Ancient Astronauts
 

I came across some interesting theories a while back, and decided to see what MB thinks. The theories are called the "ancient astronaut" theories and all entail Earth being visited by extraterrestrials. Some theories of it say that aliens are in fact the missing link in the human evolutionary chain, using examples such as the Starchild skull as evidence. Other theories say that extraterrestrials are the "Gods" that almost all ancient religions speak of, and that these "Gods" gave them technology.

Evidence proposed for these theories include:

• Beliefs that the people of the time could not possibly have had the technology or power to create monuments suchs as the Pyramids (some believe we couldn't even replicate some monuments today) to such incredible size and technical accuracy (including things like alginment with constellations).
• The fact that a lot of ancient religions depict the "Gods" descending from the skies. Some even mention ships made of metal.
• The interpretation of some ancient art containing deptions of aliens or flying ships.
• The Nazca lines - they can only be seen properly from the air (the people of the time had no kind of plane or anything), are drawn to a good degree of accuracy and could be interpreted as landing lines or aliens or even messages to them.
• Some believe that the ancient people had a sudden and inexplicable "boom" in technology, and could not have come up with some of their technologies themselves.

So what do you make of this? Personally I can see some possiblity to this but I think there are better explanations. For example, on a National Geographic programme a while back on the subject, they proved that they could recreate one of the shapes in the Nazca lines using only technology they had at the time to a reasonable degree of accuracy. Interesting nonetheless.

Pictures and more information: Wikipedia article.

Though I am interested in all this stuff, I try to be as skeptical as I can. Humans then are not much different from humans now and a lot of knowledge has been lost over the years. I feel like we don't give ancient humans a whole of credit when we say things like "aliens helped". People seem to think we were totally stupid back then and somehow became geniuses overnight during the industrial revolution. I doubt it.

edit: I do believe in aliens, though.

oh rats, i thought this was a thread about the hip hop group Ancient Astronauts :(

well while i'm here, i'll throw my 2 cents in.

speaking as an anthropologist, i call BS on the lot of it!

there is no good reason to jump to such bizarre and incontrovertible theories when there are completely plausible explanations for these things. moreover, it is irresponsible to try and interpret much of this 'evidence' outside of the framework in which it was produced.

pyramids: this is just old ideas about primitive savages rearing its ugly head. there is no reason to suspect that humans are not capable of building them. i've seen tremendous archaeoastronomical sites in the US that could be used to predict events like eclipses and the motion of the planets with amazing accuracy. not unheard of at all in the ancient world.

as for the technological feat of building the great pyramid - well, with tens of thousands of slaves and many decades in which to work, it's really not that unbelievable to imagine...

gods from the skies: well why not? a tripartite cosmos is a common thread in ancient religion, and the upper world was often one of supernatural beings. no surprises here.

ancient art: if you choose to interpret ancient art from outside of its native sociocultural framework, then you're free to interpret it as you wish - but don't expect anyone to listen to you.

nazca lines: again, why should we imagine humans are not capable of this sort of thing? no need for otherworldy interpretations.

boom in technology: no idea what you're on about here. got any examples?

I think it's natural to think of gods as being "up there" (or possibly "down there") because they're obviously somewhere and we can't see them. We don't know what's up there - must be the home of the gods. This is too brief to summarize all my thoughts on the matter, but for now, suffice to say I think it's natural for people to believe in gods coming from heaven.

About the nazca lines, it is strange that you have to be high up to see them. Perhaps they were images or messages made to please deities rather than real aliens?

That skull looks like it belongs to eh victim of some genetic disease or mutation to me. The rest is speculation, free interpretations and wishful thinking in my opinion.

I agree that a lot of this theory is quite ridiculous, but it does make you think. For example, the fact that almost every ancient religion has Gods which physically descended from the sky at some point. But again, I'm sure there are other, more reasonable explanations, it's just quite an interesting theory I thought.

As for technological boom, I can't give any examples because it's not my idea, just an idea I've seen used in favour of the theory.

this simply is not true. it may be an uncanny trend, but it's far from universal...

Granted, but I did say almost every. I personally have come across very few that don't say this, but I'm sure there are a lot more than I know.

