Chariots of the Gods

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My World. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from
how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be starting off
by talking about theme parks. Just before we started recording,

(00:23):
Robert and I were talking about possible alternative theme parks
that just never got to be. I was thinking, you know,
we've got Disneyland and Disney World that we know some
people here in the office that are really into disney World.
We go all the time. But it's based on all
these classic animated characters, right, And I was thinking, there
should be an alternative theme park that's based on the

(00:44):
classic animated characters, not of Disney, but of Don Bluth. Okay,
so this would be like the Secretive Nim Yeah. So
you've got like a Secret of Nim ride where you
you like ride this cinder block to the lee of
the stone. And then you've got you've got like characters
walking around in the streets, of course, and costumes of
Rocketdoodle comes up to you. There's an old Dogs Go

(01:04):
to Heaven, you know, you get to be a dog
and go to dog Hell. Ride that. Yeah, that was
a disturbing portion of that movie. I remember. Yeah. But
then also there's gotta be a Dragon's Layer ride because
Don Blues worked on that. That's right. This is the
classic animation style video games. Yeah, where you die no
matter what you do all the time. Oh yeah, we
could have one for a ranking and bass rock box.

(01:24):
You get into all those old cool Disney alternative animated
classics like the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, Goblin singalongs. Yeah,
I'm all where there's a whip, there's a way, I'm
all for it. You have one hal that's just for
singing along with that Leonard Nimoy song about the Hobbit. Yeah,

(01:45):
I gotta work that in somehow though that that's not
actually in the movie, But the movie itself is full
of full of all sorts of wonderful tunes. Um. It's
interesting because we have all these various ridiculous and real
theme parks and then we have these fictional ones. So
we we have made up parks like Jurassic Park, we
have West World, we have Itchy and Scratchy Land. But

(02:06):
on the other hand, we do have Dollywood, the Dolly
Parton themed theme park, I don't think I've ever been
to Dollywood, but you gotta wonder what's there? Is it
just the same stuff, Like, it's just roller coasters and
carnival games and stuff, except it's Dolly Pardon themed. What's
all about the theme, right, It's all about the fluff.
Like I remember, I never went to Dollywood, but I

(02:28):
went to Opery Land in Nashville, Tennessee, back when that
was a theme park, a country music sort of country
themed theme park, and and that was fun. It wasn't
necessary that I was into the uh, into the flavoring
that was provided. But still, the basic rides, you do
need some reason to get on there. You need some

(02:48):
sort of character associated with it, to tell a story
with the ride. Dude, that Dollywood Joe Lene roller coaster
was a scream. So there are a lot of worthy
theme park destinations out there. But here's one that I
think most of us may not have heard of. I
had not heard of this one until we started researching
this episode. I had not heard of this until you

(03:09):
sent it to me. It's nestled in the Swiss Alps,
and it's called young Frau Park. Okay, does that mean
young woman? I believe so it's name for um, it's
name for a particular alpine peak in the immediate area.
It originally opened as Mystery Park, though it offers fun
and entertainment for the entire family, including Misty Land for

(03:31):
the children, a huge indoor outdoor children's paradise, segue rides, trampolines,
laser shows, a petting zoo, and of course multiple exhibits
in live shows addressing the mysteries of ancient history and
the possible answers to be found in ancient astronaut hypothesis.
What yes, yeah, this is I need to drive this home.

(03:52):
This is not some silly skit that Joe and I
have prepared for everybody. This is a real theme park
in Interlock and Swiss of Land, centered around the ideas
and writings of Eric van Donikin, author of the nineteen
book Chariots of the Gods. I like how the original
book title ends in a question mark. Yes, so, I

(04:12):
really think we should make a point when we're talking
about his book. We should we should pronounce it chariots
of the Gods of the Gods like they might be
chariots of somebody else's. I also love how it takes
what is otherwise a tremendously awesome title and kind of
screws it up by making a question. You know, you've

(04:33):
got that standard clickbait format these days, where like the
actual body text of an article might be fairly reasonable,
but the headline makes some outlandish claim not justified by
the article itself. This is sort of the opposite. This
is like the title is actually a little bit more
careful than the book. Yes, and we will definitely get
into that as we proceed. But this particular park again,

(04:55):
it opened as Mystery Park and two thousand three at
a reported cost of eighty six million Swiss francs or
sixty two million dollars American uh. But then it closed
in two thousand six. Then it opened reopened again in
two thousand nine as Young Frau Park. It's an exhibits
still focus on things like the Nazca lines, the construction

(05:15):
of the Pyramids, and other noted uh quote unquote examples
of ancient astronauts, speculation or a A s plus. Donikan
himself still gives lectures there and insists that quote everything
ends in a question mark, so as if it's all
just a consideration of these ideas rather than um, you know,

(05:36):
propaganda about it. Well, I must say that makes me
feel a little bit better about it, because I kind
of want to go. I don't put any stock whatsoever
in the ancient aliens hypothesis, but this sounds like a
good time. You've got a petting zoo, and you've got
a guy given lectures about how aliens probably talk to
our ancestors. Yeah, there's a sun sphere they have like
a ziggurat and a pyramid. You can, you can. I'll

(05:58):
try to make sure that we link to the homepage
for the park so that you can check it out,
because it does look fun. It looks you can children
can have their birthday parties there. It looks like an
interesting destination, and we would love to hear from anyone
who has ever gone there themselves. So I've been familiar
with Van Donkin for a long time. I remember seeing

(06:18):
him mentioned on old reruns of In Search of hosted
by Leonard nimoy A and a yeah. But but I
had no idea that this had been incorporated into a
theme park. This is the kind of thing you come
to expect from religious groups in the United States, like
the Holy Lands Theme Park. I believe it is in Florida.
Oh yeah, if you're not aware of this phenomenon. In

(06:38):
the United States, there are multiple, uh, not just Bible themed,
but specifically Young Earth creationist theme parks in the United
States that have like models and exhibits. It's sort of
like a cross between an amusement park and a museum
attempting to promote the idea, for example, that humans and
dinosaurs lived side by side and that the Earth is

(06:59):
six thousand years so old. Yeah, and you know, it
makes sense that we would have theme parks about this
because in the United States, two things that people take
very seriously our religion and their major entertainment brands. So
of course there's a Disney Park. Of course there's like
Universal Studios. But I just really wasn't expecting, uh, there
to be a theme park based around the concept of

(07:21):
ancient aliens. It really gives me hope that my son
can one day celebrate his tenth birthday party at a
Phantom Time hypothesis theme park. I want to Lizard People
theme park that would be good, yeah, with the costumes
it basically rights itself, or a good Flat Earth theme
park that'll do it. I wonder if that means the
roller coasters will be very boring though there's no looks.

(07:42):
It's just flat circle flat roller coasters. Yeah. So we've
had listeners in the past ask us to talk about
ancient aliens related topics. I think it's come up in
passing on the podcast quite a few times. Actually, we
just kind of mentioned it here and there as one
of those things that you know, it would be interesting
if there were some actual evidence for it, but there

(08:04):
doesn't seem to be any good evidence. It's all just
kind of like based on massive over interpretation of little
tidbits of interesting mythology and imagery from the ancient world,
and sometimes on outright fraud and and stuff like that. Yeah,
and we'll get into all that today. I do want
to before we get into it, I do want to
stress that we are going to approach this topic, like

(08:24):
all the topics we can approach, with a skeptical mind,
but an open mind. Okay, yeah, an open minded mind exactly. Yes.
And while we're gonna be talking about about von Donnikin
himself and his book at the top of this episode,
we are going to get into say Carl Sagan's thoughts
on the possibility of ancient aliens as we progress, and

(08:46):
of course through all of it, it is an exciting idea.
I mean, it factors into so many different works of
fiction that that we love. It's uh, it's just comes
down to the fact that, like you said, the evidence
is never there. Yeah, exactly. Now. I want to be
clear that I find the idea of ancient aliens visiting

(09:06):
Earth long ago in the past as fun and interesting
as anybody else would. It's something that I would love
to believe if there were good evidence for the I mean,
that's such a cool idea. Um, And so it's and
it's also not something that I would say is something
we should just dismiss out of hand. Like some people
make the argument that, Okay, if somebody shows up and says,

