Ancient Aliens

[BillJ]

Does anyone actually buy into the theories posited on this show?

I find what they postulate interesting, yet they haven't come up with anything that just screams alien intervention. Nothing seems to be built with materials unavailable to humans of the time. None of the building seem to have any type of unexplained technology.

They don't even have a trinket that cannot be explained.

It's entertaining, but just reeks of people desperate to make a connection that just isn't there.

 

[Amaris]

Does anyone actually buy into the theories posited on this show?

I find what they postulate interesting, yet they haven't come up with anything that just screams alien intervention. Nothing seems to be built with materials unavailable to humans of the time. None of the building seem to have any type of unexplained technology.

They don't even have a trinket that cannot be explained.

It's entertaining, but just reeks of people desperate to make a connection that just isn't there.

Not one jot. It would be more accurate and informative if they had a spinning wheel which had a number of crackpot theories, by which they would spin it and proceed with some kind of bullshit explanation based on whatever theory was randomly chosen by that wheel. We could have such choices as "Space Monkey", "Magic Intelligent Meteor", or "Elvis Costello".

 

[Reverend]

The idea of "ancient aliens" isn't exactly new. It's been around for at least a century, if not more and to date, as far as I can tell there hasn't been a shred of solid evidence to back it up. Is it possible pre-historic humans at some point in the past encountered intelligent non-terrestrial life forms? Sure, but that's a far cry from proving it ever actually happened.

As for the show itself, I did what a lot of it, not because I buy into the idea so much as I find some of the real archaeological cases interesting...plus I have to admit I tend to think that all the supposed accounts of advanced technology witnessed my ancient peoples is more likely to point towards a lost chapter in human history. Also no an original idea I know *cough*Atlantis*cough* and again, it's not proof, but I think it's inherently more likely than "aliens did it."

What really bugs me though is what did that bloke to to make his hair dresser hate him so much?

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I've not watched the show, but paleocontact is definitely a possibility. There's no evidence for such however – and, indeed, alien contact is considered so unlikely right now that you'd need something pretty big. So if the show is trying really trying to paint anything in our history as evidence of alien contact, it's bollocks. I've never seen anything that's easily unexplainable without aliens, and what's more – I'd have doubts for anything large-scale. Why? If there was a paleocontact, the more extensive it was, the more likely it would have left undeniable evidence. I'm completely not buying anything about ancient buildings, especially huge ones like the pyramids. If they were built with alien help, there would something screaming alien in there.

That said, I'm pretty sure a lot of events from our history are pretty consistent with alien contact, and I've found too many things in our culture to be eerily fitting with such tales. Carl Sagan cited Oannes as an example of such story. Of course, that's still not evidence (or at least not very good evidence), but since it's indirect, you wouldn't expect alien fingerprints all over, so it actually might be aliens.

The real question is how common aliens are in our universe, and how many advanced civilizations are there right now in 100 light year radius. If there are more than two, well, I'd say there were ancient astronauts here at some point, possibly coinciding with our civilisation. If that's the case certain historical tales can be interpreted as evidence for such contact. If aliens are rarer (pretty damn likely), well, we've got nothing.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The producers aren't desperate to make a connection, they're just pandering to the kinds of people who already believe this anyway and are looking for something to reinforce their beliefs (much like the people they interview for the show itself).

As to the overall idea, I doubt it very much. On the one hand, westerners have a long history of looking down on foreign civilizations as being backwards or barbaric based on some arbitrary standard, usually something to do with technology; in point of fact, our society is not a whole lot better developed or organized than ancient civilizations of 4000 years ago, the only difference is our technology is better and our populace and infrastructure is a lot cleaner. Ancient Rome wouldn't be all that different from a modern superpower if they had mastered electricity or figured out how to make concrete, and they missed out on those innovations only for lack of development time.

