Ancient Aliens: “Pumapunku is so unique in the way it was constructed and shaped and positioned that it is the most intriguing ancient site on the planet.”

AA: “While the pyramids at Giza are an incredible feat of achieved, compared to Pumapunku, the pyramids are child’s play.”

AA: “In my opinion, the most significant piece of evidence that we have in this entire ancient alien astronaut puzzle is Pumapunku in the highland of Bolivia.”

Well, if Pumapunku is considered such good evidence for the Ancient Astronaut theory, we should probably start by looking at it. After all, it’s the one that they say was built directly by extra-terrestrials.

AA: “Pumapunku is the only site on planet Earth that, in my opinion, was built directly by extraterrestrials.”

Ancient Aliens starts off with a false dilemma by making people think that it was absolutely impossible for ancient people to construct Pumapunku, even to the point of making outright false claims.

AA: “One of the most intriguing thing there is it that the stones that were used there weren’t sandstone, they’re granite and diorite. The only stone that is harder than diorite is diamond, so the only way this could have been achieved is if the tools were tipped with diamonds.”

This is funny because it’s totally wrong, the stones are not granite or diorite at Pumapunku, they are Red Sandstone and Andesite[1][2][3], but this is also funny because of the way he says it.

AA: “The stones that were used there weren’t sandstone, they’re granite and diorite.”

Well yeah, actually it is sandstone. You can’t blame him though for it becomes obvious that throughout the series he often just repeats things he has heard in Eric Von Daniken’s books. Von Daniken’s books are what the Ancient Aliens series is based on. Later we see Eric Von Daniken himself make the exact same, totally wrong claim.

AA: “Of course [Pumapunku was] made out of stones found on Earth, because you don’t transport granite or diorite from another solar system.”

Von Daniken continues building up this false dilemma:

AA: “One of these platforms is 800 tons.”

That is very incorrect, the heaviest block at Pumapunku is 130 tons[4], and most of the stones are much smaller than that. So he is off by a whopping 670 tons! Unfortunately we will come to expect this kind of thing from Von Daniken as we progress.

Ancient Aliens spends quite a lot of time pointing out the various features in the stone masonry at Pumapunku before declaring it impossible to do without power tools.

AA: “Each of these small drills holes are basically evenly spaced along this routed groove. To me it’s clear that power tools have been used on this unusual block of stone here.”

AA: “This surface is as smooth as a table top, like in your kitchen. There’s no wave to it. This was machined.”

The sandstone and andesite stones at Pumapunku would have been easily worked with the most basic stone working tools[5][6], the idea that diamond tipped power saws were needed is ridiculous. The red sandstone was relatively soft and easy to work with, and even though andesite is pretty hard, because of the way it cooled it could be easily flaked off using stones as soft as 5.5 on the Mohs scale.[7] Such pounding stones were found all over andesite quarries in the area.[8]

Contrary to Ancient Aliens’ claims that archeologists are baffled by Pumapunku, Archeologists know the basics about how Pumapunku’s stones were cut and shaped.[9][10] This is partly because there is evidence for this all over the site itself.

They actually used a method that almost all ancient stone workers used. They used hard -pounding stones to pound out troth like depressions; later on they used flat stones and sand to grind the stone to make a polished surface.[11] We will see later on that this is also how the Egyptians, 1000’s of years before this, made their flat surfaced granite monuments like obelisks.[12]

Sand, as we will see later when we look at Egypt, has extremely hard particles in it and, if placed between a flat surface and a rock, can polish even the hardest stones known to man. In fact, the harder the stone is the better it can be polished using sand.[13]

We will also see that how sand can turn a piece of copper into a very efficient granite saw or granite drill – a method which the Egyptians utilized quite well.[14]

Some stones at Pumapunku that Ancient Aliens would never show the cameras are the ones that were in the middle of this process. They show that at the same time a stone was being pounded by stone hammers, which created these troth like depressions, the grinding and polishing was taking place on the other end of the stone.[15] Unfinished stones like this one clearly show how they were shaped – and it wasn’t with lasers.

There is also unmistakable evidence of stone hammers having been used in the places that were never meant to be visible, like where certain stones would be connected with one another.[16] And because of that, it’s hard for me to believe Eric Von Daniken’s next claim, because it would mean that the alien tool box had a laser gun right next to a stone hammer.

AA: “Extraterrestrials arrive; the spaceship stands in orbit. Only a small spaceship can stand, like a space shuttle. So, to protect their instruments they (the aliens) make, overnight, with their technology, what we call a base camp. Of course [this was] made out of stones found on Earth, because you don’t transport granite or diorite from another solar system. Then they disappeared, but the wall of their base camp is still there.”

It is true that stone tools would not be enough to construct Pumapunku, especially for some of the finer points. For those they would need metal chisels, and the equivalent of a carpenter’s square.[17]

Entire studies have detailed how these cuts were made, and nothing spectacular is required except some metal tools like chisels.[18] The arguments against this are usually either that a particular culture did not yet know how to cast metals, or that copper chisels would have been too weak.

On the first point, we know that the Pre-Incan Andean culture was very skilled at fashioning metals and creating metal alloys.[19]

In fact, the people who built Pumapunku were even pouring copper alloys into molds right on site,[20] showing that they had more than enough capability to form all kinds of metal tools. The question is: what about the tool’s strength?

Even if they were pouring pure copper into the mold it would still work, but it would need sharpening often but, because archeologist actually found a few of these metal cramps used by them on site,[21][22] we now know that they were using a very strong copper arsenic nickel alloy,[23]  Which made a much stronger final product.

Arsenic acts as a de-oxidant preventing the metal from becoming too brittle[24], and nickel was used in copper alloys specifically to make stronger chisels.[25] Once you understand that they had the ability to make strong metal tools in a huge variety of shapes, there is no part of Pumapunku’s stone work that would have been too difficult for them.

Well what about these 90-degree right angles that Ancient Aliens’ makes such a fuss about?

AA: “One of the amazing things here at Pumapunku is the precision of the blocks. You can see with this block of granite that it’s really been cut at very accurate 90-degree angles.”

To make flat surfaces with right angles you don’t need alien technology, you only need a square or a simple equivalent. It’s important to keep in mind that Pumapunku would have been built 1000’s of years after the Egyptians, who had all kinds of squares and plumb bobs and levels and so on[26], it’s a pretty basic stone working tool.

That being said, despite what Ancient Aliens says, Pumapunku is not all perfect right angles. You can even see this, ironically enough, as the Ancient Aliens crew goes around with carpenters squares. You can see some of them simply are not square.

Also they make claims like all the H blocks are the same dimensions, which they say suggest they were made by a big machine, but not only would that not be the only conclusion if it were true, it’s not even true.

The dimensions of the H blocks are not all the same, though they are close[27]. It is probably the case that there were made using the same plans.

Speaking of plans…

AA: “Mainstream archaeologists say that Pumapunku was built by Amara Indians. [However] we would all have to agree that, in order to build something like Pumapunku, you need writing; you need planning, and you also need some sort of idea where which piece goes and how it ultimately all fits together. But there is one thing that mainstream archaeologists agree upon [and that is] that the Amara didn’t have any writing. How is it possible that the Amara built all this without any plans?”

The builders of Pumapunku may not have had an alphabet, but they did use the common iconography or artwork of their culture called Yaya Mama.[28][29]  All the icons on the site are Yaya Mama, not secret alien code, and this is but one of the many indications of the culture and time that it was built.[30]

But my point is that, like many cultures, they used pictures instead of an alphabet and, like most building plans, they used pictures like blueprints. So saying that no alphabet means no planning is, in my opinion, pretty ridiculous.

Well, what about moving the stones and lifting them into place? Surely that would have required levitation…

AA: “How these massive blocks of granite were moved from their quarries and brought here to Pumapunku would have required some kind of super technology. Levitation; anti-gravity, huge lifting vehicles…something that ancient aliens would have had.”

If they did know how to levitate these stones then they put far too much effort in creating places in the stones to attach ropes to.

Many stones have grooves several centimeters in width and depth on two adjacent faces for holding ropes.[31] They even had special places cut into the stones that Pumapunku scholars call “hoisting grips.”[32] These are all very strange things to do if they could simply levitate these blocks.

To make matters worse for the Ancient Astronaut theory, according to archeologist Jean-Pierre Protzen, an expert on Pumapunku, there is almost no stone at the Pumapunku site that does not have what he calls “drag marks” on one of its faces[33], where it has been…well dragged to the site.

Ancient Aliens throws another false dilemma here:

AA: “What nobody talks about is the irrefutable fact that we are at an altitude of 12,800 feet which means we are above the natural tree line. No trees ever grew in that area, meaning that no trees were cut down in order to use wooden rollers. The wooden roller theory falls by the wayside.”

This is like saying that there is no way that the Egyptians used wood because trees didn’t grow in Egypt. The difference is that while the Egyptians had to import wood from places like Lebanon, it would have been far easier for those at Pumapunku to solve this problem for all they would have had to do is walk down the hill a little bit.

Ok well what about this claim:

AA: “Logic does not exist at Pumapunku because there we have megalithic structures which just lie around this entire site as if ripped apart by some great force.”

I propose that logic still exists at Pumapunku, and that the scattered state of the complex can be easily explained. To quote from archeologist Alexi Vranich: “the high quality of the stones made it attractive building material for houses, churches, plazas, bridges, even railways.”[34]

In other words, the stones were pulled down and hauled off by locals for building material. In fact, we even have the 400 year old writings of a visitor to Pumapunku who said that the looting was in full swing even back then. He wrote that if the site was closer to town, he didn’t think there would have been any stones left at all.[35]

Ancient Aliens says that Pumapunku is 17,000 years old!

This is what Vranich said of this claim:

“The idea that Tiwanaku is 14,000 years old is based on a rather faulty study done in 1926. Since then, there has been a huge quantity of work both on the archaeology and geology of the area, and all data indicates that Tiwanaku existed from around A.D. 300-500.”[36]

For more information on the faulty study he is referring to here I will quote at length from Jason Colavito, who has been debunking ancient astronaut theories for years in his books and blogs. He said the following about this claim.

“Tiwanaku is not 17,000 years old. This date derives from the work of Arthur Posnansky, who tried to apply archaeoastronomy to the site but did so in ways that modern scholars do not recognize as legitimate. Posnansky proposed a date of 15,000 B.P. (before present, i.e. 13,000 BCE), which the geniuses on Ancient Aliens misread as 15,000 BCE, adding an extra 2,000 years to Posnansky’s already flawed dates.

Here’s what he did wrong. Posnansky assumed that the Kalasasaya temple at Tiwanaku was laid out with perfect accuracy to align to the equinoxes and solstices that he felt (but could not prove) were important to the Tiwanaku people.

Thus, on a certain day the sun was supposed to rise above one rock at the temple and set behind another – ah, but which rock should we choose? Since the current ruins do not align with these celestial events accurately, he concluded that the ruins must have been built at a time when they would have aligned with that event.

Since the sun and sky change positions at a predictable rate due to gradual changes in the angle of the earth’s axis, he concluded that Kalasasaya was built in 13,000 BCE as a solar observatory, despite no other evidence of solar astronomy at the site.

The long and short of it is that Posnansky assumed celestial alignments and assumed flawless construction and then used his assumptions to “prove” that his assumptions were correct.

Colavito also has this picture of the site with the caption: “Pick a rock, any rock. One of them must align with something”

This site has been dated using a huge variety of methods. Things like carbon dating; the type of metals they used, the debris found in certain places, the type of iconography they used. Literally every kind of dating method applied comes to the same conclusion: It was constructed in the early middle ages.[37]

Before we conclude this section on Pumapunku there are two other claims I wanted to address:

AA: “The Spanish asked the Inca, the people living there, including the king of the Inca ‘What is this Pumapunku?’ and they all said ‘It’s not us. It’s not our forefathers that made this. This was made by the gods in one, single night.’ Usually a king is proud of what his people did, about the precision. [However] in this case the chief of the people said ‘No. It was not us. It was the gods who made it’.

If you understand a little about the Incan imperial system and religion, you will understand why the Incans didn’t claim the site and why they claimed that it had a supernatural origin.

Part of the Incan state religion was that the Incan empire was the first civilization and was created by God himself. It was a very convenient idea for bolstering the Incan case for the right to rule everyone else.

When the Incans arrived at Pumapunku the site had already been abandoned for at least 100 years.[38] Admitting that there was a pre-Incan culture at all, let alone one with more skill than them, would have been detrimental to the whole scheme.

So they slightly modified their already existing mythology to include Pumapunku. So, instead of Virachoca creating the Incan capital, he also created Pumapunku. Just like that the Incans were still the oldest and greatest civilization, even though everyone probably knew it wasn’t true.

Finally, Ancient Aliens says the following about what the ancient local people believed regarding who constructed Pumapunku:

AA: “Local legend suggests that Tianaka was built as a site of religious pilgrimage to celebrate the arrival of sky gods.”

This is a total lie. Viracocha came from the sea not the sky. This is a very sneaky move by Ancient Aliens in my opinion.

In conclusion, the stones are not made of Granite and Diorite. The stones were easily workable with the tools available to the Andean culture – tools which we know included high-quality metal-alloyed chisels.

These tools would have been more than sufficient to make the angles seen at Pumapunku. The faces of the rocks have been finished using a polishing technique after being rough cut using stone hammers – evidenced by the unfinished stones and hidden areas of the finished stones.

The moving of the stones was not as difficult as Ancient Aliens makes it seem, especially when you take into account they are telling people that the stones weigh 600 tons more than they actually do. The stones have tell-tale drag marks and hoisting holes for ropes, all showing that they were not levitated as Ancient Aliens would have us believe.

We know the culture which built this monument, and all the iconography and sculptures are consistent with that culture. The various methods of dating that scientist use all point to the same time period. The idea that Pumapunku was from Atlantean times we now know is based on a very transparently flawed presupposition which, with modern equipment, can be easily demonstrated to be false.

[1] Ponce Sanginés, C. and G. M. Terrazas, 1970, Acerca De La Procedencia Del Material Lítico De Los Monumentos De Tiwanaku. Publication no. 21. Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Bolivia

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumapunku#cite_note-Isbell2004a-0

[3] Isbell, William H. (2004), “Palaces and Politics in the Andean Middle Horizon”, in Evans, Susan Toby; Pillsbury, Joanne, Palaces of the Ancient New World, Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection,

[4] Sanginés (1970)

[5] Jean Pierre Protzen, “Who Taught the Inca Stonemasons Their Skills? A Comparison of Tiahuanaco and Inca Cut-Stone Masonry,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 146-167.

[6] Sanginés (1970)

[7] Jean Pierre Protzen, “Inca Quarrying and Stone Cutting,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 44, No. 2 (May, 1985)

[8] Protzen (1997)

[9] Ibid.

[10] Sanginés (1970)

[11] Protzen (1997)

[12] Dieter Arnold. “Building in Egypt; Pharaonic Stone Masonry.” Building in Egypt; Pharaonic Stone Masonry, n.d. http://hbar.phys.msu.ru/gorm/ahist/arnold/arnold.htm.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Archae Solenhofen. “Ancient Egyptian Stoneworking Tools and Methods.” Ancient Egyptian Stoneworking Tools and Methods, March 31, 2002. http://www.oocities.org/unforbidden_geology/ancient_egyptian_copper_slabbing_saws.html.

[15] Protzen (1997)

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] COLIN A. COOKE, MARK B. ABBOTT, ALEXANDER P. WOLFE. “Metallurgy in Southern South America.” Metallurgy in Southern South America, n.d. http://faculty.eas.ualberta.ca/wolfe/eprints/cooke_encyclopedia_chp.pdf.

[20] Protzen (1997)

[21] Ibid.

[22] Lechtman, H.N., 1998, Architectural cramps at Tiwanaku: copper-arsenic-nickel bronze. In Metallurgica Andina: In Honour of Hans-Gert Bachmann and Robert Maddin, Deutsches, edited by T. Rehren, A. Hauptmann, and J. D. Muhly, pp. 77-92. Bergbau-Museum, Bochum, Germany.

[23] Ibid.

[24] The New Scientist. “A Chronology of Prehistoric Metallurgy:” A Chronology of Prehistoric Metallurgy:, October 23, 1993. http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/metallurgy.htm.

[25] See 19.

[26] See 12.

[27] Protzen (1997)

[28] Vranich, A., 1999, Interpreting the Meaning of Ritual Spaces: The Temple Complex of Pumapunku, Tiwanaku, Bolivia. Doctoral Dissertation

[29] Andean Archaeology edited by Helaine Silverman http://books.google.com/books?id=GXcwi84zNokC&pg=PA172&lpg=PA172#v=onepage&q&f=false

[30] Ibid.

[31] Protzen (1997)

[32] Ibid.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Vranich, A., 1999

[35] Ibid.

[36] archaeology.org. “Tiwanaku Q&A.” Tiwanaku Q&A, n.d. http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/tiwanaku/qanda.html.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Protzen (1997)
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/puma-punku/#sthash.mryGBumW.dpuf

Ancient Aliens: “Perhaps the most familiar and most mysterious megalithic structure in all the world is the Great Pyramid of Giza. The enormous size and weight of the stones, multiplied by the sheer number of them, makes one thing certain: the construction of the Great Pyramid remains one of the greatest marvels and mysterious of architectural engineering.”