(09:27):
I've got a new propellantless drive that'll get us through
space without propellant, some people say, you know, if you're
violating the laws of physics, I don't even need to
listen to you to begin with. I don't feel like
that about ancient aliens. I'd say, Okay, this is something
that we don't know whether or not aliens exist. Maybe
they do. We don't know if they do exist, whether
they visited Earth in the past. Maybe they have. There's

(09:49):
no reason to rule it out out of hand. So
it's at least worth looking at the evidence if somebody
thinks they have some exactly, So let's return to Chariots
of the Gods uh the Night sixty eight book by
Eric von Donakin, And the basic idea here is again
that ancient that ancient astronauts visited Earth and serve as
the sort of god figures of our mythologies and religions,

(10:11):
and they wowed us with their technology and taught us
to do things like make bread and build pyramids, the
two primary activities of human civilization. Well they're they're also
we'll get into it, especially the pyramid thing more. But
these are the sort of things that it's easy to
look at and say, how did people ever figure this out?
I thought about that with bread before you know, I'm like,

(10:33):
this is amazing. It's so tasty, and I if you,
if you you show me where it came from, and
I would. I can't imagine ancient people putting that together.
But of course they did put it together. Do you
think aliens were the ones that taught us to drink
the milk that comes out of goats and cows. Oh
well that is that isn't another interesting topic of topic.

(10:53):
I believe Julie and I did an episode that got
into some of that in the past. Because there are
different theories regarding how we made this leap. One of
them one of the theories is that it actually involved
a drinking contest, like essentially dares and double dares among
ancient people. I bet you can't down that glass of
of of sheep's milk. Let's see what happens. Okay, So

(11:15):
it would be like, drink this crocodile's urine, drink this
goat's milk, but then the goat milk was kind of tasty. Yeah,
I mean it actually would play into some of these
ancient astronaut ideas, like the aliens arrive and they're like, hey,
you uh monkey creature, Um, can you drink the milk
of that other one without becoming ill? Let's see what happens,
just doing experiments on us. Yeah. Uh. So we can't

(11:37):
rehash all of von Danikin's arguments from his book, but
I think just to give you a flavor of the
kinds of things he argues and and what it feels
like to participate with his arguments. We should just give
an example from several of his major lines of evidence,
and one of the major types of arguments he makes
is about ancient projects that supposedly we're beyond our power

(12:01):
to produce at the time. Right, So this is you
know you mentioned how do we learn to bake bread?
How do we learn to build pyramids? Von Dannikin essentially
will look back and say, hey, we couldn't have done
that back then. Must have been aliens showing us how
to do it or assisting us with their technology. So
classic example of this you'll often hear is the pyramids
of ancient Egypt. Right, if you've got an ancient Aliens

(12:23):
person talking to you, they'll say, look, there's no way
the ancient Egyptians could have built the pyramids. These these
stones that the pyramids are made of or gigantic How
did they get them to the site? How did they
build them with such precision? You know that, how do
they move them so far? It's just impossible. They couldn't
have done it, right, Why did they build it like that?
Why were they looking up? Yeah? Vandanakin makes that argument too.

(12:45):
He says the pyramids they seem to be oriented with
some kind of relationship to the stars, and Egyptian astronomy
was not advanced enough for them to have had this
kind of like knowledge of the stars when they built them.
That seems to be wrong. But yeah, if you look
at pyramids like the Great Pyramid of Giza built in
the twenty century BC, it's true that we used to
consider it a great mystery how these amazing marvels like

(13:07):
the Pyramids were built in a time before modern metal working.
I mean, these people didn't have iron tools or anything.
They were probably working with like copper tools. Uh, this
is really before any kind of advanced wheels of any sort.
But as best I can tell, modern archaeologists and Egyptologists
do not believe that it was beyond the power of
the ancient Egyptians to create these marvels like the Pyramids.

(13:29):
We now know a lot about the construction of the pyramids.
So the pyramids were built through massive coordination of engineers
and skilled workers. Granite building materials were probably floated down
the Nile on rafts from quarry locations upstream. Uh. And
we've discovered, through for example, ancient illustrations, that giant stone
blocks were dragged into place using ropes and sledges. So

(13:52):
workers would have ropes and they pull a sledge with
a stone on it. And there was even a recent
discovery about how wetting the sand underneath the sledge could
reduce the friction between the sledge and the ground, helping
ease the transport of the blocks. And then there's other
evidence that indicates, for example, the height of the pyramids
was achieved with the use of wait for it, ramps.

(14:14):
But where they get the ramps? Joe, clearly aliens crazy? No,
I mean, yeah, how could they have figured out that
you could pile earth up to make a ramp? But yeah,
So this kind of argumentation, it seems to me to
be based on basically just a type of prejudice, prejudice
against the abilities of the ancient people. Ancient people might
have had less scientific knowledge and less technology than we do,

(14:36):
but they weren't stupid. In fact, they were really clever,
often more clever than we are, because they had to
accomplish their great works with so much less. Yeah, they
were not, as the saying goes, standing on the shoulders
of giants. No, they had to they had to be
giants themselves in order to do great things. So that's
one type of argument, but then you've got a couple others.
One is like looking at ancient art and saying, well,

(14:59):
that depicts a lilians and spaceships. So you could look
at ancient figurines from Japan and say that looks like
an alien in a space suit. Or you can look
at the Nasca Lines of Peru, where von Danikin says
their quote very reminiscent of aircraft parking bays on a
modern airport. I look at that, I don't know, I mean,
it looks to me like their giant works of art. Yeah,

(15:23):
this is one of those cases where you're taking several
logical leaps to get to a more grandiose explanation. Yeah.
And it's not to say that things like the Nasca
lions aren't themselves very interesting and mysterious, Like who did
the people who created them think they were making them for?
If they're too big for the average human to actually see, Uh,
they must have had the idea of like gods in

(15:44):
the sky or even maybe somehow people traveling in the
sky to look down and see them. So you know
that's not impossible. But there are these mysteries and and
and they're very interesting, but I don't think you need
to jump to this is a landing strip for spacecraft
or this is in you know, an aircraft parking bay. Likewise,
another way he looks at ancient art is the Mayan

(16:05):
temple of the inscriptions at pelen k Robert. Had you
ever seen this carving before? Um? If I had, I'd
forgotten about it. It's it's very cool because you see
this individual that's kind of in a recline position. Uh.
And you know, I'm not sure how how I would
have interpreted it had I not been looking at it,

(16:27):
uh as part of the research for this episode, like
knowing what people would read into it, Because knowing what
people would read into it, I look at it and
I'm I'm reminded of hr Geeger's concept for the pilot
that they encounter in Alien, that the giant, you know,
that the Titan character that is uh fossilized in this

(16:48):
uh this command chair within the crashed Alien spaceship the engineer. Yeah. Yeah,
it's sort of a similar reclining pose surrounded by I
don't know what what you'd call it, kind of ornate
objects that look like all then maybe that could be
some form of technology. So this carving from this Mayan
temple is from the sarcophagus of the Mayan lord Pakal

(17:10):
the Great, who lived in the seventh century CE. And
from what I've read, the stuff in the carving are
common Mayan religious symbols. They're the kinds of things you
see on Mayan carvings that indicate things about the Mayan
mythology and cosmology. But of course von Dannikin and the
ancient Aliens people they say, well, it's got a guy

(17:30):
reclining and he's surrounded by all these objects and lines
and weird looking stuff, and so maybe what this is
is it's a person who is reclining in a spaceship
that's ready for takeoff, and they're surrounded by all these
technological objects. It's a fun read on a piece of art.
I love that idea, but but again it comes it

(17:52):
comes down to the question is this really the best
explanation for what we're looking at here? Yeah, good question. Again,
I think the answer is probably no. And then finally
another line of evidences, for example, ancient descriptions of things
in literature and religion. So we I think we've talked
on the podcast before about the first chapter of the
Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible. Robert, I have

(18:14):
we done this one before? I know it came up
when Christian and I talked about John d and sort
of the various occult ideas about angels, because we talked
about how how rad the angels are in the Old Testament,
you know, with interlocking wheels and uh a sense of
like multiple eyes and strange fires. Yeah. So just to

(18:35):
give a brief reading, the author, supposedly, the prophet Ezekiel
rights that he had a vision one day the heavens
were opened. Quote. Then I looked, and behold, a whirlwind
was coming out of the north, a great cloud with
raging fire engulfing itself, and brightness was all around it
and radiating out of its midst, like the color of amber.

