# Ancient astronaut believers: Are they racist? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 27, 2024, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730 "2024-01-27T07:13:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/61 "2024-01-29T06:30:31Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Many cultures including white Europeans have given credit to God or the gods or their helpers for structures and inventions. Yes, many cultures have _themselves_ given credit to God or Gods or magic. But they themselves gave deific beings credit. It isnt white men, saying that those brown people over there couldn’t do the Moai for example. That is the racist part. > [@Retzbu\_Tox](#): > > An Irishman believing fairies built a mound or castle in Ireland is different between than a white American or European believing _ **every** _ marvellous structure from antiquity that was built in Africa or South America had to have been built by aliens. Exactly. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > So what is an example of an ancient white culture that huilt strange megaliths that weren’t ascribed to ancient aliens? Sam makes a point here that of course _some_ have claimed that Stonehenge , Avebury ect were built by aliens. So, it is not all 100% _always_ racist. Just far too often. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/62 "2024-01-29T06:34:50Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I cannot stress strongly enough that ETs did NOT do these things. We know this because the belief that they did came from racists. Erm, no, I gotta disagree on that. We know that ETs did not build these things because of the evidence that shows that the locals were fully capable of doing so and did. The past being what it was, many things that _are_ true were probably pointed out for the first time by a racist person. If Isaac Newton was a racist, that wouldn’t invalidate his theory of gravity. We cannot reject the ancient aliens theory _only because_ it was first proposed by racists. We can reject it based on the lack of evidence supporting it, and the presence of contradictory evidence against it. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/63 "2024-01-29T13:38:26Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I had earlier very carefully laid out a history of the development of modern-day racism, setting its rise in the 19th century. Yeah, but that wasn’t the statement that I was replying to. It wasn’t carefully laid out, and didn’t hold water. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/64 "2024-01-29T14:18:55Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > We cannot reject the ancient aliens theory _only because_ it was first proposed by racists. True, but the origins of a theory springs from the idea that non-Western civilizations weren’t as smart or advanced as Western civilizations and therefore needed help from fanciful outsiders. Its core argument can be dismissed, and the rest of the house of cards falls apart. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/65 "2024-01-29T14:23:35Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Its core argument can be dismissed Because there is no evidence for said core argument and plenty of evidence for alternative, terrestrial origins to these monuments. _Not_ because the people initially making those arguments were racists. If no racists had ever made the Ancient Aliens claim we could still reject it on those grounds. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/66 "2024-01-29T14:24:48Z")
The core argument is based on faulty assumptions, so it can be dismissed. It can also be dismissed because of the reasons you state. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/67 "2024-01-29T14:31:51Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > The core argument is based on faulty assumptions, so it can be dismissed. I agree, but that is a _very_ different statement than > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > We know this because the belief that they did came from racists. Your post takes issue with the _argument_ being made an with the evidence presented to support it. The phrase I objected to implies that we should reject the argument _without even considering whether it is true_ because it originates with racists. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/68 "2024-01-29T18:01:58Z")
I’m really very surprised that nobody understood the sentence “We know this because the belief that they did came from racists.” as snark rather than an explanation of 200 years of history. Try it as snark and see how much difference that makes. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/69 "2024-01-29T18:05:23Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Try it as snark and see how much difference that makes. It’s one thing as snark, but Poe’s Law comes into play here, and there is no lack of people who would sincerely make the argument “the person who came up with this theory was racist, therefore the theory can be disregarded” unironically. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/70 "2024-01-29T18:09:14Z")
> [@DesertDog](#): > > The person asked what he thought about ancient astronauts and he told her that people who forward those hypotheses or believe in them really pisses him off because they are saying, in effect, brown people couldn’t have built/done those things back then so it must have been extraterrestrials doing it for them. Well, they couldn’t. LOL However, neither could white, yellow, red, whatever people build them, so I don’t get the racism here. The idea is that, for that era and stage of ALL human development, those accomplishments were not possible. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/71 "2024-01-29T19:23:01Z")