The pyramids at Giza are marvels of engineering and there are many theories, from the mundane to fantastic, surrounding their construction.

“There are all kinds of theories on how the Great Pyramid of Giza was built – so many theories that you just sit back and shake your head. That includes ET visitations, levitating the blocks with some sort of sound system.”

One place we can learn a lot about Egyptian stone-cutting methods is from the so-called unfinished obelisk.[1]

Here we have a 1,000-ton obelisk made of granite, abandoned midway through the project because of a crack that developed. This stone, because it is unfinished, gives us direct insight into how they cut and shaped granite, as well as other stones.[2]

On the sides we can see how these stones were separated from the quarry. A team of workers would line-up side by side and pound their sections with a diorite pounding stone.[3] Such pounding stones can be found all over this quarry and others in Egypt.[4] This pounding only broke off millimeters of granite at a time, but eventually these troth-like sections would emerge at each workers station.[5]

After that they would do the same thing on the bottom of the block until it was supported only by a thin spine in the middle. Then it would be snapped off using levers.[6] The people who created the Moai statues at Easter Island used very similar methods for quarrying stone, as did many other groups around the world – as we will see.

After the stones had been roughly shaped using pounding stones, they would begin to polish them with grinders.[7] There have been many types of stone grinders, or polishers, found in ancient Egypt.[8] They usually had a handle and a flat surface which they would use to rub against the stone, using sand as the abrasive[9]. They were, well… sanding the stone.

The various mineral particles found in sand are indeed hard enough to polish hard stones like granite, but also to do what Ancient Aliens tries to make people think is utterly impossible – that is, to cut granite.[10]

The Egyptians had a variety of ways to cut granite, mostly involving copper and sand.[11] There are plenty of saw marks on granite stones in Egypt, such as at the granite quarries, as well as notable ones like the famous granite sarcophagus in the Great Pyramid.[12]

The person who was doing the sawing on the sarcophagus sawed, for a while, at the incorrect angle before realizing his mistake and going in the right direction. This left us a pretty large mark to study.[13]

These copper saws came in three basic styles. One was a two-person saw, like an old time lumber saw. Another type was a small, hand held saw with a wooden handle.[14] And finally there was a tubular saw for making holes in granite and other stones.[15]

These saws are depicted in several Egyptian reliefs.[16] Interestingly they didn’t require saw teeth to work. They only required sand to be placed between the saw and the stones. The sand was what did the cutting.[17]

This particular method of stone cutting has been tested by ancient Egyptian tool experts and, not only was it done, it was apparently quite easy to do.[18]

However, sawing granite with copper was expensive because the copper would wear out quite quickly. Thus, you mostly see granite being worked with pounding stones finished with grinders and chisels. The saw work was reserved primarily for royal projects, like that of the sarcophagus.[19]

All of this information severely dents Ancient Aliens’ credibility due to the fact that, all throughout the series, they try to make it seem like working with granite was only possible through the use of diamond-tipped alien power tools.

However, as all of this relates to the great pyramid’s construction, it’s important to remember that almost none of the pyramid is made from granite – except for a few things such as the roof supports for the king’s chamber. Most of the stones used were sandstone and limestone. About 85% of the stone used in the construction of the pyramids was relatively soft sandstone which was quarried right on site.[20]

That’s right! The great pyramid was built right in the middle of a massive sandstone quarry, which was no doubt at least one factor in choosing the location to build it.

The other 15% of the stones, like limestone and the granite, would have to be brought in from a slightly further away location.[21] So this raises another question:

Okay, so what about moving these stones? Surely, as Ancient Aliens claims, the only option is levitation…

AA: “In order to really move massive amounts of stone like that, they would have had to have been levitated, somehow made weightless and then moved through the air by some sort of device. Perhaps even a handheld device like some sort of beam weapon.”

If levitation was how the ancient Egyptians moved stones, they had a funny way of showing it. This is because there are plenty of depictions of them using wooden sleds to move everything from blocks the size and shape of the ones used for the pyramid, to massive 1,000 ton monuments and obelisks – all using wooden sleds.[22]

They even had a hieroglyph for the world “sled”, which they used often.[23] In fact three such sleds have been found in tact by archeologists[24] and they have all kinds of places to attach ropes to.[25]

Speaking of ropes…

Ropes made out of papyrus and other materials have been found in Egypt, some of them with a massive circumference, suggesting that they were used for extremely heavy objects.[26]

Boats were used for stones that needed to be imported. In fact a channel was dug from the Nile to the construction site, so no stone had to be dragged very far anyway[27]

So, what about the construction of the Pyramids? How exactly was it done?

Part of the reason the Ancient Aliens perspective is attractive is because some of the other popular theories concerning the pyramid’s construction have serious problems, such as the single ramp theory which would have had to extend out more than a mile, and would have had to have had more stones in it than the pyramid itself.[28]

Another one is the spiral ramp theory. This one is problematic because some of the ledges only had about two feet or less to work with, certainly not enough to hold a ledge that would carry workers and stones the size of the ones used.[29]

Also, a structure like the pyramid would have had to have been constantly monitored for geometric accuracy as it progressed upwards[30], because being even a few inches off on a lower level could cause the top to be off by a huge amount. And a spiral ramp would have made it impossible to survey the geometric accuracy of the pyramid as it progressed.[31]

Add to this that there is no actual evidence for either of those theories and you can see why people are looking for alternatives.

While doing research for this documentary I came across a new theory about the pyramids construction that I had not heard before. At first I planned to mention it only briefly, but the more I heard of this theory the more convinced I became of its validity.

It was proposed, not by an Egyptologist, but by and eccentric French architect named Jean Pierre Houdin.

And if Jean Pierre is correct, knowing how the blocks were raised in the pyramid also happens to explain some of the other mysteries, like the purpose for the odd shaped Grand Gallery, as well as the purpose of the granite blocks above the kings chamber and why there were three burial chambers cut in at different levels in the pyramid two of which were unused.

I will very briefly explain this theory, but I highly encourage you to visit the links at the website on your screen because the specifics of this theory are something that any pyramid enthusiast should be, in my opinion, very familiar.

The basic idea is that there was an internal ramp in the Great Pyramid, and workers dragged the blocks through it until they reached the corners, at which point the block was repositioned for another team to pull it up the next ramp.

Also, the exterior limestone blocks with the polished finish would have been positioned and aligned first to ensure geometric accuracy, and then the sandstone blocks would have been positioned behind them as filler.

This would mean that all the internal chambers, like the Queen and King’s Chamber, were built as the pyramid progressed upwards in the light of day.

This internal ramp theory, unlike some of the others is actually supported by quite a lot of physical evidence. For example in the 1980s a French team looking for hidden chambers conducted a full scale gravimetric survey of the Great Pyramid – kind of like a giant x-ray map of the entire pyramid.

They actually found evidence of this internal ramp through their study[32], but had no idea what to think of the spiral pattern they saw at the time, so they simply filed it away until they heard about Jean Pierre’s internal ramp theory 14 years later.

In addition there is a notch high up on the Great Pyramid which, according to Jean Pierre, rests exactly on the 7% grade where you’d expect to find the internal ramp, and would be at the exact place where the workers would have lifted the blocks and changed the direction for the pullers.[33]

Bob Brier, an Egyptologist working with Jean Pierre, was only allowed a few minutes to survey this notch and take a few pictures and measurements. They found that there was indeed a large space behind theses stones, and made extensive computer models with the pictures that were taken.[34]

As of 2012, the team is still waiting for clearance from the Egyptian authorities to conduct a full scale survey of this notch.

But perhaps even more interesting is the purpose for the Grand Gallery and the granite stones above the Kings Chamber. I mention them together because, according to Jean Pierre, they are intimately connected.[35]

First, it is important to know that the main difference between the Great Pyramid and the other two pyramids at Giza is that the Great Pyramid’s burial chamber was inside the pyramid. The other two were underground, cut directly into the bedrock[36], which meant that in those two pyramids they did not have to worry about the hundreds of thousands of tons of stone above it collapsing onto the tomb.

The Great Pyramid was different. Its chambers were in the middle of the pyramid, and because of this the designer had to get creative to prevent the stones from collapsing in on the chambers. In earlier pyramids in the area this had been accomplished using a stone roof that came together at an apex, which distributed the weight of the blocks away from the chamber.[37]

But for the Great Pyramid the designer wanted to be more ornate, opting for a flat roof in the Kings Chamber, which would have easily collapsed if he didn’t find a way to distribute the weight of the stones above it away from the roof.

He ingeniously added a series of large granite blocks, spaced out evenly above the chamber, capping those stones with the same apex roof idea from the earlier pyramids, which distributed the weight safely away from the Kings Chamber ceiling.[38]

This did indeed solve the problem of the weight of the stones collapsing the chamber, but it caused another problem. How could you get those granite stones up there for placement? They would have been too big for the internal ramp, and too heavy, even at a 7% incline.

For the solution we look to the Grand Gallery. The Grand Gallery has puzzled Egyptologists ever since it was discovered. It is such an odd shape, and it doesn’t seem to make sense to construct it the way it’s constructed if it is simply a path to get from point A to point B. This has led to much speculation about its purpose.

Jean Pierre has proposed that the Grand Gallery was used as a massive counterweight system, where a wooden trolley was loaded with stones and rigged with ropes and used to provide the force to lift the heaviest objects. Basically it was the equivalent of a freight elevator.

There is actually a lot of physical evidence for this too[39], and it explains all kinds of peculiar details about the Grand Gallery. For example, the odd holes in the so called “benches” of the Grand Gallery were used to connect a wooden guide system for the trolley. It also explains why there are remnants of grease as well as scratches along the bottom of the chamber where the trolley would have rubbed against the stone. It was apparently lubricated to make it run smoother.

It explains the odd way the stones were worn at the so called top “step” of the Grand Gallery exactly where the ropes would have had to be. This area has now been cemented over to make a step, but you can see in old pictures what it looked like when explores first arrived.

This freight elevator would have required a small external ramp, which there is some evidence for[40], and even those who oppose the long single ramp theory agree there was probably a small ramp at the beginning of the construction. This ramp would have been dismantled after the completion of the Kings Chamber, and the stones would have been dragged up the internal ramp to finish the rest of the pyramid.[41]

Jean Pierre and his team have made a lot of converts to this idea, including a number of well-respected Egyptologists and pyramid experts. But as of 2012 they are still in the final stages of being approved by the Egyptian government for more work on the site.

Heiser: “Houdin’s idea of an internal ramp is coherent. I think there is good circumstantial evidence for it. If you watched the National Geographic special on his view I think you’d agree that there is good circumstantial evidence for it. It has a lot of explanatory power for a lot of the fundamental questions. I think it’s important because Houdin’s theory depends on a very simple idea in engineering, both in the ancient world and today’s world, and that is the use of weight and counterweight – using the weight of one object to lift one of greater weight.”

Whether or not this theory proves to be perfectly true in every respect will, hopefully, soon be seen. I at least hope that by now most of us can see that these construction techniques are well within the capability of mankind to conceive and achieve without the intervention of aliens.

[1] NOVA – Peter Tyson. “The Unfinished Obelisk.” The Unfinished Obelisk, March 16, 1999. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/egypt/dispatches/990316.html

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelisk_making_technology_in_ancient_Egypt

[5] Tyson 1999

[6] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/obelisk/cutting03.html

[7] Dieter Arnold. “Building in Egypt; Pharaonic Stone Masonry.” Building in Egypt; Pharaonic Stone Masonry, n.d. http://hbar.phys.msu.ru/gorm/ahist/arnold/arnold.htm.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid

[11] Archae Solenhofen. “Ancient Egyptian Stoneworking Tools and Methods.” Ancient Egyptian Stoneworking Tools and Methods, March 31, 2002. http://www.oocities.org/unforbidden_geology/ancient_egyptian_copper_slabbing_saws.html.

[12] Dieter Arnold (see 7.)

[13] Ibid.

[14] Solenhofen 2002

[15] Dieter Arnold (see 7.)

[16] Solenhofen 2002

[17] Ibid.

[18] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/obelisk/cutting05.html

[19] Dieter Arnold (see 7.)

[20] Bob Brier, Jean-pierre Houdin. The Secret of the Great Pyramid: How One Man’s Obsession Led to the Solution of Ancient Egypt’s Greatest Mystery. Smithsonian, 2008.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Dieter Arnold (see 7.)

[23] Ibid.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Brier, 2008.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Jean-Pierre Houdin’s Theory 2011 update (video) http://vimeo.com/26769564

[35] Brier, 2008.

[36] http://www.avatarpoint.com/GizaPyramids.html

[37] Brier, 2008.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Ibid.
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/the-pyramids/#sthash.8eIrjGpQ.dpuf

Ancient Aliens: “Eastern Lebanon – the Bar Car Valley. Here, at this archaeological site stand the ruins of Heliopolis built in the fourth century BC by Alexander the Great to honour Zeus. But beneath the Corinthian columns and remnants of both Greek and Roman architecture lie the ruins of a site that is much, much older. According to archaeologists it dates back nearly 9,000 years. The ancient city of Baalbek, named after the early Canaanite deity Baal.”

AA: “And so because it was already sacred to the god Baal then later the Greeks and the Romans would build temples on this very same spot.”

AA: “Archaeological surveys have revealed that the enormous stone foundation that lies at the base of the site dates back tens of thousands of years, but even more significant to ancient astronaut theorists is their belief that the colossal stone platform may once have served as a landing pad for space travellers.”

The idea that Ancient Aliens will try to convey is that underneath the Roman ruins lies a very old platform that was once used to launch spacecraft.

As we watch the next clip, listen for the first thing they site as evidence for this claim.

AA: “But what was originally there before the Roman temple was this space-board platform that was apparently used for extra-terrestrials coming and going on planet Earth.”

AA: “As evidence researchers point to the gigantic megalithic stones incorporated into the foundation. Each weighing between 800-1200 tones and perfectly fitted together.”

These three stones they are referring to are called the Trilithons and the heaviest of the three is 800 tons, not 1200 tons as they say.[1] There are two other stones that are heavier than this around the area[2], but they are unused[3] and still connected to the bedrock in the quarries, and thus are obviously not a part of the trilithons.

The way the information is presented about these three stones leads the viewer to believe that they are part of the foundation, or platform of the Baalbek site. What they want the viewer to think is that spacecraft lifted off and landed on the stones of this platform.

They also claim that these three stones cannot be of Roman construction, as the mainstream archaeologists believe, but  that they were a part of the earliest structure at the Baalbek site, and that the Greeks and Romans only built on top of this ancient foundation.

And it is true that there was a very old pre-Roman temple at this site, but we will learn more about that later.

Our focus at the moment is the Trilithons stones. Ancient Aliens says these three stones are the real mystery of Baalbek.

AA: “This is the real mystery of Baalbek. How these stones came to be there; why they were placed there; and specifically how they were transported into place, because some of the stones are of such magnitude that modern machinery isn’t capable of putting them there, but somehow our ancestors were able to do this.”

To solve this mystery we need to first understand that these three stones do not form the foundation of Baalbek as is so often suggested.

The Trilithon stones lay end to end or long ways, and are part of the narrow wall on the western end of the complex. They are most certainly not the foundation, nor do they constitute a platform, and it would be very awkward for a spaceship to land on top of them considering the space on top is so narrow.

Ancient Aliens tries to make it seem like no one knows the purpose for these stones, or why that had to be so heavy.

AA: “But if the moving, hoisting and setting of such massive stones was so incredibly difficult, then who or what placed them there and, perhaps more importantly, why?”

The truth is that the purpose for this wall is very well known by archaeologists. It was a retaining wall.[4]

Retaining wall technology really improved with the Greeks because of the importance of the amphitheatre in their culture. Because most amphitheatres were sunken into the ground and surrounded by earth, they needed to construct retaining walls to hold back the soil.

Then the Romans came along and basically perfected the practice.

The rule of thumb in retaining walls, even today is the bigger and heavier the stones the better the retaining wall. Also the stones needed to be in as big of sections as possible. in other words, huge sections of uncut stone.

It is no coincidence that some of the biggest single stones in the ancient world besides Baalbek, are also used in retaining walls, and by the Romans as well, as we will see.

Retaining walls were especially important if there was a lot of soil erosion at the site, or if the platform you were trying to build was on a steep incline.

At Baalbek the platform was built right on the side of a huge hill, so for that reason alone it would require a retaining wall if they intended to make a large level platform. But if you added to that a soil erosion problem, you would have two very good reasons for a huge retaining wall at Baalbek.

So does the area around Baalbek have a problem with soil erosion? The answer is yes, probably one of the biggest in the world. You can see evidence of soil erosion all around the Baalbek site. The soil from the top of the hill has been sliding[5] down the hill into the valley below for hundreds of years.

One of the leading causes of soil erosion is deforestation. If an area that once had trees has been completely cleared of those trees, the rain no longer will have anything to slow down its velocity. Normally the rain hits tree branches and the thick foliage that accumulates on the forest floor over time. Also the soil is kept in check by root systems of trees which hold the soil in place.

