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Ancient Marvels: Skillful Humans Or Helpful Aliens?

You cant make someones old cereal bowls and and bits of bones exciting
 
Shadowsot said:
I've always had an issue with Ancient Aliens, it always felt to mich like old colonialism. The same sort of mentality that preached that Great Zimbabwe could not have been constructed by the local people as it was to hard for tribes to build such a great city.
Egyptian pyramids are much less complicated than the Gothic cathedrals, or Roman temples or structures like the Parthenon or Colleseum.
The Inca and Maya post date the Romans.
But while it's rarely said that the Romans must have had alien assistance to build their great aquaducts, or Medieval Europeans to build their cathedrals, its frequently said these people, or the Egyptians, or the Indians, must have extra terrestrial assistance to say, drill a hole in stone.
I used to think it was a writing issue. Most of these cultures that get these claims have either little surviving writing, or little surviving writing about construction.
But there's a record showing the translation of Old World colonialsm to modern Ancient Alien claims.
Click to expand...
It's not that simple. Even the Nordic gods dating back to the bronze age, 1700-500 BC, has gotten the 'ancient alien' stamp on that show.
 
Vardoger said:
It's not that simple. Even the Nordic gods dating back to the bronze age, 1700-500 BC, has gotten the 'ancient alien' stamp on that show.
Click to expand...
Yeah, but that was in later seasons as they started running out of material. It isnt a common thing.
There's a few sites that are European, like Stonehenge, or Roman, like the Temple at Baalbek, which get used. But the bulk of the material is on non Euopean or non-Mediteranean cultures.
I'll admit, though, I stopped watching Ancient Aliens a long while back. The beer to minute ratio needed got to high for me.
 
ramonmercado said:
The analysis also named both religiosity and lack of church attendance as associated factors, suggesting that people with a complicated relationship with religion—believers who have a lack of connection to their community of faith—are most open to paranormal claims. ...
Click to expand...

This rings true. Someone raised with religion has the choice as an adult to accept or reject it, along with faith in general. They don't have the option of ignoring it.

An example is our old pal Aleister Crowley: raised as Plymouth Brethren, invented himself a new religion. Worked for him. ;)
 
"No wiring"

Apart from ancient Egyptian reliefs of what appear to be circuit diagrams:


Batteries.JPG


and Crookes' tubes:

bulb.jpg
 
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ramonmercado said:
The analysis also named both religiosity and lack of church attendance as associated factors, suggesting that people with a complicated relationship with religion—believers who have a lack of connection to their community of faith—are most open to paranormal claims. ...
Click to expand...
That is in agreement with other psychology studies which shows just that.

blessmycottonsocks said:
"No wiring"

Apart from ancient Egyptian reliefs of what appear to be circuit diagrams:


View attachment 4269


and Crookes' tubes:

View attachment 4270
Click to expand...

As for the first, I've spent half of my working life drawing circuits for electronics design and that doesn't convince me at all as a circuit diagram or anything like it, but by all mean annotate it for me so I might work it through.

The second has a superficial resemblance to Crookes Tube, it's 'basically a funnel shape'. That's hardly conclusive.
 
"That's hardly conclusive."

I agree and would never claim that those Egyptian artefacts are conclusive proof that electricity was used in such ancient times. They are certainly curious though and I just hoped they would add something to this thread and spur further discussion.
 
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Coal said:
... This kind of document does no-one any favours, honestly I consdier it wild speculation reversed onto a bunch of non-sequiturs.
Click to expand...

Agreed ... I'd still give that webpage due credit for providing an all-in-one capsule summary (with references) covering much more of the 'pro ancient electricity' background than one will find most anywhere else.

It's also an excellent illustration for how acceptance of one initial claim (the 'Baghdad Battery' does in fact represent a workable battery) sets the stage for accepting / projecting an arbitrarily large number of subsequent claims in a sort of rhetorical cascade.

This is the means by which one or a few anomalous items can trigger a process of progressive speculation yielding elaborate back-stories, which in turn become reified mythological frameworks through which subsequent anomalies of the same type will be viewed, assessed, and / or incorporated. Once the mythos propagates widely enough / long enough (even if only in cursory form) it becomes part of the cultural milieu.

