Ancient Astronauts

As most of you know, I love to watch The History Channel. Especially when they have the pseudoscientific programs about 2012 or Atlantis. Well last night I treated myself to Ancient Astronauts. It did not let me down.

The Premise
Basically, these people believe that aliens came to earth, way back in the day, helped build all the impressive structures (pyramids), taught man some important lessons, and then left.

Where do they get all of their evidence? No clue really, most of it they just seem to make up. Needless to say, I think it’s all quite silly, unfortunately some people probably believe these things

Pyramids
The big argument is that the pyramids were too complex to build by ancient man. Also, how come there are pyramids all over the world? This is the same argument used by lost civilization lunatics (when they left Atlantis they went to Egypt and build pyramids and then to Mexico…idiotic)

One of the guys on the show states that it would take one block being placed every nine seconds for 22 years to construct the Great Pyramid at Giza. That seems pretty unlikely, well let me check the math on it. The pyramid contains about 2.3 million blocks.
2,300,000/(22 years x 365 days in a year)=286 (I will round it for simplicity)
Then divide that by hours, and you get about 11.93 blocks per hour. I could drag this down to the second, but I think you get the point. 1 block every 9 seconds? Not likely, 12 blocks an hour more reasonable, still pretty tough though. I would say that you need to extend your period of building. The Egyptians say it took 22 years, but I would bet money that is exaggerated by a few years.

Also, why is it hard to believe that ancient peoples were intelligent enough to build these structures? Of course they would use a pyramid, it’s the easiest way to stack large blocks. The idea that aliens did it is insulting to aliens. They had such power to come from far away galaxies and they decide to use limestone as their building material? Why not make it out of some crazy plastic/metal/liquid hybrid that you can build into the fourth dimension?

Lord Pacal’s Tomb
Another fun thing they like to point to is the tomb of Lord Pacal at the Mayan city of Palenque.

That is hard to see, but I wanted to give you something that is closer to the original, than one of the drawings of it. Here is a very up close rendering. These nut jobs like to say that Pacal is in a rocket ship. That his foot is operating a pedal, and his hands are adjusting dials. The thing near his nose is the breathing apparatus, at the right (or bottom of the linked version) you can see the flames from the rocket. Sounds highly suspect to me.

I always think of what Professor K would tell us at PSU: I did not ask for your interpretation, I wanted your description. Archaeology is about the facts. Without knowing what the majority of the pictures really mean, it is hard for myself to say what it is. If Mayan experts see those motifs as being consistent with Pacal descending into the underworld, then they are probably a bit more correct, since that is something they study.

The Bible
Next they love to turn to the Bible, starting first with the Book of Ezekiel. I can understand why someone would turn to this book and say “wow, that is some weird shit going on there.”

Ezekiel describes God coming to him in a chariot, which had strange winged beasts with four heads, and the chariot had wheels within wheels. Sounds just like every UFO sighting, right? Actually though, if you read Understanding the Old Testament by Bernhard Anderson, he explains this as a reference to the description of God’s throne inside the Holy of Holies from Exodus, mixed with Zeke’s own time spent in Babylon. Hmm, yes that does seem a bit more realistic, especially when you consider much of the Bible is written with constant references back to itself, or one of the older traditions.

The other Bible source they like to use is the Book of Enoch, which is another crazy book that was not placed into the Old Testament. The book deals with that line in Genesis that says that Enoch went with God for 300 years.

Apparently he goes and helps the angels battle some renegade angels who like to sleep with women and create giants. I wonder why this one was not rejected from the final draft? Obviously, angels=aliens, Enoch went to war with some bad aliens. He was like Will Smith “welcome to earf.”

Anyways, this ran a bit longer than I expected. My apologies.

Author: Ngewo