From the Vault: Chariots of the Gods

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
That means it's time for the Vault. This episode originally
published June, and it's about one of our favorite punching
bags but also like a fun punching bag, the Chariots
of the Gods. Yes, yeah, this is This is a

(00:26):
really fun episode to put together. Um, you know, and
I think it's because the topic itself is fun and
the topic the topic itself, there's nothing wrong with it,
Like there's nothing wrong with with asking the question, is
their life elsewhere in the in the galaxy? Might it
have visited us in the past? And if it did
visit us in the past, might we find evidence of that? Oh? Sure,

(00:48):
I mean it's a fascinating question. It's a fun thing
to contemplate. You run into trouble when you start trying
to push this hypothesis without good evidence, which is what
all these you know, Eric von Danikin types are doing exact.
It's the evidence or the lack of evidence that is
the sticking point. And so that's one of the things
we discussed in this episode. And so I hope you
enjoy it. Uh. Here we are the Chariots of the Gods.

(01:14):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
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, Robert and I were talking

(01:35):
about possible alternative theme parks that just never got to
be obvious, thinking, you know, we've got Disneyland and Disney
World that we know some people here in the office
that really into Disney World to 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 classic animated characters, not of Disney,

(01:57):
but of Don Bluth. Okay, so this would be like
this Secretive Nim Yeah, so you've got like a Secretive
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 in costumes of Rocketdoodle comes up to you. There's
an Old Dogs go to Heaven. You know, you get
to be a dog and go to dog Hell ride that. Yeah,

(02:19):
that was a disturbing portion of that movie I remember. Yeah.
But then also there's got to be a Dragon's Layer
ride because Don Blues worked on that. That's right. This
is the classic animation style video game. 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.
You get into all those old cool Disney alternative animated

(02:40):
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,
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

(03:04):
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
on the other hand, we do have Dollywood, the Dolly
Parton themed yea theme park. I don't think I've ever
been to Dollywood, but you gotta wonder what's there? Is

(03:27):
it just the same stuff, Like, it's just roller coasters
and carnival games and stuff, except it's Dolly Parton themed.
What's all about the theme, right? It's all about the fluff?
Like I remember, I never went to Dollywood, but I
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

(03:50):
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
sort of director associated with it to tell 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

(04:13):
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 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. Originally opened

(04:35):
as mystery park, though, it offers fun and entertainment for
the entire family, including Misty Land for 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

(04:56):
answers to be found in ancient astronaut HYPOTHESI what, yes, yeah,
this is I need to drive this sound. This is
not some silly skit that Joe and I have prepared
for everybody. This is a real theme park in Interlock
in Switzerland, centered around the ideas and writings of Eric
van Donnikin, author of the nine eight book Chariots of

(05:19):
the Gods. I like how the original book title ends
in a question mark. Yes, so I 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

(05:39):
tremendously awesome title and kind of screws it up by
making a question. You know, you've 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,

(06:01):
and we will definitely get into that as we proceed,
But this particular park again. It opened as Mystery Park
in 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 Fraul Park.

(06:22):
It's exhibits still focus on things like the Nasca lines,
the construction 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

(06:43):
all just a consideration of these ideas rather than um,
you know, 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 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

(07:05):
have like a ziggurat and a pyramid. You can, you can.
I'll try to make sure that we link to the
home page 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

(07:26):
been familiar with Van Donkin for a long time. I
remember seeing 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've come to expect from religious groups in the United States,
like the Holy Lands Theme Park. I believe it is

(07:46):
in Florida. Oh yeah, if you're not aware of this phenomenon.
In 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

(08:07):
humans and dinosaurs lived side by side and that the
Earth is six thousand years 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 they're 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,

(08:28):
there to be a theme park based around the concept
of 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 a lizard
people theme park, but 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

(08:50):
means the roller coasters will be very boring though there's
no rollers, it's just flat circle flat roller coasters. Yeah.
So we've had listeners in the past to 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

(09:12):
interesting if there were some actual evidence for it, but
there 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

(09:32):
stress that we are going to approach this topic, like
all the topics we can approach, with a skeptical mind,
but an open mind. Okay, yeah, an open minded mind exactly. Yeah.
And while we're gonna be talking about about Vannikin himself
and his book at the top of this episode, we
are going to get into say, Carl Sagan's thoughts on

(09:53):
the possibility of ancient aliens as we progress and 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

(10:14):
clear that I find the idea of ancient aliens visiting
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

(10:35):
make the argument that, Okay, if somebody shows up and
says 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,

(10:57):
whether they visited Earth in the past. Maybe they have,
of there's 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 nineteen sixty eight book
by Erik von Donakin, and the basic idea here is
again that ancient that ancient astronauts visited Earth and serve

(11:19):
as the sort of god figures of our mythologies and religions,
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?

