“Red, white, whatever … guys are all the same!” - Liz Sherman (Hellboy)

By Brian Thompson

I. The Setup

Have you ever been to Machu Picchu? I haven’t, but I hear it’s amazing. Could I pony up the cash to take a trip myself? Wouldn’t that kind of first-hand reporting bolster my credibility as a journalist? Perhaps, but I’m no good at high altitudes. Boiling water at sea level already tests my patience (come on, Pasta-Roni!), and I second-hand smoke at least two packs a day. Regardless, Machu Picchu is a sight to behold—especially on a brand new 47” HDTV.

Look, you don’t have to go there to be impressed with its majesty. It’s quite literally a city in the clouds. Beautiful, isolated, and a testament to the ingenuity and intelligence of the Incans who built it. I could barely carry a fanny pack to the top of the Coit Tower, so there’s no way I could schlep hundreds of pounds of stone blocks to the top of a mountain. Plus, it took me six hours just to finish building my Lego Batcave, and I still had leftover pieces. The Incans didn’t even have advanced education, and I have a college degree.

Okay, it’s a liberal arts degree, but still.

Which is why ancient astronaut conspiracy theorists piss me off. They see something spectacular—monuments to the achievements of ancient humanity—and piss all over them. Their argument? That those civilizations weren’t quite civilized enough to pull off something so amazing. The Druids were too savage to build Stonehenge. The Egyptians were too lazy to build the Great Pyramid. The Incans were too stupid to build a cloud city. (Actually, there might be something to that last one, as we all know it was probably built by Lando Calrissian.) No, the only logical explanation is that aliens visited the Earth in times past and used their advanced technology to help ignorant villagers…build things out of rocks?

You’ve probably heard the names of these crackpots. Erich von Daniken, with his best-selling science (non)fiction book Chariots of the Gods, being the most famous. But there’s also Richard C. Hoagland (the face on Mars fetishist) and Zecharia Sitchin (the Planet X groupie), not to mention countless cranks who have pimped their self-published books on Coast to Coast AM. I’m not going to go into the specifics of all these people’s claims, as each one of them could make for an entire article in themselves. Instead, I’m going to explore the general ideas of the ancient astronaut theory. And by “explore”, I mean “lampoon”.

II. The Findings

Aside from its racist and xenophobic implications, ancient astronaut theory is largely based on one of the oldest and most ridiculous of logical fallacies—the argument from incredulity. You’ve heard this kind of reasoning before. It’s also the primary reasoning behind intelligent design—“Life is too complex to have evolved naturally.” The fact is that just because something seems implausible, that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily untrue. For example, it seems impossible that America so lovingly embraced 7th Heaven for all those seeming decades it was on the air. I don’t know anyone who could have stomached such saccharine slop on a weekly basis, but the thing consistently outperformed television shows with writing staffs that actually gave a sh!t. It would be easy for me to explain this mystery by claiming that every season renewal order made by the WB’s executives resulted from black Gypsy magic. (Meaning the magic is black. Not the Gypsies. Although they could be. Let’s move on.) But there’s likely a far more mundane explanation than mystical curses. Perhaps, for instance, the entire series was an elaborate performance art piece meant to shine a mirror on America’s collapsing standards of taste. Or maybe Jessica Biel was just too damn hot. Either way, my point stands. You don’t jump to the supernatural just because you can’t think of anything else.

It would be one thing if the ancient astronaut theorists arrived at their conclusions after examining evidence, but from reading their books, it becomes clear that they are simply fishing for evidence to back up their preconceived argument from incredulity. But while alien influence is a more logical explanation for the construction of the Great Pyramid than, say, magic—it still doesn’t make any sense. If aliens had the advanced technology to visit the Earth in the first place, why wouldn’t they build something more technologically advanced than a giant stone building? And if humans were so primitive and incompetent, how did they learn to communicate with the aliens in the first place? Where did the aliens come from? Where did they go? Why were they here, Cotton-eyed Joe?

Of course, all of these questions become moot once you realize that the aliens were pulled out of these pseudoscientists’ asses. (Von Daniken’s ass being especially roomy.) In the world of ancient astronaut theory, there’s no difference between aliens and ghosts, monsters, or Superman. Their abilities and proclivities can be shaped to fit any hypothesis. Sitchin, for example, says that ancient Sumerian tablets depict rockets being launched into space. So interstellar species are still using rocket fuel? Von Daniken claims that the Nazca lines, giant pictographs on the Peruvian desert floor, were used as landing strips for the aliens. So they never mastered vertical takeoff? Also, why shape them like cute animals? And Hoagland believes there’s evidence of alien activity in an Egyptian hieroglyph that looks like a helicopter. Which, I guess, means that aliens flew in helicopters?

Of course, it would also be a logical fallacy to dismiss these ideas simply because they’re batsh!t insane. Luckily, they’ve also been debunked using the scientific method. Go here to learn about the madness of Sitchin’s methods, here for an explanation of the Nazca lines, and here to see how a helicopter found its way into an Egyptian temple. I’m not even going to get into how von Daniken was caught forging his evidence.

Okay, maybe I will.

Von Daniken claimed to have photographs of an ancient pot bearing the images of flying saucers. He didn’t bother explaining why a flying saucer would need a landing strip in Peru, but he also didn’t bother with making a more convincing fake. In 1978, the PBS science show Nova tracked down the potter who originally made the “Biblical artifact” (he was, of course, still living) and confronted von Daniken for their episode “The Case of the Ancient Astronauts”. Von Daniken confessed that the pot was a fake (what else could he do?) but said he only wanted to convince skeptics who wouldn’t accept his theories without hard evidence. Which is understandable. I mean, what kind of closed-minded boob demands evidence?

III. The Conclusion

Look, there are still some monumental mysteries we haven’t solved. No one, for example, knows who carved the heads on Easter Island. But there are also several mysteries that we have solved. We know where the rocks for Stonehenge were quarried and how they were raised. And ancient astronaut theorists claim several mysteries that aren’t mysteries at all. Machu Picchu was built quite simply with hard work, patience, and a vision for civilization. After all, if the Incans borrowed alien technology, why didn’t they use it to save them from smallpox?

And even though I can’t explain why anyone ever thought resurrecting American Gladiators would be a good idea, I’m sure there’s a rational, logical explanation out there. Somewhere. I hope.

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About The Amateur Scientist: Brian Thompson is a professor of amateur science at a major imaginary university. He has been able to read and write for over seventeen years.

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