“According to many ancient astronaut theorists…” – Voiceover Guy
Ancient Aliens always has quite a fanciful and creative time with itself parsing together evidence for its theorem that “ancient alien astronauts” visited the planet Earth in ancient times, took part in ancient society in some ill understood way, and then took off to parts spacey and unknown.
“Alien Tech” is really just an excuse to take a slant on the themes that the show repeats somewhat repetitively at this point.
Exhibit A comes in the form of “sonic weapons,” such as those used in military engagements as rescuing the Seaborne Spirit from Somali pirates. The LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device), we’re told, exceeds 150 decibels and essentially messes with people real good when deployed. This lesson in modern warfare segues into the question: “Is the LRAD really a 21st Century invention or did similar audio weapons exist in ancient times?”
We then cut to biblical-era Jericho, where as the story in the Good Book goes, Joshua circled the city walls with a bunch of dudes, some ram horns (or shofars), and the ark of the covenant itself (pre-Raiders). After seven days, Joshua’s peoples blew the horn, and the walls came a-tumbling down.
So, the experts on the show use this “evidence” to allege that this is a sign that ancient aliens exist, even though many scholars believe an earthquake likely was the cause of wall coming down. And that’s where we get a signature question from the voiceover guy: “But could it have been something else?” And then: “Could the Israelites have possessed advanced sound wave technology? If so, where did it come from?”
At this point, I couldn’t help but think that these are questions that only Glenn Beck (and/or ancient alien theorists) could love. In any event, more background on the potential for ancient alien sound technology to disrupt stone walls is hurled at us, while meanwhile we hear about how Moses may have received alien powers along with spiritual enlightenment while up at Mt. Sinai. Imagine a remake of The Ten Commandments with this angle thrown in?
Aliens, sound technology, and building structures – about as odd a group of topics as I could ever imagine – eat up a good chunk of the hour, as we’re then whisked away to Greece (Mycenae, to be specific) and its ancient fortress city. This part perked up my interest a bit as we learned about Cyclopedian structures, which were believed to have been constructed by the mythological figure Cyclops himself.
Of course, we hear again about how the construction of the fortress was “beyond the ability of humans in that period of history,” including the 250 ton stone that sits above the doorway of the Treasury of Atreus. How ancient buildings and temples were built using massive stones that modern technology would have difficulty accomplishing is an interesting question to kick around. But when you jump from there to positing that ancient alien technology could have been involved, and then jump to “theories” of acoustic levitation… that’s just a lot of jumps for me to take while spending an hour with the History Channel.
The next few segments dealt with UFOs, rockets, and “death rays,” and while I get how it was being dealt with from the alien tech angle (and lords forbid you ever forget to examine any topic from the alien tech angle) I found it to be a bit of rehash of things we’ve seen before. In Guatemala, we see a sculpture of a “flying turtle” that’s said to be evidence that ancient aliens visited in spaceships back in the day.
And we also learn about Alexander the Great’s war elephants getting jacked up by “flying discs” which caused them to stampede as Alex’s forces were trying to cross the Indus to invade India. We then went on to rocketry and got a bunch of examples of how modern day rockets match up to descriptions of ancient gods visiting from the sky while exuding smoke and fire, causing the ground to tremble, and so forth.
I love taking note of the commentators that Ancient Aliens brings in. They do a bang up job of mixing in legitimate experts to handle legit scientific questions (Can sonic rays in theory bring down a fortress wall?) and then switch to, uh, ancient astronaut theorist-types, if you will, to handle the ancient alien pontifications and philosophicatin’. See you if you can pick out who fits into which category:
- David Childress – Author, Technology of the Gods
- Jonathan Young, Ph.D. – Founding Curator, Joseph Campbell Archives
- Tudor Parfitt – Professor of Jewish Studies, University of London
- Taylor Wang, Ph.D. – Professor / U.S. Astronaut, Space Shuttle Challenger
- Philip Coppens – Author / Investigative Journalist
- Giorgio A. Tsoukalos – Publisher, Legendary Times Magazine
- Michael Bara – Author, The Choice
- Thomas Valone, Ph.D. – President, Integrity Research Institute
- George Noory – Radio Host, Coast to Coast AM
- David Wilcock – Author / Filmmaker
- Dr. Steven M. Greer – Director, The Disclosure Project
- Erich Von Daniken – Author, Chariots of the Gods?
- Jason Martell – Author, Knowledge Apocalypse
- John Robert Tindall – Founder, Tindall Vision Laboratories
Finally, I couldn’t help but wonder throughout the hour about the Big Picture allegations that Ancient Aliens is trying to lay on us. If ancient aliens really did visit multiple societies thousands of years ago, really did interact with so many societies across the world, and really did influence our technology in such a profound way… why is there such precious few clues about this today?
Wouldn’t some form of early writing – hieroglyphics or some such – have offered some further clue of this stuff if there were actually aliens in spaceships hanging out all over the ancient world? And why did the aliens take off, never to return except for purported UFO sightings and ghost stories?
More thoughts on this edition of Ancient Aliens:
- “They were working with technology that could literally break the Earth in two.” – Scientific-like dude with accent
- Voiceover guy claims that “millions of people” believe that the Earth was visited by extraterrestrial aliens in ancient times. Millions? Are we sure about that?
- This phrase is thrown out there at least a half dozen times: “According to many ancient astronaut theorists…”
- Stonehenge is brought in at a few different points. I think every Ancient Aliens episode has to give those old English stones an obligatory shout out.
Some stats and info about Ancient Aliens, “Alien Tech”
TV SHOW – Ancient AliensSEASON/EPISODE – Season 2, Episode 6
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – History Channel
CAST – Franklin Ruehl, Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, Nick Redfern
GENRE – Reality TV, Trashtastic TV
This review was originally published on TV Geek Army.