Lebanon has a picture of a cedar tree on its flag. Their trees have been a symbol of pride for millennia – the so called Cedars of Lebanon.  But the forests have disappeared long ago as they were one of the only sites for timber in the ancient near east, and it was massively deforested in ancient times.

In fact the soil shifting is just as bad today in the Bekka valley. The UN in 2006[6] proposed a series of solutions to deal with this now full scale environmental disaster in the Baalbek region. Homes in the region are being abandoned as their foundations shift and they become inhabitable. But although these proposed solutions by the UN may be new, this problem is an ancient one, one the Romans would have been well aware of.

The massive Trilithon stones provided the weight needed to press down and secure the stones in the wall below.

This is why you only see these huge stones one side of Baalbek – the side where the steep slope is. The idea that these stones were part of a platform and were used as a landing pad is something that requires ignorance of the layout of the site in order to believe.

Well what about the age of this wall, is it from the Roman period of construction, or is it from the pre-Roman Canaanite era?

There is a lot of confusion about this point because there was indeed a very old pre-Roman temple on this site.

The Pre-Roman Canaanite temple was a pretty standard platform and alter much like other sites built by the Canaanites,[7][8] which were referred to in the Old Testament as “high places.”

This original site was probably chosen by the Canaanites because it was indeed on a hill, as any good “high place” should be, but also because it was less than half a mile from the perfect stone quarry.[9]

The early versions of this temple however did not have a retaining wall. As the different groups added to the site over the years the site changed drastically, the Romans alone spent 200 years doing construction at the site. Think of that, that would be like starting a construction project in 1812 that only just now came to completion. That’s a long time to be working on a project.

So yes Baalbek is built on a very old Canaanite alter to Baal, but the Trilithon stones were not part of that site, nor are they part of the foundation as is often claimed. They are part of a very necessary retaining wall.

The question still remains however about the methods for moving and lifting these stones:

AA: “Some have suggested that this stone alone weighs in excess of 1,200 tones. How was it moved there, because obviously it’s situated on top of these stone rows that we can find down here, which means that this stones had to be lifted and then set on top of these stones down here?”

So, did the Romans have the technology to move and lift such stones?

Well, all you have to do is look one country over to find out.

About the same time the Romans were beginning their 200 year project at Baalbek, another project of similar magnitude was beginning by the Roman “client king” Herod “the great” in 19BC.[10]

Herod, using Roman techniques, renovated the temple mount to earn favour with the Jews, who viewed him as a Roman proxy and not a Jew.

The expanded version of the temple was double the size of the original, but in order to make this expansion, he had to incorporate part of the hill to the northeast, which meant that he had to construct a massive retaining wall in order to hold back the force of the earth in order to build the massive platform.

There is a portion of this retaining wall still standing today, and it contains the second largest set of single stones, next to Baalbek.

Just like Baalbek there are several of these stones lined up to form the wall and to provide the weight and size needed to hold back the earth. They call the four largest stones the “Master Course.”[11]

The weight of the heaviest one is 630 tons, only a little over 100 tons less than Baalbek’s biggest stone. And no one denies that these stones were cut, moved and lifted to perfection using Roman and local techniques.[12]

(As a side note, it’s tempting to think the holes visible in theses stones were used for lifting, but these holes were cut after the stones were placed, they were used to hold plaster in place for certain water projects, and only go a few inches deep.)[13]

Anyway is it really logical to believe that the Romans could cut, move and lift 630 ton blocks for retaining walls just fine, but if you added another 100 tons, it would require alien technology?

We know that the Romans, about the same time, had taken a liking to Egyptian obelisks and they started dragging them back to Rome in large numbers, and Rome was hundreds of miles by land and sea from Egypt whereas Baalbek was less than a mile from the quarry.

Some of these obelisks were almost 500 tons.[14] So the Romans had a lot of opportunities to get good at moving stones about the same size and shape as the Trilithon stones.

There are even Roman descriptions of this process of moving Obelisks by Marcellinus Comes as well as reliefs, such as the one on the bottom of the Theodosius Obelisk in Istanbul.[15][16][17]

The ancient Roman writings of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio describe in detail many of the Roman technological advantages like pulleys, which would reduce the force needed by half for each pulley used. He even described their ingenious way of moving stones[18] by constructing huge oak wheels on either end of the block, whether they were round, like pillars or huge rectangular stones like the Trilithons; they would then be pulled by oxen to the site.

So what about the lifting of the Trilithon stones at Baalbek?

Some make the point that the Trilithon stones do not have “Lewis Holes” in them like many of the other Roman stones at Baalbek. Lewis Holes is the name for the holes the Romans would drill in stones for lifting with their cranes…yes, the Romans had cranes.[19][20] And although their cranes only had a five ton capacity, often they would combine many of them together, which would obviously give them greater capacity.[21]

So why don’t these three stones contain these holes like all the rest of the stones at Baalbek? Well first of all, I wouldn’t be so sure that they don’t, no one has ever seen what is on the ends of these stones. It may very well be that the decided against a straight up or dead lift of the trilithon stones because of their weight, and instead decided to lift up only one side of the stone.

You would only need to lift it high enough and long enough to get even the smallest brace underneath it, because at that point you would have a number of mechanical advantages and therefore options.

For example watch as this man makes a Stonehenge in his back yard all by himself using a simple counter weight method.

“I’ve tried to do this without any mechanical machinery at all. I’ve used mostly sticks and stones for my equipment. No pullies. No hoist. No metal ladders. I’m just trying to use gravity too. I believe this is my favourite tool.

Girl: The first goal is getting this block three feet off the ground.

In order to move it up at this point I just rock the block back and forth – adding weight to that end – and that opens a gap on this side and I just slide a board in. Then I add the weight to that end and slide a board in at this end.

Girl: This Suring box acts like a jack, slowing raising the block.”

But its not really even necessary for them to have been lifted. A French Paper written by Jean-Pierre Adam  meticulously details how the stones could have been moved using the specifications provided by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio by constructing roads underneath the stones on rollers[22], and the roads were raised to lead to the exact place of their placement, which was easy at Baalbek because of the terrain,  so it wouldnt require any lifting, and then using man powered  drums and a system of capstans to pull the stones along the road.

This method would only require 144 workers to accomplish.

It’s also helpful for people to remember that the largest stone ever moved in the world is the so called Thunder Stone in Russia, moved in the 1700’s using no modern equipment[23], and this stone is 1.5 tons larger than the largest trilithon stone, and we know that moving it didn’t require alien technology.

Well what about this claim?

AA: “What’s really interesting about Baalbek is that it’s always been known as the landing place. There’s an actual text from Sumerian times known as the epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh actually claims to have seen rockets descend and ascend from Baalbek – the landing place.”

These claims come directly from the writings Zechariah Sitchin, and they are totally untrue. Baalbek was not called the “landing place”, and the Epic of Gilgamesh never speaks of rockets ascending and descending anywhere in it.[24]

Michael Heiser: “If you’re going to make these ascertains I would want to see the passage in Gilgamesh that names Baalbek specifically. I’m naturally sceptical that there is a passage, but if you’re going to make this claim you have to be able to establish with certainty, not even just a general region, that these are the stones that are being referred to in any given text.”

Sitchin, when making this claim in his book, never tells the reader here they can find this in the Epic of Gilgamesh. This is probably because it makes it harder for the reader to check his facts.

Heiser: “I have personally found the writings of Sitchin very frustrating from the perspective of a scholar and an academic – which is what I am. It’s very hard to follow his trail because he doesn’t cite sources. Even if he cites a source, for instance an ancient text, he doesn’t give you the chapter and verse, he doesn’t give you the tablet and line numbers. I have to look at it and say it’s either really lazy or he doesn’t want you to check up on him. It’s one or the other.”

I will link the actual section of the epic as well as a link to the online resources to check the Sumerian texts yourselves at the website ancientaliensdebunked.com[25]

Nowadays all the Sumerian tablets, including their own dictionaries are searchable online, yes the Sumerians wrote their own extensive and detailed dictionaries, so we don’t have to trust Sitchin or anyone else, we can basically just ask the Sumerians what they thought a word meant.

It becomes painfully obvious to anyone that cares enough to look that Sitchin was at best totally incompetent as a translator and at worst a scam artist. See sitchiniswrong.com to being your journey in losing any confidence in the so called “translations” of Zechariah Sitchin.

In conclusion: The trithilon stones are part of a necessary retaining wall, not a foundation, and such walls were common to the Greeks and Romans. The retaining wall was not part of the simple, original, much smaller temple at Baalbek. And we know from other retaining walls of similar size, built by the Romans at the same time and in the same area, time, that they were more than capable of moving and placing stones of that size and shape, also evidenced by their ability to move Obelisks. This is especially true if you gave them 200 years, and some roman pulleys and cranes.

[1]Adam, Jean-Pierre (1977), “À propos du trilithon de Baalbek: Le transport et la mise en oeuvre des mégalithes”, Syria 54 (1/2): 31–63

[2]Ruprechtsberger, Erwin M. (1999), “Vom Steinbruch zum Jupitertempel von Heliopolis/Baalbek (Libanon)”, Linzer Archäologische Forschungen 30: 7–56

[3] Alouf, Michael M., 1944: History of Baalbek. American Press. p. 139

[4] Adam 1977, p. 52

[5]http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/crisis%20prevention/disaster/arab_states/Lebanon_Flood%20Risk%20Management%20and%20Soil%20Conservation%20for%20Livelihood%20Recovery.pdf

[6]Ibid.

[7] Adam 1977, p. 52

[8] Kalayan, H., ’Notes on the Heritage of Baalbek and the Beqa’a’ in Cultural Resources in Lebanon, Beirut, 1969

[9] Adam, Jean Pierre; Anthony Mathews (1999). Roman Building: Materials and Techniques. Routledge. p. 35.

[10]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Wall

[11] Galyn Wiemer. “Jerusalam 101.” Jerusalam 101 – Ashlar Stones of Herod’s Building Projects, http://www.generationword.com/jerusalem101/33-ashlar-stones.html

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] PBS – Nova. “Nova.” Obelisks of Rome, November 2000. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/egypt/raising/rome.html.

[15] Ibid.

[16]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_obelisks_in_Rome

[17]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelisk_of_Theodosius

[18]Jean-Pierre Adam, 1977, A propos du trilithon de Baalbek. Le transport et la mise en oeuvre des mégalithes, – http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/syria_0039-7946_1977_num_54_1_6623, English – http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2012/08/transporting-trilithon-stones-baalbek-applied-physics-ancient-aliens/

[19] Lancaster, Lynne (1999), “Building Trajan’s Column”, American Journal of Archaeology 103 (3): 419–439, DOI:10.2307/506969, JSTOR 506969

[20] Dienel, Hans-Liudger; Meighörner, Wolfgang (1997), “Der Tretradkran”, Publication of the Deutsches Museum (Technikgeschichte series) (München)

[21] Ibid.

[22] Jean-Pierre Adam, 1977 http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/syria_0039-7946_1977_num_54_1_6623

[23] Jean-Pierre Adam, 1977

[24]http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/

[25]http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/?p=63
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/baalbek/#sthash.vDWfjVmZ.dpuf

We will look at the Incan megalithic sites like Machu Pichu all in one segment because Incan stonemasonry was all done more or less the same way.

In regard to Incan building, Ancient Aliens focuses most of its attention on the curved or beveled edges of the stones. They say that it looks like the edges of these stones were melted. Notice as we listen to them build the case for this that the reason they believe this is true, is based entirely on the way the stones look.

Ancient Aliens: “There are signs in many of these stones that show very large amounts of thermal heat have been applied to mould the stones in such a way that they apply perfectly, so it really does raise a lot of questions.”

AA: “If you look at the style the Saxoman Wall was built, the blocks look as if they’ve been molded into putty. If you can mould stone into place then all of a sudden, as crazy as [it] sounds it makes more sense.”

Now melting granite or any other stone and reshaping it would leave unmistakable evidence in and on the stones themselves. In other words, if the rocks were melted, it would be easily provable, it would not be a matter of what the stones look like, it would be a simple yes or no question.

Ancient Aliens skips this step of proving or disproving their theory, instead they assume that the rocks were melted based on the look of the stones and move to the step of trying to figure out who would have had the technology to melt stones.

AA: “I have a stone torch that I use for sometimes shaping stone granite and it generates a temperature in excess of 3,000 degrees. That’s a lot.”

AA: “When we look back at the ancients and we see a technology that they couldn’t possibly know, there’s only two possibilities: either God did it, which we don’t think happened, or some high-tech civilization from another planet came and showed them how to do it, then took their materials and tools and went back home.”

I think there is at least one more possibility that Mr. Dunn may have missed.

Every shaped stone at any Incan site has what archeologists call “pit marks” or “pit scars”. They occur when stone hammers are used to quarry and shape the stone.[1]

In addition archeologist have found a huge amount of Incan stone hammers at the quarries[2], and almost uniquely to the Incans, they are found at the building sites too, because the Incans only rough cut the stones at the quarries they did the finish work on site so the stones would perfectly fit with the stones around it.[3]

Well how did the Incans accomplish these beveled edges? They used a smaller gauge stone hammer for the outer section.[4] The evidence for this can be seen on every single stone that has these edges.[5]

You can see that the pit scars are much more numerous and smaller on the edges, showing that more blows with a smaller stone was used to achieve the detail work.[6]

Another reason this is no mystery to archeologists is because there are a large number of stones in various stages of construction in the ancient Incan quarries. These stones reveal that indeed the Incan stone masons were using some of the most basic tools, even for their time.[7]

If you want to learn more about the details I will link you to some peer reviewed papers that can tell you more than you’d ever want to know. Including details of experiments done. For example a single scientist in 90 minutes accomplished similar cuts with similar tools.[8]

All this makes what Mike Dunn says here one of the most off the wall things ever said in the Ancient Aliens series:

AA: “I can’t help but think that whoever was behind this thought the process through from beginning to end. They didn’t quarry the rock and then decide how the heck [they] were going to transport [it]. They knew, from beginning to end, what needed to be done with whatever techniques and technology they were going to use. In industry today there is kind of an adage: ‘keep it simple, stupid.’”

AA: “Based on his experience, Mike Dunn believes the simplest way to build the great walls of Machu Pichu would have been to transport small rocks to the site then melt them and use molds to fashion the exact size and shapes needed.”

So he says it’s simpler to melt the rocks – something so complicated that we don’t know how to do it. Is that really the simplest solution he could come up with?

And then to say that they poured the melted rocks into a mold? I mean look at these walls! Can anyone look at this and say “yeah that looks like they were made from the same mold?” These are not exactly bricks of the same size and shape. Unless he wants to say that they made a new mold for every block, in which case we would go well out of the range of this being the simplest solution.

As far as how the Incans moved the stones into place, they left us a lot of evidence behind in the form of ramps. There are Incan ramps all over the place still in existence today, in the quarries and at the building sites.[9]

The Incans had one of the most massive work forces in the all the ancient world. They were like the Roman empire of the west, and they had an absolutely huge labor force at the ready for these types of projects.

So we know these rocks were not melted and put in molds as Ancient Aliens tells us. We actually know exactly how they made these rounded edges, because of the pit marks left behind as well as the huge number of stone hammers found in the quarries. There are no mysteries that require Alien input with Incan stone work.

[1] Jean Pierre Protzen, “Inca Quarrying and Stone Cutting,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 44, No. 2 (May, 1985), pp. 161-182
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/incan-sites/#sthash.OWXHWyRO.dpuf

Many people are familiar with these images of stone heads, called Moai by the locals. Ancient Aliens tells us that nothing is really known about them:

Ancient Aliens: “How in the heck did they make these; where did they come from and how did they move them? Nobody has the answer.”

This isn’t true at all. For instance, we know exactly how they were cut and shaped. Because the construction of the Moai was abandoned abruptly, so there are plenty of examples of Moai in various stages of development. [1]

Also the stone tools that they used to pound out the relatively soft volcanic rock[2] were found all over the quarries[3]. Here is a clip of one of the local explaining to his grandson how the Moai were built:

Spoken through a translator: “He thinks that 20 people carved this over a period of 5-6 years to this stage. These are our sections of people that are given an assignment. This is their section. You can see different ways of doing it, and you can clearly see the tonki marks and how the people were carving and going in and making these deep cuts in the rock.”

Narrator: “The channels reached around, and eventually formed a boat-like keel, until the statue could be snapped off and fully extracted.”

Ancient Aliens spends most of its time here discussing the moving of the Moai, and it’s interesting the angle that they take, because it seems that they are aware that there have been many successful experiments moving Moai with wooden sleds and minimal workers.[4] So Ancient Aliens has to do what they do best, create a false dilemma.

AA: “But there is a unique problem with the idea of moving Moai with sleds or rollers.”

AA: “When you go to Easter Island, you don’t get the impression they had enough wood to have rollers and, in fact, in the 1700s, the first four expeditions to Easter Island never really saw a tree. That’s the real mystery of Easter Island…how can you move a multi-ton statue if you have no trees for rollers?”

