Speaker 1: My World. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be starting off
Speaker 1: by talking about theme parks. Just before we started recording,
Speaker 1: Robert and I were talking about possible alternative theme parks
Speaker 1: that just never got to be. I was thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got Disneyland and Disney World that we know some
Speaker 1: people here in the office that are really into disney World.
Speaker 1: We go all the time. But it's based on all
Speaker 1: these classic animated characters, right, And I was thinking, there
Speaker 1: should be an alternative theme park that's based on the
Speaker 1: classic animated characters, not of Disney, but of Don Bluth. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this would be like the Secretive Nim Yeah. So
Speaker 1: you've got like a Secret of Nim ride where you
Speaker 1: you like ride this cinder block to the lee of
Speaker 1: the stone. And then you've got you've got like characters
Speaker 1: walking around in the streets, of course, and costumes of
Speaker 1: Rocketdoodle comes up to you. There's an old Dogs Go
Speaker 1: to Heaven, you know, you get to be a dog
Speaker 1: and go to dog Hell. Ride that. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a disturbing portion of that movie. I remember. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: then also there's gotta be a Dragon's Layer ride because
Speaker 1: Don Blues worked on that. That's right. This is the
Speaker 1: classic animation style video games. Yeah, where you die no
Speaker 1: matter what you do all the time. Oh yeah, we
Speaker 1: could have one for a ranking and bass rock box.
Speaker 1: You get into all those old cool Disney alternative animated
Speaker 1: classics like the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, Goblin singalongs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm all where there's a whip, there's a way, I'm
Speaker 1: all for it. You have one hal that's just for
Speaker 1: singing along with that Leonard Nimoy song about the Hobbit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta work that in somehow though that that's not
Speaker 1: actually in the movie, But the movie itself is full
Speaker 1: of full of all sorts of wonderful tunes. Um. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because we have all these various ridiculous and real
Speaker 1: theme parks and then we have these fictional ones. So
Speaker 1: we we have made up parks like Jurassic Park, we
Speaker 1: have West World, we have Itchy and Scratchy Land. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, we do have Dollywood, the Dolly
Speaker 1: Parton themed theme park, I don't think I've ever been
Speaker 1: to Dollywood, but you gotta wonder what's there? Is it
Speaker 1: just the same stuff, Like, it's just roller coasters and
Speaker 1: carnival games and stuff, except it's Dolly Pardon themed. What's
Speaker 1: all about the theme, right, It's all about the fluff.
Speaker 1: Like I remember, I never went to Dollywood, but I
Speaker 1: went to Opery Land in Nashville, Tennessee, back when that
Speaker 1: was a theme park, a country music sort of country
Speaker 1: themed theme park, and and that was fun. It wasn't
Speaker 1: necessary that I was into the uh, into the flavoring
Speaker 1: that was provided. But still, the basic rides, you do
Speaker 1: need some reason to get on there. You need some
Speaker 1: sort of character associated with it, to tell a story
Speaker 1: with the ride. Dude, that Dollywood Joe Lene roller coaster
Speaker 1: was a scream. So there are a lot of worthy
Speaker 1: theme park destinations out there. But here's one that I
Speaker 1: think most of us may not have heard of. I
Speaker 1: had not heard of this one until we started researching
Speaker 1: this episode. I had not heard of this until you
Speaker 1: sent it to me. It's nestled in the Swiss Alps,
Speaker 1: and it's called young Frau Park. Okay, does that mean
Speaker 1: young woman? I believe so it's name for um, it's
Speaker 1: name for a particular alpine peak in the immediate area.
Speaker 1: It originally opened as Mystery Park, though it offers fun
Speaker 1: and entertainment for the entire family, including Misty Land for
Speaker 1: the children, a huge indoor outdoor children's paradise, segue rides, trampolines,
Speaker 1: laser shows, a petting zoo, and of course multiple exhibits
Speaker 1: in live shows addressing the mysteries of ancient history and
Speaker 1: the possible answers to be found in ancient astronaut hypothesis.
Speaker 1: What yes, yeah, this is I need to drive this home.
Speaker 1: This is not some silly skit that Joe and I
Speaker 1: have prepared for everybody. This is a real theme park
Speaker 1: in Interlock and Swiss of Land, centered around the ideas
Speaker 1: and writings of Eric van Donikin, author of the nineteen
Speaker 1: book Chariots of the Gods. I like how the original
Speaker 1: book title ends in a question mark. Yes, so, I
Speaker 1: really think we should make a point when we're talking
Speaker 1: about his book. We should we should pronounce it chariots
Speaker 1: of the Gods of the Gods like they might be
Speaker 1: chariots of somebody else's. I also love how it takes
Speaker 1: what is otherwise a tremendously awesome title and kind of
Speaker 1: screws it up by making a question. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got that standard clickbait format these days, where like the
Speaker 1: actual body text of an article might be fairly reasonable,
Speaker 1: but the headline makes some outlandish claim not justified by
Speaker 1: the article itself. This is sort of the opposite. This
Speaker 1: is like the title is actually a little bit more
Speaker 1: careful than the book. Yes, and we will definitely get
Speaker 1: into that as we proceed. But this particular park again,
Speaker 1: it opened as Mystery Park and two thousand three at
Speaker 1: a reported cost of eighty six million Swiss francs or
Speaker 1: sixty two million dollars American uh. But then it closed
Speaker 1: in two thousand six. Then it opened reopened again in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine as Young Frau Park. It's an exhibits
Speaker 1: still focus on things like the Nazca lines, the construction
Speaker 1: of the Pyramids, and other noted uh quote unquote examples
Speaker 1: of ancient astronauts, speculation or a A s plus. Donikan
Speaker 1: himself still gives lectures there and insists that quote everything
Speaker 1: ends in a question mark, so as if it's all
Speaker 1: just a consideration of these ideas rather than um, you know,
Speaker 1: propaganda about it. Well, I must say that makes me
Speaker 1: feel a little bit better about it, because I kind
Speaker 1: of want to go. I don't put any stock whatsoever
Speaker 1: in the ancient aliens hypothesis, but this sounds like a
Speaker 1: good time. You've got a petting zoo, and you've got
Speaker 1: a guy given lectures about how aliens probably talk to
Speaker 1: our ancestors. Yeah, there's a sun sphere they have like
Speaker 1: a ziggurat and a pyramid. You can, you can. I'll
Speaker 1: try to make sure that we link to the homepage
Speaker 1: for the park so that you can check it out,
Speaker 1: because it does look fun. It looks you can children
Speaker 1: can have their birthday parties there. It looks like an
Speaker 1: interesting destination, and we would love to hear from anyone
Speaker 1: who has ever gone there themselves. So I've been familiar
Speaker 1: with Van Donkin for a long time. I remember seeing
Speaker 1: him mentioned on old reruns of In Search of hosted
Speaker 1: by Leonard nimoy A and a yeah. But but I
Speaker 1: had no idea that this had been incorporated into a
Speaker 1: theme park. This is the kind of thing you come
Speaker 1: to expect from religious groups in the United States, like
Speaker 1: the Holy Lands Theme Park. I believe it is in Florida.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if you're not aware of this phenomenon. In
Speaker 1: the United States, there are multiple, uh, not just Bible themed,
Speaker 1: but specifically Young Earth creationist theme parks in the United
Speaker 1: States that have like models and exhibits. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like a cross between an amusement park and a museum
Speaker 1: attempting to promote the idea, for example, that humans and
Speaker 1: dinosaurs lived side by side and that the Earth is
Speaker 1: six thousand years so old. Yeah, and you know, it
Speaker 1: makes sense that we would have theme parks about this
Speaker 1: because in the United States, two things that people take
Speaker 1: very seriously our religion and their major entertainment brands. So
Speaker 1: of course there's a Disney Park. Of course there's like
Speaker 1: Universal Studios. But I just really wasn't expecting, uh, there
Speaker 1: to be a theme park based around the concept of
Speaker 1: ancient aliens. It really gives me hope that my son
Speaker 1: can one day celebrate his tenth birthday party at a
Speaker 1: Phantom Time hypothesis theme park. I want to Lizard People
Speaker 1: theme park that would be good, yeah, with the costumes
Speaker 1: it basically rights itself, or a good Flat Earth theme
Speaker 1: park that'll do it. I wonder if that means the
Speaker 1: roller coasters will be very boring though there's no looks.
Speaker 1: It's just flat circle flat roller coasters. Yeah. So we've
Speaker 1: had listeners in the past ask us to talk about
Speaker 1: ancient aliens related topics. I think it's come up in
Speaker 1: passing on the podcast quite a few times. Actually, we
Speaker 1: just kind of mentioned it here and there as one
Speaker 1: of those things that you know, it would be interesting
Speaker 1: if there were some actual evidence for it, but there
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be any good evidence. It's all just
Speaker 1: kind of like based on massive over interpretation of little
Speaker 1: tidbits of interesting mythology and imagery from the ancient world,
Speaker 1: and sometimes on outright fraud and and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into all that today. I do want
Speaker 1: to before we get into it, I do want to
Speaker 1: stress that we are going to approach this topic, like
Speaker 1: all the topics we can approach, with a skeptical mind,
Speaker 1: but an open mind. Okay, yeah, an open minded mind exactly. Yes.
Speaker 1: And while we're gonna be talking about about von Donnikin
Speaker 1: himself and his book at the top of this episode,
Speaker 1: we are going to get into say Carl Sagan's thoughts
Speaker 1: on the possibility of ancient aliens as we progress, and
Speaker 1: of course through all of it, it is an exciting idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, it factors into so many different works of
Speaker 1: fiction that that we love. It's uh, it's just comes
Speaker 1: down to the fact that, like you said, the evidence
Speaker 1: is never there. Yeah, exactly. Now. I want to be
Speaker 1: clear that I find the idea of ancient aliens visiting
Speaker 1: Earth long ago in the past as fun and interesting
Speaker 1: as anybody else would. It's something that I would love
Speaker 1: to believe if there were good evidence for the I mean,
Speaker 1: that's such a cool idea. Um, And so it's and
Speaker 1: it's also not something that I would say is something
Speaker 1: we should just dismiss out of hand. Like some people
Speaker 1: make the argument that, Okay, if somebody shows up and says,
Speaker 1: I've got a new propellantless drive that'll get us through
Speaker 1: space without propellant, some people say, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: violating the laws of physics, I don't even need to
Speaker 1: listen to you to begin with. I don't feel like
Speaker 1: that about ancient aliens. I'd say, Okay, this is something
Speaker 1: that we don't know whether or not aliens exist. Maybe
Speaker 1: they do. We don't know if they do exist, whether
Speaker 1: they visited Earth in the past. Maybe they have. There's
Speaker 1: no reason to rule it out out of hand. So
Speaker 1: it's at least worth looking at the evidence if somebody
Speaker 1: thinks they have some exactly, So let's return to Chariots
Speaker 1: of the Gods uh the Night sixty eight book by
Speaker 1: Eric von Donakin, And the basic idea here is again
Speaker 1: that ancient that ancient astronauts visited Earth and serve as
Speaker 1: the sort of god figures of our mythologies and religions,
Speaker 1: and they wowed us with their technology and taught us
Speaker 1: to do things like make bread and build pyramids, the
Speaker 1: two primary activities of human civilization. Well they're they're also
Speaker 1: we'll get into it, especially the pyramid thing more. But
Speaker 1: these are the sort of things that it's easy to
Speaker 1: look at and say, how did people ever figure this out?