(11:41):
I thought about that with bread before you know, I'm like,
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 oats and cows. Oh

(12:01):
well that is that isn't another interesting topic topic. 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 sheep's milk.

(12:24):
Let's see what happens. Okay, so 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

(12:44):
doing experiments on us. Yeah. Uh. So we can't 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 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

(13:05):
of the major types of arguments he makes is about
ancient projects that supposedly were beyond our power to produce
at the time. Right, So this is you know you
mentioned how do we learn to bake bread? How did
we learn to build pyramids? Von Danikin 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

(13:26):
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 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?

(13:47):
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?
Vandanakin makes that argument too. He says the pyramids are
they seem to be oriented with some kind of relationship
to the star. As an 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

(14:07):
to be wrong. But yeah, if you look at pyramids
like the Great Pyramid of Giza built in the twenty
six century BC, it's true that we used to consider
it a great mystery how these amazing marvels like the
Pyramids were built in a time before modern metal working.
I mean, these people didn't have iron tools or anything.
They're probably working with like copper tools. Uh, this is

(14:27):
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.
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

(14:51):
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
workers would have ropes and they'd pull a sledge with
a stone on it. And there was even a recent
discovery about how wetting the sand underneath the sledge could

(15:12):
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.
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,

(15:34):
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,
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

(15:56):
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,
that depicts aliens and spaceships. So you could look at
ancient figurines from Japan and say that looks like an

(16:17):
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,
this is one of those cases where you're taking several
logical leaps to get to a more grandiose explanation. Yeah.

(16:40):
And it's not to say that things like the Nasca
Lines 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
the sky or even maybe somehow people traveling in the
sky to look down and see them. So you know

(17:01):
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 a you know, an aircraft parking bay. Likewise,
another way he looks at ancient art is the Mayan
temple of the inscriptions at pelen k Robert, had you
ever seen this carving before? Um? If I had, I'd

(17:23):
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,
uh as part of the research for this episode, like
knowing what people would read into it. Because knowing what

(17:44):
people would read into it, I look at it and
I'm I'm reminded of hr Geiger's concept for the pilot
that they encounter and Alien that the giant. You know
that the Titan character that is fossilized in this, uh,
this command chair within the crashed Alien spaceship the engineer. Yeah. Yeah,

(18:04):
it's sort of a similar reclining pose surrounded by I
don't know what you call it, kind of ornate objects
that look like all them. Maybe that could be some
form of technology. So this carving from this Mayan temple
is from the sarcophagus of the Mayan lord Pakal the Great,
who lived in the seventh century CE. And from what

(18:24):
I've read, the stuff in the carving are common Mayan
religious symbols. They're the kinds of things you see on
Miyan 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 reclining and he's
surrounded by all these objects and lines and weird looking stuff,

(18:47):
and so maybe what this 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 base of art. I love that idea,
but but again it comes it comes down to the question,
is this really the best explanation for what we're looking

(19:07):
at here? Yeah, good question. Again, I think the answer
is probably no. And then finally another line of evidence is,
for example, ancient descriptions of things in literature and religion.
So 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 we done this one before?
I know it came up when Christian and I talked

(19:28):
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 give a brief reading,
the author, supposedly the prophet Ezekiel, writes that he had

(19:51):
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. Out of the
midst of the fire. Also from within it came the
likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance.

