Petroglyphs and Pyramids and Aliens?! Oh My!

Last winter we got really into Antiques Roadshow.  We have been doing better this winter at not driving ourselves crazy with marathons of random Netflix shows, until now.

After four hours of the show Ancient Aliens; I lost it and started yelling at the idiot box.  Forgetting Mark Twain’s sage advice to “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”  I guess since it is not technically a person the adage does not apply OR it is worse to by virtue of the fact it is an inanimate object.

Who can keep track of these things?

For those of you who have never experienced the amazing deductive reasoning involved in this show, basically it explores the hypothesis that pretty much every ancient monument, civilization and oddly semetrical stone object was made with the guidance of extraterrestrials.

On a very basic level, the premise is rather insulting to our predecessors.  To think that given the lack of electricity and internal combustion they would have been unable to move/manipulate stone unless they had the help of flying saucers.  It is completely possible to move heavy objects as long as you are can be smarter than a large rock.

If you don’t believe me check out this site.  This retired carpenter demonstrates how ONE MAN can move tons of stone all over the place- using nothing more than simple levers and small stones placed underneath the object to act as a fulcrum.

He has single handedly built his own stonehenge in his backyard and even moved a 10 ton building over 200ft with the help of his son.  Yes, it took a long time but remember that saying about the construction of Rome?  It is my basic objection to the theories on the show, that these creations were not humanly possible because it would have been really hard or taken a long time.

It is amazing what you can get done in a world without electricity.

Now, I am not saying that I don’t think there is other life somewhere in the universe, only that their help is not necessary.  Anyway back to the show.

The other thing that dawned on my was; if alien involvement was everywhere in the ancient world where are they now?

Let’s just say the show is correct and most of the technology from ancient times was given to us from extraterrestrial beings.  These encounters between civilizations were supposedly frequent and widespread.  According to the show’s experts almost every major civilization around the world had prolonged meaningful interations with these visitors.

Fine.

It begs the question,  why did they stop coming?  Given the large amounts of petroglyphs said to be depictions of alien beings I highly doubt it’s because they are camera shy or wouldn’t tolerate a record of the encounter.

Maybe Earth used to be a popular universal vacation destination till we screwed it up so badly.  Think about it; less than a thousand years ago from space the Earth looked something like this:

Beautiful right?

Then we started making “progress” and the dark side of the world stated to shine with an unhealthy light that never goes out.

If your favorite vacation spot started to glow-inthe-dark and die would you go back? If all the amazing sites of mass animal movement like the murmurations of birds where now too few to fill the sky.

Murmuration from Islands & Rivers on Vimeo.

If the Serengeti no longer thundered under thousands of hooves.

Would you want to go back?

If the native inhabitants started blowing up large portions of their own population, would you want to spend time in their company or engage them in meaningful conversation?

Me neither.  I came away from the evening’s marathon with one conclusion, the aliens don’t want to hang out with us anymore.  I bet now they are sorry for teaching us how to build large rock structures.

Joke’s on them I guess.  I hope the Netflix gods will give us new programming soon.  We will also accept any intergalactic entertainment that falls from the sky.

I’m not picky.