Speaker 1: I thought about that with bread before you know, I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is amazing. It's so tasty, and I if you,
Speaker 1: if you you show me where it came from, and
Speaker 1: I would. I can't imagine ancient people putting that together.
Speaker 1: But of course they did put it together. Do you
Speaker 1: think aliens were the ones that taught us to drink
Speaker 1: the milk that comes out of goats and cows. Oh
Speaker 1: well that is that isn't another interesting topic of topic.
Speaker 1: I believe Julie and I did an episode that got
Speaker 1: into some of that in the past. Because there are
Speaker 1: different theories regarding how we made this leap. One of
Speaker 1: them one of the theories is that it actually involved
Speaker 1: a drinking contest, like essentially dares and double dares among
Speaker 1: ancient people. I bet you can't down that glass of
Speaker 1: of of sheep's milk. Let's see what happens. Okay, So
Speaker 1: it would be like, drink this crocodile's urine, drink this
Speaker 1: goat's milk, but then the goat milk was kind of tasty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it actually would play into some of these
Speaker 1: ancient astronaut ideas, like the aliens arrive and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you uh monkey creature, Um, can you drink the milk
Speaker 1: of that other one without becoming ill? Let's see what happens,
Speaker 1: just doing experiments on us. Yeah. Uh. So we can't
Speaker 1: rehash all of von Danikin's arguments from his book, but
Speaker 1: I think just to give you a flavor of the
Speaker 1: kinds of things he argues and and what it feels
Speaker 1: like to participate with his arguments. We should just give
Speaker 1: an example from several of his major lines of evidence,
Speaker 1: and one of the major types of arguments he makes
Speaker 1: is about ancient projects that supposedly we're beyond our power
Speaker 1: to produce at the time. Right, So this is you
Speaker 1: know you mentioned how do we learn to bake bread?
Speaker 1: How do we learn to build pyramids? Von Dannikin essentially
Speaker 1: will look back and say, hey, we couldn't have done
Speaker 1: that back then. Must have been aliens showing us how
Speaker 1: to do it or assisting us with their technology. So
Speaker 1: classic example of this you'll often hear is the pyramids
Speaker 1: of ancient Egypt. Right, if you've got an ancient Aliens
Speaker 1: person talking to you, they'll say, look, there's no way
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians could have built the pyramids. These these
Speaker 1: stones that the pyramids are made of or gigantic How
Speaker 1: did they get them to the site? How did they
Speaker 1: build them with such precision? You know that, how do
Speaker 1: they move them so far? It's just impossible. They couldn't
Speaker 1: have done it, right, Why did they build it like that?
Speaker 1: Why were they looking up? Yeah? Vandanakin makes that argument too.
Speaker 1: He says the pyramids they seem to be oriented with
Speaker 1: some kind of relationship to the stars, and Egyptian astronomy
Speaker 1: was not advanced enough for them to have had this
Speaker 1: kind of like knowledge of the stars when they built them.
Speaker 1: That seems to be wrong. But yeah, if you look
Speaker 1: at pyramids like the Great Pyramid of Giza built in
Speaker 1: the twenty century BC, it's true that we used to
Speaker 1: consider it a great mystery how these amazing marvels like
Speaker 1: the Pyramids were built in a time before modern metal working.
Speaker 1: I mean, these people didn't have iron tools or anything.
Speaker 1: They were probably working with like copper tools. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is really before any kind of advanced wheels of any sort.
Speaker 1: But as best I can tell, modern archaeologists and Egyptologists
Speaker 1: do not believe that it was beyond the power of
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians to create these marvels like the Pyramids.
Speaker 1: We now know a lot about the construction of the pyramids.
Speaker 1: So the pyramids were built through massive coordination of engineers
Speaker 1: and skilled workers. Granite building materials were probably floated down
Speaker 1: the Nile on rafts from quarry locations upstream. Uh. And
Speaker 1: we've discovered, through for example, ancient illustrations, that giant stone
Speaker 1: blocks were dragged into place using ropes and sledges. So
Speaker 1: workers would have ropes and they pull a sledge with
Speaker 1: a stone on it. And there was even a recent
Speaker 1: discovery about how wetting the sand underneath the sledge could
Speaker 1: reduce the friction between the sledge and the ground, helping
Speaker 1: ease the transport of the blocks. And then there's other
Speaker 1: evidence that indicates, for example, the height of the pyramids
Speaker 1: was achieved with the use of wait for it, ramps.
Speaker 1: But where they get the ramps? Joe, clearly aliens crazy? No,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, how could they have figured out that
Speaker 1: you could pile earth up to make a ramp? But yeah,
Speaker 1: So this kind of argumentation, it seems to me to
Speaker 1: be based on basically just a type of prejudice, prejudice
Speaker 1: against the abilities of the ancient people. Ancient people might
Speaker 1: have had less scientific knowledge and less technology than we do,
Speaker 1: but they weren't stupid. In fact, they were really clever,
Speaker 1: often more clever than we are, because they had to
Speaker 1: accomplish their great works with so much less. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: were not, as the saying goes, standing on the shoulders
Speaker 1: of giants. No, they had to they had to be
Speaker 1: giants themselves in order to do great things. So that's
Speaker 1: one type of argument, but then you've got a couple others.
Speaker 1: One is like looking at ancient art and saying, well,
Speaker 1: that depicts a lilians and spaceships. So you could look
Speaker 1: at ancient figurines from Japan and say that looks like
Speaker 1: an alien in a space suit. Or you can look
Speaker 1: at the Nasca Lines of Peru, where von Danikin says
Speaker 1: their quote very reminiscent of aircraft parking bays on a
Speaker 1: modern airport. I look at that, I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it looks to me like their giant works of art. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of those cases where you're taking several
Speaker 1: logical leaps to get to a more grandiose explanation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's not to say that things like the Nasca
Speaker 1: lions aren't themselves very interesting and mysterious, Like who did
Speaker 1: the people who created them think they were making them for?
Speaker 1: If they're too big for the average human to actually see, Uh,
Speaker 1: they must have had the idea of like gods in
Speaker 1: the sky or even maybe somehow people traveling in the
Speaker 1: sky to look down and see them. So you know
Speaker 1: that's not impossible. But there are these mysteries and and
Speaker 1: and they're very interesting, but I don't think you need
Speaker 1: to jump to this is a landing strip for spacecraft
Speaker 1: or this is in you know, an aircraft parking bay. Likewise,
Speaker 1: another way he looks at ancient art is the Mayan
Speaker 1: temple of the inscriptions at pelen k Robert. Had you
Speaker 1: ever seen this carving before? Um? If I had, I'd
Speaker 1: forgotten about it. It's it's very cool because you see
Speaker 1: this individual that's kind of in a recline position. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm not sure how how I would
Speaker 1: have interpreted it had I not been looking at it,
Speaker 1: uh as part of the research for this episode, like
Speaker 1: knowing what people would read into it, Because knowing what
Speaker 1: people would read into it, I look at it and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm reminded of hr Geeger's concept for the pilot
Speaker 1: that they encounter in Alien, that the giant, you know,
Speaker 1: that the Titan character that is uh fossilized in this
Speaker 1: uh this command chair within the crashed Alien spaceship the engineer. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a similar reclining pose surrounded by I
Speaker 1: don't know what what you'd call it, kind of ornate
Speaker 1: objects that look like all then maybe that could be
Speaker 1: some form of technology. So this carving from this Mayan
Speaker 1: temple is from the sarcophagus of the Mayan lord Pakal
Speaker 1: the Great, who lived in the seventh century CE. And
Speaker 1: from what I've read, the stuff in the carving are
Speaker 1: common Mayan religious symbols. They're the kinds of things you
Speaker 1: see on Mayan carvings that indicate things about the Mayan
Speaker 1: mythology and cosmology. But of course von Dannikin and the
Speaker 1: ancient Aliens people they say, well, it's got a guy
Speaker 1: reclining and he's surrounded by all these objects and lines
Speaker 1: and weird looking stuff, and so maybe what this is
Speaker 1: is it's a person who is reclining in a spaceship
Speaker 1: that's ready for takeoff, and they're surrounded by all these
Speaker 1: technological objects. It's a fun read on a piece of art.
Speaker 1: I love that idea, but but again it comes it
Speaker 1: comes down to the question is this really the best
Speaker 1: explanation for what we're looking at here? Yeah, good question. Again,
Speaker 1: I think the answer is probably no. And then finally
Speaker 1: another line of evidences, for example, ancient descriptions of things
Speaker 1: in literature and religion. So we I think we've talked
Speaker 1: on the podcast before about the first chapter of the
Speaker 1: Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible. Robert, I have
Speaker 1: we done this one before? I know it came up
Speaker 1: when Christian and I talked about John d and sort
Speaker 1: of the various occult ideas about angels, because we talked
Speaker 1: about how how rad the angels are in the Old Testament,
Speaker 1: you know, with interlocking wheels and uh a sense of
Speaker 1: like multiple eyes and strange fires. Yeah. So just to
Speaker 1: give a brief reading, the author, supposedly, the prophet Ezekiel
Speaker 1: rights that he had a vision one day the heavens
Speaker 1: were opened. Quote. Then I looked, and behold, a whirlwind
Speaker 1: was coming out of the north, a great cloud with
Speaker 1: raging fire engulfing itself, and brightness was all around it
Speaker 1: and radiating out of its midst, like the color of amber.