(18:55):
Out of the midst of the fire. Also from within
it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this
was their appearance. They had the likeness of a man.
Each one had four faces, and each one had four wings.
Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet
were like the soles of calves feet. They sparkled like
the color of burnished bronze. Now, as I looked at

(19:18):
the living creatures, behold, a wheel was on the earth
beside each living creature, with its four faces. The appearance
of the wheels and their workings was like the color
of barrel, and all four had the same likeness. The
appearance of their workings was as it were, a wheel
in the middle of a wheel. When they moved, they
went toward any one of the four directions. They did

(19:40):
not turn aside when they went. As for their rims,
they were so high, they were awesome, and their rims
were full of eyes all around the four of them.
That is awesome imagery. You can't deny the amazing power
of that description. Yeah, it does it. It sounds and
feels like an counter with something beyond the human experience

(20:03):
and God. And certainly if you want to say it's
an alien, that would make sense to But are you
convinced that number one, the author really saw this and
this isn't merely a composed narrative serving a religious purpose.
Number two, if the author did actually see this, that
it wasn't a hallucination, right one, either caused by quote
unquote natural causes, you know, some sort of religious trance

(20:26):
or the consumption of some sort of psychedelic substance, either
one or or just a dream or dream too, or
pure daydreaming, pure imagination. We've talked about that before too.
We often want to limit just the pure imagination of
ancient people's and say, oh, well, they actually saw something,
or clearly they were eating strange mushrooms. But really you
can we I think everyone around us can attest to this.

(20:49):
You can create amazing things without bumping your head or
or or eating something odd. I totally agree. I always
want to emphasize that point. And then only are you convinced.
Even if this was something physical the author actually saw,
was it aliens? Maybe it's something else being described in
a kind of vague and imaginative way. So von Danikin

(21:11):
is convinced, He says, quote the description is astonishingly good.
Ezekiel says that each wheel was in the middle of
another one, an optical allusion to our present way of thinking.
What he saw was one of those special vehicles that
Americans use in the desert and swampy terrain. Ezekiel observed
that the wheels rose from the ground simultaneously with the
winged creatures. He was quite right. Naturally, the wheels of

(21:34):
a multipurpose vehicle, say an amphibious helicopter do not stay
on the ground when it takes off. What do you
think of that? Read Robert. So the idea is is
he beheld an alien in a in a a fan boat,
a swamp boat, right and buy you billy alien by
you billy. Well, that kind of that kind of kicks
the wind out of this for me. If I think
of it as that, I like the idea of it

(21:56):
just being interlocking cosmic wheels with eyeballs all over the place.
I like that too. Von Dannikin also argues that it
must have been aliens and not God's Ezekiel is describing,
because quote Ezekiel gives precise details of the landing of
this vehicle. He describes a craft that comes from the north,
emitting rays and gleaming and raising a gigantic cloud of

(22:18):
desert sand. Now, the God of the Old Testament was
supposed to be omnipotent. Then why does this almighty God
have to come hurtling up from a particular direction. Cannot
he be anywhere he wants without all this noise and fuss?
Now I have to say Again, I don't really buy
that argument at all, because it strikes me as a
pretty shallow and uninformed reading of the Old Testament. I

(22:41):
think the Bible is full of references to God and
other divine beings having physical bodies and physical limitations and
being subject to normal corporeal existence. Like remember after Adam
and Eve eating the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden,
the Book of Genesis says that they quote heard the
sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in

(23:01):
the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife
hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among
the trees of the garden. So he's walking in the
garden and he can't see them if they hide. Well.
This is one of the points that Julian James made
about the Bible, taking into account both Testaments, is that
in the beginning, things are very physical, and then they

(23:22):
become less physical as you progress. God begins as something
that is seen and nearly felt, and then he becomes
something that is occasionally seen and only heard, and then
the then it's a voice that one is is longing for,
one is reaching and grasping for. Well, I would absolutely
agree that there appears to be a chronological progression over

(23:44):
the history of religion, of the steady abstracting of religious
beings like a long long ago. If you look into
the most ancient religions, there does not seem to be
a problem with a vision of ancient angels approaching from
the north and blowing up a lot of dust and
causing a physical disturbance when they arrive. Um. I mean,
I've talked about this on the show before. I think

(24:04):
this clear distinction that we make between aliens and gods
is sort of a post Enlightenment distinction informed by scientific
thinking and discovery and ideas about physics and biology. And
I don't think that distinction would necessarily make a whole
lot of sense to all of the people of the
ancient world. And and an Old Testament angel might show
up and you might need invited into your house or

(24:27):
wrestle it out out in the yard. Uh, that that
sort of thing. The gods of the Greeks are taking
physical form and seeking to engage in intercourse with human
beings exactly so so we think like, Okay, gods are ethereal,
supernatural beings. They exist outside our spacetime universe. They're free

(24:47):
from the bounds of the laws of physics. And meanwhile,
aliens are biological organisms like us. You know, they they're
from some other planet. They may have powerful biological or
technological abilities that we don't have, but they're bound by
the laws of physics. And I just don't get a
lot of this distinction when you read ancient literature, when
you read these ancient religious texts, you don't get the

(25:07):
feeling that this distinction necessarily would have been salient to them.
Gods often had physical bodies, like you say, they could
be injured or killed. They lived in distant but physically
solid places in the mountains or in the sky, which
they believed there was ground in the sky that you
could walk around. They could be bound. That would be
like the ultimate doom for a god of Olympus to
be bound somewhere. Absolutely Prometheus. Yeah, And speaking of Prometheus,

(25:30):
here's one of the craziest things. Many of the gods,
not not always, but many of the gods in ancient
religions clearly get their power not from some kind of
supernatural nature, but from artifacts that they possess essentially, some
kind of ancient vision of a technology. Right, They've got
some thing that gives them power just like a technological
alien would. Yeah, magical items. So anyway, that wraps up

(25:54):
my basic description of of the flavor of von Danikin's
type of arguments. I think we can already see a
lot of the flaws within it, but I think it's
worth exploring more the history of how this idea developed
and what a better version of this type of hypothesis
might be. The thing about Chariots of the Gods, however,

(26:15):
is that it is an essential book to discuss because
it definitely launched ancient astronaut speculation into the public consciousness. Absolutely,
it emerged, and it came along I think really at
just the right time, because this is a period of
time we've discussed on the show before a period of
rapid technological change in the second half of the twentieth century.

(26:36):
And remember it was published in nine So just think
of all the things that are going on. You know,
we are reaching out into space. We are we're we're
reaching for the moon, We're sending out probes to study
the cosmos and even bring word of our existence to
potential other forms of life out there. I mean, this
is the same energy that's going to lead to the
establishment of ct IN. But it was also a period

(26:59):
of time mean which supernatural experiences took a decidedly sci
fi turn, in many cases entailing UFO sightings, alien abduction
experiences that we have a whole episodes about here. And
von Donnikin's book took the notion of alien inspired alternative
archaeology and ancient alien visitors and propelled it into the
mainstream consciousness, first as a book and then his various

(27:22):
spinoff bits of media. And we we should be clear
here von Donnikin popularized the notion, but he was not
the originator. Well it depends no, No, you're you're right
about that. He he was not the originator. I was
gonna say, I was gonna make a distinction between fiction
and nonfiction. Let's say, even in nonfiction, not necessarily the originator, right.
So one of the sources we looked to him this

(27:43):
was a Skeptic magazine article titled Chariot Rror of the
Gods by Jason Colavito, and he points out that you
had sci fi writers such as in specifically HP Lovecraft,
exploring the idea of ancient aliens visiting the Earth and
being basically the responsible agents for our various achievements and

(28:04):
our very existence. Yeah, absolutely, if if you're not familiar
with love Crafts alien agent aliens mythos, just to read
a quote from Call of Cthulhu that also appears in
Colavito's article. Quote, there had been eons when other things
ruled on the earth, and they had had great cities.
Remains of them were still to be found as Cyclopean

(28:25):
stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast
epics of time before men came, but there were arts
which could revive them when the stars had come round
again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity.
They had indeed come themselves from the stars and brought
their images with them. And of course the original title
for that that story by Lovecraft was the Call of Cthulhu.