(20:14):
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 the living creatures, behold,
a wheel was on the earth beside each living creature,
with its four faces. The appearance of the wheels and

(20:36):
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 not turn aside when
they went. As for their rims, they were so high,
they were awesome, and their rims were full of eyes

(20:59):
all around on 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 encounter
with something beyond the human experience 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,

(21:22):
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 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

(21:46):
talked about that before too. We often want to limit
just the pure imagination of ancient peoples 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. You can create amazing things without
bumping your head or or or eating something odd. I

(22:07):
totally agree. I always want to emphasize that point. H
And then finally, 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 is convinced, He says,
quote the description is astonishingly good. Ezekiel says that each

(22:27):
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 a multi purpose vehicle,
say an amphibious helicopter, do not stay on the ground

(22:50):
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 by 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 just being interlocking cosmic
wheels with eyeballs all over the place. I like that too.

(23:12):
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 desert sand. Now,
the God of the Old Testament was supposed to be omnipotent,

(23:34):
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 think the Bible is
full of references to God and other divine beings having

(23:56):
physical bodies and physical limitations and being subject a 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 the cool of
the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from
the presence of the Lord God among the trees of

(24:18):
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 Jane's made about the Bible,
taking into account both Testaments, is that in the beginning,
things are very physical, and then they become less physical
as you progress. God begins as something that is seen

(24:39):
and it 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 the
history of religion, of the steady abstracting of religious beings. Uh,

(25:00):
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 this
clear distinction that we make between aliens and gods is
sort of a post Enlightenment distinction informed by scientific thinking

(25:24):
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 an Old Testament angel might show up and you
might need invited into your house or wrestle it out
out in the yard. Uh, that that sort of thing.
The gods of the Greeks are taking physical form and

(25:46):
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 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

(26:08):
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 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

(26:30):
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, here's
one of the craziest things. Many of the gods, not
not always, but many of the gods and ancient religions
clearly get their power not from some kind of supernatural nature,

(26:50):
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 or just like a technological alien would, yeah,
magical items. So anyway, that wraps up my basic description
of of the flavor of von Danikin's type of arguments.
I think we can already see a lot of the

(27:13):
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, is that it
is an essential book to discuss because it definitely launched
ancient astronaut speculation into the public consciousness. Absolutely, it emerged,

(27:37):
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. 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

(27:58):
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 set in. But it was also a period of
time in which supernatural experiences took a decidedly sci fi turn,
in many cases entailing UFO citings, alien abduction experiences that

(28:20):
we have a whole episodes about here. And von Donakin'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 spinoff bits
of media. And we should be clear here, von Donakin
popularized the notion, but he was not the originator. Well

(28:41):
it depends no, No, you're you're right about that. He
he was not the originator. I was gonna say, I
was going to 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 in this
was a Skeptic magazine article titled Chariot Terror of the
Gods by Jason Loveto, and he points out that you

(29:02):
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
our very existence. Yeah. Absolutely, If if you're not familiar
with Lovecrafts alien agent aliens mythos, just to read a
quote from Call of Cthulhu that also appears in Colavito's article. Quote,

(29:27):
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 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 and the cycle of eternity. They had indeed come

(29:50):
themselves from the stars and brought their images with them.
And of course the original title for that that story
by HP Lovecraft was the Call of Cthulhu. But the
Colovido 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,

(30:13):
so I've never read it, but I'm I'm familiar with
it by reputation. This was a nineteen sixty book by
Louis Paulis and Jacques Bergier. Uh. 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

(30:33):
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, 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

(30:57):
actually editors of a French magazine called Planet or Planet
I guess, which printed French translations of Lovecraft throughout the sixties.
In Traces of the Gods, Ancient Astronauts as a vision
of our future, Jonas Richter points out several additional precursors here,
uh so possible. First ancient astronauts speculation concept in sci

(31:19):
fi comes from Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Service,
published in eight 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
eight seven novel by Kurd loss Fitz that explored this
sort of contact between interplanetary cultures, and of course he

(31:42):
points out Lovecraft. But then there's also Perry Roden, a
German science fiction 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 Donnikin had the book that really just

(32:03):
took it and propelled it into the mainstream. Now, of
course this ended up making its way into other fictional
properties that were even more mainstream, 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

(32:24):
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
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

(32:44):
get into to it when we started 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
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

(33:09):
that definitely has an ancient aliens vibe to it. Of course,
the Ridley Scott film Prometheus is is rich with with
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 to the Indiana Jones movies,

(33:30):
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,
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