The thread has devolved into a cycle of people talking past one another. Numerous posters have already explained that the claims that people could not have built ancient structures have been aimed primarily at brown people and only secondarily and rarely against white people. Stonehenge might be included but it is very much an outlier. That the claim has been deracinated so that it is applied to all older structures is a recognition of its racist past. Yet the claims do not truly change. White-skinned people only took over Europe about 4500 years ago, and then as pastorialists (some hunter-gatherers are known earlier from the far north); that’s hardly time for them to have created equivalents to the omnipresent ancient structures in other cultures. (Yes, that puts the early structures at Stonehenge pre-white invaders. Hmmm.) Talking about ancient structures too complex for humans has a Venn diagram of almost a circle with ancient structures built by actual brown humans. Claiming that it is a universal does not scrub the racism off of it. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/72 "2024-01-29T19:31:03Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > The thread has devolved into a cycle of people talking past one another. Indeed! > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Talking about ancient structures too complex for humans has a Venn diagram of almost a circle with ancient structures built by actual brown humans. Claiming that it is a universal does not scrub the racism off of it. I never claimed that the theory of ancient astronauts was universally applied or deracialized. I agree that it _is_ a racist theory. My point is that we shouldn’t just say “Oh, a theory that feels racist to me, let’s discount it”. If that was how we went about things, anyone could cause us to discount any idea simply by convincing us that it is racist, at which point we will never consider any evidence to the contrary. Instead we can examine the claims and the evidence provided for them and discount them based on the lack of evidence. One could imagine that we _did_ live in a world where ancient aliens visited us and preferentially met brown people - for example, because they wanted to save fuel by sticking to landing sites along the equator. We obviously _don’t_ live in that world, but if we did, it would be silly to discount the evidence for that fact based on the fact that the data could be interpreted in a racist way. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/73 "2024-01-29T20:59:01Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > That the claim has been deracinated so that it is applied to all older structures is a recognition of its racist past. Yet the claims do not truly change. White-skinned people only took over Europe about 4500 years ago, and then as pastorialists (some hunter-gatherers are known earlier from the far north); that’s hardly time for them to have created equivalents to the omnipresent ancient structures in other cultures. (Yes, that puts the early structures at Stonehenge pre-white invaders. Hmmm.) > > Talking about ancient structures too complex for humans has a Venn diagram of almost a circle with ancient structures built by actual brown humans. Claiming that it is a universal does not scrub the racism off of it. If I am understanding this, you’re saying that there aren’t many megalithic structures created by white people, because the civilizations that created them were almost always brown people civilizations? If so, then how can it be evidence of racism that people think the megaliths came from aliens? It can’t be because they only say this for brown people, because as you claimed there just aren’t many non-brown-peopled architectural mysteries. What other evidence is there that these theories have a racist origin? When I was young I was fascinated by them. I read Worlds in Collision and all the rest of those stupid books. I don’t recall any overt racism in any of them. Maybe it was there and I was too young/naive to see it, but I don’t remember it. What else? Any quotes from people saying that it had to be aliens because brown people weren’t capable of it? Or are we just assuming here? Because by your own description above, claims about aliens making megaliths are going to focus on brown civilizations, because they were the ones making the megaliths. Of the few strangenesses attributed to white cultures (Stonehenge, Druidic practices, the Antikithera mechanism, etc), ‘ancient aliens’ pop up as an explanation all the time. Have you heard the ancient alien Viking theories? There’s lots of them. Here’s the IMDB entry for “Ancient Aliens: The Viking Gods” > **["Ancient Aliens" The Viking Gods (TV Episode 2013) ⭐ 6.9 | Documentary,...](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2831124/)** > > 45m | TV-14 Also, one of the biggest ‘ancient aliens’ theories comes from Ezekiel in the bible, with the fiery wheels in the sky. Are the Jews brown people? Oh, then there is Da Vinci. There were alien theories and time traveler theories about him, because he obviously drew things that primitive people of the time couldn’t have known about… And he was European. The more I think about it, the more I think “Ancient Aliens = Racism” is just not right. I’m sure there is an overlap between ancient alien believers and racists, just as there is an overlap with racists and almost everything else. But I’m not seeing the obviously racist intent inherent in the subject. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/74 "2024-01-29T21:35:38Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > When I was young I was fascinated by them. I read Worlds in Collision and all the rest of those stupid books. I don’t recall any overt racism in any of them. Maybe it was there and I was too young/naive to see it, but I don’t remember it. My experience matches yours and I rejected them, as others have said, on evidentiary evidence, or rather the lack of it, and especially when I discovered pareidolia. The point of the question was not why to reject them but rather why I was blind to the racial side until last week. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Are the Jews brown people? Semitic. Close enough. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/75 "2024-01-29T21:50:38Z")
