"Chariots of the Gods? " Topic

A ceramic head from the Serbian Vinca culture:
link
I came across a picture of this in the book "Prehistoric Europe". It reminds me of an 'insectoid alien'. The book remarks that it has a feline look to it. Where is Professor Quatermass?

This guy always makes me laugh.

He wants us to take him seriously, but he always comes across completely fried and that Centauri hair doesn't help.

I really think he's an advanced agent of the Centauri Empire trying to perpetuate the lie that humans and Centauri are related.

-Eli

"I really think he's an advanced agent of the Centauri Empire trying to perpetuate the lie that humans and Centauri are related."

Epic WIN.

But laugh at him all you will – Ancient Aliens is now in its 4th season.

Ancient Aliens is now in its 4th season.

Which goes to show that there are either a lot of gullible people in the world or a lot of people who like to laugh at gullible people. I pray it's the latter, but I know it's the former.

Parzival,
I think the real answer is that it doesn't cost much to produce.
Most all of it is rehashes of old points, shows, interviews and pictures and the "experts" look to be people who would work for next to nothjing just so they can say they are on TV.

My wife hates it when I watch that show. I spend the whole show bitching, cussing, and pointing out very obvious explinations for things they want to make out to be so amazing.

The big thing that REALLY bugs me about the entire ancient Aliens thing is that it pretty much equates to a slap in the face for humanity and all the hard work it has pout into developing as a species and various cultures. Pretty much every theory they put forward insults human creativity, enginuity, dedication, hard work and overall human spirit.

Saying aliens helped humanity build the pyramids is like when you busted your ass on your science project and your teacher looked at you and said, "Did your parents help you?".

-Eli

They have been around before and will be again:

link

emu2020, well said.

All that said, this sort of thing makes for great fiction and gaming

-Eli

"I really think he's an advanced agent of the Centauri Empire trying to perpetuate the lie that humans and Centauri are related."

He does always seem to win at cards…

"this sort of thing makes for great fiction and gaming"

Exactly. And not only in ancient settings: the secret knowledge, the Elohim heirloom, are not lost TMP link
And 'they' may be still among us, or in Argatha.

Emu2020, I am in much the same boat. I dont know why I watch, he just annoys me to no end, and yet I still watch it. I just cant get passed the supposedly briliant aliens and the best they can do is show us a quarter watt battery and how to pile big rocks on top of each other. Boy if they came back today we would really kick thier butts would we not?

It is good to see others are as sceptical about it as I am. I am reminded of one of my favorite lines from Mulder in X-Files. Yes I believe it but then I believe everything. That really seems to discribe these guys.

Owen

Yeah, they've been around for quite a while. They're the ones who built the canals on Mars too:

Helpful little guys. We wouldn't know how to bathe, dress or feed ourselves either if it weren't for them.

Dan
TMP link
TMP link

Always fodder for fun scenarios!

I watch it if I come across it surfing channels – it introduces me to interesting historical buildings and artifacts, which I can then find out more about.

'Ancient Aliens is now in its 4th season.'

Could it be that … (absurd speculation here).
Some claim that … (rubbish here).
If it is true that …(nonsense here)… then … (something really silly here).

Repeat formula for ghost shows, invisible warships, Nazi anti-gravity devices, and any other such toss you can get on air.

emu2020 is dead right. Egyptians get particularly brassed off at the suggestion that 'those primitive Egyptians couldn't have made these big stone things. It MUST have been aliens'.

Von D has also suggested Australian aborigines 'could not possibly have come up with anything as clever and aerodynamic as the boomerang'.

I wonder who came up with his 'theory' for him. He couldn't have done it himself.

Hilarious show.

Chance of being true is about zero but it's fun, IMO, to kinda extrapolate what itd look like if we uplifted someone in the far future.

What emu2020 said.

I enjoy the show. I enjoy ranting at it. Really, Amzing Galactic Technology and all we got was pyramids and Nazca lines?

"I enjoy the show. I enjoy ranting at it. Really, Amzing Galactic Technology and all we got was pyramids and Nazca lines?"

Remember--if you get stranded on a desert island, you make BIG messages in the sand so that anyone flying over will see it!

It's amazing what people will do when they believe enough.

Dan

I have not seen those before. Just about fell out of my chair. Thank you for making my evening Dan.

Owen

Awesome…just awesome

I'm just sayin…

-Eli

All right smart guys. How do you explain the face on Cydonia Mars? If you look closely, you will see that it looks a lot like a Cyberman from Dr. Who! The ancient aliens obviously had the Beeb long before we did.

Dan

Actually, looking at the slanted eyes of the faces…

Pages and pages more brainwreck "inspired" by the same show:
link

And still no "smoking gun".