(33:52):
either it's so strange that it is alien either way. Also,
the c G I go for didn't help. Um. Now,
one of my favorites that I almost didn't think to
include is The Life of Brian, the Money Python religious epic.
There's there's a brief alien interlude. I recall, there's like

(34:13):
a chase sequence with the character of Brian and he
is accidentally abducted by aliens and goes on a brief
adventure and it's so perfect because it's so accidental. 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

(34:35):
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
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

(34:56):
have 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,
at least a day is worth of filming, and then
Terry Gilliams like, I already built it. Uh. They're also

(35:16):
less memorable films that we might mention the Stargate. I
say less memorable, but I definitely remember an Egyptian god
having his head teleported off and in that in that
film that was at least one awesome quality kill. Yeah.
The best thing 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,

(35:40):
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 of the the The Old Doctor
Who episodes, there was an episode called the Pyramids of
Mars that has some ancient alien speculation, uh intrigue in it,

(36:01):
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 of course there are plenty of other examples in
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 happened to be.

(36:25):
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,
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

(36:46):
we we see this motif time and time again a
myth in which a god read demigod gives a technology
to ancient people. Uh. These are frequently referred to as
culture bearers. So we have Prometheus the firebringer in Chinese mythology,
we have Sujin the fire driller, who, who fulfills the
same role, brings the technology of fire to mortals. Uh.

(37:09):
And uh. You know, I have to admit that even
though I don't personally put a lot of of stock
or faith in in a s, I still read these
accounts or look at visual interpretations, and part of me
always thinks, oh, yeah, it was totally an ancient alien.
That it does. It just makes sense what else would
Prometheus be. But of course this is always flawed logic
because I feel like one of the big things to

(37:30):
drive home here is that God's in our myths are
not merely mislabeled aliens. Rather, I think it's the reverse.
Aliens are 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

(37:53):
of the way the movie Prometheus is echoing all of
these echoing all of these themes from Greek myth. Yeah, exactly.
I guess we need to take a break, don't we. Yes,
we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
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

(38:14):
of those one of those subsidiary networks. I have never
watched any of the Ancient Alien shows, but I did
see Leonard Nimoy's in Search Off or at least 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

(38:35):
an alien as well? Probably? Yeah, I want to I'm
going to drop a fact on you. We'll see how
you deal with this. Did you know that Ancient Aliens
is still on still making new episodes. It's currently on
season thirteen. Wow? You think how you like them? Apple?
It's it's I mean, having looked at some of the

(38:56):
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 you'd run out of the really
good ones by at least season eight. Yeah. Yeah, God,
I mean not to say that Ancient Aliens is not
a fun idea. It's fun to speculate about, fun to

(39:17):
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 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

(39:37):
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, Eric van Donnikin's
Chariots of the Gods and stock footage from Jurassic Fight
Club into a blender. What results is a slimy and

(39:59):
INCOMPREHENSI will mixture of idle speculation and outright fabrications. Now
he's discussing an episode of the Ancient Aliens show. I
think where they're they're talking about dinosaurs. Okay, I read
I read this article and he says that there's basically
they've got all their quote experts on talking about how
aliens might have wiped out the dinosaurs in order to

(40:22):
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 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

(40:43):
characters on cigarettes. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's why. Just the
other day I found a creationist book in a lending
library at a state park and I've moved it directly
from the lending library to a trash can, and it
was such satisfying them. You know, some of those creationist
books that have some good illustrations in them, that the
illustrations are great. I just, uh, I feel like there

(41:05):
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 I'm not positive anyway, it's it depicts a dinosaur.
I think it's a parasar lapus paras. How do you
say that one? Parasar lopus. So that's the white one.
That's the way my son says it, and he's usually

(41:27):
better at dinosaur named pronunciation than than me. In the illustration,
it's breathing fire on his he re. It's just like, yeah,
that one, it breathes fire. Well, that explains the the
complex nasal composition. So anyway, back to Chariots of the Gods.
We've recently discussed some beautifully presented hypotheses by writers such
as Julian Jaynes and Letard and Leonard Schlaine. Uh. You

(41:50):
know that that make a case for something that that
you might not accept completely. You know, it's maybe taking
a radical coach to our interpretation of the past and
to just 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 Von

(42:11):
Donakin 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 what there is to get excited about.
In the introduction alone, von Donakin immediately goes into attack
mode on anyone who might disagree with his notion that

(42:33):
archaeological and religious evidence definitely supports the idea that ancient
aliens visited the earth and kickstarted humans from that that
hate level. Uh and I 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

(42:55):
traditional archaeology constructed so laboriously and firmly cemented. Own 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 snail shell of their familiar world
when faced with the probability that finding out about our
past will be even more mysterious and adventurous than finding

(43:16):
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, 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.

