Aliens/ancient astronauts : do you believe in them?

[Heronblade]

I find the ancient aliens theory to be bunk for the most part. Not because I'm discounting the possibility, but because there's no direct evidence of anything remotely ET related.

It is true that we don't have enough evidence to fully explain the connection between a series of poorly understood coincidences in the past. However, rather than let it sit in the "unsolved" category until/unless more information is found, some people decided to fill in the blanks with an alien race.

Regardless, the biggest problem I find with ALL alien encounter stories is motive.

Modern UFO tales only make the slightest bit of sense as part of research efforts on their part, but such efforts are far more effectively conducted in a manner that no one would be aware of rather than randomly flying around and abducting stoned hippies for a probe session. The fact that many of the more credible UFO stories in the past have turned out to simply be sightings of now declassified black project vehicles...

The ancient aliens, if they existed, left behind no evidence of having taken resources, and did not leave any advanced technology behind, at least none that was sustainable. For example, one of the programs was talking about old aircraft, if any such vehicles had been built here or left behind, there would be gobs of physical and/or chemical evidence for us to find due to the materials required. If an alien race was here during our early days, all they seem to have done was set themselves up as temporary rulers/gods, then got bored and left without making any lasting impression, hardly behavior I would expect from a space-faring race.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I believe alien life exists out there somewhere; considering the size of the universe, even if there's a .000000000001% chance of a given planet having life, we're bound to not be living on the only one.

As for ancient astronauts in particular, and the idea that intelligent aliens have visited this planet in general, the chances are pretty slim, again because of the sheer size of the universe -- well, that and the abovementioned fact that the idea that aliens must have built all of the great works of stone through bronze age man is racist and an underestimation of man's ingenuity and the technology of the time. I'm sure 1,000 years from now people are going to be saying we couldn't have built the internet without alien help and using that episode of Doctor Who where an alien artifact collector said it was built with reverse engineered technology from Roswell as evidence.

 

[Stryc9]

I think it's bullcrap.

All these ancient astronaut theories seem to suggest that humanity on a whole lacks any inventiveness; How could we have build the pyramids? How could we have made the Nazca lines?

From the way these ancient alien believers talk you'd think we couldn't even wipe our own ass without the help of E.T.

This sums up my thoughts on this subject. Also, just like any other conspiracy theory there are holes in these theories that are big enough to fly an entire planet through but these people will either fall silent and not answer you when you bring them up, come up with some even more bullshit answer to counter you until they have to stop taking to not sound stupid, or just call you the crazy one.

 

[Ambulo]

Just want to say I respect that you stuck your neck out there and made an argument for your dissenting opinion.

I think with so many new ideas out there about what other life could look like, its hard to say for sure whether or not we've even been visited. I'm not a fan of those Ancient Alien shows myself because they seem to me to be less about opening your mind and more about leading you to conclusions. But sometimes I think about what the human race will be like when/if we ever find a way to traverse the cosmos. I'd think we might be interested in the development of primitive extraterrestrial species if we found one. So I don't think its unreasonable to think they an alien race would find our planet interesting in one way or another.



*****

Edit-Sorry, this was directed at FFHAuthor, but I took too long to reply.

 

[Frozen Fox]

Yes being capable of interstellar travel came here and left absolutely no tech behind. Because that makes fucking sense.

Seriously it pisses me off when I here "Oh yeah the extra terrestrials moved giant boulders to signal space craft" yeah they did not just build any real structures no they drew real big pictures in the dirt.

 

[BaronUberstein]

I think aliens exist, but they haven't visited Earth. That, and I will make no conjecture over the complexity of those aliens, but it would be silly, in my mind, to say that there isn't even some bacteria somewhere out there.

As for the whole UFO thing, they are silly people who should do something more productive with their time.

 

[ZeroMachine]

I fuckin' love that show. Excellent sci-fi potential.

But sometimes they say something that just kinda... makes sense.

 

[DugMachine]

I believe rather strongly in the Ancient Astronaut theory. There's a great deal of very curious information and a lot of unusual archaeological data that tends to fall by the wayside when 'mainstream' archaeologists can't explain it. A lot of people roll out the explanations for the Nazca Lines and the Great Pyramids, which can be explained reasonably...although they ignore the fact that most experts in Egyptology quietly admit that they've never found an actual mummy dating back to Egypt in the Great pyramid (the mummies found date to Greek and Roman times). They also gloss over the fact that the only record linking the existence of the Great Pyramid to an Egyptian Pharaoh is linked back to a con undertaken by a disreputable British army officer.