So they say there are currently no trees on Easter Island. Therefore they assume there were never any trees on Easter Island, and therefore, well…aliens.

The problem with this is that there used to be a lot of trees on Easter Island, which we know because of extensive pollen samples taken from the crater lakes, as well as other methods.[5] In fact the very reason there are no trees on Easter Island now, is probably because they used all of them while moving and lifting over 1,000 Moais over 100s of years. In other words they used all the trees.

One interesting thing about Easter Island is regarding the soil erosion. If you take a land that once had a lot of trees and cut them all down, then you will have massive soil erosion problem. This is because there would be no more root systems to hold the soil in place. Also the rains no longer have anything to stop their velocity.

The soil erosion at Easter Island is so notorious that if you type “soil erosion” into a search engine, you will see the Wikipedia page has a picture of Easter Island.

Some of the Moai actually have full bodies, they are not just heads, but because of soil erosion, even in very short time they have been covered up to their necks in soil. This is a direct result of the land being completely deforested.

So we know for sure how these Moai were cut and shaped, that is with simple tools which are found all over the quarries, and we know that if they had trees on Easter Island then there are no problems with moving them and prying them into place. And Easter Island used to have a lot of trees before their fascination with creating Moai exhausted their supply.

[1] Jo Anne Van Tilburg, Easter Island: Archaeology, Ecology and Culture (London: British Museum Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0714125046), 24.

[2] “Quarry on Easter Island.” National Geographic. Web. <http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/multimedia/quarry-easter-island/kd/?ar_a=3&ar_r=999>.

[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai

[4] PBS Nova. Easter Island – Secrets of Lost Empires, 2000.

[5] Thor Heyerdahl., 1962. “at some unidentified date prior to AD 380, the first settlers landed on Easter Island, and found a verdant island covered by trees, shrubs, and palms.” He proved this to be true from the extensive pollen samples taken from the crater lakes with the aid of 26 feet long cores from the sediments
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/easter-island/#sthash.IltkoVAt.dpuf

Ancient Aliens: “Arguably the most remarkable Mayan artifact ever found – the stone sarcophagus lid of King Pacal – has produced considerable controversy. Mainstream scholars believe the depiction of King Pacal on a journey to the underworld, but ancient astronaut theorists believe the king is portrayed at the seat of the controls of a space craft and have dubbed him the Palenque astronaut.”

AA: “He appears to be going into space. He is the original rocket man manipulating his spacecraft; going into space.”

AA: “We have maintained for a very long time that the depiction here is king Pacal sitting in some kind of spacecraft. He is at an angle like modern-day astronauts upon lift-off. He is manipulating some controls. He has some type of breathing apparatus or some type of a telescope in front of his face. His feet are on some type of a pedal. And you have something that looks like an exhaust – with flames.”

The sarcophagus lid of Pacal has been a centerpiece for the Ancient Astronaut theories since the beginning. Eric Von Daniken believes this to be one of his best pieces of evidence.

AA: “You see his upper hand – he is manipulating some controls. From the lower hand – he is turning something on. The heel of his left foot is on a kind of pedal and, outside the capsule, you see a linking flame. This is incredible. This is absolute proof of extraterrestrials.”

The theory rests on the idea that the Mayans were not depicting their usual symbols here but were trying to realistically depict a rocket with Pacal as its pilot.

I think the best thing I can do for you here is to clearly explain what Mayanists and other scientists who specialize in Mayan culture and artwork believe this scene is depicting.

As Ancient Aliens said, archeologists believe this scene is depicting the moment of Pascal’s death and his decent into the underworld. Let me show you why they believe that.

The most famous symbol in this picture is that of the “World Tree”[1] which, if you believe Ancient Aliens, would make up the entire hull of the rocket. It’s hard to over emphasize the importance of the World Tree in Mayan mythology.

The idea was that the World Tree extended into the heavens with its branches, and its roots extended into the underworld. So it was a symbol of the bridge between the underworld, heaven and earth.[2]

When it is depicted it almost always has the double headed “vision serpent” on its branches[3], just like it’s depicted on Pacal’s lid. The vision serpent was believed to live at the center of the world, thus it is depicted just above the underworld and just below the heavens.[4]

In its top branches is the celestial bird which is seen a little more clearly in other World Tree depictions like this one, but on Pacal’s lid you can see its clearly depicting the same bird.

The celestial bird represented the heavens and thus was pictured on the top of the World Tree.[5]

What Ancient Aliens says is the exhaust or fire from the rockets takeoff is the roots of the World Tree extending into the underworld. Which is not just typical for depictions of the World Tree, it’s pretty much a requirement.[6]

In the underworld we see a picture of the Mayan sun monster which Pacal is riding into the underworld.[7]

The idea was that every time the sun set it was actually travelling into the underworld where it would die, like everything else in the underworld. You can even see the bottom half of the suns face was a skeleton while the top half still had flesh and had not yet died. This too is a common theme showing the moment of transition.[8]

So Pacal is hitching a ride on the sun into the underworld.

Even the so-called smoke is easily explained when you understand Mayan symbols.

In Mayan art whenever you see a so-called “traveler”- which is a person in transition from one world to the next – there must be something that is making that travel possible.[9] Sometimes it is a twisted umbilical cord, but almost always it is a serpent, often a double headed serpent.[10] In other words being in the mouths of a double headed serpent was a symbol of transition from one world to the next.

You can see that the so called smoke is actually the traditional serpent’s beard which appears in almost every depiction of a serpent in Mayan art.

Now that you have an idea about what the scholars believe about this, let’s look at some of Ancient Aliens’ specific claims.

AA: “He is manipulating some controls right here.”

They say his hands are manipulating some controls, but if you look closely his right hand isn’t touching anything at all, and the thing to its right is not connected to the tree anymore that any of the other floating design elements in the picture.

His left hand could be said to be manipulating controls more than his right, but you would have to say that all these marks on the tree are controls too which, in reality, is probably the bark of the World Tree, which was modeled after the Ceiba tree, which had a very unique bark and was usually depicted in some way or another in World Tree art.[11]

The odd position of Pacal’s hands in this image is really what the fuss is all about. In the 1970s video refutation of the Ancient Astronaut theories the Mayan expert in that film made the point that the hands in Mayan art are often depicted in “delicate positions”[12]

“The Maya liked to show hands in rather delicate gestures.”

“Such gestures are common in Mayan art. There are similar examples on the side of the slab.”

As far as the claim about his foot being on a type of pedal, I would have to say that if that is how aliens designed pedals, then we are far more advanced in pedal technology than they are because that may be the worst angle to put any kind foot pedal.

Plus, there are other reliefs of Mayans in the underworld on similar slabs, with their feet in similar positions, but without the rocket.

What about this so-called “breathing tube” for his nose?

Well, it doesn’t connect to anything and, if you look closely, thing it could potentially connect to is also represented on the other side of the lid and is clearly a stylistic element of the vision serpent.

What it actually is a nose piercing, particularly a bone.

“Here an earring extended from a pierced ear; a nose plug – which has the elements of death because it takes the form of a fleshless bone.”

Finally, consider the context that we find this image. It’s on a coffin lid, so the mainstream view is perfectly in line with that, and the whole concept was common in Mayan burials. It would have been a strange thing for them to all of a sudden abandon their usual symbolic artwork to depict a rocket on a coffin lid.

The fact is that the symbols on the sarcophagus lid are really consistently used[13]. Often the symbols are even explained in the extensive Mayan writings. These symbols fit perfectly with what we know about their beliefs about the world and the afterlife. [14]

[1] Miller, Mary; and Karl Taube (1993). The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05068-6.

[2] Ibid.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Serpent

[4] Schele, Linda; and David Freidel (1990). A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya. New York: William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-07456-1. OCLC 21295769.

[5] Stierlin, Henri (2001). The Maya: Palaces and Pyramids of the Rainforest. London; New York: Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-1241-2.

[6] DIANNA WILSON MOSLEY. “ANCIENT MAYA AFTERLIFE ICONOGRAPHY: TRAVELING BETWEEN WORLDS” (2000). http://etd.fcla.edu/CF/CFE0001258/WilsonMosley_Dianna_L_200608_MA.pdf.

[7] Francisco Cámara Riess. “PAKAL’S TOMB”, http://www.delange.org/PalenqueTomb/PalenqueTomb.htm.

[8] Ibid.

[9] MOSLEY 2000

[10] Ibid.

[11] http://www.maya-archaeology.org/pre-Columbian_Mesoamerican_Mayan_ethnobotany_Mayan_iconography_archaeology_anthropology_research/sacred_ceiba_tree_flowers_kapok_spines_yaxche_incense_burners.php

[12] Harald Reinl. In Search of Ancient Astronauts, 1973. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133018/.

[13] MOSLEY (2000)

[14] Ibid.
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/pacals-rocket/#sthash.cPDo7e3Q.dpuf

Ancient Aliens: “Belize, Central America. In 1924, British adventurer Frederick Mitchell-Hedges travelled here with his daughter Anna to explore the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Lubontoon. One afternoon Anna climbed to the top of a crimpling pyramid, hoping to see the ocean”

AA: “It was high noon and she was at the top and the way the sun came in; the way the rocks had moved, there was just a small opening and the light from the sun went through and it hit the top of the skull. She ran down and she was all excited and she said ‘there’s someone in the there with a flashlight’. Anna’s father and others in their party were too large to fit inside the small opening of the pyramid, so they tied a rope around Anna and lowered her into the hole. When she came back up, Anna held the top of a strange crystal skull. A second search uncovered a macthing jaw.”

As you might have suspected nothing you just heard is true, the real story about the Mitchel Hedges Skull (MHS) is quite different. It’s worth mentioning that the reason that Ancient Aliens focuses in on the MHS is because all of the other known crystal skulls have now been proven to be fakes [1] and even ancient aliens admits this.

AA: “Scientific tests have determined that the two owned by the British Museum and the Cape Brandley were not authentic pre-Columbian artifacts.”

The MHS was the last hope for a real one, and the only reason it was the last hope is because the daughter of Mitchel Hedges, while she was alive, refused to have an official study done to see if it was fake or not. Rather than that she toured around with it in new age conventions and the like, until she recently died.

Her widower however, in 2007 took it to the Smithsonian museum for natural history where extensive testing was done on it. It was found to be a fake, just like the others.[2] I’m not sure if Ancient Aliens produced this episode before or after 2007, but I suspect they wouldn’t have cared much either way.

The real history of the MHS starts with another crystal skull that was in the British Museum which the forger of the MHS copied it from.[3]

The British Museum acquired a crystal skull in 1898 at a time right after tools were first invented that made it possible to carve crystal skulls like these. We now know it was also a time when a lot of fake crystal artifacts were sold to museums.[4]

The British museum’s skull, which has its own dubious history, was later found to be fake too, but in the 1930’s it was still believed to be genuine, and it was proudly displayed in the museum.[5]

Based on research done on the MHS by the Smithsonian museum, it was concluded that the forger of the MHS copied the one in the British museum in order to make his work seem more authentic.[6] The MHS was first owned by a man named Sydney Burney who we have records of trying to sell it to various people unsuccessfully for 10 years before this. He finally sold it to a member of the general public at a Sotheby’s auction in London in 1943.[7] That member of the general public was Fredrick Mitchel Hedges. (FMH)

We actually have the letter FMH wrote to his brother directly after purchasing the skull at the auction in which he expresses his excitement about his new purchase – this will be important later.[8]

Five years later though in a local paper FMH was claiming that he found the skull himself in a daring expedition to Central America.[9]

FMH was a renowned storyteller and often sold his fanciful stories to Hearst newspapers. In these stories he was always the main character.

For example FMH was a fisherman by trade, and so he would have tales of him catching previously undiscovered animals; fighting off sea monsters; tales of man eating sharks, as well as your average big fish stories.

Later with his book “Danger is my Ally,” he told tales of him discovering previously unknown lands and undiscovered people groups, as well as battling all kinds of jungle dangers.

Later on people would write editorials that had been to the areas he said he went to and publically debunked him.[10]

FMH was also shown to hoax an odd situation involving a supposed robbery and several shrunken heads. He even lost a very public liable suit concerning this. But all of this only scratches the surface of the deceit that surrounds the MHS.[11]

First of all none of the stories about the discovery of the MHS match each other, and all of them contradict the letter he sent to his brother in 1943 which clearly says he bought it in an auction. It says:

“The “Collection” grows and grows and grows. You possibly saw in the papers that I acquired that amazing Crystal Skull that was formerly in the “Sydney Burney Collection.” It is fashioned from a single block of transparent rock crystal, exactly life size; scientists put the date at pre-1800 B.C., and they estimate it took five generations passing from Father to son to complete. It is anthropologically perfect in every detail, a superb piece of craftsmanship. There is only one other in the world known like it, which is in the British Museum and it is acknowledged to be not so fine as this.”

Many years later, when this letter surfaced, his adopted daughter Anna tried to explain the discrepancy between these stories this way on her website:

“In 1943 Mitchell-Hedges got embroiled in another controversy that still rages in some quarters to this day. In times before burglar alarms, it was not unusual to leave valuable items with friends if one was going away for long periods of time.

Mitchell-Hedges did this with a school friend, Sidney Burney, who had always shown an interest in the Crystal Skull. However, in 1943, Burney inexplicably put the Crystal Skull up for auction at Sotheby’s in London.

Mitchell-Hedges learned of this the day before and was so furious that for a while he was unable to speak. Unable to contact Burney, he arose the next day at 5am and traveled to London to retrieve his property.

Sotheby’s informed him that the vendor was Sidney Burney’s son. When they refused to withdraw it from the sale, Mitchell-Hedges realized the easiest way of regaining his property was to purchase it back. This he did for £400.”

This doesn’t make sense for lots of reasons, let alone that according to her story, which we will get to in a minute, this would mean that he had the skull for 10 years and didn’t mention it to anyone until after he writes a letter to his brother a decade later obviously implying that it was something he just acquired for the first time.

After FMH died the skull was left to Anna Mitchel Hedges, his adopted daughter, and this is when things really get sketchy.

Anna spent her entire life trying to sell the skull. She hired a guy named Frank Dorland, an art dealer, to promote the skull so she could get it sold. Dorland had worked with her father when he was alive to sell another one of his objects, which also turned out to be a fake.[12]

She and Dorland signed an agreement in July of 1964 that he would promote the skull and that the price of its sale must be no less than $50,000.

Dorland then got busy trying to make everything look really official, including coming up with a totally different story for the skulls discovery. After this agreement with Dorland in 1964 was the first time Anna claimed that is was she, not her father who found the skull.[13] Something that no one else seemed to mention in the last 30 years.

By doing this it made Anna the sole person who could establish provenience for the skull, something that a buyer would want, especially a museum. And because everyone else involved was dead by this time there was no one left to contradict this new story.

All of the mystical claims about the skull were born out of the two books that the promoter, Frank Dorland commissioned in order to promote the skull.

Here is a letter from Dorland to Anna concerning the writer who he wanted to write one of the books.

“I have convinced Dick Garvin (who does sell) it is worth the percentage to you and me and you to furnish the information. This makes it a better book, makes more money all the way around. The skull is not sold, it is put to use in this manner and for public appearances to boost sales and interest. (OC 276, folder #11 – 3/10/1970)”

These books make outlandish claims about the crystal skulls origin and powers and, since the books were released at the height of the new age movement, they enjoyed an uncritical and enthusiastic audience.

During all these years they tried desperately to sell the skull. The problem was that, because of all the fakes, museums were now asking to validate the skull first. [14]

One letter from the British Museum to Anna shows that negotiations were stopped when the curator caught wind of the actual history of the skul.

None of this stops Ancient Aliens from promoting all kinds of contradictory stories about the skull.

AA: “Yes, they’re alien artefacts. Even some people think they’re made on another planet”

AA: “They were created specifically to hold records from alien civilisations. There was a legend that there were 13 skulls and that when the 13 skulls come together then something significant will change in the world”

AA: “Legend suggests that there are 12 additional worlds out there – planets which are inhabited by intelligent species. These 13 crystal skulls that allegedly exist on planet Earth were each brought here from one of those 12 planets, and the 13th skull is the one that apparently contains all of the information of all those 12 different realms…and that’s the legend of the 12 crystal skulls.”

AA: “But, as ancient astronaut theorists maintain, why would visiting aliens have given the crystal skull to the Maya?”

The only problem is that no one can seem to find a record of this Mayan prophecy.[15] The idea seems to trace back to one new age author. Mayan scholars have never heard of this legend…and certainly not this one:

AA: “A lot of natives and a lot of people working with crystal skulls say that the high-quartz-contents skulls and especially the quartz skulls themselves is the highest frequency or energy or vibration possible on the physical plain, and so a lot of native people kind of worshipped or took care of these objects because they knew that they had, or felt that they had, the highest energy possible on the Earth plain.”

This whole myth was birthed out of a marketing campaign for a forged artifact, a myth which found a home in the new age.

In conclusion, all of the proposed crystal skulls have now been conclusively proven to be hoaxes. The last holdout (the MHS) was only still a candidate because it was not allowed to be examined until recently. Its history is full of greed and lies, and it genuineness could only be accepted by the most dedicated devotee given the facts we now know.