Hmm, the vikings believed in Yggdrasil, the world tree, and then the gods lived higher in the trees than regular humans do and so arguably, you could say they also came from the sky. To get there, you could walk on this rainbow bridge.

http://poderesunidos.files.wordpress...gdrasil_04.jpg

The greek thought many of their gods lived on mount Olympus which arguably is also in the sky. Or at least it's upwards! Not all the gods could have lived there, though. Hades would've been in Hades (of course) and I always thought Poseidon (god of the sea) would be in the sea somewhere.

There are also animistic religions in which they revere some kind of force which is in nature, for example in animals, trees or rocks. It's popular now with hippies and the like, but I don't know, perhaps some indian tribes have believed something like that although I know at least some of them have also believed in totem spirits and I've no idea where they would be.

I guess the more gods you have, the more likely they are to be elsewhere than just in the sky :D I'm sure noise has some better examples though!

tore mentioned animism - this is the foundation for most primal 'religions'. the idea of gods, or even of powerful supernatural entities, is really quite recent.

even the idea of the 'supernatural', which is by definition opposed to the 'natural', is a modern idea. the more time you spend learning about ancient religion, the more natural it becomes.

i have spent a lot of time studying ancient art, and i have seen very alien looking images in my studies (like the one below). but if you take the time to approach these images from the context within which they were created, rather than from an external perspective, you realize that the sorts of interpretations you proffer are really not valid.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1389/...11e575.jpg?v=0

^Wow, that creature on the left there looks really like an elongated E.T. :p:

Do you know of any plausible interpretation of that thing? I guess it could just be a fantasy creature?

In a sense, anthropology sometimes sounds like trying to figure out what people were thinking based on some pottery here, some imagery here. I mean, you have a very few pieces of a puzzle and the rest you have to fill in on your own as best you can. It sounds pretty hard!

Depending on how you fill in the pieces, I'm sure you could use such art to draw all sorts of conclusions, for example about alien visitors. I'm sure noise agrees, at least to some extent, that such interpretations is not the right thing to do. Coming from biology, I would say it's the wrong thing to do based on principles of parsimony. If you make the assumption that the image is an illustration of an alien who visited these peoples, then you have to assume that aliens exist and visited earth and these people at some point(s) in time. If you assume that it's an illustration of a figment of imagination, you don't have to make any "new" assumptions about our universe. We already know people are capable of art and fantasy.

edit :

Parsimony is sorta about making as few wrong assumptions as possible. For example we know people are smart and can build things. If we assume people made the pyramids, we have a hypothesis which is broadly congruent with this knowledge. If we assume aliens guided the builders or even built the pyramids, then we have to make a whole new set of assumptions to accomodate that hypothesis.

regarding the image i posted - judging by the rest of the imagery in that tradition, and the sorts of places in which the art was produced, it is very probable that the cultural group responsible for the images were shamanistic.

shamans were (are) spiritual leaders who make use of altered states of consciousness to establish and maintain contact with the spirit world.

altered states are biochemical phenomena, and the sorts of visual and somatic hallucinations they produce are often quite predictable.

in this image, we see floating human-like figures which is likely related to the sensation of an out-of-body experience, or of flying. the large eyes could indicate expanded visual powers. the flying objects around them may be what are called entropic phenomena - basically, the weird spots and shapes you see when you're on drugs. even the elongation of the figures is a well-documented somatic hallucination referred to as 'attenuation'.

the snakes and birds are common in this tradition - they probably had metaphorical significance.

it's hard to 'interpret' ancient art in this way, since it really consists of layer upon layer of metaphor, most of which we no longer have access to. there are clues to help us interpret, but in a sense you're right, it's all a giant guessing game :)

Tore, I'm with you on the parsimony, especially being a biologist myself. However, I don't like to be trapped by it. I use it appropriately when thinking about designing a very specific experiment, but I have a firm belief that sometimes wild leaps need to be made to make real discoveries. Being very parsimonious gets you the tiny details, like which protein out of millions of proteins belong to which intracellular compartment, but that is about as far as it goes. For example, when Fleming discovered penicillin, he did so knowing full well most of the scientists in the world thought he was nuts.

Basically I guess I'm saying stay logical, but keep an open mind. It is one thing to believe the hypothesis with the least assumptions and another to flat out deny the other possibilities. When that happens, it is harder recognize evidence that proves the wilder theory even if it shows up. At this point, I like to give our ancient ancestors credit for their accomplishments. They built the pyramids. They were bored and came up with fantasy creatures and stories to go with them. But who knows, maybe it was all aliens...

Anyone who has seen this show can't logically deny the evidence.

^ Heh.. totally accidentally deleted your post as spam and banned you.

