advance of recent years can be traced back to earlier stuff.

At first I thought you were advocating the theory, but by the end of the paragraph it seems you're debunking it. I guess you were just describing what it claims, but the phrasing was confusing.

Anyway, of course the advocates of the theory don't come right out and say it's about white vs. non-white, because it's a dogwhistle, a way to sneak racially condescending ideas under the radar. One of Von Daniken's books originally included a passage where he claimed white people were aliens' successful third attempt to create humanity after "failing" with black and Asian people, but it was deleted for being way too racist. They knew they had to encode the racism to make it marketable.

As for the idea that modern technology was stolen from alien tech (usually the "Roswell crash" UFO, though sometimes time travelers as seen in Star Trek: Voyager: "Future's End"), that's distinct from ancient astronaut claptrap -- it's not ancient, obviously, and it presumes we took the tech from the aliens without their permission or knowledge, so it inverts the power dynamic of the interaction.

Even superhero comics (one of the most American pieces of pop culture), there's some mystery on who created them and perhaps they had encounters with aliens... except that there's no such mystery and we know exactly who created what and when, and they gave plenty of interviews explaining, among other things, how they got their ideas.

No idea what you're saying here. Are you saying there are people who believe superhero comics writers were inspired by aliens???

 

[Nerys Myk]

What's the Green Lantern connection? They're space cops. They pop in, bust a perp and leave. Often
"undercover". Earth doesn't even have one from the Corps until the 20th Century. The previous version was Aladdin with out the Genie. The magic came from a meteor.

 

[Darth Thanos]

To clarify my view: Is the ancient astronauts nonsense? Yes, it is. Is it nonsense crafted with the idea of promoting a hidden supremacist agenda? No, it is just nonsense. No need to overcomplicate things. I usually distrust explanations that fall down to "someone has a hidden agenda", whoever that someone may be. We don't need supremacists to explain why the Ancient Astronauts theory is popular: people's fascination with extraterrestrials is already there, and the idea that they already visited us (implying, they may easily do so again) is attractive in the way of wishful thinking.

As for superheroes, yes, there are people who believe exactly that: the guys from the "Ancient Aliens" TV program. A pair of years ago my dad was in the hospital and the TV had very limited channels, the History Channel was the only one remotely watchable. Which means I had to listen to all this crap for several hours. When I say that they insert it into just about anything, it's because I have actually seen them for a long time. Yes, they talk about the Egyptians, the Mayans, the Aztecs and whatnot, but also about superheroes, Roswell, the battle of Los Angeles, etc. Even Alessandro Volta somehow stole his work from aliens.

 

[FredH]

According to "This Side of Paradise" and "Journey to Babel," Sarek and Spock's family name is difficult for humans to pronounce. It's possible that the Vulcans' name for their species is similarly hard to pronounce (although that's hard to credit given that none of the spoken Vulcan we've heard in Trek is all that hard to say).

Although… while we’ve only ever heard about “the Vulcan language”, and by the fictionally-current era maybe there is only one, presumably the early Vulcans would have originally developed any number of languages across the planet during their history, just like Earth. Pure speculation, but could be that Sarek’s/Spock’s family name is an ancestral handdown from some now-obscure ethnic group who spoke some local language very distinct from now-normative Vulcan (or from the current Vulcan planetary lingua franca, which non-Vulcans just think of as the Vulcan language). Just saying there could be a cultural/historical reason for a name to sound radically different from “Usual Vulcan”.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Kirby, the creator of the Eternals was very taken with Ancient Aliens. You find it peppered through his earlier work too like the Inhumans. The Fourth World has a touch of it too.

 

[Darth Thanos]

What's the Green Lantern connection? They're space cops. They pop in, bust a perp and leave. Often
"undercover". Earth doesn't even have one from the Corps until the 20th Century. The previous version was Aladdin with out the Genie. The magic came from a meteor.

Not really a "connection", but the concept of space alien cops roaming the universe would easily lend itself to ancient astronauts crap. I pointed that to point that those guys do not even know about the topics they talk about.

 

[FredH]

Kirby, the creator of the Eternals was very taken with Ancient Aliens. You find it peppered through his earlier work too like the Inhumans. The Fourth World has a touch of it too.

True, but comics (especially Marvel) tended to incorporate whatever big pop culture memes were floating around, which is how the Marvel Universe incorporated kung fu, the occult and sort-of Satanism, classic Universal monsters etc, and how DC got Superman in the ring with Muhammad Ali.

 

[Christopher]

To clarify my view: Is the ancient astronauts nonsense? Yes, it is. Is it nonsense crafted with the idea of promoting a hidden supremacist agenda? No, it is just nonsense.

I cited my sources for this back in comment #17 over two weeks ago. Here they are again:

https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/is-pseudoarchaeology-racist/

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-astonishing-racial-claims-of-erich-von-daniken

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/01/02/close-encounters-racist-kind


Yes, of course there are plenty of people who repeat this stuff without being aware of its racist origins. I was one of those people when I was a kid and didn't know any better. I didn't know about the racial underpinnings myself until just a few years ago. As I said, the racism is deliberately coded. The whole point of dogwhistle rhetoric is that it looks innocuous except to the people who are attuned to the implications, which is how it slips under the radar and infiltrates popular discourse.