(28:49):
But the Colavida even goes so far as to line
up the nineteen sixties European popularity of love Crafts fiction
with the publication of The Chariots of the Gods. Yeah,
that's totally right. I mean we should mention Morning of
the Magicians. Oh yes, so I've never read it, but
I'm familiar with it by reputation. This was in a
nineteen sixty book by Louis Paulis and Jacques Bergier. Uh.

(29:11):
And this is a book that I actually learned about
on the DVD special features for the Nazi zombie film
Shockwaves from seven, which is, if you haven't seen it,
a fabulous film, uh, with Nazi zombies in Florida. And
it was inspired at least in part by the Morning
of the Magicians, which supposedly also gets into uh, you know,

(29:33):
ideas and conspiracies related to Nazi interest in the occult. Well,
I mean so. Colavito points out that this book Morning
of the Magicians was inspired directly by Lovecraft's fiction, as
the authors were actually editors of a French magazine called
Planet or Planet I guess, which printed French translations of

(29:53):
Lovecraft throughout the sixties. In Traces of the Gods, Ancient
Astronauts as a vision of our future, Johan as Richter
points out several additional precursors here, uh so possible first
ancient astronauts speculation concept in sci fi comes from Edison's
Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Service, published in eight

(30:14):
I've never heard of this, No, I had not either,
and that it basically discusses the idea that the Pyramids
were built by Martians. There's also an eighteen seven novel
by Kurd loss Fitz that explored this sort of contact
between interplanetary cultures, and of course he points out Lovecraft.
But then there's also Perry Roden, a German science fiction

(30:37):
series running since nineteen sixty one, and it apparently gets
into some of these ideas as well. So it seems like,
especially if you go into the fiction realm, the nineteen
sixties were full of ancient astronauts stuff. Yeah, it's just
von Donkin had the book that really just took it
and propelled it into the mainstream. Now, of course this
ended up making its way into other fictional properties that

(30:59):
were even more and stream like movies. Oh yes, uh,
you know, just to name a few here, I probably
the greatest example is two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey.
You know, I never think of that as an ancient
alien story, but that it is what it is, right,
the idea. Yeah, so there's a there's a monolith that
appears on Earth at some point during our evolution and

(31:20):
sparks this revolution and tool use among our ancient ancestors. Yeah,
and it's It's one of the reasons we don't think
about it much is because it is such a a
thoughtful and intelligent treatment of the concept. And we'll actually
get into to it when we start discussing Sagan's Carl
Sagan's thoughts on ancient alien speculation, because some of the
things that he say might might take place given a

(31:44):
situation like this line up directly with the plot of
two thousand and one. But then you have you have
other films as well. For instance, God told me to
the Larry Cohen film about Christ Like hermaphroditic aliens, that
that definitely has an ancient alien vibe to it. Of course,
the Ridley Scott film Prometheus is it's rich with with

(32:06):
ancient alien speculation as well. I didn't see this film,
but Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull gets into this
as well, Right, it's this an ancient aliens uh speculation film. Yeah,
it is easily the weakest of the Indiana Jones movies,
I think explicitly because Indiana Jones it didn't need to
go into the sci fi realm. I think it works
best when it's integrated deeply with earth based mythology. Yeah,

(32:28):
I agree, like the Ark of the Covenant is terrifying
and awesome in in Raiders because you don't know what
it is. It is this mysterious supernatural thing and maybe
it is alien in nature, but it is it is
either it's so strange that it is alien. Either way. Also,
the c G I go for it didn't help um. Now,

(32:51):
one of my favorites that I almost didn't think to
include is The Life of Brian, the Monty Python religious epic. Uh,
there's a there's a brief alien interlude. I recall, there's
like a chase sequence with the character of Brian and
he is accidentally abducted by aliens and goes on a
brief adventure and it's it's so perfect because it's so accidental.

(33:13):
The aliens don't seem to be trying to do anything.
They just sort of happened to run into the story
for a little bit and then they're out of it
and no knowledge is getting like, there's no there's no
wisdom imparted upon Brian by this experience. It just scares
the crap out of him. I don't know this for sure,
but I'm going to speculate that the reason that is
in the film is simply because somebody wanted to create

(33:35):
some alien spaceships and alien sets and and alien costumes,
and they wanted a way to fit it in. So
they just said, oh, let's have them get abducted for
a couple of minutes. Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad they
got to make it, because it does seem like the
kind of situation where producers might say, is this necessary
to the script, because we could cut this whole alien thing,
and then we don't have to build a spaceship or
an extraterrestrial and we could cut down and maybe you know,

(33:58):
at least a day's worth of filming, and then Terry
Gilliams like, I already built it. Uh. They're also less
memorable films that we might mention Stargate. I say less memorable,
but I definitely remember an Egyptian god having his his
head teleported off and that in that film that was
at least one awesome quality kill. Yeah. The best thing

(34:19):
about it I recall is like, is like attack by
Edge of Teleportation Zone. Of course, the fifth element has
ancient Aliens plot element as well. Yeah it does. And
uh and for any of our pyramids, Oh yeah, that's right,
And speaking of pyramids, Uh, here's one something for our
our Doctor Who listeners out there. If you're a fan

(34:40):
of the the The Old Doctor Who episodes, there was
an episode called the Pyramids of Mars that has some
ancient alien speculation um uh intrigue in it. And there's
this this wonderful moment where this uh like Egyptian deity
servant steps out of the like a portal and says,
I bring SUITEX gift of death to all humanity. And

(35:03):
of course there are plenty of other examples in the
film and literature that we could bring up, and we
would love to hear from you the listeners, what your
favorite bits of fictional ancient astronaut intrigue you happen to be.
But clearly it's been a very inspiring idea to many people,
Like it's something that caught on fast and we haven't
let go of since. Now. Mentioned of Prometheus is key here,

(35:24):
and we've already touched on both the movie and the
actual character the titan Prometheus who brought fire to the
ancient Greeks in in the myth And it's interesting because
we we see this motif time and time again a
myth in which a god red demigod gives a technology
to ancient people. UH. These are frequently referred to as

(35:45):
culture bearers. So we have Prometheus the firebringer. UH. In
Chinese mythology, we have Sujin the fire driller, who, who
fulfills the same role, brings the technology of fire to mortals.
Uh and UH. I have to admit that, even though
I don't personally put a lot of of stock or
faith in in a a s, I still read these

(36:06):
accounts or look at visual interpretations, and part of me
always thinks, oh, yeah, it was totally an ancient alien.
That it just makes sense. What else would Promethe this be?
But of course this is always flawed logic because I
feel like one of the big things to drive home
here is that God's in our myths are not merely
mislabeled aliens. Rather, I think it's the reverse. Aliens are

(36:27):
essentially rebranded gods. I agree with you a hundred percent
on that. I think you're exactly right. Our visions of
aliens come from our mythological visions of gods, and they
continually are influenced by them. I mean, think of the
way the movie Prometheus is echoing all of these echoing
all of these themes from Greek myth Yeah, exactly. I

(36:49):
guess we need to take a break, don't we. Yes,
we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Thank all right, we're back now, Robert, you mentioned I
think that you'd actually seen some of these Ancient Alien
shows that they show on what the History Channel or
one of those one of those subsidiary networks. I have
never watched any of the Ancient Alien shows, but I
did see Leonard Nemys in search Off or at least

(37:12):
reruns of it on A and E back in the
late nineties. Was that the sort of the proto Ancient Aliens?
In a way? I remember them exploring topics like this
and uh and and also stuff like big Foot? Was
Bigfoot an alien as well? Probably? Yeah, I want to
I'm gonna drop a fact on you. We'll see how
you deal with this. Did you know that Ancient Aliens

(37:34):
is still on still making new episodes. It's currently on
season thirteen. How you like them? Apple, It's it's I mean,
having looked at some of the examples that are frequently
brought up, there are a lot of There are a
number of examples that are used, that are brought up
to support uh, ancient alien speculation. But it seems like

(37:56):
you'd run out of the really good ones by at
least season eight. Yeah. God, I mean not to say
that Ancient Aliens is not a fun idea. It's fun
to speculate about, fun to play with. But given that,
I think you and I agree that there's really no
good evidence anywhere, how do they get that far? Yeah?
I think it's it's safe to say that they don't