(43:36):
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 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

(43:57):
that a fair fair shake here, And 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, doesn't do it
any favors, because it immediately feels a bit um aggressive. Yes, Now,

(44:18):
I looked back to see 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 was from nine four,
and he really put the screws to the book while

(44:39):
also highlighting of von Donakin's background as a convicted in
Bezler 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 that
the ancient people were the beneficiaries of some kind of
cosmological point for program quote, von Donakin's evidence is that

(45:03):
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, along
with the archaeologist, refused to admit the truth. As von
Donakin has revealed it, Actually, most modern religion is not

(45:25):
anti scientific, though it might be might well be anti
von Donakin. The two aren't as synonymous as for archaeologist,
I suspect that their professional tendency is to chip away
at the potsherds of truth rather than make cosmic 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

(45:48):
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 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

(46:10):
that Earth had 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, 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 determining what,

(46:33):
let's say, a lot more cautious, a lot more cautious
in determine like what could possibly be identified as evidence.
But still he admits that like this is what we have.
We have this this, this is when you look back
on an ancient peoples and the records they left, you're
gonna get religion, you're gonna get myth. But this is
also you know, you see what he's doing here is

(46:53):
he's operating off of unanswered questions and then immediately navigating
to a spect killative answer. I mean, you see this
in all kinds of people who are trying to prove
radical and speculative hypotheses, where 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

(47:16):
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, if we don't know,
then it must have been X. And that's exactly what
you can't do. So Van Donkan and he makes some
pretty broad assertions about the archaeological evidence he presents. You know,

(47:38):
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 goo sculptures um kind of look
like they their space suits. But they you know, they're
definitely representations of space suits. Yes they are spacemen that
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,

(48:01):
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 up in 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

(48:23):
will see what Karl Sagan had to say about all
of this. Thank alright, we're back. Now we've been discussing
Eric van Deniken Chariots 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 Danicken, I'm thinking that this argumentation is

(48:44):
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 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

(49:05):
people looking at it. You have like quasi religious advocates
of ancient aliens, and then you have skeptics that are
in here just to tear it down. You know that
there they 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,

(49:28):
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 up with the Soviet astrophysicist Josef Shotski and UH. Indeed,
in the book they do consider they consider a number
of possibilities concerning UH aliens and the possible existence of aliens,

(49:53):
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 the basic 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. We're not ready for interstellar travel yet.
And UH and they argue that if you have a

(50:16):
technologically advanced group like this, the enterprise of space travel
is simply gonna be too rewarding for them 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,

(50:37):
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 that's us and therefore we tend
to think what 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 times

(51:00):
of organisms. They're not just going to be sitting there
and photosynthesizing. So if they 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

(51:20):
and then technological civilizations of the galaxy will be an
intercommunicating whole, but that the communication will be sluggish. So
at this point, the Sagan and Schlowski 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

(51:41):
I believe that's what a hundred thousand years. Furthermore, quote,
each communitive technological 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

(52:02):
come by the planet during the earliest stages of intelligent
life on Earth, and that it's therefore possible that yes,
in an extracestrial civilization 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

(52:23):
civilization during the last few centuries, when critical scholarship and
non superstitious reasoning have been fairly widespread. 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

(52:44):
alters the fat basic fabric of the account varies with
time and circumstance. And so they point to an example
made by historian Mercelles in the 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 the idea of
the terror of history uh and the cyclical versus linear time.