[1] British Museum (n.d.-b), Jenkins (2004, p.217), Sax et al. (2008), Smith (2005), Walsh (1997; 2008)

[2] Jane MacLaren Walsh. “Archeology.org – The Skull of Doom”, May 27, 2010. http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/mitchell_hedges/The Skull of Doom.htm.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Aldred (2000, passim.); Jenkins (2004, pp.218–219). In this latter work, Philip Jenkins, former Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies and latterly an endowed Professor of Humanities at PSU, writes that crystal skulls are among the more obvious of examples where the association with Native spirituality is a “historically recent” and “artificial” synthesis. These are “products of a generation of creative spiritual entrepreneurs” that do not “[represent] the practice of any historical community”.
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/crystal-skulls/#sthash.6KvyxxEe.dpuf

Ancient Aliens: “Early in the 20th century, tomb robbers searching among the Magdalena River stumbled upon a grave site dating back 1,500 years to a pre-Columbian civilization known as the Tolima. Among the funerary objects found there were 100s of small 2-3 inch gold figurines.”

AA: “Many of those [figurines] looked like insects and fish. However, out of those 100s that they found, they also found about a dozen that are eerily reminiscent of modern-day fighter jets.”

Okay, so he admits that when these things were found there were hundreds of them that were clearly representing insects and animals and only about 10 of them that looked like jet airplanes.

Now, before we get into the specifics I want to appeal to your sense of logic. Almost all of these little figurines are depicting fish, birds, insects, lizards and frogs, and we can see when we look at the figurines where we know what they were trying to depict – like these frogs -we can see huge amounts of variation and clearly stylistic elements that are not found in nature.

So we know they weren’t trying to be ultra-realistic here, which you can see by looking at their depictions of this man, or this cat, or this alligator. The Tolima were artists, and like most artists they had a certain style that they brought to the subjects they were depicting.

Considering that all the other objects they found are animals, and considering the objects in question, like all the others, have eyes and teeth and so on, isn’t it more logical to assume that these objects are probably like all the others? That is, that they are also depicting some kind of animal in a stylized way?

Ahh, but wait, Ancient Aliens has a false dilemma for us.

AA: “They have nothing in common with anything similar in nature.”

AA: “There is not a single insect in the world which has got its wings at the bottom. Now, when you exclude the possibility that it’s an insect, one of the things which remain is that this thing is actually what it looks like – yes, a plane.”

Okay, let’s see if we have this logic straight.

Since no insect has these characteristics, it leaves us with only one other choice, which is an airplane? But I thought there were fish, birds, lizards, bats and cats found too in the other 100 figurines? It would seem to me that he is kind of skipping a few options here on his way to the airplane conclusion.

Let’s take the most famous one for example. This is the one we will see later that they made a model airplane out of. The tails of all these figures are vertical, which would make me think of fish, which also have vertical tails.

One fish that the Tolima would have been familiar with is the sucker mouth Catfish.[1] This might explain the round head and the big eyes, and even the small protrusions on the front of the fins. You can see that some varieties of this species of catfish have small protrusions on its fins as well.

When you look at the other gold figurines you can see that not only were fish a common subject, but many different species of fish were represented as well.

Because of the number and placement of the fins, fish are proposed for some of the other figurines as well. So when he says that no insect has its wings on the bottom so it must be an airplane, I can only see that line as deceptive considering the placement and angle of the fins are perfectly accounted for in many fish species that were available and important to the Tolima culture.[2] In other words, airplanes don’t have a monopoly on being aerodynamic.

To prove one of these figurines was aerodynamic which, according to Ancient Aliens proves it was a plane, they built a model of it. Here is what they say about it.

AA: “It was rather simple because we don’t need to put [many] parts into this shape because this shape is perfect. Everything was already done by the native people 2,000 years ago.”

AA: “They did not add an inch or remove an inch; they just essentially just blew the thing into a larger size. I mean, this is sensational.”

No they didn’t add an inch or remove an inch, unless you count things like totally removing the big curls on the front of the wings which would have rendered the model totally useless for flying. They also added curvature to the wings; they added flaps, a landing gear and, one more little thing, a propeller and an engine.

Finally, I want to appeal to your logic on the following point:

Consider that all we know about this culture reveals them to be simple farmers, fisherman, and artisans[3]; people that lived of the land and, considering that there is nothing in the extensive amount of archeological material from this culture that would suggest knowledge about planes landing and taking off all the time, is it logical to assume that aliens landing and taking off in their back yards made so little impression on them that they only devote 10 of the 100s of figurines to it, and only in one tomb?

Or is it more logical to assume that, just like the other hundreds of figurines with eyes and teeth and fins, that they are highly stylized animals, like fish, that they knew about and relied upon in their daily lives.

I think even a die-hard Ancient Astronaut theorist would have to admit that logic is not on their side on this one.

[1] Nelson, Joseph, S. (2006). Fishes of the World. John Wiley & Sons, Inc..

[2] Fishbase.org. “List of Freshwater Fishes for Colombia.” List of Freshwater Fishes for Colombia, August 15, 2007. http://fish.mongabay.com/data/Colombia.htm.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pijao_people
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/tolima-fighter-jets/#sthash.3GqdnkJw.dpuf

Ancient Aliens: “All throughout the middle ages there are some magnificent paintings and, in certain areas of the painting, there are what looks to be UFOs. They are always floating above in the sky – usually above the Virgin Mary or above Jesus on the crucifix. [In some places] we have sceneries that depict what looks like UFOs.”

Almost all supposed UFO-in-art cases come from medieval art, and there is a pretty good reason for that.

Most people are not aware of the symbolism rules of Byzantine or medieval art and so they are easy prey for Ancient Astronaut theories about it.

This theory concerning Byzantine art could never work on someone who studies this type of art professionally. Let me show you why.

First, let’s take one that Ancient Aliens showed in the background a few times in the last clip. It’s a very famous UFO-in-art painting, and it’s usually presented using a very poor quality image so you can’t see the details very well.

If you look closely you can see that these objects have distinct faces. They are actually representing the sun and the moon, and you would think that someone being honest about this would fill you in that they appear in almost every painting of a crucifixion done in the Byzantine style.[1]

The sun and the moon were consistently depicted with human characteristics, sometimes they had just faces; other times they had full bodies.[2]

The concept of representing the sun and the moon with human characteristics was a carry-over from the pagan artwork of Rome. The Roman Catholic Church simply continued that tradition of symbolizing the sun and the moon with human characteristics in the artwork that it had commissioned.[3]

The sun and the moon are usually facing the cross, which is supposed to represent them being witnesses to the crucifixion.[4]

The sheer number of Byzantine crucifixion scenes where these objects are depicted in such a way that is obviously supposed to be the sun and the moon, should be enough to put this one to rest for good.

Ancient Aliens goes on for a while about the 14th century fresco at the Viscoski Decani monastery in Kosovo. It has been a big favorite of Ancient Astronaut theorists since it first appeared in a French magazine called Sputnik in the 1960’s[5]

This crucifixion scene is just like the others we have seen except it has a more full body representation of the sun and the moon. There are just as many examples of the sun and the moon being depicted in this way – with full bodies – in other Byzantine crucifixion scenes including in other places in this same monastery.[6]

Ancient Aliens also shows this famous painting – well, famous to ancient astronaut theorists anyway. This one is like the others in that once you know what you’re looking at you will see so many other examples of it in medieval art.

This one is called “Madonna with Child with the Infant St. John” and to start out I want to draw your attention just below and to the right of the object, where you will see a character holding his hand to his eyes and looking toward the sky; with him is a dog that is also looking toward the sky.

The painting was supposed to be depicting this passage in the bible:

«…and there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, an angel of the Lord come upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear ye not: for behold!, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you was born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord…»

So the shepherds and the glory of the Lord shining round about them are all in the context of the announcement of Jesus’ birth from the gospel of Luke.

What really demystifies this is to show other paintings from the era depicting the same scene. Slowly you will see what the so called UFO is supposed to be.[7]

First you will notice that all of these paintings have the same shepherd, usually with a dog, and usually with their hands to their eyes.

Usually an angel comes out of the cloud lined with light. In older pictures the cloud in this scene would have golden rays.

Sometimes an angel is coming out of a big tear in the sky. Other times, like this one of a similar style, only a tear in the sky is visible, not the angel.[8]

In an almost identical Tondo we see the shepherd looking toward a red-dressed angel, and in the center, above the Madonna’s head there is the same light rayed cloud.

Here is the same scene painted by the artist’s brother in law, with a bright star appearing inside a cloud. On a hill to the right, the angel appears to the shepherds.

Here is another shepherd scene. We see the angel and the luminous cloud. Sometimes the angels would be depicted in the cloud like this.

So the “Madonna with Child with the Infant St. John” can safely be identified with the announcement scene in the gospel of Luke, and all the elements in the painting are well known by students of medieval art.

AA: “The most famous painting that dissolved any doubt in my mind depicted a UFO, with its lazer beam, was made by Crivelli in 1486 – the annunciation to Mary.”

AA: “In Medi-evil art in the annunciation when Mary is told that she will have a child but she will still be a virgin, and the angels tell them this, over Mary’s head is a space capsule. What is a space capsule doing over the head of Mary?”

This isn’t a space capsule. If you look closely you will see that it is formed by a circle of clouds inside of which there are two circles of small angels.

This is a very common way of representing God and is visible in a huge number of paintings. Gustave Dore in the middle of the 1800’s even resumed this pattern of the circles of angels in his illustration titled Dante’s Paradise.[9]

The so called “laser beam” is present in a lot of paintings of this scene[10] and is used to show the impregnation of Mary by the Holy Spirit, often represented by a dove, which is present in this painting as well if you look closely.

But this laser beam loses its value for Ancient Astronaut theorists the more one sees of other paintings of this Biblical scene, because it becomes obvious that they weren’t trying to depict a space capsule at all, but rather the circle of angel’s motif.

The last one Ancient Aliens mentions is this one:

AA: “One very interesting painting is where Jesus sits up in the clouds with, quote unquote, God and they’re holding onto the antenna of what looks like sputnik and theologians say that what is depicted here is nothing else but the Earth. Why would Earth have two antenna sticking out of it and why would it be round, because the mainstream viewpoint at the time was that the Earth was flat?”

This is similar to all the others we have looked at in that there are lots of other pictures of this Biblical scene that help to give us context.[11]

This scene usually contains the father the Son and the Holy Spirit – usually symbolized as a dove. They are holding what is sometimes called the “Creation Globe.”[12]

The idea that they are trying to convey is the Biblical concept that the creation of the world is attributed to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Bible.

This “Creation Globe” becomes a very common symbol in medieval art[13], and the only reason Ancient Aliens says that it can’t represent a globe is that according to them, people at that time in history thought the earth was flat.

Although this idea about people in the Middle Ages believing the earth was flat is widely believed nowadays, it’s little better than an urban legend.[14]

If you type in the “myth of the flat earth” into a search engine you’ll see that the truth is that almost every scientist since the ancient Greeks knew the earth was spherical. Here are a few quotes about this:

Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell says the flat earth error flourished most between 1870 and 1920 he said “with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat,”

The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching. But it gained currency in the 19th century, thanks to inaccurate histories such as John William Draper’s History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White’s History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Atheists and agnostics championed the conflict thesis for their own purposes, but historical research gradually demonstrated that Draper and White had propagated more fantasy than fact in their efforts to prove that science and religion are locked in eternal conflict.

One funny thing about this is that Tsoukalous in another episode, in order to suit his purposes there, admits the idea of a round earth was even in the Bible.

AA: “Moses actually describes Earth seen from outer space.”

AA: “The quote is: ‘there upon I saw the whole round of the Earth, at once the depth of the Earth and the vast altitudes of the heavens’. I mean here he describes the Earth as being round.”

So there is no problem whatsoever with the medieval artists knowing that the Earth was round, and therefore there is no reason to say that these symbols aren’t representing exactly what the artists have always said that they represent.

Almost all the UFO-in-Art theories come from the middle ages and they all fail when they are compared with other paintings of the same scene because one can then see that these were consistent motifs in that style of art and were used to describe certain theological concepts which, when explained in light of the concept that its obviously trying to convey, totally demystifies the objects in question.

[1] Diego Cuoghi. “ART and UFOs? No Thanks, Only Art…” ART and UFOs? No Thanks, Only Art…, n.d.

[2]Ibid.

[3] http://sprezzatura.it/Arte/Arte_UFO_2_eng.htm

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] http://sprezzatura.it/Arte/Arte_UFO_5_eng.htm

[8] Ibid.

[9] http://sprezzatura.it/Arte/Arte_UFO_1_eng.htm

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth


- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/ufos-in-ancient-art/#sthash.nbwUIeFr.dpuf

Ancient Aliens: “Are these carvings on a wall at the Dendera complex in Egypt? To some, the strange designs look eerily similar to objects very much in use today.”

AA: “In Egypt there is this underground crypt at Dendera that was always secret and only the high priests had access to that crypt. It is very hot in there, very narrow, low ceiling, and on the walls you have these reliefs of what looks like ancient light bulbs. Because we have to question one thing: How did the ancient Egyptians light the inside of their tombs?”

This is the Egyptian light bulb theory. Let’s see what we can figure out about it.

Let’s start by listening to some of the reasons that Ancient Astronaut theorists believe it’s true.

AA: “According to most mainstream archaeologists torches were used by the ancient Egyptians to light the pitch black chambers of tombs and temples, yet nowhere on the ceilings it there even the slightest evidence of soot or smoke residue.”

It’s hard to know why they are saying this because there is black soot in almost every Egyptian temple and tomb.[1]

In fact a recent ceiling cleaning conducted at the Temple of Hathor, which is the same temple where the so-called light bulb relief is found, they uncovered a brightly colored ancient ceiling painting that had never before been noticed.[2]

What was covering it up you ask? I will quote them directly, they said the ceiling was covered with “hundreds of years of black soot”[3] That’s kind of funny, you have to admit.

AA: “Also, there isn’t enough oxygen inside those tombs with which to support or feed a flame of a torch. I was once inside the Kings’ chamber inside the pyramid of Giza and someone turned off the lights and immediately we were in pitch darkness, and I said ‘no problem, I’ll just take out my lighter from my satchel, and I turn on the lighter and it didn’t work’.”

I don’t know about his specific zippo, but there are plenty of documented explorations of the pyramids and other tombs in the 20th century which used torches to light the pyramids.[4][5]

Archeologist and pyramid expert John Romer was once asked a similar question by someone on a television show, this was his response:

“As for the soot, there is soot in the Great Pyramid from the 19th Century travelers, but most of it has been washed off. Most of the pyramids, of course, were built in sunlight. So lighting in the interior would only have been a problem after the roof went on. They would have used lamps, with salt in the oil so the flame burns very pure.”

Romer isn’t just guessing about the olive oil lamps, these lamps are depicted in Egyptian reliefs, and there are even receipts for orders of their wicks and other such evidence.[6][7]

Another thing to consider is that as far as tombs go, they weren’t expected to be lit, in fact if all went well, robbers would not be able to find a way in, and the tomb would never see the light of day ever again. That was the plan, and if it weren’t for 19th century explorers and dynamite, that plan might have worked too.

But when we are talking about temples like at Dendera, the false dilemma of not enough oxygen simply doesn’t work. The temple is much more open the oxygen levels are plentiful. They obviously used fire to light it, if for no other reason than because of the “100s of years” worth of soot on the ceiling.

Ok so the false dilemmas have been addressed, but we are still left to explain what this relief is depicting.

Let’s first hear what Ancient Aliens has to say about the mainstream interpretations of this relief:

AA: “Egyptologists’ explanation of this, and they have to have some explanation – there’s got to be one, and it has to be pretty mundane [for] it can’t be an electrical device – is that it is a lotus flower and what appears to be a bulb around [it] is the aroma of a lotus flower and so it’s just a very odd depiction of a flower.”

That is a terrible representation of the mainstream view of this relief. It’s Ancient Aliens using a straw-man argument to make their argument look superior.

This relief is not so mystical if you have a little understanding of Egyptian art and religious symbols.

This is a variant depiction the creation of the world in Egyptian mythology.

The Egyptians believed that before anything else existed there was a vast primordial sea of nothingness.[8]

They believed that the first thing to emerge from this sea was a lotus flower.[9][10]

This is probably because the lotus closes at night and sinks underwater. In the morning it re-emerges and blooms again.

It was believed that lotus flower then gave birth to the first God who was often associated with the sun.[11] This relief was done after the God Atum was merged with the sun God Ra and thus became Atum-Re.

Atum the God who created everything else after this is actually represented as a snake.[12]

And yes it is a snake in these reliefs not light bulb filaments, you can actually see the eyes and other elements of a snake if you look closely.

This is pretty standard Egyptian mythology, that the lotus flower came forth first then the first God Atum – who was represented as a snake.

Well what about the bubble surrounding it?

I will quote an expert directly on this point

“Despite the variety of deities, the Egyptians conceived the origin of the world as singular. Only one god (Atum) was responsible for the emergence of the universe as a bubble of air in the vast, limitless, inert ocean and everlasting darkness of the undifferentiated primordial waters (Nun) that existed before creation.”