My bad...

i think the unimaginable vastness of the universe is enough to convince me that if i were to assume there were no technologically advanced species farther along than us, i would be quite ahead of myself and parsimony is dust to the wind. the drake equation is very vague, but only so much as our understanding of our non-local environment is though, and i strongly believe this should be more often considered.

and then there is Paul Hellyer. he is the former Canadian Defense Minister, and was Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Elliot Trudeau. he's not some quack, and he, along with his current associates (and well over 4,000,000 reported interactions in one form or another since 1957) REALLY believe in aliens. they call the interactions between our race and the many that visit Earth "Exopolitics" and are moving in an effort to psychologically prepare humanity for the eventuality of our integration into a Universe Society.

interesting sh*t.

While it's almost definate that aliens exist, the vastness of the universe makes it extremely unlikely for any alien race to come into contact with us, and still very unlikely to have done in our entire history. That's one argument against this theory, but there is still a possibility aliens visited us.

you can call this arrogance if you wish, but i'd like to point out that from where i stand, i can see no argument.

WHY does the vastness of our universe make it extremely unlikely that any alien race would have come in contact with us?

you just rearranged my words and muttered "nah."

I see what you're saying but it all depends on exactly how frequent intelligent life is and whether they are alive in human's existance. There are so many varibles to aliens actually visiting us that it is actually extremely unlikely - think about it: first of all there has to actually be other life (almost definate), secondly that life must become intelligent (again, almost definately out there), thirdly that intelligent life must become an advanced space-faring species during human existance. That's where it becomes less likely. Fourthly that intelligent, space-faring life must choose to visit us during human existance. That is extremely unlikely considering the amount of other planets. Assuming this space-faring species can travel across the galaxy, that is hundreds of billions of planets they could visit before they come to us. And all of that must be within human existance, which is relatively an extremely small window.

Now all of that depends on the frequency of life, which we do not have a clue about. If life is very frequent (i.e. life in every other solar system) then yes, it is likely we have been or will be visited by aliens. If it is very infrequent (i.e. a few in every galaxy) then it is unlikely.

What I'm saying is that the vastness of the universe means that the frequency of life becomes the biggest factor is our likeliness to have been visited, and we don't know that.

Also, I'm not saying it is a good argument, just saying that it is sometimes used as a point against this theory.

"during human existence" is not an accurate measure at all.

earth is young. that doesn't mean the rest of the planets in the universe are.

the idea of space travel should also not be limited to the idea of limited means. it's likely that with an understanding of physics millions of times greater than our own (relative to our difference in age as a species), these civilizations don't have to deal with overcoming the problems we humans face as the pilots of jet-propelled craft.

then you need to consider the size of a UNIVERSE SOCIETY. i don't know exactly how long humans have been around. but i wouldn't call the notion impossible that a species, or very large group of different species co-mingling, could be millions of times older than humans. thus creating a possible population of numbers and vastness unimaginable. perhaps there are more of them than there are stars in the sky... perhaps enabling them, if they did not create all the planets in the universe themselves, that is, to keep tabs on all life-bearing planets.

and who knows, perhaps we're under an intergalactic quarantine, effectively disabling our evolutionary path... cuz we do SO MUCH STUPID SH*T.

By "during human existance" I meant that they would have to have become space-faring and find us by the time humans are alive. There may well have been a species with a space empire millions of years before humans but they got extinct by a gamma ray burst or something. What I'm saying is that depending on the frequency of life it is would be very unlikely to come into contact with aliens during our existance. Not ruling out the possiblity at all.

this conversation only works if we pretend that faster-than-light travel is actually possible.

are we allowed to pretend whatever we want? if so, i have some things to say about invisible emus and their plot to assassinate me (as predicted by the ancient mythology of the Kalahari)

There are actually particles theorized to travel faster than the speed of light, and the theory of special relativity does not disallow faster-than-light travel.

Besides, you do not necessarily need faster-than-light travel for space exploration. For example, with technology we have now we could reach Mars within about 210 - 250 days. With technology in, say, 100 years time that time could be drastically reduced. Because of this, it means that, rather than using faster-than-light travel, you could just colonized each planet in turn, slowly getting further out. This is one of the reasons why actual contact with other life is so unlikely.

Edit: In fact, Barack Obama has said:

So space travel without faster-than-light travel is certainly not impossible.

the nearest star is about 4.2 light years away.
the nearest extrasolar planet is 10.5 light years away.
the nearest earth-like planet orbiting within the habitable zone of its star is 20.3 light years away.