Speaker 1: Out of the midst of the fire. Also from within
Speaker 1: it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this
Speaker 1: was their appearance. They had the likeness of a man.
Speaker 1: Each one had four faces, and each one had four wings.
Speaker 1: Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet
Speaker 1: were like the soles of calves feet. They sparkled like
Speaker 1: the color of burnished bronze. Now, as I looked at
Speaker 1: the living creatures, behold, a wheel was on the earth
Speaker 1: beside each living creature, with its four faces. The appearance
Speaker 1: of the wheels and their workings was like the color
Speaker 1: of barrel, and all four had the same likeness. The
Speaker 1: appearance of their workings was as it were, a wheel
Speaker 1: in the middle of a wheel. When they moved, they
Speaker 1: went toward any one of the four directions. They did
Speaker 1: not turn aside when they went. As for their rims,
Speaker 1: they were so high, they were awesome, and their rims
Speaker 1: were full of eyes all around the four of them.
Speaker 1: That is awesome imagery. You can't deny the amazing power
Speaker 1: of that description. Yeah, it does it. It sounds and
Speaker 1: feels like an counter with something beyond the human experience
Speaker 1: and God. And certainly if you want to say it's
Speaker 1: an alien, that would make sense to But are you
Speaker 1: convinced that number one, the author really saw this and
Speaker 1: this isn't merely a composed narrative serving a religious purpose.
Speaker 1: Number two, if the author did actually see this, that
Speaker 1: it wasn't a hallucination, right one, either caused by quote
Speaker 1: unquote natural causes, you know, some sort of religious trance
Speaker 1: or the consumption of some sort of psychedelic substance, either
Speaker 1: one or or just a dream or dream too, or
Speaker 1: pure daydreaming, pure imagination. We've talked about that before too.
Speaker 1: We often want to limit just the pure imagination of
Speaker 1: ancient people's and say, oh, well, they actually saw something,
Speaker 1: or clearly they were eating strange mushrooms. But really you
Speaker 1: can we I think everyone around us can attest to this.
Speaker 1: You can create amazing things without bumping your head or
Speaker 1: or or eating something odd. I totally agree. I always
Speaker 1: want to emphasize that point. And then only are you convinced.
Speaker 1: Even if this was something physical the author actually saw,
Speaker 1: was it aliens? Maybe it's something else being described in
Speaker 1: a kind of vague and imaginative way. So von Danikin
Speaker 1: is convinced, He says, quote the description is astonishingly good.
Speaker 1: Ezekiel says that each wheel was in the middle of
Speaker 1: another one, an optical allusion to our present way of thinking.
Speaker 1: What he saw was one of those special vehicles that
Speaker 1: Americans use in the desert and swampy terrain. Ezekiel observed
Speaker 1: that the wheels rose from the ground simultaneously with the
Speaker 1: winged creatures. He was quite right. Naturally, the wheels of
Speaker 1: a multipurpose vehicle, say an amphibious helicopter do not stay
Speaker 1: on the ground when it takes off. What do you
Speaker 1: think of that? Read Robert. So the idea is is
Speaker 1: he beheld an alien in a in a a fan boat,
Speaker 1: a swamp boat, right and buy you billy alien by
Speaker 1: you billy. Well, that kind of that kind of kicks
Speaker 1: the wind out of this for me. If I think
Speaker 1: of it as that, I like the idea of it
Speaker 1: just being interlocking cosmic wheels with eyeballs all over the place.
Speaker 1: I like that too. Von Dannikin also argues that it
Speaker 1: must have been aliens and not God's Ezekiel is describing,
Speaker 1: because quote Ezekiel gives precise details of the landing of
Speaker 1: this vehicle. He describes a craft that comes from the north,
Speaker 1: emitting rays and gleaming and raising a gigantic cloud of
Speaker 1: desert sand. Now, the God of the Old Testament was
Speaker 1: supposed to be omnipotent. Then why does this almighty God
Speaker 1: have to come hurtling up from a particular direction. Cannot
Speaker 1: he be anywhere he wants without all this noise and fuss?
Speaker 1: Now I have to say Again, I don't really buy
Speaker 1: that argument at all, because it strikes me as a
Speaker 1: pretty shallow and uninformed reading of the Old Testament. I
Speaker 1: think the Bible is full of references to God and
Speaker 1: other divine beings having physical bodies and physical limitations and
Speaker 1: being subject to normal corporeal existence. Like remember after Adam
Speaker 1: and Eve eating the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden,
Speaker 1: the Book of Genesis says that they quote heard the
Speaker 1: sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in
Speaker 1: the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife
Speaker 1: hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among
Speaker 1: the trees of the garden. So he's walking in the
Speaker 1: garden and he can't see them if they hide. Well.
Speaker 1: This is one of the points that Julian James made
Speaker 1: about the Bible, taking into account both Testaments, is that
Speaker 1: in the beginning, things are very physical, and then they
Speaker 1: become less physical as you progress. God begins as something
Speaker 1: that is seen and nearly felt, and then he becomes
Speaker 1: something that is occasionally seen and only heard, and then
Speaker 1: the then it's a voice that one is is longing for,
Speaker 1: one is reaching and grasping for. Well, I would absolutely
Speaker 1: agree that there appears to be a chronological progression over
Speaker 1: the history of religion, of the steady abstracting of religious
Speaker 1: beings like a long long ago. If you look into
Speaker 1: the most ancient religions, there does not seem to be
Speaker 1: a problem with a vision of ancient angels approaching from
Speaker 1: the north and blowing up a lot of dust and
Speaker 1: causing a physical disturbance when they arrive. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've talked about this on the show before. I think
Speaker 1: this clear distinction that we make between aliens and gods
Speaker 1: is sort of a post Enlightenment distinction informed by scientific
Speaker 1: thinking and discovery and ideas about physics and biology. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that distinction would necessarily make a whole
Speaker 1: lot of sense to all of the people of the
Speaker 1: ancient world. And and an Old Testament angel might show
Speaker 1: up and you might need invited into your house or
Speaker 1: wrestle it out out in the yard. Uh, that that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. The gods of the Greeks are taking
Speaker 1: physical form and seeking to engage in intercourse with human
Speaker 1: beings exactly so so we think like, Okay, gods are ethereal,
Speaker 1: supernatural beings. They exist outside our spacetime universe. They're free
Speaker 1: from the bounds of the laws of physics. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: aliens are biological organisms like us. You know, they they're
Speaker 1: from some other planet. They may have powerful biological or
Speaker 1: technological abilities that we don't have, but they're bound by
Speaker 1: the laws of physics. And I just don't get a
Speaker 1: lot of this distinction when you read ancient literature, when
Speaker 1: you read these ancient religious texts, you don't get the
Speaker 1: feeling that this distinction necessarily would have been salient to them.
Speaker 1: Gods often had physical bodies, like you say, they could
Speaker 1: be injured or killed. They lived in distant but physically
Speaker 1: solid places in the mountains or in the sky, which
Speaker 1: they believed there was ground in the sky that you
Speaker 1: could walk around. They could be bound. That would be
Speaker 1: like the ultimate doom for a god of Olympus to
Speaker 1: be bound somewhere. Absolutely Prometheus. Yeah, And speaking of Prometheus,
Speaker 1: here's one of the craziest things. Many of the gods,
Speaker 1: not not always, but many of the gods in ancient
Speaker 1: religions clearly get their power not from some kind of
Speaker 1: supernatural nature, but from artifacts that they possess essentially, some
Speaker 1: kind of ancient vision of a technology. Right, They've got
Speaker 1: some thing that gives them power just like a technological
Speaker 1: alien would. Yeah, magical items. So anyway, that wraps up
Speaker 1: my basic description of of the flavor of von Danikin's
Speaker 1: type of arguments. I think we can already see a
Speaker 1: lot of the flaws within it, but I think it's
Speaker 1: worth exploring more the history of how this idea developed
Speaker 1: and what a better version of this type of hypothesis
Speaker 1: might be. The thing about Chariots of the Gods, however,
Speaker 1: is that it is an essential book to discuss because
Speaker 1: it definitely launched ancient astronaut speculation into the public consciousness. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it emerged, and it came along I think really at
Speaker 1: just the right time, because this is a period of
Speaker 1: time we've discussed on the show before a period of
Speaker 1: rapid technological change in the second half of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And remember it was published in nine So just think
Speaker 1: of all the things that are going on. You know,
Speaker 1: we are reaching out into space. We are we're we're
Speaker 1: reaching for the moon, We're sending out probes to study
Speaker 1: the cosmos and even bring word of our existence to
Speaker 1: potential other forms of life out there. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the same energy that's going to lead to the
Speaker 1: establishment of ct IN. But it was also a period
Speaker 1: of time mean which supernatural experiences took a decidedly sci
Speaker 1: fi turn, in many cases entailing UFO sightings, alien abduction
Speaker 1: experiences that we have a whole episodes about here. And
Speaker 1: von Donnikin's book took the notion of alien inspired alternative
Speaker 1: archaeology and ancient alien visitors and propelled it into the
Speaker 1: mainstream consciousness, first as a book and then his various
Speaker 1: spinoff bits of media. And we we should be clear
Speaker 1: here von Donnikin popularized the notion, but he was not
Speaker 1: the originator. Well it depends no, No, you're you're right
Speaker 1: about that. He he was not the originator. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, I was gonna make a distinction between fiction
Speaker 1: and nonfiction. Let's say, even in nonfiction, not necessarily the originator, right.
Speaker 1: So one of the sources we looked to him this
Speaker 1: was a Skeptic magazine article titled Chariot Rror of the
Speaker 1: Gods by Jason Colavito, and he points out that you
Speaker 1: had sci fi writers such as in specifically HP Lovecraft,
Speaker 1: exploring the idea of ancient aliens visiting the Earth and
Speaker 1: being basically the responsible agents for our various achievements and
Speaker 1: our very existence. Yeah, absolutely, if if you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with love Crafts alien agent aliens mythos, just to read
Speaker 1: a quote from Call of Cthulhu that also appears in
Speaker 1: Colavito's article. Quote, there had been eons when other things
Speaker 1: ruled on the earth, and they had had great cities.