Anything the aliens might taught us has long been forgotten. So why bother teaching us to electroplate stuff with grape juice batteries? Why not tell us, hey guys, that mold on the bread you're eating? There's a handy trick you can do with that…

Nothing new, by the late "50 – early "70, in relation with the blossoming UFO interest, there was a *lot* of 'studies' about E.T. in the Old Testament and other ancient (mythological) texts. You know the kind: 'Elohim' = true plural (not 'emphatic' singular) thus 'CreatorS' = E.T.; 'Sons of G*d' (angels) mated with 'daughters of Man' -> Nephilim (Elves?); educated Humankind -> Atlantis (& Mu); The Flood and the sinking of Atlantis caused by a war between E.T. colonies or hyper-advanced prehistoric 'half-breed' civilizations (the battle of Kurukshetra in the Mahabharata); knowledge partly saved (artefacts: the Ark, the Grail…) -> Pyramids builders ->masons of the Temple of Jerusalem -> Knights Templars &/or Cathars -> Agartha… Yet the 'Aliens' were still roaming later, Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by A bombs, Ezechiel's wheel = flying saucer…

If taken as entertaining fiction, it can be quite enjoyable and inspirational. The Atlantis – Mu war can still be raging underground, official History being just the tip of the iceberg. For instance in the 18th C. the WAS / SYW could be the visible part of the centuries-old war between the Knights of Sion, now manipulating Catholic monarchies, and the Free Masons using Frederick as a pawn
Add the Vatican as a 3rd player ('Jesus the alien half-breed'), and possibly minor 'characters' such as rogue Rosenkreuzer turned pangermanist searching for great artifacts of power 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' fashion (their self-propelled 'temple' looks very 'Lacepunk': link).
While the heirs of the Templars could still hire Hashashiyyin (Assassin Creed!) as their forefathers did in the Holy Land

Each faction can field 'interesting' agents, such as Sylvia / Monica Bellucci in 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' (specially useful if among the Lost artifact of Power some can only be touched / used by woman, re. the Kalidor Talisman and the Witchblade).

(could not resist -for the tricorne, of course)

The Gypsies came from India, in their tongue their patron St Sarah is called Sara e Kali, thus they can harbor a strangler cult; remotely controlled by another group of ET or heirs of ET in Agartha, probably?
See also TMP link

And of course each major faction is likely to have its Torchwood / Threshold ['demons' = aliens] super-secret inner circle: for the Vatican think Iscariota in 'Hellsing Ultimate'.

Re 'Ancient Aliens' it could be worse: at least the staff of the show had not (as yet) founded a Church. Think of that -poor Sci-Fi writer who, at pain to sell his work as fiction, in a stroke of genius sold them as Holy Scriptures

"I really think he's an advanced agent of the Centauri Empire trying to perpetuate the lie that humans and Centauri are related.": of course they are related! In B5 as in ST all humanoid species are inter-fertile, meaning that they belong to the same biological species. Even the egg-laying Red Martians can breed true with Earthlings (not without some… 'technological' difficulties at the beginning of the process, I suspect

).

I leave to each of you to speculate about the implied ad-hoc hypotheses….

I find the Ancient Aliens series interesting and entertaining. But I take much of it with a "grain of salt". In many cases, I find myself thinking, that they are "really digging here" or "that is a real stretch" … however, sometimes evocotive none the less … And I thought the same, that the "hair-do" on that frequent contributer to the series does look a lot like a race from B5 …

abdul666lw 13 Apr 2012 4:47 a.m. PST:

In B5 as in ST all humanoid species are inter-fertile, meaning that they belong to the same biological species

Umm… I don't think so, actually. Not in the TV show anyway, can't vouch for books and comics and whathavethey.

I find the series very entertaining and fun to watch for a little bit.

But after a while, all those unrelated trivia bits thrown at you for you to make sense of get a little tiring. The creepy thing is that I'll start using their feeble reasoning with my wife, to try to explain misplaced items or to justify not doing things she wanted me to do, but all it does is get me into a lot of trouble.

The sad thing is how big a following these "alien astronaut theorists" have managd to capture. Makes you think that the entire intelligent world is seeing something you aren't seeing. And the you notice the crystals and other trinkets the followers wear and suddenly everything makes sense.

Dan

A religion by any other name there Dan…:)

Humanity loves something to glom on to. Science is the thing now and aliens are scientific. So, in a way, believing in aliens is a safe way to have "religion" in your life without having to admit you belief in spirits, deities and such.

I wish I still had the article my mother clipped for me back when I was young. Being a huge fan of fantasy and scifi, even back then, she kept an eye out for educational and thought-provoking tidbits that would access that part of my mind for the good of learning.

Anyhow, this article was all about drawing connections between modern UFO/Abduction beliefs and the common folklore surrounding faerie folk and other forms of spiritualism throughout time. It pointed out that there were several common threads throughout – hybrids, abductions, strange lights, visitations, borrowing, loss of time, feelings of entrapment or imprisonment, etc..

They were not trying to say that these common threads were some sort of proof of the validity of the claims, but more that these commonalities all draw from a certain common, psychological place inside of human beings. It was almost like the sensible mirror image of these Ancient Aliens guys.

-Eli

Yep. Even if just two people share that faith-based belief system and then try to shape (bind, "religare") their lives by the new set of values that have that faith at the center, that's already a religion.