The most realistic version of the theory is that some alien probe or small expedition got stranded on Earth and it was, in the end, a one-time freak meeting between two different species... on the other hand, the odds that the aliens would have had enough common ground with humans to communicate with them AT ALL is extremely slim, even if they were able to survive in our environment long enough to make the attempt, even if the humans they encountered recognized them as "beings from another world" instead of "funny looking animals carrying bits of things on their backs."

It's actually more likely that the first contact between humans and aliens would have involved a dying alien breathing his last dying gasp as an ancient hunter-gatherer watched him from the bushes wondering what he might taste like.

 

[zephramc]

What really bugs me though is what did that bloke to to make his hair dresser hate him so much?

Obviously Mr. Tsoukalos is a decendent of those ancient aliens. The funky hair. The orange skin. The hair may be something used by his species for finding a mate, similar to a peacock.

 

[BillJ]

I love their best argument: this rock was to heavy to move so it must've been aliens!

From another board I frequent:

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I've seen the show and I think it's entertaining bullshit, and that's about it. Definitely not something I would take the least bit seriously. Saying "we can't explain this, therefore aliens" is, to me, just like saying "we can't explain this, therefore God did it." It's a copout instead of an answer.

 

[The Green Mushroom]

Ah, Ancient Aliens one of my guilty pleasures. I especially like the way that the narrator always says things like "Could Aliens..." or "If Aliens had...," I always interpret it as a kind of backhanded disclaimer. Those lines and the Whale Wars opening "warning" where they say that they views of the show are not the views of the producers are such great honesty in television--"Look, folks we don't believe this shtuff, we just hope you find it as entertainingly bad as we do."

 

[Unicron]

Obviously Mr. Tsoukalos is a decendent of those ancient aliens. The funky hair. The orange skin. The hair may be something used by his species for finding a mate, similar to a peacock.

I agree.

 

[MacLeod]

Could an Alien civilisation have visited Earth in it's past. Whilst it is possible, I'm unconvienced that they have.

Even if there are Alien Civilisations within 100ly from Earth. We might not even detect them, we turned our radio telescopes to them after the last radio transmission would have reached Earth. They didn't develop radio and invented something else etc..

 

[The Dominion]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IABsBprJJPo&feature=related[/yt]

This guy is a goldmine of bullshit. The hair is just the icing on the cake.

 

[Starbreaker]

I think it's entirely possible that aliens visited Earth in the past. Some of the cave drawings depicting possible astronauts and ancient structures that they can't figure out how they were built make the show very interesting at times. However; there are some crazy theories that even a nutjob wouldn't believe.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I think it's entirely possible that aliens visited Earth in the past. Some of the cave drawings depicting possible astronauts and ancient structures that they can't figure out how they were built make the show very interesting at times. However; there are some crazy theories that even a nutjob wouldn't believe.

I think we ought to expect that we are in one of the most simple universes that support sentience – should the universe be any more simple, it would have been pretty unlikely for sentient beings to appear, should the universe be any more complex, it itself becomes unlikely. If that's true, I'd expect that there's some difficulty still in sentient life forms appearing here, so they wouldn't be exactly all over the place.

In which case I'd expect no visits, possibly not even future contact – hey, if the closest aliens are in Andromeda, we've got one chance in a several billion years to meet them, and we are most certainly going to miss it. That totally sucks. Lately I kinda given up any hope for aliens.

Hopefully future studies on evolution and abiogenesis prove me wrong.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

in point of fact, our society is not a whole lot better developed or organized than ancient civilizations of 4000 years ago, the only difference is our technology is better and our populace and infrastructure is a lot cleaner. Ancient Rome wouldn't be all that different from a modern superpower if they had mastered electricity or figured out how to make concrete, and they missed out on those innovations only for lack of development time.

AND if the romans knew - and actually applied - such things as human rights (see the rights of slaves, peasants, etc) AND an equitable political system (see how patricians kept for themselves wealth, power and everything else worth keeping) AND science and technology (which is not even close to being reductible to only concrete - which they knew about - and electricity: these are details that fit into a MUCH larger scheme) AND were a LOT less aggressive (their entire economy was a raubwirtschaft, based on conquest of the subhuman - subroman, that is - peoples beyond the borders of the empire), etc.