Speaker 1: Remains of them were still to be found as Cyclopean
Speaker 1: stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast
Speaker 1: epics of time before men came, but there were arts
Speaker 1: which could revive them when the stars had come round
Speaker 1: again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity.
Speaker 1: They had indeed come themselves from the stars and brought
Speaker 1: their images with them. And of course the original title
Speaker 1: for that that story by Lovecraft was the Call of Cthulhu.
Speaker 1: But the Colavida even goes so far as to line
Speaker 1: up the nineteen sixties European popularity of love Crafts fiction
Speaker 1: with the publication of The Chariots of the Gods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's totally right. I mean we should mention Morning of
Speaker 1: the Magicians. Oh yes, so I've never read it, but
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with it by reputation. This was in a
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty book by Louis Paulis and Jacques Bergier. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is a book that I actually learned about
Speaker 1: on the DVD special features for the Nazi zombie film
Speaker 1: Shockwaves from seven, which is, if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: a fabulous film, uh, with Nazi zombies in Florida. And
Speaker 1: it was inspired at least in part by the Morning
Speaker 1: of the Magicians, which supposedly also gets into uh, you know,
Speaker 1: ideas and conspiracies related to Nazi interest in the occult. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean so. Colavito points out that this book Morning
Speaker 1: of the Magicians was inspired directly by Lovecraft's fiction, as
Speaker 1: the authors were actually editors of a French magazine called
Speaker 1: Planet or Planet I guess, which printed French translations of
Speaker 1: Lovecraft throughout the sixties. In Traces of the Gods, Ancient
Speaker 1: Astronauts as a vision of our future, Johan as Richter
Speaker 1: points out several additional precursors here, uh so possible first
Speaker 1: ancient astronauts speculation concept in sci fi comes from Edison's
Speaker 1: Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Service, published in eight
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this, No, I had not either,
Speaker 1: and that it basically discusses the idea that the Pyramids
Speaker 1: were built by Martians. There's also an eighteen seven novel
Speaker 1: by Kurd loss Fitz that explored this sort of contact
Speaker 1: between interplanetary cultures, and of course he points out Lovecraft.
Speaker 1: But then there's also Perry Roden, a German science fiction
Speaker 1: series running since nineteen sixty one, and it apparently gets
Speaker 1: into some of these ideas as well. So it seems like,
Speaker 1: especially if you go into the fiction realm, the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties were full of ancient astronauts stuff. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: von Donkin had the book that really just took it
Speaker 1: and propelled it into the mainstream. Now, of course this
Speaker 1: ended up making its way into other fictional properties that
Speaker 1: were even more and stream like movies. Oh yes, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just to name a few here, I probably
Speaker 1: the greatest example is two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey.
Speaker 1: You know, I never think of that as an ancient
Speaker 1: alien story, but that it is what it is, right,
Speaker 1: the idea. Yeah, so there's a there's a monolith that
Speaker 1: appears on Earth at some point during our evolution and
Speaker 1: sparks this revolution and tool use among our ancient ancestors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's It's one of the reasons we don't think
Speaker 1: about it much is because it is such a a
Speaker 1: thoughtful and intelligent treatment of the concept. And we'll actually
Speaker 1: get into to it when we start discussing Sagan's Carl
Speaker 1: Sagan's thoughts on ancient alien speculation, because some of the
Speaker 1: things that he say might might take place given a
Speaker 1: situation like this line up directly with the plot of
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. But then you have you have
Speaker 1: other films as well. For instance, God told me to
Speaker 1: the Larry Cohen film about Christ Like hermaphroditic aliens, that
Speaker 1: that definitely has an ancient alien vibe to it. Of course,
Speaker 1: the Ridley Scott film Prometheus is it's rich with with
Speaker 1: ancient alien speculation as well. I didn't see this film,
Speaker 1: but Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull gets into this
Speaker 1: as well, Right, it's this an ancient aliens uh speculation film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is easily the weakest of the Indiana Jones movies,
Speaker 1: I think explicitly because Indiana Jones it didn't need to
Speaker 1: go into the sci fi realm. I think it works
Speaker 1: best when it's integrated deeply with earth based mythology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, like the Ark of the Covenant is terrifying
Speaker 1: and awesome in in Raiders because you don't know what
Speaker 1: it is. It is this mysterious supernatural thing and maybe
Speaker 1: it is alien in nature, but it is it is
Speaker 1: either it's so strange that it is alien. Either way. Also,
Speaker 1: the c G I go for it didn't help um. Now,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites that I almost didn't think to
Speaker 1: include is The Life of Brian, the Monty Python religious epic. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a brief alien interlude. I recall, there's
Speaker 1: like a chase sequence with the character of Brian and
Speaker 1: he is accidentally abducted by aliens and goes on a
Speaker 1: brief adventure and it's it's so perfect because it's so accidental.
Speaker 1: The aliens don't seem to be trying to do anything.
Speaker 1: They just sort of happened to run into the story
Speaker 1: for a little bit and then they're out of it
Speaker 1: and no knowledge is getting like, there's no there's no
Speaker 1: wisdom imparted upon Brian by this experience. It just scares
Speaker 1: the crap out of him. I don't know this for sure,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to speculate that the reason that is
Speaker 1: in the film is simply because somebody wanted to create
Speaker 1: some alien spaceships and alien sets and and alien costumes,
Speaker 1: and they wanted a way to fit it in. So
Speaker 1: they just said, oh, let's have them get abducted for
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes. Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad they
Speaker 1: got to make it, because it does seem like the
Speaker 1: kind of situation where producers might say, is this necessary
Speaker 1: to the script, because we could cut this whole alien thing,
Speaker 1: and then we don't have to build a spaceship or
Speaker 1: an extraterrestrial and we could cut down and maybe you know,
Speaker 1: at least a day's worth of filming, and then Terry
Speaker 1: Gilliams like, I already built it. Uh. They're also less
Speaker 1: memorable films that we might mention Stargate. I say less memorable,
Speaker 1: but I definitely remember an Egyptian god having his his
Speaker 1: head teleported off and that in that film that was
Speaker 1: at least one awesome quality kill. Yeah. The best thing
Speaker 1: about it I recall is like, is like attack by
Speaker 1: Edge of Teleportation Zone. Of course, the fifth element has
Speaker 1: ancient Aliens plot element as well. Yeah it does. And
Speaker 1: uh and for any of our pyramids, Oh yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: And speaking of pyramids, Uh, here's one something for our
Speaker 1: our Doctor Who listeners out there. If you're a fan
Speaker 1: of the the The Old Doctor Who episodes, there was
Speaker 1: an episode called the Pyramids of Mars that has some
Speaker 1: ancient alien speculation um uh intrigue in it. And there's
Speaker 1: this this wonderful moment where this uh like Egyptian deity
Speaker 1: servant steps out of the like a portal and says,
Speaker 1: I bring SUITEX gift of death to all humanity. And
Speaker 1: of course there are plenty of other examples in the
Speaker 1: film and literature that we could bring up, and we
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you the listeners, what your
Speaker 1: favorite bits of fictional ancient astronaut intrigue you happen to be.
Speaker 1: But clearly it's been a very inspiring idea to many people,
Speaker 1: Like it's something that caught on fast and we haven't
Speaker 1: let go of since. Now. Mentioned of Prometheus is key here,
Speaker 1: and we've already touched on both the movie and the
Speaker 1: actual character the titan Prometheus who brought fire to the
Speaker 1: ancient Greeks in in the myth And it's interesting because
Speaker 1: we we see this motif time and time again a
Speaker 1: myth in which a god red demigod gives a technology
Speaker 1: to ancient people. UH. These are frequently referred to as
Speaker 1: culture bearers. So we have Prometheus the firebringer. UH. In
Speaker 1: Chinese mythology, we have Sujin the fire driller, who, who
Speaker 1: fulfills the same role, brings the technology of fire to mortals.
Speaker 1: Uh and UH. I have to admit that, even though
Speaker 1: I don't personally put a lot of of stock or
Speaker 1: faith in in a a s, I still read these
Speaker 1: accounts or look at visual interpretations, and part of me
Speaker 1: always thinks, oh, yeah, it was totally an ancient alien.
Speaker 1: That it just makes sense. What else would Promethe this be?
Speaker 1: But of course this is always flawed logic because I
Speaker 1: feel like one of the big things to drive home
Speaker 1: here is that God's in our myths are not merely
Speaker 1: mislabeled aliens. Rather, I think it's the reverse. Aliens are
Speaker 1: essentially rebranded gods. I agree with you a hundred percent
Speaker 1: on that. I think you're exactly right. Our visions of
Speaker 1: aliens come from our mythological visions of gods, and they
Speaker 1: continually are influenced by them. I mean, think of the
Speaker 1: way the movie Prometheus is echoing all of these echoing
Speaker 1: all of these themes from Greek myth Yeah, exactly. I
Speaker 1: guess we need to take a break, don't we. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Thank all right, we're back now, Robert, you mentioned I
Speaker 1: think that you'd actually seen some of these Ancient Alien
Speaker 1: shows that they show on what the History Channel or
Speaker 1: one of those one of those subsidiary networks. I have
Speaker 1: never watched any of the Ancient Alien shows, but I
Speaker 1: did see Leonard Nemys in search Off or at least
Speaker 1: reruns of it on A and E back in the
Speaker 1: late nineties. Was that the sort of the proto Ancient Aliens?
Speaker 1: In a way? I remember them exploring topics like this
Speaker 1: and uh and and also stuff like big Foot? Was
Speaker 1: Bigfoot an alien as well? Probably? Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: I'm gonna drop a fact on you. We'll see how
Speaker 1: you deal with this. Did you know that Ancient Aliens
Speaker 1: is still on still making new episodes. It's currently on
Speaker 1: season thirteen. How you like them? Apple, It's it's I mean,
Speaker 1: having looked at some of the examples that are frequently
Speaker 1: brought up, there are a lot of There are a
Speaker 1: number of examples that are used, that are brought up
Speaker 1: to support uh, ancient alien speculation. But it seems like
Speaker 1: you'd run out of the really good ones by at
Speaker 1: least season eight. Yeah. God, I mean not to say
Speaker 1: that Ancient Aliens is not a fun idea. It's fun
Speaker 1: to speculate about, fun to play with. But given that,
Speaker 1: I think you and I agree that there's really no
Speaker 1: good evidence anywhere, how do they get that far? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think it's it's safe to say that they don't
Speaker 1: get that get to this point by, you know, through
Speaker 1: through anything resembling accurate balance, consideration of scientific fact or
Speaker 1: archaeological fact. They're basically writing documentary fiction, right Yeah. Brian
Speaker 1: Switek described the show in Smithsonian Magazine as what you quote,
Speaker 1: what you would get if you drop some creationist propaganda, Uh,
Speaker 1: Eric van Donnikin's Chariots of the Gods and stock footage
Speaker 1: from Jurassic Fight Club into a blender. What results is
Speaker 1: a slimy and incomprehensible mixture of idle speculation and outright fabrications.
