Is it me or is there just the tiniest bit of racism in all those ancient alien shows?

[MrDibble]

@Biggirl

These are not Roman ruins that are being accused of being built by aliens at Baalbek. It’s an ancient Lebanese site.

No, it’s quite specifically the Roman-built triliths of the retaining wall at the Temple of Jupiter that were in question. Which is fucking rich since we even know the quarrythey come from.

[ExTank]

@Biggirl

So why is it that, instead of using what they know about human history and applying it to the Aztecs and Egyptians, they assume that those peoples just weren’t smart enough to figure things out? Although hearing that Stonehenge got the alien treatment does make me feel, um, better?-- about it.

I think that it has less to do with racism than scope.

The Egyptians and Aztecs thought BIG; thus, their monuments get more attention.

[Colibri]

@Quimby

I brought this up in a similar thread in IMHO. I read Chariots of the Gods a dozen times as a kid and that book at least only questions the skills of brown people so yeah I agree there was a twinge of racism. I’m not saying they were White supremacists but the the view of history at the time was Euro-Centric and everyone else were the Primitive Natives so things were written from that point of view.

I went to a lecture by Carl Sagan in the 1970s in which he was asked his opinion of von Daniken’s ideas. He said in his opinion they were racist, which is the first time I had heard that objection to them.

While von Daniken’s ideas may be racist, that doesn’t mean that all ancient alien theorists are necessarily so. As has been noted, some of them include ancient European sites as well. (They’re still rubbish, of course.)

[even_sven]

I don’t know much about Ancient Aliens, but I do know African exploration by Europeans is full of fantastical theories of the “black people couldn’t have done this— it must have been Vikings or something” theories. Great Zimbabwe spent decades being attributed to everyone BUT the people in the area. I even lived near a missionary in Cameroon who tried to convince me that Fulfulde (a language descended from Wolof) is actually from Vikings.

I could see Ancient Alien thinking being an extension of this thought process, and perhaps expanding beyond it as it becomes more popular.

[Malthus]

@even_sven

I don’t know much about Ancient Aliens, but I do know African exploration by Europeans is full of fantastical theories of the “black people couldn’t have done this— it must have been Vikings or something” theories. Great Zimbabwe spent decades being attributed to everyone BUT the people in the area. I even lived near a missionary in Cameroon who tried to convince me that Fulfulde (a language descended from Wolof) is actually from Vikings.

I could see Ancient Alien thinking being an extension of this thought process, and perhaps expanding beyond it as it becomes more popular.

This sort of thing was rife in New World archaeology. The Mayan ruins were originally tied in to all sorts of Old World “sources”. Not sure if even that counts as “racism” though - as the “old world” sources these people alleged were, often as not, not white Europeans.

One of the leading examples of this is an eccentric fellow named “Count” Waldeck (his noble title was pretty dubious). He is actually an important figure - one of the first to publish drawings of several Mayan sites. Too bad he faked them up to look more like Egyptian, Roman or Indian ruins! Even to the extent of having Mayan carvings include … elephants.

It is interesting to see how similar his bullshit is to modern day “ancient aliens” speculators. Though more damaging, as Waldeck was, for all his frauds, a considerable artist, and his pics were very influential (though soon contradicted).

Waldeck’s first contact with the art of ancient Mesoamerica was when he was hired by the publisher Henry Berthoud to prepare some plates for an 1822 book entitled Description of the Ruins of an Ancient City.[3] This book was an English translation of the 1787 report on Palenque by Antonio del Río which had been commissioned for Charles III of Spain and then sat unpublished in the National Archives of Spain.[1] Waldeck’s engravings were much more beautiful and artistic than the original drawings he worked from, and gave the monuments a decidedly Egyptian look, in line with his patron’s views that the ancient Mesoamerican Native Americans were the Lost Tribes of Israel.[citation needed]

In 1825, he was hired as a hydraulic engineer by an English mining company and went to Mexico. He did not last long at this job, and after his failure he explored the Pre-Columbian ruins of the country, living in the ruined Palenque between May 1832 and July 1833. After that, in 1834, he was hired by Lord Kingsborough to travel to Uxmal and make drawings and architectural reconstructions. Some of these were “fanciful in the extreme.”[1]

In 1838, Waldeck published Voyage pittoresque et archéologique dans la province d’Yucatan pendant les années 1834 et 1836 (Paris), a volume of illustrations of Mérida, Yucatán and Maya ruins, including those at Uxmal. Dedicated to Lord Kingsborough, this book provided what Waldeck believed was further support for connections between the ancient Maya and ancient Egypt. His illustration of the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal, for example, makes it look similar Egyptian pyramids.

Waldeck’s illustrations of Palenque were chosen to accompany Monuments anciens du Mexique (Palenque, et autres ruines de l’ancienne civilisation du Mexique) (1866) by Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg. However, just as his earlier illustrations had implied connections between the ancient Maya and ancient Egypt, the ones included with Brasseur de Bourbourg’s text invoked the Classical antiquity of ancient Greece and Rome. His illustrations of panels of Maya script in the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque included clear depictions of heads of elephants (now known to be erroneous embellishments). This fueled speculation about contact between the ancient Maya and Asia and the role of the mythical lost continent of Atlantis as a common link between ancient civilizations of the Old and New Worlds.

Jean-Frédéric Waldeck

Interestingly, it was an American writer - a guy named Stephens - who, at around the same time, quite correctly demonstrated that the ruins were built by the ancestors of the local inhabitants. His book makes very interesting reading, highly recommended. Includes very accurate drawings by his artist friend Catherwood (still amazing today).

John Lloyd Stephens