But again, what woke you up to the racism? Was it something specific in the claims? A propensity of the authors of such claims to exhibit other racist beliefs or make racist statements? Or is it just the correlation of ancient astronaut theories with ‘brown’ societies along with people claiming that means it’s racist? If it’s the latter, then the point that megalithic structures are primarily created by ‘brown’ societies makes it inevitable that ancient astronaut theories would correlate with them, whether there was any racist intent or not. And I’ve now provided numerous examples of ancient astronaut theories being applied to Caucasions whenever they did anything that people think was ‘too advanced’ for the time. Da Vinci and the Vikings and the ancient Greeks are examples I already brought up. Hell, we went through a phase of thinking crop circles were aliens because ‘no humans could make that’. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/76 "2024-01-29T22:02:38Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > If it’s the latter, then the point that megalithic structures are primarily created by ‘brown’ societies makes it inevitable that ancient astronaut theories would correlate with them, whether there was any racist intent or not. There are plenty of megalithic structures in “white” lands. When was the last time you saw someone claim that the Roman aqueducts were made by aliens? They’re a lot older than Machu Picchu, or Angkor Wat, or the Mayan pyramids, and required considerable craftsmanship. And so people just say “Well, the Romans were clever and resourceful”. Which, of course, they were… just like the builders of Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, and the Mayan pyramids. But all of those other structures get attributed to aliens, but the aqueducts (or the Colosseum, or the Parthenon, or whatever) never do. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/77 "2024-01-29T22:02:57Z")
The evidence for the racist notion is everywhere. Since my last post I read a review of Alicia Puglionesi’s _In Whose Ruins: Power, Possession, and the Landscapes of American Empire_ in the _New York Review of Books_. A pertinent excerpt. > One persistent and popular theory ran through much of thievery and claimed to justify it. William Cullan Bryant even wrote a famous poem, [“The Prairies,”](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55341/the-prairies) that in 1832 made the thievery into a rose-tinted myth. Supposedly an ancient race of white people inhabited North America before the ancestors of the current Native Americans. As the fantasy was retold, other writers, naturalists, local boosters, and skull-collecting ethnologists described these notional First Americans as Danish Vikings, Celts, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Romans, Druids, Toltecs, or refugess from Atlantis (that presumably all-white lost continent). There’s the “natives couldn’t have done it” calumny applied to the Mound Builders. Other examples follow. The imputation that whites must have been necessary to create the structures led to a series of conclusions. One. The whites have disappeared. Two. Therefore the “red men” must have wiped them out. Three. Therefore we are justified in wiping out the “red men” and taking their goods and lands in the name of the white ancestors we have fantasized into existence. Holy shit. No wonder people today are trying to deracinate the origins. You can see the same process unfolding in today’s politics. Here are some of the lines from Bryant that articulate the myth. > Are they here— > The dead of other days?—and did the dust > Of these fair solitudes once stir with life > And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds > That overlook the rivers, or that rise > In the dim forest crowded with old oaks, > Answer. A race, that long has passed away, > Built them;—a disciplined and populous race … > > The red man came— > The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce, > And the mound-builders vanished from the earth. > The solitude of centuries untold > Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf > Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den > Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground > Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone; ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/78 "2024-01-29T22:53:42Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > When was the last time you saw someone claim that the Roman aqueducts were made by aliens? [Giants, not aliens.](https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/the-ruin/) And they’re being poetic. (I agree with your point overall of course). ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2024, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/79 "2024-01-29T23:22:03Z")
The Roman aqueducts and their construction were heavily documented, and looks like obvious human engineering in ways that a giant stone pyramid in an ancient land is not. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730/80 "2024-01-30T00:22:07Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > and looks like obvious human engineering in ways that a giant stone pyramid in an ancient land is not. In what way do stones piled on top of each other NOT look like human engineering? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-astronaut-believers-are-they-racist/996730.md?page=5)