Speaker 1: Now he's discussing an episode of the Ancient Aliens show.
Speaker 1: I think where they they're they're talking about dinosaurs. Okay,
Speaker 1: read I read this article and he says that there's
Speaker 1: basically they've got all their quote experts on talking about
Speaker 1: how aliens might have wiped out the dinosaurs in order
Speaker 1: to make room for humankind to ascend, and so they've
Speaker 1: got animations of dinosaurs running away from spaceships that are
Speaker 1: blasting them and stuff. It does feel a lot like
Speaker 1: creationist propaganda at that point where you just especially when
Speaker 1: you start using the dinosaurs, you know, because I feel
Speaker 1: like then you're really you're trying to get to the children.
Speaker 1: That's true. It's despicable and unfair. It's like using cartoon
Speaker 1: characters on cigarettes. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's why. Just the
Speaker 1: other day I found a creationist book in a lending
Speaker 1: library at at a state park, and I've moved it
Speaker 1: directly from the lending library to a trash can. And
Speaker 1: it was such a satisfying them. You know, some of
Speaker 1: those creations books, they have some good illustrations in them
Speaker 1: that I really enjoy. The illustrations are great. I just, uh,
Speaker 1: I feel like there should be a warning label on
Speaker 1: the front, uh, you know, letting you know that this
Speaker 1: is uh, this is not science. Now there was one.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember. I think it might have been
Speaker 1: a creationist book by Dwayne Gish, but I'm not positive. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's it depicts a dinosaur. I think it's a parasar
Speaker 1: alafus paras. How do you say that one? Parasar Lopuskay?
Speaker 1: So that's the way one. That's the way my son
Speaker 1: says it, and he's usually better at dinosaur named pronunciation
Speaker 1: than than me. In the illustration, it's breathing fire on
Speaker 1: a t rex. It's just like, yeah, that one it
Speaker 1: breathes fire. Well, that explains the yeah, the complex nasal composition.
Speaker 1: So anyway, back to Chariots of the Gods. We've recently
Speaker 1: discussed some beautifully presented hypotheses by writers such as Julian
Speaker 1: Jaynes and Letterard and Leonard Schlaine. Uh. You know that
Speaker 1: that make a case for something that that you might
Speaker 1: not accept completely. You know, it's maybe taking a radical
Speaker 1: approach to our interpretation of the past and to just
Speaker 1: how humans interact with with ideas. Chariots of the Gods
Speaker 1: is not on the same level with these books. In fact,
Speaker 1: I would say that the author of ann most reminds
Speaker 1: me of is probably l Ron Hubbard, And I say
Speaker 1: that as somebody who who picked up l Ron Hubbard
Speaker 1: with an open mind, saying, you know, all right, this
Speaker 1: this is this is a book that means a lot
Speaker 1: to a fair number of people. I want to see
Speaker 1: what there is to get excited about in the introduction alone. Uh,
Speaker 1: von Donnikin immediately goes into attack mode on anyone who
Speaker 1: might disagree with his notion that archaeological and religious evidence
Speaker 1: definitely supports the idea that ancient aliens visited the earth
Speaker 1: and kickstarted humans from that hate level. Uh and I
Speaker 1: feel like I actually have to read just a little
Speaker 1: bit of it here, he said, he writes quote, it
Speaker 1: took courage to write this book, and it will take
Speaker 1: courage to read it. Because its theories and proofs do
Speaker 1: not fit into the mosaic of traditional archaeology constructed so
Speaker 1: laboriously and firmly cemented down. Scholars will call it nonsense
Speaker 1: and and put it on the index of those books
Speaker 1: which are better left unmentioned. Layman will withdraw into the
Speaker 1: snail shell of their familiar world when faced with a
Speaker 1: probable ability that finding out about our past will be
Speaker 1: even more mysterious and adventurous than finding out about the future.
Speaker 1: So and that continues for for paragraphs afterwards as well,
Speaker 1: where he's it's he's not saying exclamation points in it. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not making He's not saying I have an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but I'd like you
Speaker 1: to think about it. He's saying, Look, let's just get
Speaker 1: this out of the way. If you're not down with
Speaker 1: this idea, you're a coward. Well, I mean we should
Speaker 1: try to be critical of ourselves and skeptical of the
Speaker 1: skeptical mindset, right, But I mean we we discuss and
Speaker 1: entertain radical hypotheses and strange ideas. We try to bring
Speaker 1: a skeptical mind to them, say, Okay, are they actually
Speaker 1: presenting any good evidence or not? Right? And we will
Speaker 1: and we'll give it that give it that a fair
Speaker 1: fair shake here. I mean, we are giving it a
Speaker 1: fair shake here. But but I also have to say, like,
Speaker 1: there's there's something in the way that the idea is
Speaker 1: presented in the book that I think does not give
Speaker 1: ancient alien speculation. Uh uh, doesn't do it any favors,
Speaker 1: because it immediately feels a bit um aggressive. Yes, Now,
Speaker 1: I I looked back to see like a little bit
Speaker 1: more about what the the immediate reaction was to was
Speaker 1: to the book and how it was received in the
Speaker 1: years to follow. And I found a really interesting New
Speaker 1: York Times review by a critic, Richard Lingaman. Uh. This
Speaker 1: was from four and he really put the screws to
Speaker 1: the book while also highlighting of von Donakan's background as
Speaker 1: a convicted embezzler, fraud and forger. So here a few, uh,
Speaker 1: a few highlights from the review. Quote. His method is
Speaker 1: to use a negative ancient people's couldn't have done or
Speaker 1: thought all the things they did, to prove a positive
Speaker 1: that the ancient people were the beneficiaries of some kind
Speaker 1: of cosmological point for program quote, von Donakin's evidence is
Speaker 1: that of an enthusiastic amateur, not scholar, an amateur with
Speaker 1: an axe to grind. There is a tendentiousness in his
Speaker 1: book that lies in an urgent, recurring motif. A running
Speaker 1: complaint against the quote high priests of organized religion, who,
Speaker 1: along with the archaeologist, refused to admit the truth as
Speaker 1: von Donakan has revealed it. Actually, most modern religion is
Speaker 1: not anti scientific, though it might be might well be
Speaker 1: anti von Donakin. The two aren't as synonymous. As for archaeologists,
Speaker 1: I suspect that their professional tendency is to chip away
Speaker 1: at the pot shards of truth rather than make cosmic
Speaker 1: leaps of faith into outer space. And then he goes
Speaker 1: on to say, ironically, for a man who is almost
Speaker 1: gaga about space science, much of what von Donakin purveys
Speaker 1: depends upon ancient religious myths, specifically the recurring references to
Speaker 1: skyborn gods. We come full circle. The man who seeks
Speaker 1: to overturn the religious explanation of man's origins goes not
Speaker 1: to scientific evidence, but to the Bible and Ezekiel's fiery wheels. Now,
Speaker 1: to push back against that somewhat, I would say, though
Speaker 1: it would be very hard to be conclusive about the
Speaker 1: idea that are have been visited by aliens if all
Speaker 1: you had to go on was literature, I would say
Speaker 1: that in many cases, if it actually did happen, the
Speaker 1: only evidence we might have would be literature. Exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And as as we'll discuss later on, and Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: said as much as well, this is where we would
Speaker 1: find the evidence. Carl Sagan is a bit more cautious
Speaker 1: and determining what, let's say, a lot more cautious, a
Speaker 1: lot more cautious and in determined like what could possibly
Speaker 1: be identified as evidence. But still he admits that like
Speaker 1: this is what we have. We have this this, this
Speaker 1: is that when you look back on an ancient people's
Speaker 1: and the records they left, you're gonna get religion, You're
Speaker 1: gonna get myth. But this is also uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you see what he's doing here is he's operating off
Speaker 1: of unanswered questions and then immediately navigating to a speculative answer.
Speaker 1: I mean you see this in all kinds of people
Speaker 1: who are trying to prove radical and speculative hypotheses, where
Speaker 1: they take a thing that, you know, take an unknown
Speaker 1: like we don't know how they built the pyramids, and
Speaker 1: back in the sixties and seventies that was largely true.
Speaker 1: I mean, we might have had some good hypotheses, but
Speaker 1: it was like, oh wow, you know, there was this
Speaker 1: feat accomplished in the ancient world. How could they have
Speaker 1: done it? And so because that ends in a question
Speaker 1: mark and it's a mystery, now you have license to say, well,
Speaker 1: if we don't know, then it must have been X.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what you can't do. So then Donican
Speaker 1: he makes some pretty broad assertions about the archaeological evidence
Speaker 1: he presents. You know, it's not so much of the
Speaker 1: Baghdad battery might have been a battery, now it was
Speaker 1: a battery. It's not that the Japanese do goose sculptures
Speaker 1: um kind of look like they their space suits, but
Speaker 1: they you know, they're definitely representations of space suits. They
Speaker 1: are spacemen. Now they do look really cool. And and
Speaker 1: the thing is in any of these various bits of
Speaker 1: evidence that are brought up, the ones that you know
Speaker 1: aren't fraudulent in nature, they are fascinating. Even the ones
Speaker 1: that are fraudulent in nature, we could potentially do a
Speaker 1: whole episode on, but it's it's to to hold them
Speaker 1: up then as proof of of ancient aliens. Is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, is this is a step beyond all right,
Speaker 1: So I think we've had we've we've had enough time
Speaker 1: with with Chariots of the Gods. Let's take a break
Speaker 1: and when we come back we will see what Karl
Speaker 1: Sagan had to say about all of this. Thank thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. Now we've been discussing Eric van denikin Chariots
Speaker 1: of the Gods, the ancient aliens speculation, uh, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the problems with it. But one thing that
Speaker 1: this got me wondering about is, I'm reading von dannikin
Speaker 1: I'm thinking that this argumentation is not very good. A
Speaker 1: lot of the evidence seems very shaky. What would a good,
Speaker 1: well presented case for ancient aliens speculation look like? What
Speaker 1: would it look like if a responsible, thoughtful, skeptical scientist
Speaker 1: approached the question and tried to put together the best
Speaker 1: possible case for it. Yeah, because a lot of times
Speaker 1: it seems like you have two types of people looking
Speaker 1: at it. You have like quasi religious advocates of ancient
Speaker 1: aliens and and you have skeptics that are in here
Speaker 1: just to tear it down. You know that there they
Speaker 1: don't seem like they would even entertain any of the
Speaker 1: ideas like who would be the person to maybe not
Speaker 1: take the middle ground, but at least approach it with
Speaker 1: with skeptical open mindedness. Yeah, not middle ground, but just
Speaker 1: giving it a fair skeptical shake. Yeah. And and luckily
Speaker 1: this is where Karl Sagan enters the picture, because in
Speaker 1: the book Intelligent Life in the Universe, Uh, Sagan teamed
Speaker 1: up with the Soviet astrophysicist Josef Schowski and Uh. Indeed,
Speaker 1: in the book they do consider they consider a number
Speaker 1: of possibilities of concerning uh aliens and the possible existence
Speaker 1: of aliens, but they do specifically look at the idea
Speaker 1: of ancient aliens as well. They get into it pretty
Speaker 1: late in the book, but here's some of the basic
Speaker 1: ideas they present. So they said that if interstellar travel
Speaker 1: is technically possible, then it is quote likely to be
Speaker 1: developed by a civilization substantially in advance of our own.