(38:17):
get that get to this point by, you know, through
through anything resembling accurate balance, consideration of scientific fact or
archaeological fact. They're basically writing documentary fiction, right Yeah. Brian
Switek described the show in Smithsonian Magazine as what you quote,
what you would get if you drop some creationist propaganda, Uh,

(38:40):
Eric van Donnikin's Chariots of the Gods and stock footage
from Jurassic Fight Club into a blender. What results is
a slimy and incomprehensible mixture of idle speculation and outright fabrications.
Now he's discussing an episode of the Ancient Aliens show.
I think where they they're they're talking about dinosaurs. Okay,
read I read this article and he says that there's

(39:03):
basically they've got all their quote experts on talking about
how aliens might have wiped out the dinosaurs in order
to make room for humankind to ascend, and so they've
got animations of dinosaurs running away from spaceships that are
blasting them and stuff. It does feel a lot like
creationist propaganda at that point where you just especially when

(39:25):
you start using the dinosaurs, you know, because I feel
like then you're really you're trying to get to the children.
That's true. It's despicable and unfair. It's like using cartoon
characters on cigarettes. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's why. Just the
other day I found a creationist book in a lending
library at at a state park, and I've moved it
directly from the lending library to a trash can. And
it was such a satisfying them. You know, some of

(39:46):
those creations books, they have some good illustrations in them
that I really enjoy. The illustrations are great. I just, uh,
I feel like there should be a warning label on
the front, uh, you know, letting you know that this
is uh, this is not science. Now there was one.
I'm trying to remember. I think it might have been
a creationist book by Dwayne Gish, but I'm not positive. Anyway,
it's it depicts a dinosaur. I think it's a parasar

(40:09):
alafus paras. How do you say that one? Parasar Lopuskay?
So that's the way one. That's the way my son
says it, and he's usually better at dinosaur named pronunciation
than than me. In the illustration, it's breathing fire on
a t rex. It's just like, yeah, that one it
breathes fire. Well, that explains the yeah, the complex nasal composition.
So anyway, back to Chariots of the Gods. We've recently

(40:31):
discussed some beautifully presented hypotheses by writers such as Julian
Jaynes and Letterard and Leonard Schlaine. Uh. You know that
that make a case for something that that you might
not accept completely. You know, it's maybe taking a radical
approach to our interpretation of the past and to just

(40:51):
how humans interact with with ideas. Chariots of the Gods
is not on the same level with these books. In fact,
I would say that the author of ann most reminds
me of is probably l Ron Hubbard, And I say
that as somebody who who picked up l Ron Hubbard
with an open mind, saying, you know, all right, this
this is this is a book that means a lot
to a fair number of people. I want to see

(41:12):
what there is to get excited about in the introduction alone. Uh,
von Donnikin immediately goes into attack mode on anyone who
might disagree with his notion that archaeological and religious evidence
definitely supports the idea that ancient aliens visited the earth
and kickstarted humans from that hate level. Uh and I

(41:33):
feel like I actually have to read just a little
bit of it here, he said, he writes quote, it
took courage to write this book, and it will take
courage to read it. Because its theories and proofs do
not fit into the mosaic of traditional archaeology constructed so
laboriously and firmly cemented down. Scholars will call it nonsense
and and put it on the index of those books
which are better left unmentioned. Layman will withdraw into the

(41:57):
snail shell of their familiar world when faced with a
probable ability that finding out about our past will be
even more mysterious and adventurous than finding out about the future.
So and that continues for for paragraphs afterwards as well,
where he's it's he's not saying exclamation points in it. Yes, yeah,

(42:17):
he's not making He's not saying I have an interesting idea.
Maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but I'd like you
to think about it. He's saying, Look, let's just get
this out of the way. If you're not down with
this idea, you're a coward. Well, I mean we should
try to be critical of ourselves and skeptical of the
skeptical mindset, right, But I mean we we discuss and
entertain radical hypotheses and strange ideas. We try to bring

(42:40):
a skeptical mind to them, say, Okay, are they actually
presenting any good evidence or not? Right? And we will
and we'll give it that give it that a fair
fair shake here. I mean, we are giving it a
fair shake here. But but I also have to say, like,
there's there's something in the way that the idea is
presented in the book that I think does not give
ancient alien speculation. Uh uh, doesn't do it any favors,

(43:01):
because it immediately feels a bit um aggressive. Yes, Now,
I I looked back to see like a little bit
more about what the the immediate reaction was to was
to the book and how it was received in the
years to follow. And I found a really interesting New
York Times review by a critic, Richard Lingaman. Uh. This

(43:23):
was from four and he really put the screws to
the book while also highlighting of von Donakan's background as
a convicted embezzler, fraud and forger. So here a few, uh,
a few highlights from the review. Quote. His method is
to use a negative ancient people's couldn't have done or
thought all the things they did, to prove a positive

(43:44):
that the ancient people were the beneficiaries of some kind
of cosmological point for program quote, von Donakin's evidence is
that of an enthusiastic amateur, not scholar, an amateur with
an axe to grind. There is a tendentiousness in his
book that lies in an urgent, recurring motif. A running
complaint against the quote high priests of organized religion, who,

(44:07):
along with the archaeologist, refused to admit the truth as
von Donakan has revealed it. Actually, most modern religion is
not anti scientific, though it might be might well be
anti von Donakin. The two aren't as synonymous. As for archaeologists,
I suspect that their professional tendency is to chip away
at the pot shards of truth rather than make cosmic

(44:28):
leaps of faith into outer space. And then he goes
on to say, ironically, for a man who is almost
gaga about space science, much of what von Donakin purveys
depends upon ancient religious myths, specifically the recurring references to
skyborn gods. We come full circle. The man who seeks
to overturn the religious explanation of man's origins goes not

(44:48):
to scientific evidence, but to the Bible and Ezekiel's fiery wheels. Now,
to push back against that somewhat, I would say, though
it would be very hard to be conclusive about the
idea that are have been visited by aliens if all
you had to go on was literature, I would say
that in many cases, if it actually did happen, the
only evidence we might have would be literature. Exactly. Yeah,

(45:11):
And as as we'll discuss later on, and Carl Sagan
said as much as well, this is where we would
find the evidence. Carl Sagan is a bit more cautious
and determining what, let's say, a lot more cautious, a
lot more cautious and in determined like what could possibly
be identified as evidence. But still he admits that like
this is what we have. We have this this, this

(45:34):
is that when you look back on an ancient people's
and the records they left, you're gonna get religion, You're
gonna get myth. But this is also uh, you know,
you see what he's doing here is he's operating off
of unanswered questions and then immediately navigating to a speculative answer.
I mean you see this in all kinds of people
who are trying to prove radical and speculative hypotheses, where

(45:55):
they take a thing that, you know, take an unknown
like we don't know how they built the pyramids, and
back in the sixties and seventies that was largely true.
I mean, we might have had some good hypotheses, but
it was like, oh wow, you know, there was this
feat accomplished in the ancient world. How could they have
done it? And so because that ends in a question
mark and it's a mystery, now you have license to say, well,

(46:17):
if we don't know, then it must have been X.
And that's exactly what you can't do. So then Donican
he makes some pretty broad assertions about the archaeological evidence
he presents. You know, it's not so much of the
Baghdad battery might have been a battery, now it was
a battery. It's not that the Japanese do goose sculptures
um kind of look like they their space suits, but

(46:37):
they you know, they're definitely representations of space suits. They
are spacemen. Now they do look really cool. And and
the thing is in any of these various bits of
evidence that are brought up, the ones that you know
aren't fraudulent in nature, they are fascinating. Even the ones
that are fraudulent in nature, we could potentially do a
whole episode on, but it's it's to to hold them

(46:59):
up then as proof of of ancient aliens. Is uh,
you know, is this is a step beyond all right,
So I think we've had we've we've had enough time
with with Chariots of the Gods. Let's take a break
and when we come back we will see what Karl
Sagan had to say about all of this. Thank thank alright,
we're back. Now we've been discussing Eric van denikin Chariots

(47:20):
of the Gods, the ancient aliens speculation, uh, and a
lot of the problems with it. But one thing that
this got me wondering about is, I'm reading von dannikin
I'm thinking that this argumentation is not very good. A
lot of the evidence seems very shaky. What would a good,
well presented case for ancient aliens speculation look like? What