We don't need supremacists to explain why the Ancient Astronauts theory is popular: people's fascination with extraterrestrials is already there, and the idea that they already visited us (implying, they may easily do so again) is attractive in the way of wishful thinking.

You're getting it backward. The supremacist foundations of the theory don't explain why it's popular; the popularity of aliens explains why supremacists promoted the theory as a Trojan horse to sneak their ideas into the discourse.

As for superheroes, yes, there are people who believe exactly that: the guys from the "Ancient Aliens" TV program. A pair of years ago my dad was in the hospital and the TV had very limited channels, the History Channel was the only one remotely watchable. Which means I had to listen to all this crap for several hours. When I say that they insert it into just about anything, it's because I have actually seen them for a long time. Yes, they talk about the Egyptians, the Mayans, the Aztecs and whatnot, but also about superheroes, Roswell, the battle of Los Angeles, etc. Even Alessandro Volta somehow stole his work from aliens.

I'm quite confident that the makers of sensationalist TV shows like that don't actually believe the BS they peddle, any more than the authors of the sensationalist books I read as a kid; they're just con artists trying to trick their audience into believing it. They insert their nonsense into everything because they need fodder for multiple episodes.

Although… while we’ve only ever heard about “the Vulcan language”, and by the fictionally-current era maybe there is only one, presumably the early Vulcans would have originally developed any number of languages across the planet during their history, just like Earth. Pure speculation, but could be that Sarek’s/Spock’s family name is an ancestral handdown from some now-obscure ethnic group who spoke some local language very distinct from now-normative Vulcan (or from the current Vulcan planetary lingua franca, which non-Vulcans just think of as the Vulcan language). Just saying there could be a cultural/historical reason for a name to sound radically different from “Usual Vulcan”.

Could be, I guess. But then, you'd expect speakers of the modern language to adjust the pronunciation of the name to fit modern phonetics, in the same way that I pronounce my own name using modern sounds rather than the way Χριστόφορος (Christophoros) would have been pronounced in Ancient Greek.

True, but comics (especially Marvel) tended to incorporate whatever big pop culture memes were floating around, which is how the Marvel Universe incorporated kung fu, the occult and sort-of Satanism, classic Universal monsters etc, and how DC got Superman in the ring with Muhammad Ali.

Yes. It doesn't prove Kirby believed in any of this stuff, any more than he was a worshipper of the Norse gods.

 

[oberth]

At first I thought you were advocating the theory, but by the end of the paragraph it seems you're debunking it. I guess you were just describing what it claims, but the phrasing was confusing.

which theory? that stuff not even qualifies as a hypothesis - james ussher at least believed the nonsense he peddled (and some are still buying it)

 

[Darth Thanos]

I cited my sources for this back in comment #17 over two weeks ago. Here they are again:

https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/is-pseudoarchaeology-racist/

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-astonishing-racial-claims-of-erich-von-daniken

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/01/02/close-encounters-racist-kind


Yes, of course there are plenty of people who repeat this stuff without being aware of its racist origins. I was one of those people when I was a kid and didn't know any better. I didn't know about the racial underpinnings myself until just a few years ago. As I said, the racism is deliberately coded. The whole point of dogwhistle rhetoric is that it looks innocuous except to the people who are attuned to the implications, which is how it slips under the radar and infiltrates popular discourse.



You're getting it backward. The supremacist foundations of the theory don't explain why it's popular; the popularity of aliens explains why supremacists promoted the theory as a Trojan horse to sneak their ideas into the discourse.



I'm quite confident that the makers of sensationalist TV shows like that don't actually believe the BS they peddle, any more than the authors of the sensationalist books I read as a kid; they're just con artists trying to trick their audience into believing it. They insert their nonsense into everything because they need fodder for multiple episodes.




Could be, I guess. But then, you'd expect speakers of the modern language to adjust the pronunciation of the name to fit modern phonetics, in the same way that I pronounce my own name using modern sounds rather than the way Χριστόφορος (Christophoros) would have been pronounced in Ancient Greek.





Yes. It doesn't prove Kirby believed in any of this stuff, any more than he was a worshipper of the Norse gods.

You're right!!

The ancient astronauts theory is a plot by Trump-financed crackpots to finance the Forth Reich led by Adolf Hitler, who has not really died, to counter the influence of Biden-financed influencers so that new Star Trek series could distract people from the fact that Biden and his cabinet are actually Reptilian aliens whose ship crashed in Roswell decades ago and after killing JFK and keeping the death of Paul McCartney under wraps they send the men in black to abduct everybody who has heard of the alliance of the Illuminati and the freemasonry to fake the moon landing and create supersoldiers with the wreckage of the ships sunk at the Bermuda Triangle so that nobody finds out the truth!


Now, seriously... that's the best you got? Fan-made Wordpress and blog pages that say that Von Daniken is racist because someone claims he accidentally read a lost draft of a book that somehow was printed and put for sale anyway? That's a textbook example of a conspiracy theory. We don't need this nonsense to debunk the ancient astronauts theory, science is enough.

Really, a conspiracy theory to explain the existence of another conspiracy theory? That's messed up.