Speaker 1: That kind of makes sense. Are not ready for interstellar
Speaker 1: travel yet? And uh, and they argue that if you
Speaker 1: have a technologically advanced group like this, the enterprise of
Speaker 1: space travel is simply gonna be too rewarding for them
Speaker 1: to give up. They're just they're going to to expand
Speaker 1: beyond their own planet. I think maybe you could argue
Speaker 1: with that, But then again, I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: it's fair to assume that there's an exploratory nature in
Speaker 1: most organisms. Yeah, I mean, certainly when we come back,
Speaker 1: we always come back, of course, around to the idea
Speaker 1: that we have to look to our only example of
Speaker 1: life and intelligent life, and that's an intelligent life and
Speaker 1: that's us, and therefore we tend to think, well, they
Speaker 1: would do what we do, which is enlightening and at
Speaker 1: times horrifying. Well, okay, so if you try to reason back,
Speaker 1: whereas you say, if an organism has intelligence, it can
Speaker 1: probably move right, and moving organisms tend to be either
Speaker 1: like hunting or foraging types of organisms. They're not just
Speaker 1: going to be sitting there and photosynthesizing. So if they
Speaker 1: have to seek out types of food, then they probably
Speaker 1: have some kind of exploration instinct. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's very rough, but trying to get there. No, No,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. So they say that if interstellar
Speaker 1: space flight is a feasible and then technological civilizations of
Speaker 1: the galaxy will be uh An intercommunicating whole, but that
Speaker 1: the communication will be sluggish. So at this point, the
Speaker 1: Sagan uh and Schlovski they do some math and they
Speaker 1: determine that quote if contacts are made on a purely
Speaker 1: random basis, each star should be visited about once every
Speaker 1: ten to the fifth power years, or I believe that's
Speaker 1: what a hundred thousand years. Furthermore, quote, each communitive technological
Speaker 1: civilization should be visited by another such civilization about once
Speaker 1: every thousand years. So you see where this is going, right,
Speaker 1: given their assumptions. Yes, so they say that it's possible
Speaker 1: then that a starship might have come by the planet
Speaker 1: during the earliest stages of intelligent life on Earth, and
Speaker 1: that it's therefore possible that, yes, and an extracestrial civilization
Speaker 1: could have visited the planet within historical times. Okay with you,
Speaker 1: so far, all right? However, this is an important they
Speaker 1: lay out here. Quote, there are no reliable reports of
Speaker 1: direct contact with an extraterrestrial civilization during the last few centuries,
Speaker 1: when critical scholarship and non superstitious reasoning have been fairly widespread.
Speaker 1: Any earlier contact story must be encumbered with some degree
Speaker 1: of fanciful embellishment due simply to the views prevailing at
Speaker 1: the time of the contact. The extent to which subsequent
Speaker 1: variation and embellishment alters the fat basic fabric of the
Speaker 1: account varies with time and circumstance. And so they point
Speaker 1: to an example made by historian Mercelles Lead in the
Speaker 1: myth of the Eternal Return or Cosmos in history. And
Speaker 1: this is this is an excellent book that I've referenced
Speaker 1: on the show several times before. This is where you
Speaker 1: get into the idea of the terror of history UH
Speaker 1: and the cyclical versus linear time. But Eladi pointed out
Speaker 1: just how supernaturally elaborate, elaborate it a simple Romanian romantic
Speaker 1: tragedy became, so it became it transformed into a story
Speaker 1: of ancient magical myth within the subject's own lifetime, so
Speaker 1: that it's like a game of telephone to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: Here it's the myth making just compounds everything, so the
Speaker 1: the individual it's about is still alive, but the stories
Speaker 1: about it have placed it in a magical mythic past. Well.
Speaker 1: The myth making impulses not just to make up a story,
Speaker 1: and for the listener, not just to repeat a story,
Speaker 1: but to repeat a story with your own changes and abolishments.
Speaker 1: Exactly so for our purposes here though, the idea if
Speaker 1: there's if there's science occurring among the magical, then how
Speaker 1: are we to tell them apart in the stories that
Speaker 1: survived from the ancient past? Good question. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: Sagan and Slowski point out that there's also, for instance,
Speaker 1: the the account of six first contact between the telling
Speaker 1: that people of North America and sailing vessels. Their quote
Speaker 1: oral rendition contains sufficient information for later reconstruction of the
Speaker 1: nature of the encounter. But also these stories contain myth
Speaker 1: mythic descriptions of the ships. Is uh, the of the
Speaker 1: the French ships as great black birds with white wings.
Speaker 1: So they say, if you look at the myth, you
Speaker 1: see clear embellishments. But you can also put together historical
Speaker 1: details from them that we can verify as correct. Right.
Speaker 1: So Sagan argues that this means that quote, under certain circumstances,
Speaker 1: a brief contact with an alien civilization will be recorded
Speaker 1: in a reconstructible manner. Uh. However, he drives home that
Speaker 1: it needs to be first of all, committed to written
Speaker 1: records soon after the event. It has to be there.
Speaker 1: It has to result in major changes for the contacted people,
Speaker 1: so not our life of Brian example, where nothing is
Speaker 1: really affected. Uh. And then also the contactors can't be
Speaker 1: a timpting attempting to disguise themselves, so the aliens can't
Speaker 1: be pretending to be humans. So that's going to throw
Speaker 1: everything off right right now, I know they wouldn't say
Speaker 1: that unless we can verify all that stuff, we can
Speaker 1: be sure that alien contact never happened in the past.
Speaker 1: They would just say that, you know, we're not justified
Speaker 1: in moving to that conclusion until we meet the following criteria, right.
Speaker 1: And they also say that you just can't look for
Speaker 1: sky gods. It's just too obvious. The sky is just
Speaker 1: too obvious a place to position your gods, Like the
Speaker 1: only other place to have your gods live is in
Speaker 1: the deep ocean, or just in the ocean if you
Speaker 1: are a seafaring people. Mountaintops or mountaintops. Yeah, but just
Speaker 1: these are just obvious places for gods to be. You
Speaker 1: can't say, oh, here's the story about a sky god,
Speaker 1: therefore ancient aliens. So instead they say that what you
Speaker 1: need is a visit from the sky, a return to
Speaker 1: the sky, and a gift of knowledge or technology. Now,
Speaker 1: I would charge that that might even be too broad
Speaker 1: based on some of the culture bear motifs that I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, I would agree with that. So this is
Speaker 1: a nineteen six book, so it came out before Chariots
Speaker 1: of the Gods Uh set the world on fire. So
Speaker 1: he's not responding in this book to specific evidence presented
Speaker 1: by von Donnikan, but he does talk briefly about some
Speaker 1: evidence that would have brought up, particularly by Soviet ethnologist M. M. August,
Speaker 1: and he just drives home that yeah, these you have
Speaker 1: these cases for past cultures encountering interstellar society, but that
Speaker 1: there are just ultimately no known alien artifacts that that
Speaker 1: are just definitely connected with this with such a visit.
Speaker 1: There's just no hard evidence. But the authors do offer
Speaker 1: one possible example from ancient sumer that they think might
Speaker 1: be a good starting point if you're going to consider, uh,
Speaker 1: examples of potential ancient alien contact. Yeah, so that they say,
Speaker 1: we don't have any hard evidence, but we need at
Speaker 1: least a framework for how to examine ancient literature and
Speaker 1: stories and stuff to see if they meet the great
Speaker 1: if they're actually worth considering. And they give this example
Speaker 1: of one that is maybe worth considering as an example
Speaker 1: of alien contact, not not necessarily as an evidence, but
Speaker 1: just worth looking at. So the story relates to the
Speaker 1: origin of the Sumerian civilization. Summer is one of the
Speaker 1: most ancient civilizations known on planet Earth, dating back to
Speaker 1: roughly the fifth millennium b CE. UH. These these versions
Speaker 1: of this one story can all be traced back to
Speaker 1: one Birosis, a priest of Bell Marduke in Babylon during
Speaker 1: the time of Alexander the Great, and supposedly Borrosis had
Speaker 1: access to ancient cune of form and pictographic records from
Speaker 1: thousands of years before his time. And there are multiple
Speaker 1: translations and retellings of Barrosis. And the authors of this
Speaker 1: book quote three passages about Borrosis and his writings at length.