(47:43):
would it look like if a responsible, thoughtful, skeptical scientist
approached the question and tried to put together the best
possible case for it. Yeah, because a lot of times
it seems like you have two types of people looking
at it. You have like quasi religious advocates of ancient
aliens and and you have skeptics that are in here
just to tear it down. You know that there they

(48:05):
don't seem like they would even entertain any of the
ideas like who would be the person to maybe not
take the middle ground, but at least approach it with
with skeptical open mindedness. Yeah, not middle ground, but just
giving it a fair skeptical shake. Yeah. And and luckily
this is where Karl Sagan enters the picture, because in
the book Intelligent Life in the Universe, Uh, Sagan teamed

(48:28):
up with the Soviet astrophysicist Josef Schowski and Uh. Indeed,
in the book they do consider they consider a number
of possibilities of concerning uh aliens and the possible existence
of aliens, but they do specifically look at the idea
of ancient aliens as well. They get into it pretty
late in the book, but here's some of the basic

(48:49):
ideas they present. So they said that if interstellar travel
is technically possible, then it is quote likely to be
developed by a civilization substantially in advance of our own.
That kind of makes sense. Are not ready for interstellar
travel yet? And uh, and they argue that if you
have a technologically advanced group like this, the enterprise of
space travel is simply gonna be too rewarding for them

(49:11):
to give up. They're just they're going to to expand
beyond their own planet. I think maybe you could argue
with that, But then again, I don't know. I think
it's fair to assume that there's an exploratory nature in
most organisms. Yeah, I mean, certainly when we come back,
we always come back, of course, around to the idea
that we have to look to our only example of
life and intelligent life, and that's an intelligent life and

(49:32):
that's us, and therefore we tend to think, well, they
would do what we do, which is enlightening and at
times horrifying. Well, okay, so if you try to reason back,
whereas you say, if an organism has intelligence, it can
probably move right, and moving organisms tend to be either
like hunting or foraging types of organisms. They're not just
going to be sitting there and photosynthesizing. So if they

(49:53):
have to seek out types of food, then they probably
have some kind of exploration instinct. I don't know. I mean,
that's very rough, but trying to get there. No, No,
I think you're right. So they say that if interstellar
space flight is a feasible and then technological civilizations of
the galaxy will be uh An intercommunicating whole, but that

(50:14):
the communication will be sluggish. So at this point, the
Sagan uh and Schlovski they do some math and they
determine that quote if contacts are made on a purely
random basis, each star should be visited about once every
ten to the fifth power years, or I believe that's
what a hundred thousand years. Furthermore, quote, each communitive technological

(50:36):
civilization should be visited by another such civilization about once
every thousand years. So you see where this is going, right,
given their assumptions. Yes, so they say that it's possible
then that a starship might have come by the planet
during the earliest stages of intelligent life on Earth, and
that it's therefore possible that, yes, and an extracestrial civilization

(51:00):
could have visited the planet within historical times. Okay with you,
so far, all right? However, this is an important they
lay out here. Quote, there are no reliable reports of
direct contact with an extraterrestrial civilization during the last few centuries,
when critical scholarship and non superstitious reasoning have been fairly widespread.

(51:20):
Any earlier contact story must be encumbered with some degree
of fanciful embellishment due simply to the views prevailing at
the time of the contact. The extent to which subsequent
variation and embellishment alters the fat basic fabric of the
account varies with time and circumstance. And so they point
to an example made by historian Mercelles Lead in the

(51:42):
myth of the Eternal Return or Cosmos in history. And
this is this is an excellent book that I've referenced
on the show several times before. This is where you
get into the idea of the terror of history UH
and the cyclical versus linear time. But Eladi pointed out
just how supernaturally elaborate, elaborate it a simple Romanian romantic
tragedy became, so it became it transformed into a story

(52:06):
of ancient magical myth within the subject's own lifetime, so
that it's like a game of telephone to a certain extent.
Here it's the myth making just compounds everything, so the
the individual it's about is still alive, but the stories
about it have placed it in a magical mythic past. Well.
The myth making impulses not just to make up a story,

(52:30):
and for the listener, not just to repeat a story,
but to repeat a story with your own changes and abolishments.
Exactly so for our purposes here though, the idea if
there's if there's science occurring among the magical, then how
are we to tell them apart in the stories that
survived from the ancient past? Good question. On the other hand,
Sagan and Slowski point out that there's also, for instance,

(52:53):
the the account of six first contact between the telling
that people of North America and sailing vessels. Their quote
oral rendition contains sufficient information for later reconstruction of the
nature of the encounter. But also these stories contain myth
mythic descriptions of the ships. Is uh, the of the

(53:14):
the French ships as great black birds with white wings.
So they say, if you look at the myth, you
see clear embellishments. But you can also put together historical
details from them that we can verify as correct. Right.
So Sagan argues that this means that quote, under certain circumstances,
a brief contact with an alien civilization will be recorded

(53:34):
in a reconstructible manner. Uh. However, he drives home that
it needs to be first of all, committed to written
records soon after the event. It has to be there.
It has to result in major changes for the contacted people,
so not our life of Brian example, where nothing is
really affected. Uh. And then also the contactors can't be
a timpting attempting to disguise themselves, so the aliens can't

(53:58):
be pretending to be humans. So that's going to throw
everything off right right now, I know they wouldn't say
that unless we can verify all that stuff, we can
be sure that alien contact never happened in the past.
They would just say that, you know, we're not justified
in moving to that conclusion until we meet the following criteria, right.
And they also say that you just can't look for

(54:18):
sky gods. It's just too obvious. The sky is just
too obvious a place to position your gods, Like the
only other place to have your gods live is in
the deep ocean, or just in the ocean if you
are a seafaring people. Mountaintops or mountaintops. Yeah, but just
these are just obvious places for gods to be. You
can't say, oh, here's the story about a sky god,
therefore ancient aliens. So instead they say that what you

(54:41):
need is a visit from the sky, a return to
the sky, and a gift of knowledge or technology. Now,
I would charge that that might even be too broad
based on some of the culture bear motifs that I
mentioned earlier, I would agree with that. So this is
a nineteen six book, so it came out before Chariots
of the Gods Uh set the world on fire. So

(55:02):
he's not responding in this book to specific evidence presented
by von Donnikan, but he does talk briefly about some
evidence that would have brought up, particularly by Soviet ethnologist M. M. August,
and he just drives home that yeah, these you have
these cases for past cultures encountering interstellar society, but that

(55:27):
there are just ultimately no known alien artifacts that that
are just definitely connected with this with such a visit.
There's just no hard evidence. But the authors do offer
one possible example from ancient sumer that they think might
be a good starting point if you're going to consider, uh,

(55:47):
examples of potential ancient alien contact. Yeah, so that they say,
we don't have any hard evidence, but we need at
least a framework for how to examine ancient literature and
stories and stuff to see if they meet the great
if they're actually worth considering. And they give this example
of one that is maybe worth considering as an example
of alien contact, not not necessarily as an evidence, but

(56:11):
just worth looking at. So the story relates to the
origin of the Sumerian civilization. Summer is one of the
most ancient civilizations known on planet Earth, dating back to
roughly the fifth millennium b CE. UH. These these versions
of this one story can all be traced back to
one Birosis, a priest of Bell Marduke in Babylon during

(56:32):
the time of Alexander the Great, and supposedly Borrosis had
access to ancient cune of form and pictographic records from
thousands of years before his time. And there are multiple
translations and retellings of Barrosis. And the authors of this
book quote three passages about Borrosis and his writings at length.
So I'll try to summarize. First. According to Alexander polyhistor

(56:56):
and Borrosis is giving a summary of the history and
geography of Babylon, with its native plants and crops, and
its neighboring people's and so forth. And he comes to
speak of beings variously known as ab Khalu and as
Barrosa's himself calls the first one of these creatures Owanas
or a Wannies or Adappa, and Barrosas tells that at

(57:17):
the time in ancient Babylon, there were men of many
nations who were yet uncivilized and quote lived without rule
and order, like the beasts of the field. But then
something happened quote in the first year there made its
appearance from a part of the Persian Gulf which bordered
upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason who was called