You have an unaccurately high opinion of the Roman Empire.


No political entity in history matches modern liberal democracies (imperfect as they are) when it comes to wealth, liberty, equality of chances, human rights, etc (as in, quite a few other highly relevant/objective criteria).
Those human rights violations and wars implicating liberal democracies you hear reported about in outraged terms are all but jokes by comparison to what the romans (and pretty much everyone else) were doing throughout history (and someone daring to be outraged by them, if he had any influence was promptly executed/imprisoned in some hell hole/etc).

 

[smiki]

Ancient Rome wouldn't be all that different from a modern superpower if they had mastered electricity or figured out how to make concrete,

I know this is completely off topic, and I apologize, but this just bugged me. Romans actually did invent concrete (that's how the Pantheon was built), but the knowledge was lost due to the barbarian invasions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete

And to give this a more "ancient alienish" spin, I'll just say that this is a good example of how we underestimate the abilities of ancient civilizations. There's no need to attribute alien assistance to any of their achievements. Then again, that doesn't mean they haven't visited. But if they had, I'd be more inclined to believe we were for them more like an ants nest, or some monkeys or something, i.e. of no particular interest (given the age of the universe, and the relatively small time it would take for a civilization to develop, the chances of a neighboring visiting civilization being on the roughly same level as us are minuscule... then again, maybe not... maybe a relatively equally developed civilization from a somewhat more distant part of the galaxy developed FTL and bumped into us, but I'd wager they'd too just leave us alone... unless a couple of them crash-landed and the locals helped them, and they taught them stuff in return, but as I said that's more SF, and not science or history, it's not probable nor is there any evidence whatsoever.).

 

[Alidar Jarok]

On Rome. I think basic understanding of inflation would have gone a long way (given their advances, the complete cluelessness of something that seems common sense to us is hard to grasp).

On the show. It reminds me a bit of people who thought there was some lost civilization in the Mississippi River valley because Native Americans couldn't have built the Mounds. While I don't think this show is racist, I do think it undercuts genuine human achievement by wanting to credit an outside force. In that sense, it's a shame. We've done a lot of cool shit over the last couple thousand years. Nothing in our history needs aliens in order to have a satisfactory explanation. That doesn't mean there's never been any contact, but it does make pervasive contact unlikely.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

There are really people who think Native Americans couldn't have built the Cahokia Mounds? I mean, they're big piles of dirt. Just takes a lot of dirt, time, and manpower--not any really special technology.

Likewise, the Pyramids were also quite doable with the available technology, it just took a lot of time and effort.

I think that's the part modern people (maybe just Westerners) have a hard time grasping: construction projects lasting for decades or even centuries, generations of workers participating. The idea of sticking with anything that long must seem a bit, well, alien.

 

[Winterwind]

I love their best argument: this rock was to heavy to move so it must've been aliens!

From another board I frequent:

My favourite caption for that picture is "I didn't hear your question but the answer is Aliens."

The show, for the most part, is a steaming pile of BS. My girlfriend and I watched the first few seasons and found it moderately entertaining and a few "theories" were intriguing enough to dig a little deeper into. Then the fourth season arrived and it was simply re-hashing the same old stories from the earlier seasons and neither of us could sit through an episode without groaning and turning it off.

Some of their guests are interesting choices and there seems to be some selective editing going on. In season one or two, they had Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval and neither of them have ever expressed a belief in ancient aliens. Last year, when we interviewed Duncan Lunan (who knows both of them), he stated that Hancock doesn't believe in aliens at all and that he believes in an ancient advanced human civilisation.

South Park did a lovely job sending the show up with their History Channel Thanksgiving episode.

 

[RobertVA]

I love their best argument: this rock was to heavy to move so it must've been aliens!

From another board I frequent:

If any of you have seen Babylon 5, that hair does make him look like a Centari.