... And during recent decades it's become all too easy to make a decent living stoking the process and acting as self-anointed cognoscente for the mythos.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
"No wiring"

Apart from ancient Egyptian reliefs of what appear to be circuit diagrams:


View attachment 4269


and Crookes' tubes:

View attachment 4270
Click to expand...
Well those aren't ancient Egyptian, for one. They come from the temple of Hathor at Dendera and the structure was built during the late Ptolemaic period, in the first century when Egypt was under Greek control.
Then you have to be very careful when looking at art.
What you see looking at art is not necessarily what was intended.
Especially if you are removed from the artist by time and culture.
Depictions of common myths and objects are strange and foreign to us, and we try to fit it into our own cultural narrative.
Now the first image is a depiction of a Menat necklace:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menat

The second is panel from a narrative, showing a snake emerging from a lotus bloom. Its a creation account, further attested to by the hieroglyphs you can see on the side.
 
Coal said:
It's kind of interesting, but even a cursory check of one or two of the 'facts', rapidly spirals into 'no primary source can be found'. This kind of document does no-one any favours, honestly I consdier it wild speculation reversed onto a bunch of non-sequiturs.
Click to expand...
Especially this bit:
nd the evidence that the ancients used them to electroplate some of the artifacts stored in museums around the world is likewise common knowledge.
Click to expand...
There's plenty of evidence of chemical plating. But none for electroplating. That's just a straight fabrication.
 
Shadowsot said:
Especially this bit:

There's plenty of evidence of chemical plating. But none for electroplating. That's just a straight fabrication.
Click to expand...

Exactly ... The subsequent factoid none of the 'ancient helpers' / 'ancient advanced tech' promoters ever mention is that plated / gilded artifacts from the Baghdad Battery's purported timeframe, once analyzed, provided trace residues (e.g., cyanide compounds) consistent with chemical rather than electrical plating methods.
 
One of the most common peripheral elements cited in touting Egyptian electric lamps is the alleged absence of residue evidence indicating long-term use of oil (etc.) lighting while all those carvings were being created.

The obscure presumption here is that the structure was pretty much complete (and dark within) before anyone carved anything. They therefore needed lighting, and this lighting had to be used for a quite extended period of time.

The Temple of Hathor at Dendera is an above-ground structure built up of stone blocks and mud bricks.

Why does no one mention the possibility that the relevant blocks were carved (at least to some penultimate state) outdoors in full sunlight before being moved inside and incorporated into the interior walls?

Why do we seem to presume the ancients were so inept at project planning / management that no one thought of having the carvers prepare the stones' decorations in parallel with the basic construction work, so as to reduce the overall project time?

How much sense does it make to assume the builders were geniuses in devising advanced lighting technology, all for the sake of making up for their relative stupidity in leaving all carving undone until the end?
 
Yeah, for things like the pyramids there was very little done inside until later on when you start getting the pyramid texts. And no one was supposed to go inside after it was built.
So most of the carving was probably done during construction while it was still open.


But the Egyptians also used olive oil lamps with a little bit of salt that gave off very little smoke. You can see this in their mines or when they excavated out tunnels. Despite the low amount of smoke it still collected on the ceiling, and sometimes work stopped so suddebly their tools and lamps are left behind.
And of course, they also tended to clean up and keep the place tidy. The gods might be angry if you let soot develop in their holy places.
Which seems to be an odd concept to people.
 
"Now the first image is a depiction of a Menat necklace"

Yes. I can certainly see that.
I guess it's down to the necklace being depicted on a huge - man-sized scale and the proximity to other enigmatic features in the carvings - the "bulbs", djed columns and lightning symbols, that has resulted in comparisons being drawn to some kind of electrical infrastructure.
 
I will be interested to see what mainstream archeology makes of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey - a 12,000 - 15,000 year old city that seems to be a star map in its layout.

History tells us cities like this did not exist 12,000 years ago - so history must be wrong.
 
XBergMann said:
I will be interested to see what mainstream archeology makes of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey - a 12,000 - 15,000 year old city that seems to be a star map in its layout.

History tells us cities like this did not exist 12,000 years ago - so history must be wrong.
Click to expand...
Mainstream archeology has been studying the site now since it was discovered- in fact mainstream archeology discovered it.
It also isn't a city, and I'm sure you can make it match some stars if you make the effort.
And a bit pedantic, but history is just everything that's happened since writing. This site is prehistory, no writing
 
Review of Ancient Aliens S12E01 "The Alien Hunters"
4/28/2017

Welcome to the twelfth (!) season of Ancient Aliens, which at this point is less a TV show and more of a thought experiment in how a TV production crew of cockroaches might survive a nuclear holocaust that destroyed all facts, evidence, and reason. There isn’t much to say about this episode, “The Alien Hunters,” by way of preface, as it is as much as possible just more of the same. This episode hews away from the show’s title adjective in favor of its recent devolution into freshman dorm room bullshitting about anything vaguely related to space aliens.