(57:39):
as the whole body of the animal was like that
of a fish, and had under a fish's head another head,
and also feet below similar to those of a man
subjoined to the fish's tail. His voice, too, and language
was articulate and human, and a representation of him is
preserved even to this day. Robert, I got a picture here,

(58:02):
at least one picture of oh well, so that the
picture of a honest uh, just kind of looks like
a fishman, which I'm definitely into. But that description with
the double faces that that is, that is creepy. It
really reminds me of some stuff that our Scott Baker
plays with in his um his second Apocalypse saga, which

(58:23):
does involve a sort of ancient alien motif within a
fantasy world. Interesting. I got more quote. This, being in
the daytime, used to converse with men, but took no
food at that season, and he gave them an insight
into letters and sciences and every kind of art. He
taught them to construct houses, to found temples, to compile laws,

(58:46):
and explain to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He
made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and showed
them how to collect fruits. In short, he instructed them
in everything which could tend to soften manners, and human
I is mankind. From that time, so universal were his instructions,
nothing material has been added by way of improvement. When

(59:08):
the sun set, it was the custom of this being
to plunge again into the sea and abide all night
in the deep, for he was amphibious. Oh and then
also quote after this there appeared other animals like Oenus,
of which Barrosas promises to give an account when he
comes to the history of the kings. And then, according

(59:28):
to an ancient writer known as Avid nous Uh, he's
giving an account of the borosis is giving an account
of the king's of ancient Mesopotamia, and he mentions in
passing o Honus and other quote double shaped personages who
came out of the water at various points in history. Also,
Apollodorus gives an account of this history, mentioning that fishmen

(59:50):
appear out of the Persian Gulf at various points throughout history.
And Alexander Polyhisto, or the source of the first version
of the story uh tells a version of the common
flood myth with a king of ancient sumeer being warned
by the gods of a coming flood catastrophe, and he's
told how to preserve his himself in civilization to survive it. So,

(01:00:10):
according to these ancient accounts, Sumerian civilization was not the
invention of humans, but a gift bestowed and guided by
several waves of semi humanoid fish like visitors. Kind of interesting.
Oh yeah, Now this may have once been more impressive
evidence at a time when many archaeologists believe Sumerian civilization

(01:00:31):
sort of sprang up out of nowhere at the time
the myths described. The authors of the book now note
that it seems there was probably a more gradual technological
and cultural evolution to the first Sumerian cities. It is
interesting to think that this same the same kind of
questions we might ask today, like how did bread? How
did they ever figure that out? Or you know, or
making fire that what was it like when when somebody

(01:00:54):
discovered this, Like even in ancient times, I'm imagining you
could still have someone that might think, wow, I just
don't see how anyone figured this out. It must have
been fished people, right, It's not like they knew who
first drank milk out of the cow right, they needed
a myth for that too, um So. The authors also
point out interesting features of Sumerian pictographic art on cylinder seals,

(01:01:15):
which show mysterious symbols that appear like they could be
representations of solar systems. So there will be a symbol
where there's like a central sphere with rays appearing to
come out of it, and it's being circled by smaller spheres.
The idea of planet circling a son, of course, wouldn't
catch on until centuries later. And more interestingly, there are
images of this type with different numbers of planets that

(01:01:39):
seem to be associated with different gods, almost suggesting that
it's like, Okay, this god came from this solar system
and this other god came from this other solar system. However,
as fun as it can be to draw connections like this,
the author's stress that we should not get carried away
quote these cylinder seals maybe nothing more than the experiments
of the ancient uncons anscious mind to understand and portray

(01:02:02):
a sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes hostile environment. The stories of the
op Kalu may have been made out of whole cloth,
perhaps as late as Babylonian times, perhaps by Barrosas himself.
Sumerian society may have developed gradually over many thousands of years.
In any event, a completely convincing demonstration of past contact
with an extraterrestrial civilization will always be difficult to provide

(01:02:26):
on textual grounds alone. But stories like the Oanes legend
and representations especially of the earliest civilizations on the Earth,
deserve much more critical studies than have been performed here
to four, with the possibility of direct contact with an
extraterrestrial civilization as one of the many possible alternative interpretations.

(01:02:46):
So they're saying, it's a high bar, you know, if
you're going to try to go from ancient textual evidence
and just like storytelling to okay, aliens came here, it's
going to be a really high bar to jump over, right,
But we should at least be open to the idea
that such contact could have possibly happened, and have a
good idea of what evidence for it would look like. Yeah,

(01:03:08):
So they summarized that given the numbers they discussed, it's
possible that Earth has been visited maybe many times, maybe
by numerous galactic civilizations even during geologic time, and that
they might have a base of operations within our solar system.
So in the point out that the moon makes the
most sense here, just as author C. Clark explored in

(01:03:30):
his science fiction specifically two thousand and one, we should
stress again appears to be no evidence of that. No, yeah, no,
no evidence. But but basically they're saying, like, all right,
somebody comes through here, they see, oh, there's something interesting
going on in this Earth. But we're important aliens. We
have things to do. We can't hang out around here
and watch. We can't wait for it to get interesting.

(01:03:51):
Let's leave something behind, so we leave Larry. Yeah, let's
leave Larry. Uh, Larry, But we don't want to leave
Larry in plain sight because they're really looking at the
stars a lot, and they're right things down. I guess
we're gonna have to put it on the other side
of the moon just to keep it under wraps. Uh.
But now we've surveyed the other side of the moon
and no Larry so far. Yeah, so you know they
need to they say that, Yeah, they would. They might

(01:04:13):
want to create an automated system to keep track of
technological developments on Earth because that thousand year interval it
wouldn't be enough to avoid self annihilation incidents. You know,
they don't want to miss anything. You don't want to
come back a thousand years later and it's like, oh,
those what happened to those ape creatures? Oh they discovered
nuclear whatps man, They're gone already and we missed it now.
They also point out that the other thing to keep

(01:04:34):
in mind is that if if if extraterrestrials wanted to
contact us, they wouldn't necessarily need to show up and
do it. They could simply transmit a message, And certainly
the work of the set has revolved around that, like,
let's listen, let's see if their signals coming. That seems
to be a far more plausible way for first contact

(01:04:56):
to occur. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean people when they imagine
first contact happening, they think we're going to be looking
at the aliens face to face. I'd say they're at
least two things more likely than that. Number one is that,
of course we would get their electromagnetic signals first. But
also still more likely than encountering them face to face
is simply encountering their technology in person. They're they're unscrewed probes. Now,

(01:05:17):
the good news that the authors present here is an
advance civilization like this wouldn't have to enslave us or
eat us good because they would probably be be on
that however, so so the Cathulu theory is off. Yeah,
I guess that one's off the table. Maybe, But then
when you get into questions of religious or cultural conversion,

(01:05:38):
well we can't really rule that out. The other possibility
is that perhaps humans have some unique talent that aliens
would require, even if it's just mere amusement, or they
might just want to crush us to prevent us from
posing a threat, just say, oh, well they have promised
they have spunk these humans, we need to cut that out.
Or or also even worse, they get to be something

(01:06:00):
that they call the cockroach response, which is simply it's different.
We better kill it. But then again, if it hasn't
happened already, then then maybe we're safe. Now Again, that
book came out The Four Chariots of the Gods. Uh,
Sagan definitely lived long enough to reconsider some of this

(01:06:22):
and to and to sort of revisit the idea of
ancient aliens in light of the ancient alien madness. I
guess you could say that kind of gripped the culture.
Let's hear it. Yeah, so he he wrote about it
this time solo. In the book Broke's Brain, Reflections on
the Romance of Science, He wrote that he believed that
those excited by ancient alien speculation, you know, they're generally

(01:06:45):
motivated by sincere scientific and occasionally religious feelings that you know,
their their passion for science is real. But quote, for
many people, the shoddily thought out doctrines of borderline science
are the closest to oximation, to comprehensible science readily available.
So the idea here is you're scientifically curious, but then

(01:07:08):
where do you go to get your information? Like you
turn on the TV, and if you're presented with in
search of if you're presented with ancient aliens, then that
is what is going to feed your hunger. Yeah. I
mean a lot of times you see people who are
attracted to pseudoscience or people who have not had the
right kind of exposure to how inspiring real science can be.