In other words the universe came forth from the lotus in a bubble of air.[13]

There are other elements of this picture that back this interpretation up.

The Universe bubble is here being supported or raised up by the Goddess Nun.[14] Nun is the primordial waters and technically it is she that raises up the lotus, Atum, and everything else.[15]

This pose of outstretched hands is one of the more common motifs for Nun and she raises and supports the universe from nothingness.[16]

In some versions of this story the sun God represented in these scenes is Khepri who was represented as a scarab Beetle. Atum and Kephri sort of traded off being aspects of RA in Egyptian mythology.

So, in essence, you have Nun the primordial waters lifting up the solar barge of Ra for its first journey accross the sky.

And this explains why similar poses are seen in the creation account at Dendara. They are also depicting Nun raising up the universe out of her waters.

The idea that the ancient Egyptians used electricity is something that is not even hinted at anywhere else in the Egyptian records. And if you believe Ancient Aliens, they were not just using electricity but vacuum tubes, which requires high amounts of electricity, as well as rarified gasses like argon. And if this was the case we should expect to find some mention of this somewhere.

Ahh but Ancient Aliens has an answer for why we do not:

AA: “But if the ancient Egyptians had used some kind of electric light to illuminate their passageways, why does the visual evidence exist only in the ancient temple of Dendera?”

AA: “In Egypt you had different areas of specialty and Dendera was the area where the knowledge of the light-giving source was kept, and this secret knowledge was kept by the high priests. They were the only ones that were privy to this type of information, because Dendera was the special place where this specific knowledge was guarded and kept.”

Right…of course there is nothing in any text, or on any wall that would back-up anything he just said. He even makes up this phrase ‘keepers of the light giving source’ just to make it sound official.

Again it’s interesting that the temple where the knowledge of this light was kept is the same one with the 100s of years of soot on the ceiling. Maybe they were trying to save on the electric bill.

In conclusion all the reasons that Ancient Aliens says light bulbs existed in ancient Egypt such as no soot in tombs or not enough oxygen are easily dismissed false dilemmas. And the so called light bulb pictures are easily explained using standard Egyptian symbolism.



[1] Subir Ghosh. “Archaeologists Unearth 2800-yr-old Burial Chamber in Egypt.” Digital Journal, September 19, 2010. http://digitaljournal.com/article/297825.

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendera_Temple_complex#Ceiling_cleaning

[3] Ibid.

[4] Al-Mamun. “Egypt – Gods, Myths and Religion”, It is recorded that following entry, Al-Mamun first crawled back up to find the original entrance, then down the descending corridor to the subterranean chamber, there he reported torch marks on the ceiling of the Subterranean Chamber.

[5] “60 Minutes.” Secret of the Pyramids: John Romer, July 15, 2007.

[6] Clarke and Engelback, Ancient Egyptian Construction And Architecture, 1930, p. 201

[7] “These lamps are sometimes depicted on tomb reliefs and often take the form of an open receptacle with a base that can be grasped with the hand” (see figure 5.8 in Arnold, Building In Egypt, 1991, page 218 for example) “Dieter Arnold mentions distribution lists of linen wicks for work in Biban el-Muluk, and Kent Weeks has found receipts on ostraca for wicks among the rubble of KV5” (The Lost Tomb,1998). Olive oil is fairly clean burning, and the addition of salt may have help keep the soot at a minimum. It may also have been that the lamps were covered in some way to minimize smoke.

[8] Allen, James P. (2000). Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Cambridge University Press. pp. 466. ISBN 0-521-77483-7.

[9] Wilkinson, Richard H. (2003). The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson. pp. 206–207. ISBN 0-500-05120-8.

[10]http://www.egyptianmyths.net/lotus.htm

[11] Wilkinson, Richard H. (2003).

[12]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atum

[13]http://www.maat.sofiatopia.org/netjer.htm

[14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu_%28mythology%29

[15] Ibid.
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/112-2/#sthash.LoJdr0sT.dpuf

The Nazca Lines of Peru have been an important part of the Ancient Astronaut theory since its beginning. Originally Von Daniken claimed that the lines were kind of a UFO runway, or a type of alien airport, where the alien craft landed and took off.

When challenged by Carl Sagan and others on this point in an early documentary, Von Daniken kind of backtracked on this and said that he meant that the lines were created as a result of the spacecraft landing.[1]

Von Daniken: “I never said that the extraterrestrials needed a runway with concrete or something like this. My idea was that some vehicle was coming down, not an interstellar spaceship, simply a small vehicle, and landing with an effect of an air-cushion system. So they don’t need landing tracks but simply, by the landing, itself some sand and stones are blown away and you have a simple track on the ground, and after a few hours or days, they start again and you have a second track [in another direction].”

In other words he is saying that the spacecraft dragged on the surface of the ground as they landed, and the lines are therefore the unintentional result of spacecraft landing.

For the Ancient Aliens series however, it seems they are back to claiming it was an airport.

Ancient Aliens: “The land looked like airstrips. They start abruptly. They end abruptly.”

AA: “Looking at Nazca from the air, it looks like an airport. It really does, because you have all these bands, wide bands, that look like airstrips that are layered on top of each other, but you also have these gigantic, long straight lines that go for miles and miles over valleys; over mountains.”

Either explanation seems to fall short of explaining why these lines are sometimes several miles long, one of them being almost 15 miles long. It would be a pretty inefficient spacecraft if it took 15 miles for it to take off or, in the alternate explanation, if it needed to drag on the ground for 15 miles before it stopped.

We will look more into this later, in the meantime I want to look at what I think might be the most ridiculous claim of the entire Ancient Aliens series.

AA: “Now at Nazca entire mountain tops have been removed. I mean, this all requires machining, and I’m not talking a little wheelbarrow and a pick. I’m talking sophisticated machinery because we today would also need sophisticated machinery in order to achieve such feats.”

They are claiming this mountain in the Nazca region has been artificially sheared off. But what they are referring to is a plateau[2]. Plateau’s and mesa’s are naturally flat on top. They occur all over the world, geologist know exactly how they form.[3]

In light of that it makes them spending so much time on this point kind of funny.

AA: “There the mountains are cut from both sides. Here it is flat. This is absolutely incredible. This is one of the craziest pictures I made about Nazca.”

AA: “The crazy thing is the rumble [and] the remains of that summit or that mountain top [are] gone. It’s nowhere. It’s not in the valley below. It’s not in the region. What happened to it?”

Ok moving on to the lines. Nazca doesn’t just have straight lines. There are also several images of animals, such as monkeys, spiders, fish, jaguars, llamas, lizards and dogs.

Contrary to what Ancient Aliens says the way they were made is very well known. In fact it’s ridiculously simple. They simply moved the reddish-brown iron oxide covered pebbles, that cover the surface of the Nazca desert, out of the way.[4]

When the gravel is moved the layer underneath is exposed, which is much lighter, and the contrast of the two colors creates the Nazca line.[5] If you were in the Nazca desert you could create a Nazca line by running your finger over the surface of the ground.

It would probably stay there for hundreds of years too. Because the Nazca desert is one of the driest places in the world and it almost never receives rain. If it did the lines would have been washed away long ago because they are so superficial.[6]

Well, if these lines aren’t an alien airport, what are they? What is known are the basic beliefs about religion in the ancient Nazca culture?

Likely related to the arid and extreme nature of their environment, Nazca religious beliefs were centered around agriculture and fertility. Much of Nazca art depicts powerful nature gods such as the mythical killer whale, the harvesters, the mythical spotted cat, [ect.][7]

Essentially they worshipped gods represented by animals which they thought controlled things like water and crops.

I might add that they were super serious about this too – so serious that they decapitated lots and lots of humans in order to appease these nature gods.[8] I think it’s fair to say that the Nazca people were obsessed with beheadings.

On their pottery it depicts crops growing from severed heads, and there are other things too that show the connections they believe severed heads had to good crops.[9]

All that to say these people were dead serious about farming, and if you’re serious about farming you must be also serious about water, and if you were farming in the desert then it’s off the charts how serious about water you would be. I mention this because it helps explain what the Nazca lines likely are.

First let’s take the depictions of animals. For the most part all of these animals can also be found depicted in Nazcan pottery.[10] They were the Nazca gods of water and fertility.[11]

If you asked an ancient Nazcan what they believed about the world and how it worked, they would likely say something like: “We take hallucinogenic drugs; we cut off a lot of heads, all in hopes that the monkey spirit will help us have some good crops this year.

That just isn’t what you would expect to hear if these people were smack-dab in the middle of a massive mining operation conducted by UFO flying spacemen. There should be some hint of that in their mythology if it were true. But if it was true they apparently couldn’t have cared less based on their lack of any indication in their belief system.

Let’s move on to the actual line. To understand these we need to know a few more facts.

One aspect of the Nazcan religion was huge pilgrimages. Massive amounts of Nazcan’s would walk to certain holy sites throughout the year. There they would participate in big religious events.[12]

The main place that they walked to was a place called Cahuachi very near the Nazca lines. For a long time archeologists thought it was the biggest Nazcan city ever found. But slowly they realized that it was never a place of permanent residence, but was only a place for all the pilgrim’s to converge.[13] And what they did after they all walked there was…well, some more walking.

These walks are called processions when they are in a religious context. In the Nazcan culture everyone got together and walked on these specific paths.[14]

The idea was that by getting everyone together and doing these rituals they could appease these water gods. And even when the straight lines were not directly above underground water reservoirs they were leading to mountains and other sites which were associated with the water gods, where the people would then worship those gods.[15]

So in conclusion, the mountains weren’t shaved off. The idea that it was an airport makes no logical sense, and the symbols and rituals which were a huge part of the Nazcan culture more than explain the so called Nazca lines.

[1] Harald Reinl. In Search of Ancient Astronauts, 1973. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133018/.

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines

[3] Science Clarified. “Plateau.” Plateau, June 29, 2006. http://www.scienceclarified.com/landforms/Ocean-Basins-to-Volcanoes/Plateau.html.

[4]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_culture

[8]Proulx, Donald A. “Ritual Uses of Trophy Heads in Ancient Nasca Society.” In Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson and Anita G. Cook. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.

[9] Ibid.

[10] A Sourcebook of Nasca Ceramic Iconography by Donald A. Proulx (2006) University of Iowa Press

[11] THE NAZCA LINES, WATER AND MOUNTAINS: AN ETHNOARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY. Johan Reinhard. 1996

[12] Helaine Silverman, Cahuachi in the Ancient Nasca World, University of Iowa Press, 1993.

[13] Silverman, Helaine (1994). “The Archaeological Identification of an Ancient Peruvian Pilgrimage Center”. World Archaeology 26 (1): 1–18. doi:10.1080/00438243.1994.9980257. JSTOR 124860

[14]http://people.umass.edu/~proulx/Nasca_Lines_Project.html

[15] Reinhard. 1996
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/nazca-lines/#sthash.RZCNqDz0.dpuf

Ancient Aliens: “In the Book of Ezekiel, the prophet describes a flying chariot containing wheels within wheels and powered by angels. Although Bible historians suggest Ezekiel was speaking symbolically about the terrifying enemies facing Israel, could this be another example of an alien visitation and proof that pre-historic aircraft existed?”

Ezekiel’s vision is often used to try to support the Ancient Astronaut theory. Let’s take a close look at it and see if it does in fact support this idea.

First we need to disagree with the narrator that biblical scholars think this vision is referring to the enemies of Israel. I can’t imagine any biblical scholar saying that, as it expressly says in the book that the vision is of the glory of God on his throne. I have read dozens of commentaries by bible scholars on Ezekiel and have never found one that said this was referring to the enemies of Israel.

I think this is a case of Ancient Aliens propping up a straw-man argument, in other words, taking an obviously weak argument and pretending it is your opposition’s majority view.

The main premise of the Ancient Astronaut theory is that ancient writers couldn’t understand, or didn’t have the vocabulary to explain technology. But that idea doesn’t really work for Ezekiel for many reasons.

First of all, Ezekiel had a huge vocabulary. Hebrew is one of the richest languages in history of the world, and Ezekiel showed great skill in utilizing it when describing complicated things in other places in his writings.[1]

He had the vocabulary to say things like: silver disk, or round, or window or grey being with big eyes if he had wanted to[2], but he didn’t. As we will see what Ezekiel describes simply cannot be compared to a UFO.

More than any other Bible writer, Ezekiel was extremely detail oriented. He makes sure to describe every detail, not just here, but throughout his writings. For example a very accurate model of the layout of an entire city, as well as a huge temple complex can be constructed by using his specifications.

He even starts out every one of his visions by a meticulous detailing of the time and place it happened. For example:

“Eze 8:1 And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord GOD fell there upon me. “

The vision that Ezekiel saw that is in question can also be drawn out on paper using his specifications, and people that do this all pretty much get the same thing.

It is describing the throne of God, which rests on a platform, that platform is supported by four Cherubim on each corner. (Cherubs are specific types of angels in the bible that have four faces and several wings; there are also four wheels next to the angels).

Mike Heiser: “Everyone in the field knows what this is in Ezekiel One: It’s a cherubim throne, because we have very clear examples of the elements that you find in Ezekiel One.”

It’s not that exciting, but it is more or less what everyone gets when they draw this out…well, almost everyone.

AA: “Joseph Bloomrich is your proverbial rocket scientist. He worked on the moon project for NASA and, from the mind of a rocket engineer, started to look at was written in the first part of the book of Ezekiel and, after months of research Joseph Bloomrick came to the conclusion that what Ezekiel described in his eye-witness report was indeed a type of spacecraft.”

AA: “Joseph Bloomrich would go on to write “The Spaceships of Ezekiel”.

Ok so they say this guy, who they say is super smart, really studied the book of Ezekiel, and they say that what he got was this contraption with four propellers at the bottom of each corner.

The biggest problem with this theory is Ezekiel’s attention to detail; there is just no way to get this contraption from what Ezekiel describes.

Heiser: “Bloomrichs’ book and other books penned by ancient astronaut theorists all have the same weakness: They tend to ignore the vocabulary of Ezekiel chapter one. For instance, the throne upon which Yahweh seats is never described as round or silvery or some sort of disk shape. That just has to be assumed and brought into the text. So they either do that, or they modernize the descriptions that are there, for instance the bovine with the calf legs must surely be legs of a UFO or some other aircraft.”

Let me read a description of the four angels holding up the throne, and you can decide for yourself if you think he is really struggling with his ancient vocabulary to describe four propellers.

Eze 1:5 Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man.

Eze 1:6 And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.

Eze 1:8 And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings.

Eze 1:10 As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.

It’s hard to get a propeller when Ezekiel says “And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man.”

Ezekiel knew what a man looked like, so it’s just not honest to say that Ezekiel mistook a propeller for a man.

But Ancient Aliens has a way around this one:

AA: “If we thought of the word angel as representing something like celestial energy, sounds much more like a spacecraft.”

So we just make “angel” equal “celestial energy” and that’s much better for our UFO theory. Talk about forcing the evidence to fit the hypothesis.

Using this logic I could say that the description of my car would sound more like a UFO if instead of wheels I said “anti-gravity devices.”

The problem is that Ezekiel doesn’t just mention angels in passing, he devotes an entire chapter to describing them, he calls them “Cherubim” over 20 times in chapter 10, he even says in chapter 10 verse 20 that he knows that they are Cherubim.

Heiser: “It’s very illogical to assume that an ancient astronaut reading of the modern mind is getting it right when the ancient person has pretty much done all they can do to tell you what they are talking about, and you just depart from what they say. It’s very inconsistent to say that you’re reading an ancient text, [only to look] at what the creators of that text thought and [push] it aside.”

One thing that helps to dispel the Ezekiel UFO theories is by seeing how common this throne idea is in other places in the Bible. No one seems to think these other passages are talking about UFOs but they are obviously talking about the same thing as Ezekiel.

For example in the book of Revelation, when John was taken up to heaven and specifically to Gods throne, this is how he describes it:

Rev 4:2 And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.

Rev 4:6 And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.

Rev 4:7 And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

Rev 4:8 And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.

Daniel the prophet even mentions that the throne of God has “wheels” in Daniel 7:9

Heiser: “The other places in the Hebrew Bible that describe God’s throne don’t have a lot of detail. Isaiah 6 is a familiar example where Isaiah appears before God’s throne with the Seratheme and other divine beings there. I think the best one for this particular issue is found in Daniel 7. You have the ancient of days seated upon a throne and it’s called a throne – the word for throne actually appears in the passage. The issue there is, since we know it’s a throne because Daniel calls it a throne, it’s really important to observe how the throne is described. It has wheels. It has fiery descriptions. Scholars have known for a long time that the description of the throne in Daniel 7 has the same elements as that in Ezekiel 1, so it’s very clearly a throne, and some of the other passages help us understand that.”

We could go through other passages, but the point is that according to the Bible God’s throne is supported by four angels with multiple wings which are on wheels.

But now the interesting part, it seems that even the other cultures, from Sumer to Egypt and everywhere in between, also knew that the thrones of kings, and especially of God, were to be supported by cherubim, and that they have wheels, as well as other elements described by Ezekiel. [3] [4]

We know this because of the artwork of the ancient world. There are 1,000s of pieces of art from the ancient world that show various elements that Ezekiel described of God’s throne.