(53:06):
But Deliade pointed out just how supernaturally elaborated, elaborated a
simple Romanian romantic tragedy became. So it became it transformed
into a story 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

(53:29):
compounds everything. So 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, and for the listener, not
just to repeat a story, but to repeat a story
with your own changes and embolishments. Exactly so for our
purposes here, though, the idea, if there's if there's science

(53:52):
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 hands, Sagan and Showsky point
out that there's also, for instance, the the account of
seventeen eighty six first contact between the telling that people
of North America and French sailing vessels their quote oral

(54:13):
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 if
the French ships has great blackbirds with white wings. So
they say, if you look at the myth, you see
clear embellishments. But you can also put together historical details

(54:35):
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
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,

(54:58):
so not our life of Brian example, where nothing is
really affected. Uh. And then also the contactors can't be
attempting attempting to disguise themselves, so the aliens can't be
pretending to be humans, or that's gonna 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

(55:20):
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
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

(55:40):
are a seafaring people, or mountaintops or mountaintops. Yeah, but
just these are just obvious places for God's to be.
You can't say, oh, here's the story about a sky god,
therefore ancient aliens. So instead they say that you what
you need is a visit from the sky, a return
to the sky, and a gift of knowledge or technology.
Now I would charge that might even be too broad

(56:01):
based on some of the culture bearer motifs that I
mentioned earlier, I would agree with that. So this is
a book, so it came out before Chariots of the
Gods set the world on fire. So he's not responding
in this book to specific evidence presented by von Donnikin,
but he does talk briefly about some evidence that was

(56:24):
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 there
are just ultimately no known alien artifacts that that are
just definitely connected with this with such a visit. There's

(56:46):
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,
examples of initial ancient alien contact. Yeah, so they say,
we don't have any hard evidence, but we need at
least a framework for how to examine ancient literature and

(57:09):
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
just worth looking at. So the story relates to the
origin of the Sumerian civilization. Sumer is one of the
most ancient civilizations known on planet Earth. Dating backs are

(57:32):
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 bel Marduke in Babylon during
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

(57:53):
translations and retellings of Borosis. And the authors of this
book quote three messages about Borrosis and his writings at length.
So I'll try to summarize. First. According to Alexander polyhistor
and Borosis is giving a summary of the history and
geography of Babylon, with its native plants and crops, and

(58:14):
its neighboring people's and so forth. And he comes to
speak of beings variously known as ab Khalu and as
Barross himself calls the first one of these creatures Oanas
or a Wannies or Adappa, and Barrosas tells that at
the time in ancient Babylon, there were men of many
nations who were yet uncivilized and quote lived without rule

(58:36):
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
as the whole body of the animal was like that
of a fish, and had under a fish's head another head,

(58:58):
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,
at least one picture of as oh well, so that
the picture of a honest uh, just kind of looks

(59:20):
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 does involve a sort of ancient alien motif within
a fantasy world. Interesting. I got more quote. This being

(59:43):
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, and explain to them the principles of gmt
crical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the
earth and showed them how to collect fruits. In short,

(01:00:06):
he instructed them in everything which could tend to soften
manners and humanize mankind. From that time, so universal were
his instructions, nothing material has been added by way of improvement.
When 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

(01:00:29):
then also quote after this there appeared other animals like
oh Honus, of which Borrosis promises to give an account
when he comes to the history of the kings. And then,
according to an ancient writer known as Avid nous Uh,
he's giving an account of the Borosis is giving an
account of the kings of ancient Mesopotamia, and he mentions
in passing O Honus and other quote double shaped personages

(01:00:53):
who came out of the water at various points in history. Also,
Apollodorus gives an account of this history, mentioning that fishmen
appear out of the Persian Gulf at various points throughout history.
And Alexander polyhistor 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

(01:01:14):
by the gods of a coming flood catastrophe, and he's
told how to preserve his himself in civilization to survive it. So,
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.

(01:01:34):
Oh yeah, Now this may have once been more impressive
evidence at a time when many archaeologists believe Sumerian civilization
sort of sprang up out of nowhere at the time
the myths describe. 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

(01:01:56):
questions we might ask today, like how did bread? How
did they ever figured that out? Or you know, or
making fire that what was it like when when somebody
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 a cow? Right, they needed

(01:02:18):
a myth for that too um so. The authors also
point out interesting features of Sumerian pictographic art on cylinder seals,
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.