Other than that we can say that the Egyptians built many pyramids, but there is nothing that explains the construction of the pyramids of Giza, the largest and the smallest of the Great pyramids aren't dedicated to any particular pharaoh.

There are myriad other unusual events and aspects in history that are glossed over, evidence in ancient Indian cities in the Indus valley showing they were destroyed by Atomic weapons (central glassed/fused land in the geographical center of the cities, bodies lying dead and showing signs of death from radiation poisoning), texts of Babylonian history that give explanations of 'weapons of the gods' that resemble the affects of nuclear weapons (massive explosions, slow painful death for those close by, warnings to not venture close to where the weapons detonated), Mesoamerican cultures believed to hold a common ancestor in their language that is completely without historical evidence.

Developmental cycles in the Middle east that showed rapid development followed by slow regression for three thousand years before suddenly making massive leaps once more, ancient civilizations showing knowledge of our solar system which we only recently developed (The ancient Babylonians knew about every major planet after Mars, we only know about them because of mathematical extrapolation of their existence.), development of cereal crops and agricultural processes in the Middle east in an eye blink (We take corn, grain, grapes, apples, and olives for granted, they were selectively bred over thousands of years to look that way, while other food crops seemed to just appear without precursor).

I could go on about castles in Northern England that demonstraight evidence of being struck by some kind of heat ray (solid stone being melted and fused in place), I could talk about identical existence of the creation mythology in every ancient religion, I could bring up the Babylonian Creation epic which describes humans being created by the gods using phials, beakers and jugs (the -only- detailed example of such a creation of mankind.) I could bring up the fact that every major religion has a polytheistic origin (even Christianity), I could speak of the cave paintings that describe their gods in ways that we consider the most common appearance of aliens. There are myriad examples of things that don't fit, things that are strange and things which are completely ignored.

There is a lot of information out there, and only a miniscule portion of it actually has anything to do with gigantic structures. A lot of it has to do with the sophistication of the civilizations and the archaeological evidence that's anomalous. I can say that sure, the ancient egyptians might have been able to build the pyramids (unlikely), or that the Incas built Macchu Picchu (nearly impossible), but saying that the ancient residents of the Indus Valley had nuclear weapons is obscene, just like saying that the ancient Picts had heat rays, or that the Babylonians knew how to genetically engineer cereal crops.

Hmm while I still think the theory is a load of crap from what I've seen, all this sounds interesting. Got any sources of all of this?

 

[FFHAuthor]

Hmm while I still think the theory is a load of crap from what I've seen, all this sounds interesting. Got any sources of all of this?

The centennial favorite is of course Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken, it mainly asks a lot of questions, but it does point out a lot of intriguing things. I much prefer The Earth Chronicles by Zecharia Sitchin, it's a multi book set and brings up a lot of stuff that I mentioned. Those are probably the two biggest ones, but I like Stichin because one of the things he does is that he goes by the literal translation of what the ancient language said rather than the 'well, they actually meant this' explanation that modern archaeology tends to use.

Lots of people talk about how they speak of the great pyramids and other great constructs, but they also talk at length about things that don't have a rational explanation, ancient nuclear weapons, technological and social development, linguistic oddities, strange imagery and inexplicable ancient knowledge. It's easy to explain away a giant mound of dirt, or lines in rocks, or a pyramid, it's a lot more difficult to explain away everything else that's out there. Images, stories, first hand accounts and statements from those ancient peoples that say 'our gods lived with us, they created us, they came from the sky, they created everything we have, we've seen then, this is why they're here'.

It's funny that people who say 'well, of course our ancestors are capable of creating those things' are unwilling to say 'well, of course our ancestors can give an honest statement', which is the crux of the matter...anything that says that there was something other than humans working in our ancient past is discounted as misunderstandings, linguistic errors or even fanciful tales..anything but the truth.