(01:07:28):
Yeah yeah, or or or for instance, how inspiring real
archaeology can be, how how legitimate studies of mythology, how
how they can inspire us. So most of his criticism
is really not leveled at people who enjoy it or
or buy into it, but rather those certainly those who
peddle it. Uh and he he responds broadly to some

(01:07:51):
of the evidence and chariots of the gods and points
out that quote in every case, the artifacts in question
have plausible and much simpler explanations. I agree with that
our ancestors were no dummies. They may have lacked high technology,
but they were as smart as we, and they sometimes
combined dedication, intelligence, and hard work to produce results that
impress even us. So against killing it. Yeah. He also

(01:08:14):
pointed out that a s may have remained a popular
idea in Russia at the time because it presented religious
ideas within a scientific framework. So if you're in a
communist state, that's sort of got an anti religious position,
but you've still got a religious disposition. You want to
believe in mythological types of ideas, but it's not cool
to say be a Christian or anything like that anymore.

(01:08:35):
You could be essentially of the ancient aliens religion, right, Yeah,
it is quasi religious at least. He also speculated that
the interest in UFOs and ancient astronauts quote seems at
least partially the result of unfulfilled religious needs. So again
you have tales of wise, powerful, benign humanoid entities that
attend to the human race. And this is an idea

(01:08:57):
that definitely ends up becoming central to a numb a
different ufo uh New religions, the idea that the aliens
will save us from ourselves, that the aliens have an
answer to our essentially our religious needs. And he he
also mentions that that he had given the idea of
ancient aliens far far more attention than he cared to

(01:09:18):
think about, and that he loved the idea. But but
you know, as you might expect Sagan to him, and
clearly he didn't write about it previously and in this
volume because he thought it was just ridiculous and above consideration. No,
clearly Sagan doesn't like hate this and want to crush it.
He just wants to be responsible when entertaining the idea. Yeah,
he's but he says that the the supposed evidence rarely

(01:09:41):
requires more than just passing attention. Quote in the long
litany of ancient astronaut pop archaeology, the cases of apparent
interest have perfectly reasonable alternative explanations or have been misreported,
or are simple pre varications, hoaxes and distortions. And then
he makes these final points. He says that even if

(01:10:02):
an advanced alien civilization had really wanted to leave a
calling card, there would be no question. They could have
left a metal artifact that, due to elemental composition, would
have clearly been from beyond. Or yeah, they could have
left a silicon semiconductor chip, yeah, yeah, they could have
left a mathematical proof as a calling card. There there
are various things that could have done. Here's Fermat's last theorem. Yeah,

(01:10:24):
but but they didn't. They didn't leave any of these things.
This book broke his brain. Reflections on the romance of science.
This is still in print. You can you can definitely
obtain a copy, and I would advise anyone who's interested
to check it out because he does go into greater
detail on some of the arguments for a s namely
the serious mystery of the dogon people. Uh, it's all

(01:10:45):
very interesting. We don't really have time to discuss it here,
but the book is out there. Sagan's writing is always
a joy, So I invite everyone to check it out.
So I'd say my takeaway at the end of this
is that there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea that
Earth may have been visited by aliens at some point.
It's possible for all we know. There's nothing wrong with
playing with speculation or looking for evidence there. But don't

(01:11:08):
get carried away. Don't let it become your religion, and
don't don't lower your standard of evidence just because it's
a cool idea and you want it to be true. Yeah,
I agree, Like, don't make it your religion. But if
you do make it your religion, just be open about
the fact that you've made it your religion. That's fine too, sure, Yeah, yeah, uh.
Don't make it your religion and then pretended science and
try to convince people. One last thing, I want to

(01:11:30):
test your intuitions on something or discigional audience just you.
I mean, the audience can play to play along at home.
But Robert, I want to think about ranking some probability.
So let's say you're in a scenario where you find
out archaeologists have discovered a tomb in the Nile Valley
with multiple lines of evidence independently confirming to every major

(01:11:51):
archaeologist satisfaction that the tomb has remained buried and undisturbed
since at the latest. And also inside the tomb they
discover a clay jar containing silicon, semiconductor chips and say
lithium ion batteries. All other things being equal, what do

(01:12:12):
you think would be the ranking of the most likely
interpretations of this? Would it be that there was ancient
lost technology, right, that some ancient Egyptians figured out how
to make these inventions semiconductor chips and batteries, and somehow
this is the first we're finding out about this capability
of theirs, or ancient aliens. Aliens came and brought this

(01:12:34):
or taught humans how to make it and it was lost,
or they just you know, shared a few trinkets, or
time travel or all the experts are wrong and this
is some kind of hoax. Well, I have to throw
out time travel because that definitely breaks our understanding of
of cosmos. I was going to say the same. I

(01:12:54):
think I actually ranked time travel below ancient aliens, and
I would I can see where though, I can see
where someone would be more inclined for ancient Aliens over
the two remaining options, simply because if you go to
ancient aliens, then you kind of have an out. You
don't have to admit that, oh well, we simply missed
it in the in the in the archaeological record. We

(01:13:17):
just somehow missed the fact that the ancient Egyptians developed batteries. Yeah,
it's a tough question actually knowing how to rank these
other ones. I think for me, the top option would
be a tie between all all the experts are wrong
and it's some kind of hoax that's been very cleverly
designed to fool all the The hoax is really the
place I think I would go first, because it's just

(01:13:39):
it seems so outrageous, like it it's too much of
a leap of faith to think aliens like time travel
is is impossible as we understand uh the underworkings of
the universe. And then the idea that we simply missed
all record of this technology also seems unlikely. Lost technology
is very hard to hard to believe because of the context.

(01:14:02):
Right um, that technology doesn't come to exist in a vacuum,
but comes as a result of other technologies. So if
you suddenly found lithium ion batteries and silicon semiconductor chips
in ancient Egypt, it wouldn't just be that, like, Wow,
how do they figure out how to make those? They
would be missing many many steps along the chain of

(01:14:23):
technological progress that would lead you to be able to
make those. So you'd have to assume not just that,
but you'd have to assume the step before it, and
before that and before that, like all the metal working
and all the fine machining and machining tolerances and things
like that. Yeah, it's like if you suddenly found out
that you're significant other was a drug lord, you know,

(01:14:43):
and would and they were you, and you would say,
how did I not know they were a drug lord?
Like you would think there would be there would be
other steps up to becoming a drug lord, right, I
would have been surprised at something way earlier in the
chain of this progression. Yeah, so that's hard to entertain too,
But I don't know. I think maybe I I probably
go with hoax first, and then maybe it's hard to

(01:15:04):
decide whether ancient aliens or lost technology is a better
because one of those those answers at least has an
answer built into it for why there's no evidence of
its development and construction or it's travel beyond that region,

(01:15:24):
like because it's simply an alien dropped it. But in
any case, I think clever hoax beats the other two definitely,
and it's sad, like that's the sad answer. Nobody wants
that to be the answer to their either they're great
archaeological find or their unique insight into some bit of
existing mythological, archaic archaeological evidence. But I would have to
wonder we'd at least do an episode on it. We

(01:15:46):
try to give it a fair shake, right, yeah, exactly,
all right, so there you have it again. We did
not have time here to discuss every example that is
often brought up as as potential evidence for ancient aliens,
though many of them are are just fascinating in their
own ride. I think one or two we've discussed on
the show before, like the idea that uh that that
the Hindu epics describe the use of nuclear super weapons.

(01:16:11):
It's a fabulous concept, but we just didn't have time
to get into it today. But again, there is ultimately
no evidence for for that being true. I agree, certainly
no physical evidence, which is what the real standard would be.
Even with physical evidence, as we've said, it would be
hard to know exactly what to make what to make
of it. And with all this uh, literary and artistic
evidence that's heavily based on interpretation, you've got all the

(01:16:33):
problems that we discussed with say again and trying to
make sense of what's this story from ancient summer about? Um, Yeah,
it's it's a hard hill to climb up if you
want to say that there were ancient aliens. But if
you must climb that hill, do your best to do
it in a responsible, skeptical, evidence based way. Yeah, or
certainly give it your best shot, go wild within the
realms of fiction. Again. I hope that we I hope

(01:16:56):
we keep getting great ancient astronaut fiction because I can't
get enough of it. So there you have it. Hey,
if you want more episodes of Stuff to Blow your
Mind and head on over to Stuff to Blow your
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(01:17:18):
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(01:17:38):
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(01:18:00):
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