They say they follow science, but turn their backs on the only known sciences in order to embrace unknown ones, based on nothing but blind faith and wishful thinking. That's not true scientific thinking. You don't let go of a solid lifeline to just jump onto one that may or may not be there.

Dan

Even science, for the every man, could almost be looked at as a faith-based religion.

I know people will come screaming after me on this, but the average guy on the street only trusts and believes in science because he is told by a book or education that it works. He cannot prove it for himself other than in it's most obvious forms which is for all intents and purposes the same as witnessing a supernatural occurrence or a miracle.

Until such a time as he is able to get into the mechanics of what he sees and experience or test them for himself, he really must put faith in the established doctrines and education he has received and continues to receive at the hands of his society.

That said, I do believe in science. This is just another way to look at things.

-Eli

"… but the average guy on the street only trusts and believes in science because he is told by a book or education that it works. He cannot prove it for himself…"

That's true – but then the average guy does not let "science" govern his morality or how he treats other people.

Anyway, your comment reminded me about this conversation I had with my mates a couple of weeks ago about time travel that also applies to aliens visiting less technologically advanced civilisations:

If you were transported back in time or to another planet where the native civilisation is technologically more bakward, with nothing but the knowledge in your head and a miraculous ability to speak their language, how much can you do to advance their civilisation?

I mean, I know the names of the things gunpowder are made of, but without access to the internet or a book I can't tell you how much of each to use, let alone how to obtain them in a strange world.

The morality question you pose is a good one and there are arguments I could raise there, but that'll have to be in another thread and not on TMP.

As for the time travel or alien visitation idea. There are plenty of schools there including that such information would be available in databases of the travelers.

As for passing it on to the "primitives" there are all sorts of arguments that have been used in scifi and in attempted legitimate texts. Everything from locked away genetic encoding to psychic imprinting has been suggested for how to get "us" to grip "their" ideas. I also wouldn't sell short the ability of the human mind to lock onto and retain knowledge before the likes of advanced storage media made our brain slushy and lazy.

-Eli

Well, the point of the conversation was how much each one of us as an individual with nothing but the clothes he stood in could do to advance other civilisation's technology.

Say instead of a planned time-travel you just got teleported to Bronze Age Europe or even earlier in nothing but your pyjamas. How much of the science you know and the technology you enjoy each day can you realistically impart to the "primitive natives"?

Or if an alien mutineer is marooned on Earth with nothing but the equivalent of a bottle of rum?

Encountering aliens didn't seem to have enlightened Fred and Barney:

Imagine this scenario:

Caption:
"Guys, I don't think they quite appreciate what we're trying to do for them! Time to go."

Caption:
"There. Don't worry, you're doing great. No, don't touch it! Man, you guys really need our help."

No captions needed there with those two.

Caption:
"Look. I know our saucers are vertical take off, but I still want you to draw up all those lines. Believe me, it might not make sense now, but it's going to be funny as heck in the 20th century."

Are these the ones that decided not to benefit from mating with aliens?

Caption:
"Guys, we've done nothing but improve your species!"

Dan
PS. This is funny:
link

Caption:
"Do you really think they were serious about that Prime Directive stuff? I mean, c'mon, I know they don't have much of a forehead and are all hairy and smelly, but some of their females look hot. Or maybe I've just been locked up on that darn ship too long."

Dan
groups.yahoo.com/group/cavewars

let alone how to obtain them in a strange world

Never underestimate the awesome power of gull poop.

- Monk

"Never underestimate the awesome power of gull poop."

And that's contingent on you being able to find gull poop and sulphur, or rather the civilisation that you were dropped into had means to access these two.

And do you know how exactly to extract saltpeter from guano?

This guy does. :)

link

And do you know how exactly to extract saltpeter from guano?

This, sadly, is one of those rare instances where I find myself wishing I could actually, honestly say I didn't know how to do something.

But, alas, yes. I did, and I still… er… "doo."

Ahem. Couldn't resist.

Heh. :)

- Monk

(Starting when I was 16, I had a summer job working for a traveling snake-and-reptile show owned and operated by a former high school chemistry teacher with a warped sense of humour and a fondness for "hazing" me as a way of exasperating his [adult] baby sister, who was my next door neighbor when I was growing up, and who got me the job. 'nuff said.)

I think one could help a lot, even if they were a totally average, basically unskilled person today, by going back and just discussing world view with some of his ancestors.

Most people know the very basics that many people did not… for example, that, ignoring air resistance all things fall at the same speed. (which can easily be shown in an experiment by, say, dropping one coconut that has been emptied and one that has not). You might not be able to prove the Theory of Relativity to them, but you can get the ball rolling.

Even just discussing things you can't prove but make good logical sense might help. Explaining the concept of atoms making of everything, for example, may be impossible to prove in the given situation, but it leads to thinking about things like germs in a more realistic way.

Who built the pyramids?

ELVIS!

Who built Stonehenge?

ELVIS!

YouTube link

Well, we do have pretty good evidence that Elvis did exist. We don't have similar level of evidence for the existence of aliens, never mind ancient aliens.