Segment 1
The first segment discusses plans by scientists to survey the cosmos for signs of civilizations around other stars. Scientists have long believed it likely that life exists in other star systems, but that implies absolutely nothing about whether beings from those worlds came here, the claim that is the bread and butter of Ancient Aliens. Without any real connection to this opening, the show rehearses the early history of UFOs, starting in 1947 with Kenneth Arnold’s sighting, and from their they moved into other government investigations of flying saucers. While the show claims to rely on government documents to show that the government was involved in investigating Arnold’s sightings, but they tactfully refuse to acknowledge the results of the FBI’s investigation, namely that the flying saucer phenomenon was the result of mass hysteria born of science fiction publisher Ray Palmer’s efforts to link lights in the sky to Richard Shaver’s underground and spacefaring civilization. Those details I collected and published.

The show devotes a large amount of time to Air Force investigations and suggests a conspiracy and a coverup, but they omit the rather clear evidence that the FBI recorded that the Air Force encouraged the UFO mystery in order to obscure tests of secret aircraft and possibly Soviet spy missions. This explanation, which is the only plausible reading of the FBI’s files, neatly explains the entire “conspiracy” that Ancient Aliens suggests is located in the heart of the Air Force, but it goes unmentioned. ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-ancient-aliens-s12e01-the-alien-hunters
 
"..the show rehearses the early history of UFOs, starting in 1947 with Kenneth Arnold’s sighting, and from their they moved into other government investigations of flying saucers."

Now some might call me a grammar Nazi, but stuff like this reduces the credibility of such critiques! :twisted:
 
ramonmercado said:
Review of Ancient Aliens S12E01 "The Alien Hunters"
4/28/2017

Welcome to the twelfth (!) season of Ancient Aliens, which at this point is less a TV show and more of a thought experiment in how a TV production crew of cockroaches might survive a nuclear holocaust that destroyed all facts, evidence, and reason. There isn’t much to say about this episode, “The Alien Hunters,” by way of preface, as it is as much as possible just more of the same. This episode hews away from the show’s title adjective in favor of its recent devolution into freshman dorm room bullshitting about anything vaguely related to space aliens.

Segment 1
The first segment discusses plans by scientists to survey the cosmos for signs of civilizations around other stars. Scientists have long believed it likely that life exists in other star systems, but that implies absolutely nothing about whether beings from those worlds came here, the claim that is the bread and butter of Ancient Aliens. Without any real connection to this opening, the show rehearses the early history of UFOs, starting in 1947 with Kenneth Arnold’s sighting, and from their they moved into other government investigations of flying saucers. While the show claims to rely on government documents to show that the government was involved in investigating Arnold’s sightings, but they tactfully refuse to acknowledge the results of the FBI’s investigation, namely that the flying saucer phenomenon was the result of mass hysteria born of science fiction publisher Ray Palmer’s efforts to link lights in the sky to Richard Shaver’s underground and spacefaring civilization. Those details I collected and published.

The show devotes a large amount of time to Air Force investigations and suggests a conspiracy and a coverup, but they omit the rather clear evidence that the FBI recorded that the Air Force encouraged the UFO mystery in order to obscure tests of secret aircraft and possibly Soviet spy missions. This explanation, which is the only plausible reading of the FBI’s files, neatly explains the entire “conspiracy” that Ancient Aliens suggests is located in the heart of the Air Force, but it goes unmentioned. ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-ancient-aliens-s12e01-the-alien-hunters
Click to expand...
Like I have said here before, I am open-minded on fortean stuff, but I have also been skeptical of Ancient Aliens Theories (AAT) for a long time. If anyone cares to go to the forum of another website, there, I have been one of the more hard-headed members and refused to accept very many claims without solid evidence backing them up. That particular forum is no longer very active, I notice.

I have always felt that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. AAT, primarily due to the enormous distances involved, is one such claim and I think the requirement for extraordinary evidence in that case is entirely justified.

The claim that transoceanic voyages were made in ancient times is not so extraordinary, so I m more inclined to accept such claims than I am those of AAT advocates. Granted, I still need evidence to support such claims, but they are much more likely to be true than AAT.