Mars, on the other hand, is a mere 2.4x10^-5 light years away.

so let's imagine that in 100 years we somehow reduce the time it takes to reach Mars form 230 days to just a week. 7 short days, traveling at about 1/800th the speed of light.

it would still take 3,340 years to reach Proxima Centauri, the nearest star. and a full 16,000 years to get to reach the closest known earth-like planet.

do you see the problem?

Yes I understand this, but what's to say they don't travel in a sort of space station in which they reproduce on board. I understand I'm getting a bit unrealisitic here but what I'm saying is it is possible, even if faster-than-light travel did not exist (which it could). But yes, I see what you mean.

wormholes.

It's easily possible that any other life in the universe has discovered a way to travel that we have not. Other life (especially a species that may be a hundred times older than humans) is not necessarily held down by what we see as possible/impossible. We shouldn't assume that they can't do something just because we can't. Does that make sense?

you're absolutely right.

in fact, it's possible to imagine anything you want if you choose to ignore all our knowledge of how the universe works. if we open ourselves up to all possibilities, however improbable, we can waste away our days dreaming up invisibility pills and flying cybernetic chimpanzee slaves and laser blaster tickle guns and mini dragon pocket pets.

but i'll tell you something - that sort of thinking isn't very practical. it might be fun to consider for a few minutes here or there, but there's no sense in taking it seriously...

Another problem with assuming or arguing aliens could visit us or have visited us is that then you also have to explain why they're not here right now. I've never seen an alien and I haven't seen proof that they exist. Why would they keep their presence a secret? And if they visited us way back then, why did they leave again? One might think that in the universe, a planet supporting life is like a rich oasis in a desert. Life and interest would congregate around them because of the wealth of resources they provide.

Well, we all may be able to talk rationally about seeing an alien on a forum or one on one, but I have no doubt an alien showing up in some downtown city would cause mass panic. We are still stupid creatures and I'm sure a species advanced enough to actually get to our planet would consider us lesser animals and would try to prevent that hysteria. Much like how we hide from animals when trying to film them in their natural habitats.

Like I said earlier, I try not to give much credence to the ancient alien theories and how they helped advance early civilizations, but I really do believe in aliens. I also believe they have visited our planet in some capacity. The universe is too large for intelligent life not to exist elsewhere, we have a very young sun compared to other solar systems with planets that could potentially support life, and I think a species that could travel space would be very interested in exploring all forms of life including our planet.

You exagerate every point. Imagining differences in our knowledge and the truth if not irrational in the slightest. In the past 100 years our scientific knowledge has changed immensely - who's to say we aren't completely wrong? Like Sljslj said, we shouldn't assume that they can't do something just because we can't.

And also, as zevokes said, if wormholes are a reality then that is your answer to how aliens could travel those distances in one lifetime.

Again, this depends on the frequency of life in the universe. If it's very frequent, then perhaps we are nothing special to them. There are many reasons why the aliens may have left - a distant war requiring them, not enough resources to stay, etc. As for proof, well, supporters of this theory would suggest that there's a lot of evidence, but over time many other explanations have also come about and more and more evidence is lost.

I certainly believe aliens exist, but I'm definately not too sure on whether or not they visited us. You say you don't give much credence to these theories and yet you say you believe that aliens have visited our planet in some capactiy?

Yeah...why not? Believing aliens have visited the planet and believing they have a direct connection with the development of our species are two different things.

Oh yes, fair point. I see what you meant now.

i would just like to interject with the idea that, yes, it's nice to come onto this forum and speculate on such topics as this with music lovers, but if one is actually going to have an opinion, they should do their research. AND, if it interests one enough to do that research, it should occur to said one that it might actually mean something.

it's been said here already that when imagining the goings-on of a species far more advanced than we are, the line between possible and impossible becomes quite blurred. in my own opinion, the impossible, many times, almost becomes probable.

as soon as a civilization creates its first tool, the inherently exponential growth of information and technology begins. it's also been said that we are a young solar system and that the last hundred years has proved humanity a formidable presence in the realm of information gatherers and technology builders... which is indicative of exponential growth when juxtaposed with the rest of what we know as human history. we just keep going faster. and anybody reading this knows just as well as i do that man alive will not allow that learning curve to stop. we've learned to build things to learn for us.