Other than those two, I can't vouch for first hand information, it's rather hard for honest scholarly discussion on it, mainly because it's all so far fetched nobody wants to talk about it, it's easier to say 'Well, it means Gods, not people who came down from the skies'. But for Daniken and Stichin, they are scholarly texts, they've put me to sleep more times than I like to say (heh)...and they both talk about worldwide phenomena, from Mesoamerica to the middle east, africa and asia.

 

[FFHAuthor]

Just want to say I respect that you stuck your neck out there and made an argument for your dissenting opinion.

I think with so many new ideas out there about what other life could look like, its hard to say for sure whether or not we've even been visited. I'm not a fan of those Ancient Alien shows myself because they seem to me to be less about opening your mind and more about leading you to conclusions. But sometimes I think about what the human race will be like when/if we ever find a way to traverse the cosmos. I'd think we might be interested in the development of primitive extraterrestrial species if we found one. So I don't think its unreasonable to think they an alien race would find our planet interesting in one way or another.



*****

Edit-Sorry, this was directed at FFHAuthor, but I took too long to reply.

Just caught this.

Anyway, my point isn't so much to argue that the information leads us to a conclusion as to point out that there is information there that's blatantly ignored. When I spoke about the destruction of Indian cities by nuclear weapons, the information was unearthed in the 1920's and it wasn't until after Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the scientist said it had to be an atomic weapon, he was laughed at and ridiculed.

The same as the hoax of the Great Pyramid; Colonel Vyse forged a mark of 'Khufu' in the Great Pyramid to gain popularity and notoriety, other than that one forgery there is not a single marking to link the Pharaoh Khufu to the Great Pyramid of Giza, not one, even the Funeral temples that surround it do not touch or make any contact with the Great Pyramid. Vyse's forgery was brought to light by one of the Egyptian workers with him who was ignored because he was a native, and his mark of 'Khufu' was misspelled the exact same way as a well known book on hieroglyphics at the time misspelled the name, plus the spelling was a slang version of Khufu and that was an offense that was punishable by death at the time...combine that with the fact that the marking was made at an unusual angle (i.e. like someone lying on the floor of a chamber a foot tall rather than someone standing up as an ancient stone mason might have), and you have compelling evidence that Vyse's mark was an outright forgery.

But god forbid you say that the Great Pyramid didn't belong to Khufu. It's holy writ that he built the Great Pyramid.

Oh...and the only reference to the Great Pyramid that has been found from Khufu's actual reign makes reference to the fact that it was 'older than the great sphinx'...meaning that it long predated Khufu's reign.

Those are facts, and sadly, those are things that you can't talk about becasue anything else raises immense questions...like why every pyramid built after the Great Pyramid is of much lower technological sophistication. As if Egyptian Pyramid building regressed...or were mimicking something already in existence.

 

[FFHAuthor]

Damn...I know I should have rolled these responses into one, but oh well...

Modern UFO tales only make the slightest bit of sense as part of research efforts on their part, but such efforts are far more effectively conducted in a manner that no one would be aware of rather than randomly flying around and abducting stoned hippies for a probe session. The fact that many of the more credible UFO stories in the past have turned out to simply be sightings of now declassified black project vehicles...

One of the most curious things about modern UFOlogy is the fact that it excludes a fantastically large amount of occurances and tends to be a slave to popular culture. While one can say that modern UFO researchers go from reasonable to the lunatic fringe, you forget that the umbrella of what is reported that occurs with UFOs is generally discounted. We all know about gray dudes, lights in the sky and abductions, but we forget that things like Mothman, Bigfoot, flying humanoids, paranormal activity and other fantastic things occur in conjunction with people who claim to see UFOs.

For Example, the Fatima prophecy, where three children saw an image of the Virgin Mary in Spain (I think) revived prophecies from god. What you might not know is that a large crowd also witnessed the event and some of them reported seeing a luminous cloud, others reported seeing glowing lights, and others reported seeing a flying saucer.

Over seventy years ago, UFO researchers ignored reports that included seeing beings because they were outlandish. Even after they started accepting them, the beings were small humans (NOT humanoids), it was only after the Betty/Barney Hill abduction that small gray aliens came into vogue (and after that, it was only after a made for TV movie with James Earl Jones in it was made that gray aliens began to be reported).

The 'historical record' of UFO research is one that's littered with extremely unusual information and popular culture trends more than anything than what you would call 'consistent information'. I often think about one of the most unusual aspects of UFO abductions, when the abductees describe the controls of the spacecraft, they're always in keeping with what we expect them to be, knobs and levers in the 50's, buttons and switches in the 60's, touch panels in the 90's holograms today. Funny that.