(01:02:40):
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
seemed 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.
How are as fun as it can be to draw

(01:03:02):
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 unconscious mind to understand
and portray a sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes hostile environment. The stories
of the Opkalu may have been made out of whole cloth,
perhaps as late as Babylonian times, perhaps by Barrosas himself

(01:03:25):
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
on textual grounds alone. But stories like the Oanes legend
and representations, especially of the earliest civilizations on the Earth,

(01:03:45):
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.
So they're saying, it's a high bar, you know, if
you're going to try go from ancient textual evidence and
just like storytelling to okay, aliens came here, It's going

(01:04:07):
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,
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

(01:04:32):
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
his science fiction specifically two thousand and one. But 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 know there's something interesting

(01:04:54):
going on in this Earth. But we're important aliens. We
have things to do. We can't hang out around are
in a watch. We can't wait for it to get interesting.
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 writing 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.

(01:05:17):
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
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

(01:05:40):
nuclear weapons. Man, they're gone already and we missed it. Now.
They also point out that the other thing to keep
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

(01:06:03):
to be a far more plausible way for first contact
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 uncrude probes. Now,

(01:06:28):
the good news that the author's present here is an
advance civilization like this wouldn't have to enslave us or
eat us good. They would probably be be on that. However,
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, well we can't

(01:06:50):
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 or they might just
want to crush us to prevent us from posing a threat,
to say, oh, well, they they have promised they have
spunk these humans, so we need to cut that out.
Or or also even worse that could there could be

(01:07:11):
something 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 before Chariots of the Gods. Uh.
Sagan definitely lived long enough to reconsider some of this

(01:07:33):
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 n book Broke his Brain
Reflections on the romance of science. He wrote that he
believed that those excited by ancient alien speculation, you know,

(01:07:55):
they're generally 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 approximation to comprehensible science
readily available. So the idea here is, yeah, you're scientifically curious,

(01:08:18):
but then 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. Yeah yeah, or or or for instance, how

(01:08:41):
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

(01:09:02):
some 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.

(01:09:25):
He also 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

(01:09:45):
that anymore. 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 religio needs. So again
you have tales of wise, powerful, benign humanoid entities that
attend to the human race. And this is an idea

(01:10:08):
that definitely ends up becoming central to a number of
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
of ancient aliens far far more attention than he cared

(01:10:29):
to think about, and that he loved the idea. But
but you know, as you might expect Sagan to, I mean,
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

(01:10:52):
requires more than just passing attention. Quote in the long
litany of ancient astronaut pop archaeology, the cases of a
are an interest, have perfectly reasonable alternative explanations, or have
been misreported, or are simple prevarications, hoaxes, and distortions, and
then he makes these final points. He says that if

(01:11:13):
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 they could have done. Here's Fermat's last theorem. Yeah,

(01:11:36):
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

(01:11:56):
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

(01:12:19):
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. It's fine too, sure, Yeah, yeah,
don't make it your religion and then pretended science and
try to convince people. One last thing, I want to

(01:12:41):
test your intuitions on something or Dici gieneral 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

(01:13:02):
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

(01:13:23):
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

(01:13:45):
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

(01:14:05):
think I actually ranked time travel below ancient aliens. Oh yeah,
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,

(01:14:28):
we 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 expert The
hoax is really the place I think I would go first,

(01:14:49):
because it's just it seems so outrageous, Like it it's
too much of a leap of faith to think aliens
time travel is impossible as we understand uh the inner
to the universe. And then the idea that we simply
missed all record of this technology also seems unlikely. Lost
technology is very hard, too hard to believe because of

(01:15:12):
the context. 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

(01:15:34):
technological progress that would lead you to be able to
make those. So you'd have to assume not just that,
but you 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,

(01:15:54):
and would and they were, and you would say, how
did I not know they were a drug lord? Like
you would think there would be there 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'd probably go with
hoax first, and then maybe it's hard to decide whether

(01:16:16):
ancient aliens or lost technology is a better is that
it's 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,
like because it's simply an alien dropped it. But in

(01:16:38):
any case, I think clever hoax meets the other two
fortunately 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 inside into some
bit of existing mythological arch archaeological evidence. But I would
have to wonder we'd at least do an episode on it.
We try to give it a fair shake, right, yeah, exactly,

(01:17:00):
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.

(01:17:22):
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 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

(01:17:44):
all the 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

(01:18:06):
that we I hope 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
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(01:18:29):
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(01:18:49):
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(01:19:11):
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}From the Vault: Chariots of the Gods