100 years ago, we didn't have things to learn for us. now, we've been to the moon. we have thousands of satellites orbiting our own planet and others in our solar system. we can take close-up pictures of the f*cking sun. mag-lev trains. the large hadron collider. solar panels. he even have the technology to drill giant holes in the ocean floor and create an oil leak which affect the world for a very long time to come.

so, imagine 100 years from now, being a part of the mass that never halted in its lust for information. hard, but perhaps possible to imagine.



how about 1000 years? your brain would just make stuff up.





100,000 years?

completely and utterly unimaginable.


so, being that our solar system is young, and the universe being so damn pretty big, 100,000 years is nothing. and if it so happens that there are species other than us, there's more than one, and you can probably bet some of them know every corner of the universe.

why?

because we would if we could.

EDIT: another answer to the why, is given that the nature of information's growth is exponential, it's almost impossible for the bearers of information to NOT become all-knowing.

the lack of evidence against the existence of something by no means constitutes evidence for it. but the reverse is also true. i'm not saying interstellar travel cannot exist, i'm simply saying that because our current understanding of the universe makes its existence extremely improbable, it is prudent not to use it as the foundation for our interpretations of the past (which, after all, is the topic at hand).

besides, the whole idea operates on a fallacious assumption that ancient art should always be interpreted literally, that 'what you see is what you get'.

if this is true, then we have no choice but to assume that crocodiles and hippos roamed the American Southwest around 5,000 years ago:

Frolicking Animals on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

or wait - maybe those are aliens too!

Well, yes - if you accept that there will be no constraints on what science can do, then your assumption should be valid. If you believe there are limits to what can be achieved, for example faster than light travel, then you have a constraint. If you believe creating a wormholes is practically impossible because it requires just about all the energy in the known universe to create one, then you have another constraint. If you take a picture of a quasar, that picture can show a galaxy which is actually billions of years old. You can almost see the start of our universe up there, that's how relatively slow information travels when distances becomes enormous - yet another constraint.

Based on your assumption, it sounds like we should've been visited by a whole bunch of extraterrestrial species already, but where are they? If we visited a different planet that had primitive intelligent life on it and a wealth of other organisms and resources, do you think we would've just left? I don't think so, I think we would've tried to use those resources for ourselves or, from a more positive perspective, at least nurture those resources. If these aliens visited planet earth, they left no proof behind that we've found like f.ex alien technology. They are not trying to stop us destroying our oasis in space either.

If you say we must have been visited by aliens, you should also come up with some answers to such questions.

Ancient art is just one type of evidence proposed and is, in my opinion, the weakest case for it.

To me, crop circles seem pretty pathetic. We already know very well that people make them and are devilishly clever and good at doing so. Over the years, people have come forward as the creators behind many of the most celebrated and most fantastic crop circles. Circles that UFO believers claimed had to be made with alien technology because nothing man had created was able to do the job was done with careful planning, planks and lengths of rope. Yet still, some people desperately want to believe that aliens also drop by and make these. These believers are in a dilemma trying to figure out which circles are real and which ones are made to play with their minds .. :rolleyes:

To me, it just seems so depressingly stupid.

I watched this 5 part series on the History Channel called Ancient Astronauts. Ancient Aliens — History.com TV Episodes, Schedule, & Video I was taking ntes and was about to make a thread on it when I saw Dom started one already.

What I liked about it was that it was like a crash course on ancient civilizations. I wasn't fimiliar with a few of the archeoligical sites and historical events mentioned, which made it interesting for me to watch. I would highly recommend watching it if you haven't already. I would divide the material they present as either fact or speculation. Mostly they present real archeological sites, real historical events but then they interpret it to fit their theory of Ancient Aliens, which is nothing but speculation. Some where credible historians and some were conspiracy theorist but of the latter the worst was Giorgio Tsoukalos. He was incredibly annoying, like if he was to comment on this picture he would insist they were aliens in space suites, instead of thinking of something more obvious like the picture depicts a person wearing a headdress or mask.

yes, that's the problem with working backwards. if you choose your interpretation before looking at the evidence, naturally the evidence will fit. but it really doesn't leave much room for lateral movement...

Yeah I saw a similar program before deciding to make this thread. It focuesed a lot on how precise all the anicient monuments were, for example how the Great Pyramid has an average error of about 2mm and is directly aligned with the Summer and Winter solstice (or something to do with Summer and Winter anyway).