We can see the angels, some of them even have four faces, some of them have wheels. They have the platform and the throne.

Heiser: “In terms of iconography again what I like to describe are the polaroids of the old testament ancient world – pictures they left us of the things they’re talking about. The idea of a deity seated on a throne that was in effect a chariot that is carried around by supernatural beings with wings, to describe it as the chariot of heaven, is very common. However, when it’s depicted, it’s never depicted as what we would think of as a UFO. No triangles. No round disks. Nothing like that. It’s a chair. It’s a throne which has some sort of platform, with the deity [Yahweh] seated upon these various heavenly creatures”

There are also a ton of basic logical problems with the Ancient Astronaut theorist’s idea that Ezekiel is talking about a UFO.

Here is one of them.

AA: “Well that sounds like flames. That sounds like propulsion.”

No physicist, no matter how sympathetic to this cause would say that using a combustion engine for interstellar travel is possible. Not to mention that this particular fire comes from coal on the alter, so that would make it a coal powered interstellar spaceship.

As simple as it sounds the entire reason this whole thing with Ezekiel started in the 1970’s was because of the line Ezekiel uses “wheels within wheels.”

People basically said, wheels are round, flying saucers are supposed to be round too!

AA: “Ezekiel saw this wheel within a wheel. This sounds more high tech than supernatural.”

But the idea conveyed in Ezekiel’s writing is nothing more than a concentric circle. Pretty much like any wheel with a rim. It’s not exactly a high tech idea. The only reason it’s mentioned is because Ezekiel is such a detail oriented writer. Daniel doesn’t go into such detail when he sees the throne of God, he just says “wheels.”

Besides that there are four wheels that make up one unit, so if you’re going to say a wheel within a wheel is a UFO, then you have to say that UFO’s only come in sets of four, because that is unambiguously what Ezekiel is describing.

And these wheels are not horizontal as if they were flying around; they are vertical, just like they should be if they were really wheels.

So we see that this idea is refuted by:

1.) The consistent biblical motifs using these elements to describe the throne of God

2.) The 1000s of pieces of art from the ancient world that depict thrones as having the same elements that Ezekiel describes.

3.) The logical problems with the theory such as it being a coal powered combustion engine.

[1] Ezekiel 40-48 – The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2009 (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version.) (Eze 30:13–19). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

[2] Swanson, J. (1997). Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament) (electronic ed.). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

[3] http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/ezekielnotes.htm

[4] , Othmar Keel – Jahwe-Visionen und Siegelkunst: Eine neue Deutung der Majestatsschilderungen in Jes, Ez 1 und 10 und Sach 4 (“Visions of Yahweh and Seal Art: A New Interpretation of the Majestic Portrayals in Isaiah 6, Ezekiel 1 and 10, and Zechariah 4”), Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, Stuttgart, 1984-85).
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/ezekiels-wheels/#sthash.9glulVhT.dpuf

Ancient Aliens: “Atomic warfare among ancient civilizations may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, but descriptions of similar deadly occurrences can be found in the very same text doctor Oppenheimer quoted after the New Mexico atomic test.” So the Ancient Astronaut theory claims that the Mahabharata speaks of nuclear warfare. Let’s see what specifically they say it says: AA: “One reference that we have, for example, speaks of these explosions that were brighter than a thousand suns. And when these blasts occurred the suns were twirling in the air; trees went up in flames and there was just this mass destruction. After those blasts, people who survive started to lose their hair and nails started to fall out. I mean, right there, we have a concise reference to radiation poisoning; nuclear fallout – and those texts are thousands of years old.” The Mahabharata actually doesn’t say any of that. These exact claims about the hair and nails falling off and an explosion brighter than a thousand suns have been repeated by Ancient Astronaut theorists so many times that they think it’s true, but the origin of this line was from a French book called “Morning of the Magicians” [1] No one that makes this claim will actually site where in the Mahabharata this claim appears. Which makes it very difficult for people to call them out on this, because the Mahabharata contains over 1.8 million words, so if you just say, “it’s in there somewhere, just trust me,” you can pretty much get away with anything. As you might have guessed by now, they have a really good reason for covering their tracks by not siting a reference. For instance, let’s consider the claim about the people’s hair and nails falling out because of this weapon. First of all, there was no weapon involved in that story, it was a part of a bad omen, and this is what it actually says: “The streets swarmed with rats and mice; earthen pots showed cracks or broken from no apparent cause. At night, the rats and mice ate away the hair and nails of slumbering men.”[2] So rats chewed them off, it wasn’t a result of: “Nuclear fallout” What about the bomb blast that was brighter than a thousand suns? Here’s what the passage actually says: “Gratified with him, the holy one then showed Utanka that eternal Vaishnava form which Dhananjaya of great intelligence had seen. Utanka beheld the high-souled Vasudeva of universal form, endued with mighty-arms. The effulgence of that form was like that of a blazing fire or a thousand suns. It stood before him filling all space. It had faces on every side. Behold the high and wonderful Vaishnava form of Vishnu. In fact, seeing the Supreme Lord in that guise, the Brahmana Utanka became filled with wonder.[3]Jason Colavito says the following about this: “This passage, which mentions the ten thousand suns, refers to an appearance of Vishnu. It is representative of many, many passages in which the standard poetic line “ten thousand suns” is used to describe a deity. It does not refer to the specific flash of a nuclear blast unless one imagines the gods to be exploding.” If you would like to know more about the deceitful misquoting of ancient texts as it relates to this idea of ancient nuclear weapons, see Jason Colavito’s excellent book:

“Ancient Atom Bombs: Fact, Fraud, and the Myth of Prehistoric Nuclear Warfare”

Let’s move on to Ancient Aliens’ next line of evidence for this point, which is all centered around an ancient city – now archeological site – called Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan. Ancient Aliens claims that there was a nuclear bomb dropped there in the ancient past, they give several reasons to believe this: AA: “Skeletons were found lying face down in the street – many holding hands. Their faces and body positioning suggested they suffered a sudden, violent death.” AA: “You have a culture of people who literally were lying dead in the street. Archaeologists have found human remains and something big has happened to these people.” AA: “Why is there evidence that wild animals avoided scavenging their remains, and why, even after thousands of years, have their bones not decayed?” AA: “In certain areas of that site you find increased levels of radiation.” AA: “British researcher David Davenport claimed to have found a 50-yard-wide epicenter at Mohenjo Daro where everything appeared to have been fused through a transformative process known as vitrification.” AA: “Vitrification is a process in which regular-type stone gets molten into a magma state, and then it hardens again. But once the stone is hardened again it feels like glass. At Mohenjo Daro we find evidence of vitrification, which could have only have been achieved if the material was exposed to extreme heat by some type of blast.” Ok so let’s list these points:

Skeletons, one set holding hands, which they say appear to have died at the same instant.
No evidence of scavengers.
Remarkably well preserved bones.
The presence of radiation at the site.
An epicenter where vitrification is present.

That sounds like a pretty convincing case for nuclear warfare at Mohenjo Daro – well, assuming any of that is true, and considering Ancient Aliens’ track record we had better investigate these claims. One of the first problems with this theory is the city itself. Its buildings are still intact, some of which are 15 ft. high.[4] And they are made out of mud, so you would think a nuclear weapon whose main destructive power is in the force of its blast wave would be able to topple a few mud-brick buildings. But moving on, what about these skeletons? Ancient Aliens makes it sound like a lot of skeletons were found when in fact only 37 were found. And not only do these 37 bodies show no signs of dying suddenly, the date of their deaths vary sometimes as much as a thousand years from one another.[5][6] None of the archeologists involved thought these skeletons suggested a sudden catastrophe. And to make matters worse for Ancient Aliens all of the bodies were buried![7] The idea that they were laying around in the streets isn’t true. In fact almost everything Ancient Aliens said about this is completely untrue. The fact that they didn’t die in the same instant and the fact that they were buried in the normal way explains why there were no signs of scavengers. What about the remarkable well preserved bones? This can be chalked up to Mohenjo Daro being literally one of the hottest places on earth, with temperatures reaching 128 degrees. And because it’s also really dry, it is a perfect climate for preservation.[8] In fact this is also probably the reason the mud-brick buildings are still standing as well. The problem with the claims about there being radiation at Mohenjo Daro is that we don’t know where this claim came from. It certainly wasn’t any of the scientists involved with the Mohenjo Daro digs that claimed it, and the Ancient Astronaut theorists don’t site any references with which to check this claim, so until the presence of radiation can be proven to exist at the site, there is no reason to address it. What about this epicenter of vitrification? Well, according to archeologists it wasn’t exactly an epicenter of anything. It was a small amount of broken pottery which, because pottery is put in a fire to harden it, it contains a specific type of vitrification called Frit. They threw in the word epicenter to make it seem more legitimate. But there is no epicenter of anything except pottery at this site[9]. But this brings up an important point: Mohenjo Daro is not the only site that Ancient Astronaut theorists claim vitrification exists as a result of ancient atom bombs. So it would be instructive for us to look at sand vitrification and its different causes in order to address those claims. For example there is Fulgurite, which is sand fused by a lightning bolt. There is Tektite, which is sand fused by the compressed force of a meteorite. There is Frit which is partially fused sand and other chemicals in the presence of heated pottery – that’s what was found at Mohenjo Daro. Finally there is Trinitite which is vitrified sand caused by a nuclear explosion. So we first saw that the Mahabharata did not claim anything like what Ancient Aliens said it did. We saw that the bodies at Mohenjo Daro were not killed in a sudden disaster; in fact they died a thousand years apart in some cases, and were clearly buried. The cases of radiation are a non-factor. The vitrification was caused by pottery, and we noted that if it was a nuclear explosion it didn’t even knock down the mud-brick houses which are still standing at the site.
[1] Colavito, Jason. “THE CASE OF THE FALSE QUOTATIONS, How Ancient Astronaut Theorists Faked Hindu Nuclear Explosion.” JasonColavito.com, n.d. http://www.jasoncolavito.com/the-case-of-the-false-quotes.html.
[2] Mahabharata, Mausala Parva, sec. 2
[3] Mahabharata, Acwamedha Parva, Section LV (Ganguili Vol. 16)”
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohenjo-daro#Architecture_and_urban_infrastructure
[5] http://www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/6-3/The%20Mythical.pdf
[6] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Mohenjo-daro#cite_note-dalesa-2
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/ancient-nuclear-warefare/#sthash.TMobuI8U.dpuf

Ancient Aliens: “Ancient Sanskrit texts dating back as far as 6,000BC…”

Wow, 6000 BC…really? In reality the oldest of these texts would be the Vedas, which date to between 500-1500 BC[1][2].

Ancient Aliens just adds another 5,000 years as if no one would notice. They’re actually even contradicting themselves with this date because in another episode they correctly state that the oldest writings in the world are the Sumerian tablets, the oldest of which date to about 4000 BC.

So why they now say that there are some writings 2,000 years older than the oldest writings, I don’t think anyone knows.

AA: “…describing vivid detail flying machines called Vimanas.”

AA: “Vimanas are [airplanes] and they are powered by some jet engines. This seems to be true because all of the description of the flight behavior. Elephants ran away in panic; grass was thrown out because there was a lot of pressure from behind those Vimanas, so we can say that this was a description of [a] spaceship.”

The word Vimana literally means ‘having been measured out’[3]. It was related to the king’s palaces, and was referring to their intricate construction. Later on, as a result the word became synonymous with palaces in general. And because of that it was used to refer to the palaces of the gods as well[4].

And yes these palaces of the gods were in the heavens, and they could fly, but as we look into this it will be clear that some of the Vimanas of the gods really were huge palaces, with gardens and terraces and golden staircases.

Then, because the palaces of the gods flew, the word gradually became used for anything that could fly, either in mythology or in reality.

So understanding the palace concept in the development of the word Vimana is helpful in understanding what we will be looking at.

But before we look into the real descriptions of Vimanas in the Vedic texts we must first examine a fake text, because almost everything that Ancient Aliens says about Vimanas comes from a totally bogus text called the Vimanika Shastra.

AA: “Although mainstream historians believe the Vimana texts are myths, many of the documents contain passages that seem to describe modern machinery and technology.”

AA: “The Vimanika Shastra goes into metals that are used in these crafts. It talks about electricity and power sources. It talks about pilots and the clothing they need to wear. It talks about the food that they eat. It talks even about the weapons that are kept on these airships.”

AA: “The flight manuals of the Vimanas are quite similar to the flight manuals you find in the modern passenger-flight business or when you go to the military jet engines. Of course, they also have flight manuals because it’s necessary for a pilot to get knowledge about [the] plane he [wants] to fly with.”

The Vimanika Shastra is not an actual ancient text. It was channeled, or dictated, to the author from the spirit world in 1918[5].

The spirit who supposedly dictated the text claimed to be and ancient seer named Bharadvada, who is prominent in some ancient writings[6], so I guess that is what is supposed to give this text credibility – that is, the idea that the ghost of someone ancient supposedly dictated it.

But they’re not even sure if that version of the story is true, because the first mention of any of this in in 1952 by the guy who supposedly found and translated this text from 1918[7], so as far as anyone knows he could have made the whole channeled by a famous ghost story up in 1952.

The text itself reads like a technical manual, describing the details of how Vimanas operated. It includes the description of what must have sounded like a really technical idea in 1918 or 1952 called a mercury-vortex engine. Ancient Aliens spends a huge amount of time talking about this idea.

AA: “The Vimanika Shastra, or science of aeronautics, indicates Vimanas used a propulsion system based on a combination of gyroscopes, electricity and mercury. Is this possible?”

AA: “Mercury is an unusual element. Mercury is metal. It’s also a liquid and it’s a conductor of electricity.”

AA: “The Vimanika Shastra suggests Vimanas were powered by several gyroscopes placed inside a sealed liquid mercury vortex.”

AA: “One of the texts talks about mercury rotating and driving some sort of a powerful wind or a windmill effect. That might be some sort of what we call a fly-wheel energy storage where you have a spinning disc and you extract energy from it slowly – that would be the mercury. That could be used to drive some sort of propeller or what we call a conducted fan.”

Some of the other things this text describes are equally scientific sounding. It even includes very technical drawings of the things it’s talking about.

But when you look closer at all this it becomes obvious that it is physically impossible for any of these craft to get off the ground. In fact 20 years later, in 1974, a study was done on the texts and the drawings by the Aeronautical and Mechanical Institute of Science in Bangalore, India[8]. I will quote Will Hunt, an American freelance writer based in India for a description of how that study came out.

“As thoroughly as it had been written, the committee just as thoroughly dismantled the study in an essay called A Critical Study of the Work Vymanika Shastra. They questioned whether the author (whoever that may have been) had any grasp of basic physics, chemistry and electricity, not to mention the “disciplines of aeronautics: aerodynamics, aeronautical structures, propulsive devices, materials, and metallurgy.” Their conclusion: “None of the planes has properties or capabilities of being flown; the geometries are unimaginably horrendous from the point of view of flying; and the principles of propulsion make them resist rather than assist flying.[9]”

Another writer, JB hare writing for the Sacred Text Archive said the following of the craft in the Vimanika Shastra:

“[They are] absurdly non-aerodynamic… brutalist wedding cakes, with minarets, huge ornithopter wings and dinky propellers.”

I have a feeling that even though 90 percent of the information that Ancient Aliens presents on Vimanas comes from this text, they realize that it has been thoroughly discredited. So in an odd twist, after spending 5 minutes on how great the idea of a mercury vortex engine would be, they then let everyone know that the idea wouldn’t actually work.

They stop short, however, of saying there is anything wrong with this text though, they just say that there may have been a problem with the translation of a word or two.

AA: “Fly-wheel energy-storage systems however tend to lose power quickly. To navigate across space its size would have to be enormous.”

AA: “It’s not at all clear that this would be a practical device. Maybe the people were trying to describe something that [kind of] looked like something like this to them. It might not have actually have been mercury. It might have been some other liquid metal.”

AA: “The mercury vortex engine is perhaps a failure in the translation because the vortex is not a material quite suitable to a jet engine.”

So let’s move on to the mentions of Vimanas in the actual ancient Vedic texts.

So as I have already mentioned the word Vimana came to mean ‘palace’, and when it was a palace of a god it was usually capable of flying around.

When we look at the development of Vimanas chronologically the mystery surrounding them vanishes. First of all they were not even mentioned in the earlier texts, and when they were finally mentioned, the next thousand years of their being mentioned always included them having wheels and being drawn by horses[10], not exactly a mercury vortex engine.

Then, around 500 BC, the chariots lose their horses and are depicted as flying on their own[11].

Jason Colavito says the following about the first mentions of Vimanas without horses:

“The very first of these is the flying chariot of the earthly king Ravana called Pushpaka. By the time of the Mahabharata (c. 400 BCE), these flying chariots had grown in size–one was now described as 12 cubits in circumference–but they never lost the large wheels that marked them as derived from earthly horse-drawn chariots.”

