# Aliens built the pyramids
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [April 29, 2024, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943 "2024-04-29T22:08:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/81 "2024-05-01T19:49:35Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#):
>
> An advance civilization that can build rockets capable of interstellar travel, travels many light years to get to earth just to teach earth plebes how to stack rocks!? What-the-everloving-fuck?
As a member of an advanced civilization that can build rockets of intra-solar travel, I am currently training my dog to sit, lie down, and touch my palm with her nose.
It may only speak to their evaluation of our capabilities.
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### Author:  [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/82 "2024-05-01T20:12:04Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#):
>
> As a member of an advanced civilization that can build rockets of intra-solar travel, I am currently training my dog to sit, lie down, and touch my palm with her nose.
Ah, but can your dog stack rocks? ;~)
> [@Sage\_Rat](#):
>
> It may only speak to their evaluation of our capabilities.
This is similar to the argument (I’m looking at you NDT) that aliens wont try to communicate with us because they consider us as we consider ants. This is flawed. We are sentient and clearly capable of many types of communication - ants are not. My proof, look around you.
All any alien would have to do is observe us and it would be obvious that we were more than capable of much more than stacking stones. Ancient Egyptians had the same capabilities as we do. I have trouble believing that aliens would have misunderstood us that much.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/83 "2024-05-01T20:25:24Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#):
>
> As a member of an advanced civilization that can build rockets of intra-solar travel, I am currently training my dog to sit, lie down, and touch my palm with her nose.
You would think that you Advanced Guys had better things to do with your time, like clearing up those darn black holes.
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### Author:  [@Ribeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ribeye)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/84 "2024-05-01T20:32:40Z")
Ronnie James Dio wrote a [song](https://youtu.be/mLF4JvEb2lw?si=RYJ84mtcJn2-aJcm) about this very idea.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/85 "2024-05-01T20:36:40Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#):
>
> This is similar to the argument (I’m looking at you NDT) that aliens wont try to communicate with us because they consider us as we consider ants. This is flawed. We are sentient and clearly capable of many types of communication - ants are not. My proof, look around you.
The wrong thing about that isn’t that ants don’t communicate - they clearly do. The wrong thing about that is the idea that humans just ignore ants and don’t try to figure out what they’re saying to each other. Entomologists spend a lot of time researching ant communication. Probably, alien scientists would do the same with us, even if we’re shockingly primitive because we communicate primarily by making noises with our food-intake chute.
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/86 "2024-05-01T20:58:49Z")
> [@Chefguy](#):
>
> > [@eburacum45](#):
> >
> > More likely they were ordinary people, performing building works as some kind of devotional act - perhaps the same model that explains the construction of Stonehenge and other ancient megastructures around the world. People built these things because they wanted to, or were paid to do so.
>
> You don’t have to go back that far. There were also all the master masons who built magnificent cathedrals in the old (and new) world, which will probably be attributed to aliens 10,000 years from now.
You don’t even have to go back **that** far. There were these two stonemasons I hired to repair the brickwork on my previous old house before I sold it, because they seemed to be doing a good job on the stone facade of a new house going up across the street. They did a magnificent job repairing the brickwork.
This was around fifteen years ago. I’m convinced nobody could do that kind of work today. In fact, I suspect they might have been aliens – they had advanced technology that could cut through brick like a hot knife through butter! It was clearly not of this world! 😲😁
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/87 "2024-05-01T21:27:54Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#):
>
> All any alien would have to do is observe us and it would be obvious that we were more than capable of much more than stacking stones. Ancient Egyptians had the same capabilities as we do. I have trouble believing that aliens would have misunderstood us that much.
Bee, crow, dolphin, and whale communication have not been obvious to us and it’s taking us quite a while to ascertain that they do, in fact (or not in fact), have some method of communicating complex ideas.
To ascertain that, we generally start at the simplest level and work up.
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### Author:  [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/88 "2024-05-01T21:44:53Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#):
>
> Bee, crow, dolphin, and whale communication have not been obvious to us and it’s taking us quite a while to ascertain that they do, in fact (or not in fact), have some method of communicating complex ideas.
But they do not alter their environment the way humans do. The very fact that they were building structures to an afterlife would have clued the aliens to the fact that we are capable of much more. We were already stacking stones, stacking them higher is not a leap in engineering.
