Ancient Aliens? Not This Time.

I love this idea. It makes for some great "historical" sci-fi and some entertaining speculation about what "really happened" in ancient times. If you're not familiar with this hypothesis -not really a theory- here's the gist: extraterrestrials visited our planet in the ancient past and may have been perceived as gods thus inspiring many myths. A great example of a myth with a modern interpretation is about the Annunaki. They were a race of gods in ancient Sumer. The name is said to translate as "those who from heaven to earth came." These gods are said to have in legend taught the Sumerians how to write, do math, and a bunch of other stuff we associate with civilization. There's plenty of circumstantial "evidence" for this idea ranging from myths to strange cave paintings seeming to depict non-human beings. Archaeologists, and most other people, attribute these to the same things we do today like artistic license and story telling. We came up with Star Wars and Scientology right? And Picasso's people don't look like people all the time, but no one (to my knowledge anyway) says that they're inter-dimensional beings. Also, just because we don't know how they did something, doesn't mean they didn't do it. We did after all send men to the moon with less computing power than one of todays desktops.

The stories and interpretations get more outlandish from there ranging from human beings being created as a slave race to conspiracy theories of an alien invasion from within. However, studying physics, I don't see why life could not have evolved on a distant world and managed to do things we don't understand yet. I also don't see why ancient peoples couldn't have found a clever way to do most of the things they did. Either way, I'd like to know the truth, and either way which ever it turns out to be, aliens, or the insane cleverness it takes to build a pyramid by hand with no wheels will be wonderfully insightful and interesting. Just because it can't be explained at the moment doesn't mean aliens did it. That's not proof, that's a lack of proof. 

Stonehenge for example. During a class an archaeology class at RIC and doing research for a project, I cam across some articles about this monument. Current thinking says no one knows how Neolithic people moves several ton boulders hundreds of miles from the nearest source of the rock and erected them in the middle of seemingly no where. However, one article suggested glaciers may have moved these boulders a long time ago much closer to the site. Thus they could have been taken from much closer , perhaps as little as five miles, to the site. How did they move them? Another article suggested they were carved and the bundled up in wood, twigs, and rope to fashion a cushioned cylinder around the block, turning it into essentially a long wheel in and of itself. People probably did it. Maybe not like that, but maybe with some other deceptively simple, yet clever solution. And no alien tractor beams.

Another few pieces of "evidence" you should look at are the Abydos glyphs. They look like helicopters and ships of sorts. Interesting, no doubt. Convincing, not so much. First, if a bunch of people saw these things and they were important enough to carve on a temple wall (I assume seeing their gods would have been) why is there only one such section of glyphs looking like this? Second, there's a better explanation. The section had been re-carved and symbols overlapped as you can see in the second picture. Evidence of ancient aliens or technology this is not.

Another example of "evidence" that's been popping up lately is of a supposed alien being carved on the walls of another Egyptian temple. Look at it closely and even in the blurry photo of the few thousand year old eroded image and the "eyes" seem to be leaves or petals of a flower, and more of them can be seen between the eyes. Compare the cleaner image to the image of the Egyptian style depiction of a lotus. Which one takes more imagination to see on that wall? An alien, or some kind of vase with a lotus flower.

This doesn't debunk the entire idea of ancient aliens, but just these incidences. Besides if it really happened we'd all need to weed out psuedo-evidence like this so we could find something more substantial. Debunking conspiracies and the like isn't really that hard, just often time consuming and futile. 9/11-Was-An-Inside-Jobbers seem to be more out out of touch with reality than these ancient alien believers. At least they're learning a little history and taking in some culture while they do it.