• Options
• Login
• Register
• Desktop Style
• Accelerated Mobile Pages Theme

Did aliens help the ancient civilizations?

• Index

  • Science Fiction and Fantasy Community Forums
  • General Discussions
  • Archeology and Prehistory
  • Did aliens help the ancient civilizations?
• Did aliens help the ancient civilizations?

• Did aliens help the ancient civilizations?

  badlands > March 10th, 2019, 02:42 AM

  Does this sound more racist than the true?
  
  
  https://www.google.com/amp/s/relay.natio...-by-aliens

• Did aliens help the ancient civilizations?

  august > March 10th, 2019, 09:44 AM

  Which alien race is it insulting?

• Did aliens help the ancient civilizations?

  Michael > March 10th, 2019, 05:09 PM

  I don't know about racism but the idea that ancient star-faring aliens would not replicate their great technologies on Earth is far-fetched in my opinion. We're already discussing ways to send 3-D printers on space missions. We've even got a few theoretical proposals for creating entire space habitats out of 3-D printing technology.
  
  Given the primitive views of space travel that were still common in the 1960s and 1970s, when a lot of these ancient astronaut theories first became very popular (there were some going back a few more decades that didn't catch on as well), I think it's understandable that people would be easily swayed by such speculation back then. As a teenager I loved the ancient astronaut books. I collected them for their imaginative theories because they were LIKE science fiction without actually being science fiction.
  
  Here in 2019 it's hard to watch the science fiction movies and TV shows that were deemed to be cutting edge in the 1960s and 1970s because they featured very old technology (by today's standards). The computers use tape memory, the display devices are cathode ray tubes with limited graphical abilities, and they are flipping switches and pushing buttons. While we still have keyboards, I'm typing this comment on a computer with a touchscreen. If I wanted to i could use a speech-to-text program to enter my comments.
  
  If I were going to propose an ancient alien theory today, I wouldn't be looking at huge, inefficient and simplistic structures like pyramids, mounds, and megaliths. I'd look for signs of environmental disruption. Of course, I think you have to let your imagination run free because even though we don't know why or how ancient space-faring civilizations would reach Earth, such technology is so far beyond us right now that we can't even imagine what it would look like. It would seem like magic.
  
  Maybe space aliens did come and visit us, pretending to be gods, using their advanced nanobot technologies to speak commands into the air and cause things to happen mysteriously. But if we don't find any traces of the nanobots that's just one more unproven hypothesis. There is no way I can think of to disprove it.

• Did aliens help the ancient civilizations?

  Boomstick > March 18th, 2019, 11:18 PM

• Did aliens help the ancient civilizations?

  august > March 19th, 2019, 10:13 AM

  I actually saw him speak, at the height of that first book's popularity, spring of 1976 I think. A kindhearted history teacher took me and another guy, knowing our parents would never
  have ok'd us going somewhere on a school night. He drew maybe 3000 people - it was held in the university's basketball arena, and I assume it must have been free. And yes, some fundamentalist
  tried to tell him he was a sinner, and got booed by the college crowd in attendance, and von Daniken did the Swiss equivalent of saying "well bless his heart.". :laugh: He was
  fluent in English, but had a really really heavy accent. Plus, I think that fluency declined when he was answering questions off the top of his head, rather than delivering his practiced lecture. Pretty sure I
  still have his autograph somewhere - will try to scan it if I get a chance.

• Did aliens help the ancient civilizations?

  Agaricus > March 19th, 2019, 10:44 AM

  Well, as long as they waited at the border and got their Green Cards, I guess it's all okay.

• Did aliens help the ancient civilizations?

  Boomstick > March 23rd, 2019, 11:57 AM

  august Wrote:I actually saw him speak, at the height of that first book's popularity, spring of 1976 I think. A kindhearted history teacher took me and another guy, knowing our parents would never
  have ok'd us going somewhere on a school night. He drew maybe 3000 people - it was held in the university's basketball arena, and I assume it must have been free. And yes, some fundamentalist
  tried to tell him he was a sinner, and got booed by the college crowd in attendance, and von Daniken did the Swiss equivalent of saying "well bless his heart.". :laugh: He was
  fluent in English, but had a really really heavy accent. Plus, I think that fluency declined when he was answering questions off the top of his head, rather than delivering his practiced lecture. Pretty sure I
  still have his autograph somewhere - will try to scan it if I get a chance.

  
  That's pretty cool! I don't know that I believe his theories. Many of the examples he uses, such as the Nazca lines, have always perplexed me more than, say, the pyramids. Even for those that accept his views completely, I guess I can't say it's really any more odd than the things I was raised to believe as truth.

• Did aliens help the ancient civilizations?

  Michael > March 24th, 2019, 06:48 PM

  I used to collect all those books when I was in the 70s. Although just a teenager and a high school dropout, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt but he quickly went over the top for me. He finally lost me completely when he endorsed a book called (I think) The Spaceships of Ezekiel, whose author literally tore Biblical verses apart so he could use the fragments to make his case for the descriptions of the spaceships. Never mind the fact he was ripping translations to shreds.
  
  There was a book by Jean Sendy called Those Gods Who Made Heaven and Earth that completely fascinated me. I didn't believe any of it but Sendy's theories were much more advanced and coherent (in my opinion) than van Daniken's.
• Next Oldest Next Newest