In too many cases, however, claims of fraud have been leveled at discoveries that threaten to upset pet theories, such as the stone found in Kensington, Minnesota, Heavener State Park in my own state of Oklahoma, and the Glozel discoveries near Vichy. Are they frauds? I don't know, but instead of an out right rejection of such claims, a better approach might be to classify such finds as 'unproven'.

But in their defense, (or defence to our cousins across the Atlantic) they don't want to be snookered like they were in the early 1900's with Piltdown Man. So, I can understand their attitude.

I just don't agree with it.

Are there things that we don't know? Mysteries to be looked at? Most assuredly there are. Can people such as us make a valid contribution to human understanding? I believe that we can.

But I also believe that we have to use our heads for something other than a hat rack
 
ramonmercado said:
Chapman University Survey Finds Astonishing Levels of Belief in Ancient Astronauts and Atlantis
10/17/2016

Last October I wrote about a depressing survey from Chapman University which found that 1 in 5 Americans—20.3%--professed to believe in ancient astronauts. A couple of regular readers let me know that this year Chapman University repeated the survey, and the results were even worse. According to the annual survey’s new results, fully 1 in 4 Americans, an astonishing 27%, believe that aliens visited the Earth in the past. Even more disturbing, 39.6%--more than one in three—believe that Atlantis or another advanced prehistoric lost civilization once existed. (The survey did not ask about Atlantis last year.) Similarly, 42.6% of respondents believe that the U.S. government is covering up knowledge of alien encounters, and a full third think that elites are plotting a single world government.

The more detailed full results show that only 29% of respondents disagree that Atlantis existed, while a more robust 40.7% disagree that aliens visited the Earth in the past. In both cases, about one third of all respondents couldn’t decide whether Atlantis or ancient astronauts existed.

According to the analysis accompanying the survey, two factors that are most closely associated with holding beliefs in paranormal phenomena like ancient astronauts or lost civilizations are low education and low income. The analysis also named both religiosity and lack of church attendance as associated factors, suggesting that people with a complicated relationship with religion—believers who have a lack of connection to their community of faith—are most open to paranormal claims. ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/c...-of-belief-in-ancient-astronauts-and-atlantis
Click to expand...

The update for 2017.

Chapman University Survey Finds Majority of Americans Now Believe in Ancient Advanced Civilization, While a Third Believe in Ancient Astronauts
10/14/2017

Something bad is going on in America, and I’m not entirely sure whom to blame. For the past few years Chapman University has conducted a Halloween-themed study of paranormal and superstitious beliefs tied to Americans’ worst fears. Included in the survey questions were items related to subjects of interest to us: ancient astronauts, lost advanced civilizations, etc. The latest survey was released this week, and for the first time a clear majority of American now professes to believe in a lost Ice Age civilization similar to Atlantis. Across the board, fringe history beliefs reached new heights. People write to me all the time to ask why I bother to talk about “crazy” topics like aliens and Atlantis. I am flabbergasted to report now that it is because more Americans now believe in Atlantis than do not.

chapman-fear-survey-2017-paranormal-beliefs_orig.jpg


The 2017 Chapman University Survey of American Fears Wave 4 found that 55% of Americans believe in Atlantis or another lost ancient super-civilization. Additionally, 35% now believe space aliens visited ancient people in the past. Such figures are simply astonishing, even after accounting for the fact that technically speaking Atlantis and aliens are not “paranormal” per se. The numbers are unprecedented in reputable surveying, but they are the culmination of a clear upward trend. The numbers are growing compared to the 2016 and 2015 surveys, as the chart below shows: ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/c...n-while-a-third-believe-in-ancient-astronauts
 
Depends what is meant by "believe in Atlantis" .
I believe that the Azores are all that remains of what was a far larger, contiguous land mass back in the neolithic or early bronze age, and which is possibly what Plato referred to as Atlantis.
I don't believe they had any anomalously advanced technology though.
 
I'm not surprised. Ghosts and Ancient Aliens/Lost Civilizations make up a bulk of infotainment on TV.
And comparatively, very little is rebutted by professionals and skeptics.
I remember there was a debate of sorts between Hancock and Shermer recently, and Shermer didn't seem to have bothered much to prepare for it.
History doesn't have the same sort of pooularizers as physics and astronomy does. Though to me it's no less profound. And it's a good deal more personal.
I've noticed while other fields have opened up more to the public, most historians and archaeologists still expect you to do most of the heavy lifting yourself.
Which is understandable, to a point.
But if you have that mentality you can't really complain when your field is misrepresented and misunderstood.
 
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