Speaker 1: So I'll try to summarize. First. According to Alexander polyhistor
Speaker 1: and Borrosis is giving a summary of the history and
Speaker 1: geography of Babylon, with its native plants and crops, and
Speaker 1: its neighboring people's and so forth. And he comes to
Speaker 1: speak of beings variously known as ab Khalu and as
Speaker 1: Barrosa's himself calls the first one of these creatures Owanas
Speaker 1: or a Wannies or Adappa, and Barrosas tells that at
Speaker 1: the time in ancient Babylon, there were men of many
Speaker 1: nations who were yet uncivilized and quote lived without rule
Speaker 1: and order, like the beasts of the field. But then
Speaker 1: something happened quote in the first year there made its
Speaker 1: appearance from a part of the Persian Gulf which bordered
Speaker 1: upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason who was called
Speaker 1: as the whole body of the animal was like that
Speaker 1: of a fish, and had under a fish's head another head,
Speaker 1: and also feet below similar to those of a man
Speaker 1: subjoined to the fish's tail. His voice, too, and language
Speaker 1: was articulate and human, and a representation of him is
Speaker 1: preserved even to this day. Robert, I got a picture here,
Speaker 1: at least one picture of oh well, so that the
Speaker 1: picture of a honest uh, just kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a fishman, which I'm definitely into. But that description with
Speaker 1: the double faces that that is, that is creepy. It
Speaker 1: really reminds me of some stuff that our Scott Baker
Speaker 1: plays with in his um his second Apocalypse saga, which
Speaker 1: does involve a sort of ancient alien motif within a
Speaker 1: fantasy world. Interesting. I got more quote. This, being in
Speaker 1: the daytime, used to converse with men, but took no
Speaker 1: food at that season, and he gave them an insight
Speaker 1: into letters and sciences and every kind of art. He
Speaker 1: taught them to construct houses, to found temples, to compile laws,
Speaker 1: and explain to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He
Speaker 1: made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and showed
Speaker 1: them how to collect fruits. In short, he instructed them
Speaker 1: in everything which could tend to soften manners, and human
Speaker 1: I is mankind. From that time, so universal were his instructions,
Speaker 1: nothing material has been added by way of improvement. When
Speaker 1: the sun set, it was the custom of this being
Speaker 1: to plunge again into the sea and abide all night
Speaker 1: in the deep, for he was amphibious. Oh and then
Speaker 1: also quote after this there appeared other animals like Oenus,
Speaker 1: of which Barrosas promises to give an account when he
Speaker 1: comes to the history of the kings. And then, according
Speaker 1: to an ancient writer known as Avid nous Uh, he's
Speaker 1: giving an account of the borosis is giving an account
Speaker 1: of the king's of ancient Mesopotamia, and he mentions in
Speaker 1: passing o Honus and other quote double shaped personages who
Speaker 1: came out of the water at various points in history. Also,
Speaker 1: Apollodorus gives an account of this history, mentioning that fishmen
Speaker 1: appear out of the Persian Gulf at various points throughout history.
Speaker 1: And Alexander Polyhisto, or the source of the first version
Speaker 1: of the story uh tells a version of the common
Speaker 1: flood myth with a king of ancient sumeer being warned
Speaker 1: by the gods of a coming flood catastrophe, and he's
Speaker 1: told how to preserve his himself in civilization to survive it. So,
Speaker 1: according to these ancient accounts, Sumerian civilization was not the
Speaker 1: invention of humans, but a gift bestowed and guided by
Speaker 1: several waves of semi humanoid fish like visitors. Kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Now this may have once been more impressive
Speaker 1: evidence at a time when many archaeologists believe Sumerian civilization
Speaker 1: sort of sprang up out of nowhere at the time
Speaker 1: the myths described. The authors of the book now note
Speaker 1: that it seems there was probably a more gradual technological
Speaker 1: and cultural evolution to the first Sumerian cities. It is
Speaker 1: interesting to think that this same the same kind of
Speaker 1: questions we might ask today, like how did bread? How
Speaker 1: did they ever figure that out? Or you know, or
Speaker 1: making fire that what was it like when when somebody
Speaker 1: discovered this, Like even in ancient times, I'm imagining you
Speaker 1: could still have someone that might think, wow, I just
Speaker 1: don't see how anyone figured this out. It must have
Speaker 1: been fished people, right, It's not like they knew who
Speaker 1: first drank milk out of the cow right, they needed
Speaker 1: a myth for that too, um So. The authors also
Speaker 1: point out interesting features of Sumerian pictographic art on cylinder seals,
Speaker 1: which show mysterious symbols that appear like they could be
Speaker 1: representations of solar systems. So there will be a symbol
Speaker 1: where there's like a central sphere with rays appearing to
Speaker 1: come out of it, and it's being circled by smaller spheres.
Speaker 1: The idea of planet circling a son, of course, wouldn't
Speaker 1: catch on until centuries later. And more interestingly, there are
Speaker 1: images of this type with different numbers of planets that
Speaker 1: seem to be associated with different gods, almost suggesting that
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, this god came from this solar system
Speaker 1: and this other god came from this other solar system. However,
Speaker 1: as fun as it can be to draw connections like this,
Speaker 1: the author's stress that we should not get carried away
Speaker 1: quote these cylinder seals maybe nothing more than the experiments
Speaker 1: of the ancient uncons anscious mind to understand and portray
Speaker 1: a sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes hostile environment. The stories of the
Speaker 1: op Kalu may have been made out of whole cloth,
Speaker 1: perhaps as late as Babylonian times, perhaps by Barrosas himself.
Speaker 1: Sumerian society may have developed gradually over many thousands of years.
Speaker 1: In any event, a completely convincing demonstration of past contact
Speaker 1: with an extraterrestrial civilization will always be difficult to provide
Speaker 1: on textual grounds alone. But stories like the Oanes legend
Speaker 1: and representations especially of the earliest civilizations on the Earth,
Speaker 1: deserve much more critical studies than have been performed here
Speaker 1: to four, with the possibility of direct contact with an
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial civilization as one of the many possible alternative interpretations.
Speaker 1: So they're saying, it's a high bar, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're going to try to go from ancient textual evidence
Speaker 1: and just like storytelling to okay, aliens came here, it's
Speaker 1: going to be a really high bar to jump over, right,
Speaker 1: But we should at least be open to the idea
Speaker 1: that such contact could have possibly happened, and have a
Speaker 1: good idea of what evidence for it would look like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they summarized that given the numbers they discussed, it's
Speaker 1: possible that Earth has been visited maybe many times, maybe
Speaker 1: by numerous galactic civilizations even during geologic time, and that
Speaker 1: they might have a base of operations within our solar system.
Speaker 1: So in the point out that the moon makes the
Speaker 1: most sense here, just as author C. Clark explored in
Speaker 1: his science fiction specifically two thousand and one, we should
Speaker 1: stress again appears to be no evidence of that. No, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no evidence. But but basically they're saying, like, all right,
Speaker 1: somebody comes through here, they see, oh, there's something interesting
Speaker 1: going on in this Earth. But we're important aliens. We
Speaker 1: have things to do. We can't hang out around here
Speaker 1: and watch. We can't wait for it to get interesting.
Speaker 1: Let's leave something behind, so we leave Larry. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: leave Larry. Uh, Larry, But we don't want to leave
Speaker 1: Larry in plain sight because they're really looking at the
Speaker 1: stars a lot, and they're right things down. I guess
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to put it on the other side
Speaker 1: of the moon just to keep it under wraps. Uh.
Speaker 1: But now we've surveyed the other side of the moon
Speaker 1: and no Larry so far. Yeah, so you know they
Speaker 1: need to they say that, Yeah, they would. They might
Speaker 1: want to create an automated system to keep track of
Speaker 1: technological developments on Earth because that thousand year interval it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be enough to avoid self annihilation incidents. You know,
Speaker 1: they don't want to miss anything. You don't want to
Speaker 1: come back a thousand years later and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: those what happened to those ape creatures? Oh they discovered
Speaker 1: nuclear whatps man, They're gone already and we missed it now.
Speaker 1: They also point out that the other thing to keep
Speaker 1: in mind is that if if if extraterrestrials wanted to
Speaker 1: contact us, they wouldn't necessarily need to show up and
Speaker 1: do it. They could simply transmit a message, And certainly
Speaker 1: the work of the set has revolved around that, like,
Speaker 1: let's listen, let's see if their signals coming. That seems
Speaker 1: to be a far more plausible way for first contact
Speaker 1: to occur. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean people when they imagine
Speaker 1: first contact happening, they think we're going to be looking
Speaker 1: at the aliens face to face. I'd say they're at
Speaker 1: least two things more likely than that. Number one is that,
Speaker 1: of course we would get their electromagnetic signals first. But
Speaker 1: also still more likely than encountering them face to face
Speaker 1: is simply encountering their technology in person. They're they're unscrewed probes. Now,
Speaker 1: the good news that the authors present here is an
Speaker 1: advance civilization like this wouldn't have to enslave us or
Speaker 1: eat us good because they would probably be be on
Speaker 1: that however, so so the Cathulu theory is off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that one's off the table. Maybe, But then
Speaker 1: when you get into questions of religious or cultural conversion,
Speaker 1: well we can't really rule that out. The other possibility
Speaker 1: is that perhaps humans have some unique talent that aliens
Speaker 1: would require, even if it's just mere amusement, or they
Speaker 1: might just want to crush us to prevent us from
Speaker 1: posing a threat, just say, oh, well they have promised
Speaker 1: they have spunk these humans, we need to cut that out.
Speaker 1: Or or also even worse, they get to be something
Speaker 1: that they call the cockroach response, which is simply it's different.
Speaker 1: We better kill it. But then again, if it hasn't
Speaker 1: happened already, then then maybe we're safe. Now Again, that
Speaker 1: book came out The Four Chariots of the Gods. Uh,
Speaker 1: Sagan definitely lived long enough to reconsider some of this
Speaker 1: and to and to sort of revisit the idea of
Speaker 1: ancient aliens in light of the ancient alien madness. I
Speaker 1: guess you could say that kind of gripped the culture.
