I ran into this yesterday: http://www.hallofmaat.com/modules.php?name=Articles&file=article&sid=96
A friend of mine once wrote in the Swedish equivalent of the Skeptical Inquirer that you shouldn’t use a sledgehammer of logic to debunk crackpot theories when pinpoints of sarcasm could do the trick. On the other hand I have heard him saying on TV, in a discussion about seeing extraterrestrial trade routes in star charts, “Give me a map of the universe and I will show you Mickey Mouse”.
While I don’t subscribe to the Ancient Astronaut theory, I do think there is room for a healthy skepticism about the skeptics. Namely, when I read this:
… my first thought is, “Well, what evidence is there to support the notion that ancient myths and religious stories AREN’T distorted and imperfect recollections of the past?”
Meaning-- as much as we know about these ancient societies, there’s still an awful, AWFUL lot we don’t know.
It’s challenging trying to understand people who lived in the more recent past, what their lives were like, what they thought and believed. The farther back one goes-- and the more removed one gets from accessible forms of writing-- the more mysterious things get. We know far more today about the ancient Maya, Egyptians, etc. than we knew even forty years ago, but there are still gaps in our knowledge. Tremendous gaps.
Anyway, again, I don’t believe that this stuff had anything to do with aliens. But I also don’t believe we know even half the story about what made these civilizations tick.
P.S. If you think archaeology is tough now, just wait until the future when nobody has any stone carvings to look at, but empty husks of unreadable metals.
Ignorance fought. I suspected that it might be B.S. based on the fact that I have never heard anything else about it, but I was mostly trying to point out the “no aliens required” part of the theory. Apparently, airborne contraptions of any type are not required either.
Thanks,
Rob
How the heck are there “trade routes” in interstellar space? Is the Solar system on a direct line between any other stars?
I think they’re documented in John G. Fuller’s “The Interrupted Journey.”
Talking about trade routes sounds like people are considering star ships the equivalent of caravans or sailing ships.
Beyond the very big if of whether there are any aliens running around at all, why would they stop here? The HoJos on the Jersey Turnpike? If they have ftl ships, why bother. If not. why waste the reaction mass needed to decelerate from whatever immense speed needed to make the journey feasible to visit us, and then restart again?
You’d think real contactees would find out something about the real issues. In fact, what they have found out about the aliens seems to have come from bad 1950s sf movies, and would be rejected by Stanley Schmidt on grounds of implausibility in about 15 nanoseconds.
If the Fuller reference wasn’t a joke, wasn’t that clearly an early case of implanted memories?
One wonders what they found so interesting on earth to make it the end of a very long journey, and why they didn’t reveal themselves as traders usually do.
One thing the quoted article didn’t mention is the possibility that even if Barney Hill didn’t see the Outer Limits episode, he saw advertising for the Outer Limits episode with the alien pictured.
Oh, they said they were here to trade, but really it was all about the anal probing.
Do we have a reputation in other star systems as a place that one would only go for interstellar sex tourism, or something?
Earth - Bangkok of the Orion Arm.
Maybe Earth is a rest stop between colonies. Aliens pull in to get food and water, empty their sewage tanks, probe a few humans, start a civilization or two…
Better that than carrying a book called “To Serve Man.”
Count me among those who read and believed “Chariots of the Gods” as a kid, but now sees it as utter nonsense.
Since tpgonetosea has not yet posted a specific, I’ll try one that for some reason has always stuck with me.
He talks about the building of the pyramids, and that there are carvings (hieroglyphics? sorry, I’m fuzzy on the details) deep in the inner tunnels. They would have needed light, but there are no signs of blackening from the smoke of torches on the ceilings, and no sign of such blackening having been removed. Therefore, obviously, the aliens must have provided the builders with electric lights (hopefully, those cool LED flashlights).
So what’s the real answer? Did they have smokeless torches? A way to remove the blackening such that we can’t detect it? Or did they do the carving in the tunnels before the ceilings were put on?
Yes, most likely, yes, option 4, and a possible option 5.
Olive oil lamps with a properly trimmed wick are very close to smokeless. Even just putting a short wick in a open bowl of oil works fine. The Egyptians certainly could do that perfectly well.
If it’s light soot, they could have scrubbed it off. Sure it’s hard work, but you’re already building a pyramid. It’s not like some extra scrubbing is going to put your workload over the top. I don’t think anyone has taken any chemical testing equipment down there to see if there’s trace amounts on the ceiling. Everything I’ve seen is about how there’s no visible soot marks, but they could’ve been removed. Especially if you’re already using low smoke/smokeless lamps like the olive oil ones. The ceilings aren’t polished which you would expect from heavy scrubbing, but if they’re just doing touch ups they wouldn’t need to wear the stone out.
Some of the construction was done by digging a trench and then adding a roof. The pyramid at Abu Roasch has this type of construction. No problems in carving in daylight beforehand.
Option 4: They knew about mirrors and redirecting sunlight. There’s some debate on the quality of the mirrors, but it seems likely that they could have bounced around enough sunlight to provide dim lighting anywhere they wanted.
Option 5: The soot marks in the other pyramids aren’t from the builders either, but from people who gained entry after construction. Generally this one doesn’t explain everything, there’s too many indications of where torches or lamps were used from the begining, but the quanity of soot found may be be at least partially post-construction.
Most of the “mystery” comes from the fact that many of the buildings contain obvious soot marks, including portions of the pyramids that were clearly built with the walls constructed before adding a roof. Option 5 says it wasn’t the builders who did that while the rest say they just weren’t as careful about making sure there was no soot in those tunnels for some reason. None of them require alien LEDs though. 
Even if the answer is ‘we don’t know exactly how they did it’ that doesn’t equal ‘it must have been space aliens!’.
-XT
Amen. It’s “Space Aliens Of The Gaps”.
The two hour show I mentioned earlier up thread brought up the lighting thing btw…while showing a cool carving that supposedly depicted a light bulb while implying that this must have been how they did it. They also ‘debunked’ the idea that the Egyptians (or anyone else) could have possibly used mirrors to shine light down the passages (by using what looked like unpolished copper plates that could only bounce light very weakly for an extremely limited distance), and then going on about how none of the ceilings had any trace soot (without even attempting to back this up).
They never mention what Oldeb is talking about, of course, that some of the passages were built open air (in the Pyramids especially), or that they could use semi-smokeless oils like olive, or that they could, you know, simply clean up the more important parts of the tomb when they were getting ready to seal it up. Nope…had to be aliens. No other explanation is possible (or even seriously entertained by the Ancient Aliens crowd, at least on the show).
What I find hard to believe is why this stuff is making a come back now. It’s like someone is resurrecting the goofy theories from the 70’s or something…lately there has been a deluge of Bermuda Triangle shows as well. Bigfoot also seems to be making a serious comeback, at least if History Channel is any indication. I wonder if it’s simply credulous people who are looking back with longing for a simpler time of wacky theories, or if it’s the new generation who have simply re-discovered these little gems and have fallen for them all over again…
-XT