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### Author:  [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/89 "2024-05-01T22:05:53Z")
> [@Gyrate](#):
>
> N \* U \* B \* I \* A \* N \* S \* I \* N \* P \* R \* O \* F \* I \* L \* E
“What the \*\*\*\* is a N \* U \* B \* I \* A \* N?”
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### Author:  [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/90 "2024-05-01T22:15:27Z")
A Sudanese TV sitcom about ancient war medics?
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### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/91 "2024-05-01T23:48:30Z")
> [@ftg](#):
>
> “What the \*\*\*\* is a N \* U \* B \* I \* A \* N?”
What is “What Trelane called Uhura?”
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### Author:  [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/92 "2024-05-01T23:52:57Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#):
>
> But they do not alter their environment the way humans do.
Bees don’t alter their environment? Lots of animals build complex structures: bees, termites, beavers, bowerbirds, prairie dogs, etc. For most of history, that hasn’t caused humans to think that we should try to communicate with them.
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### Author:  [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/93 "2024-05-02T02:44:27Z")
> [@markn\_1](#):
>
> For most of history, that hasn’t caused humans to think that we should try to communicate with them
For most of history we weren’t capable of leaving Earth. Also, most of our scientific knowledge is less than 250 years old. ISTM that any civilization capable of interstellar travel would probably have the same amount of curiosity that has lead us to the amount of knowledge we have now
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### Author:  [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/94 "2024-05-02T07:08:36Z")
> [@markn\_1](#):
>
> For most of history, that hasn’t caused humans to think that we should try to communicate with them.
Hey, Gilda tried.
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKxjBsO-Bvk)
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### Author:  [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/95 "2024-05-02T08:09:54Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#):
>
> It’s always the brown people who couldn’t possibly have built the Pyramids or Machu Picchu or Great Zimbabwe.
I’m Zimbabwean, albeit a pale version. Those aliens must have gone on something of an insane building spree, because aside from Great Zimbabwe, there are hundreds of smaller structures, built in the same way, scattered around Mashonaland. There was one about 10km from my house, so I could ride my bicycle there. The concept that aliens (and/or the alternative wack-job theory that it was Portuguese traders) build Great Zimbabwe ignores those off-shoots. Why would aliens build a small fortress on top of a hill in a rural backwater from stone harvested on site (the stone was fractured using fire and water alternatively) when they had the facility to travel presumably interstellar distances, and therefore had slightly better technology than “build it with rocks”?
The Mashona built the thing. They built the outlying forts. They abandoned them when their empire collapsed. It really is that simple.
I enjoyed reading von Däniken when I was about 13, even though - at that tender age - I had serious doubts.
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### Author:  [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/96 "2024-05-02T15:27:01Z")
Note that this is all surmise. There is no historical record of these off-world guest-workers. And the Egyptians kept pretty good records. Clearly they were undocumented aliens, and the Pharaoh was just getting it done on the cheap.
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### Author:  [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/97 "2024-05-02T16:31:06Z")
> [@markn\_1](#):
>
> Bees don’t alter their environment? Lots of animals build complex structures: bees, termites, beavers, bowerbirds, prairie dogs, etc.
There’s many, many orders of magnitude difference between a beaver dam and New Your City. An alien probably would not be able to tell the difference between a log jam and a beaver dam.
However the 1500’ tall Central Park Tower, encased in flat glass surfaces and lots of 90 degree angles would certainly catch a visitors attention. It reeks of higher intelligent design in a way that beehives and termite mounds do not.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/98 "2024-05-02T16:35:14Z")
> [@Smapti](#):
>
> From aliens, silly.
And the reason it only showed up now was they had to send it to Altair to be developed.
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### Author:  [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2024, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/99 "2024-05-03T02:25:17Z")
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> they had to send it to Altair to be developed
That is ridiculous. Everyone knows the lab is at Wolf 359. It is less than half as far away, and, honestly, why would you have a film lab around a blue giant? Wolf 359 is dim enough, they can do the printing part without even having to use a safelight.
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### Author:  [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2024, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aliens-built-the-pyramids/1000943/100 "2024-05-03T16:13:34Z")
I might be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure both are mute because that pic oozes Polaroid emulsion.
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