Speaker 1: Let's hear it. Yeah, so he he wrote about it
Speaker 1: this time solo. In the book Broke's Brain, Reflections on
Speaker 1: the Romance of Science, He wrote that he believed that
Speaker 1: those excited by ancient alien speculation, you know, they're generally
Speaker 1: motivated by sincere scientific and occasionally religious feelings that you know,
Speaker 1: their their passion for science is real. But quote, for
Speaker 1: many people, the shoddily thought out doctrines of borderline science
Speaker 1: are the closest to oximation, to comprehensible science readily available.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is you're scientifically curious, but then
Speaker 1: where do you go to get your information? Like you
Speaker 1: turn on the TV, and if you're presented with in
Speaker 1: search of if you're presented with ancient aliens, then that
Speaker 1: is what is going to feed your hunger. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of times you see people who are
Speaker 1: attracted to pseudoscience or people who have not had the
Speaker 1: right kind of exposure to how inspiring real science can be.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, or or or for instance, how inspiring real
Speaker 1: archaeology can be, how how legitimate studies of mythology, how
Speaker 1: how they can inspire us. So most of his criticism
Speaker 1: is really not leveled at people who enjoy it or
Speaker 1: or buy into it, but rather those certainly those who
Speaker 1: peddle it. Uh and he he responds broadly to some
Speaker 1: of the evidence and chariots of the gods and points
Speaker 1: out that quote in every case, the artifacts in question
Speaker 1: have plausible and much simpler explanations. I agree with that
Speaker 1: our ancestors were no dummies. They may have lacked high technology,
Speaker 1: but they were as smart as we, and they sometimes
Speaker 1: combined dedication, intelligence, and hard work to produce results that
Speaker 1: impress even us. So against killing it. Yeah. He also
Speaker 1: pointed out that a s may have remained a popular
Speaker 1: idea in Russia at the time because it presented religious
Speaker 1: ideas within a scientific framework. So if you're in a
Speaker 1: communist state, that's sort of got an anti religious position,
Speaker 1: but you've still got a religious disposition. You want to
Speaker 1: believe in mythological types of ideas, but it's not cool
Speaker 1: to say be a Christian or anything like that anymore.
Speaker 1: You could be essentially of the ancient aliens religion, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is quasi religious at least. He also speculated that
Speaker 1: the interest in UFOs and ancient astronauts quote seems at
Speaker 1: least partially the result of unfulfilled religious needs. So again
Speaker 1: you have tales of wise, powerful, benign humanoid entities that
Speaker 1: attend to the human race. And this is an idea
Speaker 1: that definitely ends up becoming central to a numb a
Speaker 1: different ufo uh New religions, the idea that the aliens
Speaker 1: will save us from ourselves, that the aliens have an
Speaker 1: answer to our essentially our religious needs. And he he
Speaker 1: also mentions that that he had given the idea of
Speaker 1: ancient aliens far far more attention than he cared to
Speaker 1: think about, and that he loved the idea. But but
Speaker 1: you know, as you might expect Sagan to him, and
Speaker 1: clearly he didn't write about it previously and in this
Speaker 1: volume because he thought it was just ridiculous and above consideration. No,
Speaker 1: clearly Sagan doesn't like hate this and want to crush it.
Speaker 1: He just wants to be responsible when entertaining the idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's but he says that the the supposed evidence rarely
Speaker 1: requires more than just passing attention. Quote in the long
Speaker 1: litany of ancient astronaut pop archaeology, the cases of apparent
Speaker 1: interest have perfectly reasonable alternative explanations or have been misreported,
Speaker 1: or are simple pre varications, hoaxes and distortions. And then
Speaker 1: he makes these final points. He says that even if
Speaker 1: an advanced alien civilization had really wanted to leave a
Speaker 1: calling card, there would be no question. They could have
Speaker 1: left a metal artifact that, due to elemental composition, would
Speaker 1: have clearly been from beyond. Or yeah, they could have
Speaker 1: left a silicon semiconductor chip, yeah, yeah, they could have
Speaker 1: left a mathematical proof as a calling card. There there
Speaker 1: are various things that could have done. Here's Fermat's last theorem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but they didn't. They didn't leave any of these things.
Speaker 1: This book broke his brain. Reflections on the romance of science.
Speaker 1: This is still in print. You can you can definitely
Speaker 1: obtain a copy, and I would advise anyone who's interested
Speaker 1: to check it out because he does go into greater
Speaker 1: detail on some of the arguments for a s namely
Speaker 1: the serious mystery of the dogon people. Uh, it's all
Speaker 1: very interesting. We don't really have time to discuss it here,
Speaker 1: but the book is out there. Sagan's writing is always
Speaker 1: a joy, So I invite everyone to check it out.
Speaker 1: So I'd say my takeaway at the end of this
Speaker 1: is that there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea that
Speaker 1: Earth may have been visited by aliens at some point.
Speaker 1: It's possible for all we know. There's nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: playing with speculation or looking for evidence there. But don't
Speaker 1: get carried away. Don't let it become your religion, and
Speaker 1: don't don't lower your standard of evidence just because it's
Speaker 1: a cool idea and you want it to be true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, Like, don't make it your religion. But if
Speaker 1: you do make it your religion, just be open about
Speaker 1: the fact that you've made it your religion. That's fine too, sure, Yeah, yeah, uh.
Speaker 1: Don't make it your religion and then pretended science and
Speaker 1: try to convince people. One last thing, I want to
Speaker 1: test your intuitions on something or discigional audience just you.
Speaker 1: I mean, the audience can play to play along at home.
Speaker 1: But Robert, I want to think about ranking some probability.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're in a scenario where you find
Speaker 1: out archaeologists have discovered a tomb in the Nile Valley
Speaker 1: with multiple lines of evidence independently confirming to every major
Speaker 1: archaeologist satisfaction that the tomb has remained buried and undisturbed
Speaker 1: since at the latest. And also inside the tomb they
Speaker 1: discover a clay jar containing silicon, semiconductor chips and say
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries. All other things being equal, what do
Speaker 1: you think would be the ranking of the most likely
Speaker 1: interpretations of this? Would it be that there was ancient
Speaker 1: lost technology, right, that some ancient Egyptians figured out how
Speaker 1: to make these inventions semiconductor chips and batteries, and somehow
Speaker 1: this is the first we're finding out about this capability
Speaker 1: of theirs, or ancient aliens. Aliens came and brought this
Speaker 1: or taught humans how to make it and it was lost,
Speaker 1: or they just you know, shared a few trinkets, or
Speaker 1: time travel or all the experts are wrong and this
Speaker 1: is some kind of hoax. Well, I have to throw
Speaker 1: out time travel because that definitely breaks our understanding of
Speaker 1: of cosmos. I was going to say the same. I
Speaker 1: think I actually ranked time travel below ancient aliens, and
Speaker 1: I would I can see where though, I can see
Speaker 1: where someone would be more inclined for ancient Aliens over
Speaker 1: the two remaining options, simply because if you go to
Speaker 1: ancient aliens, then you kind of have an out. You
Speaker 1: don't have to admit that, oh well, we simply missed
Speaker 1: it in the in the in the archaeological record. We
Speaker 1: just somehow missed the fact that the ancient Egyptians developed batteries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a tough question actually knowing how to rank these
Speaker 1: other ones. I think for me, the top option would
Speaker 1: be a tie between all all the experts are wrong
Speaker 1: and it's some kind of hoax that's been very cleverly
Speaker 1: designed to fool all the The hoax is really the
Speaker 1: place I think I would go first, because it's just
Speaker 1: it seems so outrageous, like it it's too much of
Speaker 1: a leap of faith to think aliens like time travel
Speaker 1: is is impossible as we understand uh the underworkings of
Speaker 1: the universe. And then the idea that we simply missed
Speaker 1: all record of this technology also seems unlikely. Lost technology
Speaker 1: is very hard to hard to believe because of the context.
Speaker 1: Right um, that technology doesn't come to exist in a vacuum,
Speaker 1: but comes as a result of other technologies. So if
Speaker 1: you suddenly found lithium ion batteries and silicon semiconductor chips
Speaker 1: in ancient Egypt, it wouldn't just be that, like, Wow,
Speaker 1: how do they figure out how to make those? They
Speaker 1: would be missing many many steps along the chain of
Speaker 1: technological progress that would lead you to be able to
Speaker 1: make those. So you'd have to assume not just that,
Speaker 1: but you'd have to assume the step before it, and
Speaker 1: before that and before that, like all the metal working
Speaker 1: and all the fine machining and machining tolerances and things
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, it's like if you suddenly found out
Speaker 1: that you're significant other was a drug lord, you know,
Speaker 1: and would and they were you, and you would say,
Speaker 1: how did I not know they were a drug lord?
Speaker 1: Like you would think there would be there would be
Speaker 1: other steps up to becoming a drug lord, right, I
Speaker 1: would have been surprised at something way earlier in the
Speaker 1: chain of this progression. Yeah, so that's hard to entertain too,
Speaker 1: But I don't know. I think maybe I I probably
Speaker 1: go with hoax first, and then maybe it's hard to
Speaker 1: decide whether ancient aliens or lost technology is a better
Speaker 1: because one of those those answers at least has an
Speaker 1: answer built into it for why there's no evidence of
Speaker 1: its development and construction or it's travel beyond that region,
Speaker 1: like because it's simply an alien dropped it. But in
Speaker 1: any case, I think clever hoax beats the other two definitely,
Speaker 1: and it's sad, like that's the sad answer. Nobody wants
Speaker 1: that to be the answer to their either they're great
Speaker 1: archaeological find or their unique insight into some bit of
Speaker 1: existing mythological, archaic archaeological evidence. But I would have to
Speaker 1: wonder we'd at least do an episode on it. We
Speaker 1: try to give it a fair shake, right, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: all right, so there you have it again. We did
Speaker 1: not have time here to discuss every example that is
Speaker 1: often brought up as as potential evidence for ancient aliens,
Speaker 1: though many of them are are just fascinating in their
Speaker 1: own ride. I think one or two we've discussed on
Speaker 1: the show before, like the idea that uh that that
Speaker 1: the Hindu epics describe the use of nuclear super weapons.
Speaker 1: It's a fabulous concept, but we just didn't have time
Speaker 1: to get into it today. But again, there is ultimately
Speaker 1: no evidence for for that being true. I agree, certainly
Speaker 1: no physical evidence, which is what the real standard would be.
Speaker 1: Even with physical evidence, as we've said, it would be
Speaker 1: hard to know exactly what to make what to make
Speaker 1: of it. And with all this uh, literary and artistic
Speaker 1: evidence that's heavily based on interpretation, you've got all the
Speaker 1: problems that we discussed with say again and trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of what's this story from ancient summer about? Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a hard hill to climb up if you
Speaker 1: want to say that there were ancient aliens. But if
Speaker 1: you must climb that hill, do your best to do
Speaker 1: it in a responsible, skeptical, evidence based way. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: certainly give it your best shot, go wild within the
Speaker 1: realms of fiction. Again. I hope that we I hope
Speaker 1: we keep getting great ancient astronaut fiction because I can't
Speaker 1: get enough of it. So there you have it. Hey,
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