 

[Hazy992]

There's absolutely no evidence for it so until I get presented with some (and I highly doubt I will) I don't buy it.

EDIT: That being said I do think there are aliens somewhere in the universe, I just don't buy that they're on Earth or ever were.

 

[FFHAuthor]

Chariot of the Gods is not a scholarly academic text. Von Daniken has never attended university nor received any qualifications in Archaeology or Ancient History. He was also convicted of fraud (fraud he used to fund his foreign jaunts to 'research' the book). I suggest you read The Space Gods Revealed by Ronald Story. Which is a coherent refutation of all of Von Dankien's 'evidence'.

While I have not read Zecharia Sitchin, a brief google of his name suggests that most of his works rest on inaccurate translations of Sumerian, or the quotes are truncated or taken out of context to such a degree that distorts the evidence to prove his points. The Sumarians knew of only five planets. Sitchin saw 12 because he cannot read Sumarian.

I have just completed my degree in Archaeology and Ancient History. I find your arguments for the 'ancient aliens' premise both utterly foolish and down right insulting to anyone with a brain, the ancient civilizations that you would belittle, and the entire body of Archaeologists, Egyptologists, Semitologists, and so on. I suggest you read some real Archaeological/Historical texts.

Well, the only thing I will argue is my use of 'scholarly' simply because of it's use in jest rather than in any serious context.

Other than that, you can believe what you want to believe, but never stop asking questions. To many people in your profession refuse to address the inconsistencies. If your research proves that everything is a mis-translation, I'm fine with that. If your research provides decisive explanation as to cultural and sociological development, I'm fine with that. If your research gives ample explanation for technological and physical inconsistencies throughout history, then I'm okay with that.

The problem is nobody is asking those questions! Nobody is doing the research! Everyone is looking at things through a lens, through an ideology, through a way of thinking. It's easier to dismiss what is out there and minimize what is said rather than taking a good long look and asking 'What do I see?' rather than simply, 'What did someone else see?'. If you're content to call me an uneducated fool in a high brow manner, then fine. But that simply tells me that you're unwilling to examine things in any manner other than those you've been instructed to examine them in.

 

[BrassButtons]

There's a great deal of very curious information and a lot of unusual archaeological data

"Unusual" according to whom? Most people don't know enough about archeology to know what unusual data would look like, just as most people don't know enough about geology to know what an unusual rock formation would look like, and most people don't know enough about chainmaille to know what an unusual weave looks like. And just because someone says they're qualified doesn't mean they actually are. So is this data unusual according to people who should know what the data is supposed to look like?

that tends to fall by the wayside when 'mainstream' archaeologists can't explain it

And that answers my question. "Mainstream" archeologists are archeologists who know what they're talking about. The reason that "unusual data" tends to "fall by the wayside" is that most of it has already been dealt with, decades or even centuries ago. "Mainstream" archeologists have done the basic research to know that these issues have already been figured out, and so they don't waste any more time on them.

although they ignore the fact that most experts in Egyptology quietly admit that they've never found an actual mummy dating back to Egypt in the Great pyramid

First, are you saying they never found a mummy in the Great Pyramid, or that they've never found any mummies dating back to that time period? If it's the former, than it really means nothing as far as the Ancient Aliens thing goes. If you meant that there are no mummies that old in Egypt, then please tell me which experts have made this claim.

They also gloss over the fact that the only record linking the existence of the Great Pyramid to an Egyptian Pharaoh is linked back to a con undertaken by a disreputable British army officer.

Citation, please?

Other than that we can say that the Egyptians built many pyramids, but there is nothing that explains the construction of the pyramids of Giza

If by this you mean "we don't have a piece of paper with step-by-step instructions" then, yeah, you might be right. Of course, paper tends to degrade, so that's not surprising.

However, if you mean that there's absolutely no evidence that the Egyptians built the pyramids, then you're incredibly wrong. We have a clear progression of monuments, from simple mastabas to the true pyramids, showing how Egyptian engineers learned over time and built off of one another's designs. We even have a giant record of one fuck-up (the Bent Pyramid was an attempt at a true pyramid that failed because the angles were wrong). I'm fairly certain we also have pictures of people pulling blocks of stone. And we have cities next to the Great Pyramids where the workers lived (and yes, there is evidence that this was worker housing and not just a nearby town).

the largest and the smallest of the Great pyramids aren't dedicated to any particular pharaoh.

Yes, they were (if by "dedicated to" you mean built for a particular pharaoh). From largest to smallest, the three pyramids were built for Khufu (Cheops), Khafre, and Menkaure.

This is a very simple fact, and very easy to find (it took me less that two minutes of research) and you (or your sources) got it wrong. That's a sign that you aren't nearly as informed as you think you are (and the same goes for your sources). And I'm not going to bother looking into the rest of the claims you talk about, for exactly this reason. You clearly haven't done the most basic research, so there's no reason to assume that any of the 'unusual' things you mention are even slightly out of the ordinary. (And just so we're clear, I don't mean this as any kind of insult)

I will strongly recommend that you check out Bad Archeology [http://www.badarchaeology.com/], especially if you're actually interested in the subject.

EDIT: I just now read your claim about Khufu's signature being a forgery. Bad Archeology has this to say on the subject:

However, claims have been made, notably by Zecharia Sitchin, that the painted marks were forged. In 1983, Sitchin alleged that Vyse and his foreman, J R Hill, crept into the chambers at night and daubed the painted texts. These claims have been effectively debunked and Egyptologists have long accepted the marks as genuine. Nevertheless, although Graham Hancock does not state that the marks were forged by Richard Howard-Vyse, in Fingerprints of the Gods, he refers to ?a certain smell? hanging over Vyse?s testimony and calls the quarry marks ?dubious?. It was necessary for him to remove the attribution of the Great Pyramid to a fourth-dynasty pharaoh if he was to prove that it was built c 10,500 BC, as he attempted in Fingerprints of the Gods. In Keeper of Genesis, published in 1996, he repeats Sitchin?s unfounded claim that the Kh symbol (a circle containing several horizontal lines) is miswritten as a R? symbol (a circle with a dot in the centre), a mistake no ancient Egyptian would have made; photographs clearly show that the claim is false. In 1998, he withdrew the claim, admitting that the evidence demonstrated that the pyramid was built by Khufu c 2500 BC. His current position is now that, although the pyramid dates from the middle of the third millennium BC, its design is eight thousand years older (and he hints that some of the rock-cut parts of the structure may be that old). This is disingenuous stuff indeed!

(Full text can be found here [http://www.badarchaeology.com/?page_id=30] under the heading "Pharaoh's forged signature".)

So it's not that archeologists are ignoring the evidence, it's that they examined it and found it lacking (and then the person who made the claim changed his mind).

 

[DANEgerous]

Yes being capable of interstellar travel came here and left absolutely no tech behind. Because that makes fucking sense.

Seriously it pisses me off when I here "Oh yeah the extra terrestrials moved giant boulders to signal space craft" yeah they did not just build any real structures no they drew real big pictures in the dirt.

More or less this, if this was true we would find random bit of stuff humans could never have made. I know it reference model ships that are aerodynamically sound but they are still just tiny brass figures and to me of the several episode i have seen it was by far the "most convincing" and it was hardly convincing in the slightest.

Like the guy a quote says this does not appear to be the work of being with interstellar travel.

 

[FFHAuthor]

I will strongly recommend that you check out Bad Archeology [http://www.badarchaeology.com/], especially if you're actually interested in the subject.

Well, you just did an edit so I'll just cut what I did put.

I'll just add on a rider about the technological development of the pyramids, the pyramids cited, the step, the reduced angle one all are attributed to pharaohs that reigned after Khufu, although most archaeologists who were reasonably certain about the progression of Egyptian dynasties and Pharaohs state that it's confused and there are issues with the records, and state that the pyramid development makes sense, it's a cyclical argument, those simpler pyramids are leading up to the Great Pyramid because the Great Pyramid was the most developed, so of course the great pyramid came last, because all those other pyramids were made first.

 

[Ickorus]

The idea, and it is just an idea with no real evidence to back it up, is plausible but a lot of nut jobs jump on the bandwagon with completely implausible or downright silly connections and theories and pretty much wipe out all validity to the concept.

Spoiler: Case in point