It’s also interesting to see that Ancient Astronaut theorists have to distort the actual description of Vimanas in the Vedic texts in order to make them sound like UFO’s

For example, the following is a quote from David Childress’ book where he is supposed to be quoting a description of a Vimana from an ancient text. We’ll read what he tells his readers what it says, and then we will read the actual ancient text and note the differences.

First lets here is Childress’ version:

“When morning dawned, Rama, taking the Celestial Car Puspaka had sent to him by Vivpishand, stood ready to depart. Self-propelled was that car. It was large and finely painted. It had two stories and many chambers with windows, and was draped with flags and banners. It gave forth a melodious sound as it coursed along its airy way.”

And now here is what the actual Ramayana says:

“And the mighty monkey ascended the splendid car Pushpaka, containing figures of wolves,—made of Kart taswara and Hir anya; graced with ranges of goodly pillars; as if blazing in splendor; throughout garnished with narrow secret rooms and saloons, piercing the heavens, and resembling Meru or Mandara, and like unto the flaming Sun; skillfully reared by Vic wak arma; with golden staircases and graceful and grand raised seats, rows of golden and crystal windows, and daises composed of sapphires, emeralds and other superb gems; embellished with noble vid-rumas, costly stones, and round pearls, as also with plastered terraces; pasted with red sandal, like unto gold, and furnished with a sacred aroma; and resembling the sun new risen[12]. (Sundarakandam 9)”

Colavito says of this: “Elsewhere it is described as being filled with fruit trees, and sometimes it is drawn by geese. Do you know many UFOs with “plastered terraces” and red paint?”

In summary, most of what Ancient Aliens uses on this point is from a bogus 20th-century channeled text, which they dishonestly present as an ancient text. And even the real descriptions of Vimanas get some tweaking by them in order to make it sound like a UFO.

The development of the idea of Vimanas in Hindu mythology can be traced easily, and loses all of its intrigue for the Ancient Astronaut theorist when you do.

[1] Gavin Flood sums up mainstream estimates, according to which the Rigveda was compiled from as early as 1500 BCE over a period of several centuries. Flood 1996, p. 37

[2] Witzel, Michael, “Vedas and Upani?ads”, in: Flood 2003, p. 68

[3] Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary, version 0.1a_12

[4] Ibid

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaimanika_Shastra#cite_ref-Mukunda_1974_4-3

[6] David Hatcher Childress, Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India, Adventures Unlimited Press (1991)

[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimana#Vimanas_and_the_Vaimanika_Shastra

[8] Mukunda, H.S.; Deshpande, S.M., Nagendra, H.R., Prabhu, A. and Govindraju, S.P. (1974). “A critical study of the work “Vyamanika Shastra””. Scientific Opinion: 5–12.

[9] Ibid

[10] Ibid

[11] Ibid

[12] Ramayana, Sundarakandam 9
- See more at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/vimanas/#sthash.QcZsFopH.dpuf

Ancient Aliens: “In the ancient texts of Sumeria we have descriptions of these being descending from the sky called the Annunaki. The term Annunaki means ‘those who from the heavens came.”

This is entirely wrong. The word Annunaki means “princely seed” or “princely blood”. The idea is that the Annunaki were direct creations of Anu, who was regarded as the father and king of the gods. [1][2][3]

As we will see, this is the main idea associated with the Annunaki in the minds of Sumerians, that is that they were directly created by Anu, and so it makes sense that even their name reflects this idea, that is that they were the offspring of the prince.

“The term itself means ‘of royal seed’ or ‘princely seed’ because the annunaki were considered the offspring of Anu or An – the great God of heaven. The annunaki were also the offspring of An and his consort “ki“ of heaven and earth. [There was] this divine coupling [in] the way the Mesopotamians conceived their pantheon.”

So if the term Annunaki means princely seed or offspring of the prince, how is it that Ancient Aliens says that the word for Annunaki means those who from heavens to earth came?

The short answer is that everything Ancient Aliens says about the Annunaki comes from a man named Zecharia Sitchin. Sitchin wrote many books claiming that the Annunaki were really aliens. Unfortunately, at the time that he wrote this in the 70’s, there weren’t many ways for ordinary people to see if what he was saying is true or not.

To put it simply Sitchin’s translation of the word Annunaki is wrong.

Michael Heiser: “You’ll often read, especially in the writings of Zecharia Sitchin, that the annunaki means something like ‘they who from heaven came’ or some other description that makes them sound like aliens or extra-terrestrials. There isn’t a source on the planet by any Sumerian scholar that would agree with that definition. It’s not a difficult term. I personally don’t think that Sitchin knew Sumerian at all because if you’re going to get a term associated with a very group of important deities wrong, I have to wonder what else you’re going to get wrong.”

Sitchin claimed to be an expert on Sumerian writings, yet we can now see that he didn’t seem to even understand the basic grammar and vocabulary rules of the Sumerian language.v Several real scholars challenged him on his translations, and on his lack of any academic credentials in the field, pointing out that there is no record of Sitchin having anything but a journalism degree[4]:

One such scholar is Michael Heiser. “To this day I haven’t been able to find, nor have other people of whom I’ve asked help – people who liked Sitchin – any credentials of him knowing any of the languages or him being credentialed in any way in ancient near-eastern studies.”

As we progress and look into some of the specifics of Sitchin’s views – articulated by Ancient Aliens – I think you will see that determining the truth about this difficult subject is not out of the hands of the common person.

AA: “It says, word for word, that these beings descended in flying vehicles from the sky.”

This is a preposterous statement. I challenge anyone to produce this “word for word” text.

You can do a search online[5], and literally see all the references to the word Annunaki in the Sumerian texts. The only time it refers to anything even close to this is when it talks about the Annunaki being direct creations of Anu in heaven. A few examples of this would be:

The Anunna, the (gods), whom An conceived in the sky.

The Anunna, whom An in the sky conceived.

These texts emphasize the point that the main Sumerian concept regarding the Annunaki was that they were directly created by An – that’s what’s being said here.

The idea that the text says that they “descended out of flying vehicles” is pure fiction, and that’s the nicest way I can think of to say that.

What Ancient Aliens does here is they show pictures of the winged solar disk as they talk about the Annunaki, and I guess they expect the audience to think that the texts speak of these disks like spacecraft in the Sumerian stories, when in fact the solar disks seen in the iconography are not associated with the Annunaki at all, but rather with the sun and or sun god[6].

This is probably why Tsoucalous says the following:

“And they were always described or depicted [as] floating above some, quote unquote, regular people.”

Since the Annunaki are never depicted floating above people’s heads, we can see that they want people to believe that the solar disk icon equals the Annunaki spacecraft.

This is wrong for several reasons.

Number one, the solar disks in the Sumerian culture, really did represent the sun or the sun god.

The sun travelling across the sky everyday was seen to have been facilitated by wings on the sun. You need to know that there is nothing in these descriptions of the sun in the Sumerian texts that would suggest that they were really talking about a UFO. As boring as it may be, they were really talking about the sun.

One way to demonstrate this is found in the epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh worships Shamash, the sun god, in order to get favor for part of his journey, and he does this by facing east in the morning – that is, in the direction of the rising sun.[7]

The idea that Ancient Aliens proposes here that the Annunaki actually came out of the solar disks or that they were pictured riding in them is just a lie; there is no way around it.

“We can find not only descriptions of the annunaki, but also depictions. We can see them in statues; in carvings, so it’s all very interesting to see that those beings looked like modern-day space travellers with weird suits; some of them wore wrist watchers; they had boots on and helmets and, above all, wings.”

All throughout the Ancient Aliens series they show these pictures of Akkadian winged genies and refer to them as Annunaki. But funnily enough winged genies aren’t Annunaki. In fact these reliefs are not even Sumerian, they’re Akkadian.

But hey, while were here we might as well explain what’s going on in these images, even though they have absolutely nothing to do with the Annunaki.

The belief was that certain aspects of nature were controlled by these winged genies. Most notably they were responsible for the fertilization of the crops.[8][9]

They were often depicted with a bucket of pollen or water in one hand, and a group of male flowers or a pine cone in the other hand. They often are depicted as fertilizing a date tree which was a symbol of fruitfulness.

Sometimes they would be depicted as being pointed at the king which, because of the accompanying inscriptions, we know means that the king was seen to be a type of intermediary between the gods, and responsible for the fruitfulness of the land and the people.[10]

One way to demonstrate this is by explaining what Ancient Aliens calls a “wristwatch.” First, you should take note that if this is a watch then these genies were serious about timekeeping, because they wore one on both wrists, and often on a headband as well. This “watch” is actually an Akkadian symbol for Ishtar the goddess of fertility. You can see the same rosette on the famous Ishtar gate in Babylon.

The fertility of the land was associated with, as you might expect, the goddess of fertility, and these beings are depicted as acting on behalf of Ishtar as they fertilize this date tree.

This also probably explains the wings, considering that the natural and visible way that a flower is pollenated is through bees and birds. Therefore it’s not so hard to see that they were depicting their spiritual agents of pollination with wings as well.

AA: “Zecharia Sitchin has essentially suggested that the reason we were visited in the remote past is because the ancient astronauts’ home planet needed gold for their atmosphere and that their gold-content in the atmosphere was depleting – so they came to earth in order to mine gold and bring it back to their home planet.”

This line about aliens coming to mine gold for their atmosphere, in the ancient past, is widely repeated by Ancient Astronaut theorists. In fact it’s become something of a foundational idea in the movement. This idea traces directly back to Zecharia Sitchin and has absolutely nothing to do with Sumerian texts.

It’s interesting to note that Sitchin doesn’t even give a place in the Sumerian texts to justify this notion that they needed gold for their atmosphere. He says the following in his book “The Wars of Gods and Men”:

“The metal, with its unique properties, was needed back home for a vital need, … as best as we can make out, this vital need could have been for suspending the gold particles in Nibiru’s waning atmosphere and thus shield it from critical dissipation.” (emphasis mine)

So he says ‘as best as we can make out’. Who is ‘we’? And what texts would even hint at that idea. He creates this idea of gold particles being needed in a planet’s atmosphere out of nowhere.

Nowadays you can do a word search for the uses of the word “gold” in the Sumerian texts.[11] We can read every mention of this word.

Not only are the mentions of the word gold relatively few in the Sumerian texts, there is nothing to indicate anything but the most ordinary uses for gold[12]. In fact It’s a surprisingly boring study.

Thanks to meticulous cataloging of the Sumerian texts over the last few decades, and the advent of the internet, we no longer have to take people like Sitchin’s word for it.

Heiser: “There are some databases online that allow you to search through Sumerian texts, and I have a video on my website sitchiniswrong.com. If you go there and click on the Annunaki tab I will show you how to search through something called the electronic text corpus of Sumerian literature. I will show you how you can search for all the occurrences of the word Annunaki and then click through the English translations of all those occurrences. You can find this material and I would encourage you to do so because you can check up on Zecharia Sitchin; you can check up on me.

When I claim that there are no texts [and] there are no tablets that have, for instance, the Annunaki on Nibiru or associated with Nibiru; that Nibiru isn’t a planet beyond Pluto, how easy would it be to prove me wrong if you knew how to search for those terms? It would be real easy, and I encourage you to check up on me and everybody else and do the work. You can access this material and know who’s telling you the truth.”

We can finally see for ourselves why the Sumerian scholars have been so critical of Sitchin, not because they are too close minded or anything like that, but because Sitchin really doesn’t seem to know what he is talking about.

Let me give you an example of how Sitchin comes up with his “amazing” translations.

Let’s take this idea that the Sumerian texts speak of mining gold. Now since the Sumerian texts do not speak of mining gold in any way, Sitchin has to construct this idea out of thin air. This is how he did it:

Let’s look at a quote from his first book “The Twelfth Planet”:

“Some Mesopotamian hymns to Ea exalt him as Bel Nimiki, translated “lord of wisdom”; but the correct translation should ‘undoubtedly be “lord of mining.”

In classic Sitchin style he never gives any reason that the “correct translation should ‘undoubtedly be “lord of mining.” He just says it should be and leaves it at that.

Again, we have Sumerian dictionaries written by the scribes themselves, and the Sumerians don’t agree with Sitchin here at all, so why should we?

I think one way to demonstrate how bad of a translation this is, is to read a little about Ea’s or Enki’s wisdom in context, and let you see if it makes sense to you as meaning wisdom or if it really means mining.

This is an example from a Sumerian text called Enuma Elish:

HE WHO UNDERSTANDS ALL
The Wise One,
The Great One,
EA who Knows ALL THAT IS,
Perceived the Plot.
He countered it
With a Powerful Spell.

Not only does it describe his wisdom further by saying “he who understands all” but it also says that because of this wisdom he was able to perceive a plot before it happened and counter it. None of what we just read makes sense if “wisdom” means mining.

Or from the same epic:

EA,
Who knows ALL THINGS,
Knew he could not Defeat
KINGU and the Hosts of TIAMAT.

Here again we see a contextual definition of Ea’s knowledge. He knows all again, and we see this knowledge helped him understand that he could not defeat Kingu.

These are not isolated descriptions of this knowledge; Ea is the god of wisdom for a reason. Nothing said about him makes sense if his knowledge means mining, or even knowledge about mining. All the stories about him highlight his great understanding, and conversely there isn’t even a hint that he cares a lick about digging for gold or anything else…it’s just not there. It requires an ignorance of the Sumerian texts in order to be believed.

Let’s move on to another claim about the Annunaki:

AA: “Virtually every story that’s in Genesis – the flood story, the Adam and Eve story – all have precedents with the ancient Sumerians. The story that came down to the Sumerians is that the Annunaki were mining gold on the Earth and the run-of-the-mill workers complained saying: ‘This is really hard work and we’re tired. We don’t want to do this anymore’ and so they had a big council and they decided to create a primitive worker called an Adamou. The Annunaki created humans as a slave species.”

The first thing to be aware of here is that in the epic of creation that they are referring to here, the God’s weren’t mining gold. The work that the gods were doing is creating the world, kind of what you would expect from a creation epic.

It even specifically states that they were making mountains and rivers, such as the Tigris and Euphrates. [13]The gods here were tired of creating the earth not gold mining.

The epic goes on to describe the following events:

· The gods decide to mix up themselves with clay and make man.
· As the version of men they made increased in number, the noise they made angered the gods.
· They decide to kill them off with a flood.
· One man is instructed to build a boat.
· He put animals on it.
· It rains for seven days and seven nights.
· The man and his family are saved.

There are many similarities between these Sumerian writings and to the biblical accounts of the creation of man and Noah’s flood.

Some people think this is due to the writers of the Bible copying the earlier Sumerian writings. This is problematic because even the critics who specialize in this style of ancient literature say there is no evidence of literary borrowing[14], in fact just the opposite. They propose that they must be referring to a common source for the information.

One paper by A. Heidel, A.R. Millard and D. Damrosch concludes this way:

“Literary dependence cannot be demonstrated. Here, as in most of the parallels in the primeval history, it is considered more likely that Mesopotamian and biblical traditions are based on a common source. Some understand this common source to be a piece of more ancient literature, while others consider it the actual event.’ Hill & Walton, ‘A Survey of the Old Testament’, p. (2010).

Add to this that it is not just the Sumerian texts and the bible that are talking about the same basic story, but obvious elements of this story can be found in almost every early culture, regardless of its location.

Take for example the story of Viracocha in South America.

Viracocha created the heavens and the earth. He then took large stones and breathed life into them. But they became giants, so he sent a flood to wipe them out. After the flood he breathed into smaller stones than the first time thereby creating smaller people, which were then scattered all over the world.[15]

And in the bible, in Genesis 6 we see something similar. The Sons of God disobeyed God, they came to earth had sex with human women, producing giants called Nephilim. The Nephilim over time almost eliminated the original human population, and this is one of the reasons that God sent the flood.[16]

These stories are found in some form in cultures as geographically separated as you can get. They are in China, Europe, the Middle East, they are found in Native American traditions, in South America and many others.xvii

The similarities are too obvious to simply dismiss. Things like 8 people being on the boat are mentioned in a good percentage of these stories.[17]

I personally think that all these cultures are drawing from the same original story, a story that was told only one way, and that as migrations happened from this original group they started adding in details that were more locally important to them. But that each of these cultures sincerely believed they were passing on the true account of the origin of humanity to their descendants as this story was told.

Ironically if you take it at face value, if there was really a flood and all people except for the ones on the boat were destroyed, and if most modern cultures were descended from them, the fact that the entire world seems to have inherited the same story would make sense, because they essentially had the same eight ancestors who experienced such a dramatic event, and made it a point to pass the story to each generation.

I propose that something like this really did happen in ancient history. I don’t see any logical way around it. The question I have is which, if any of these accounts, is closest to the truth?

Ancient Aliens tells us that the Sumerian version is closest to the truth because they were recorded earlier. That makes sense to a point, but we have to remember that the events described in the Sumerian texts were still ancient history to the Sumerians. So the question is not so much about the date of the writing, but rather their ability to preserve the story.

I’ll give you a few very good reasons to seriously doubt that the Sumerian accounts should be given more weight where they differ from the others.

The first is that the Sumerians stories are not logically consistent.

Take for example that in both the Sumerian and Biblical accounts, dimensions for the boat are given.

The mere fact that an important part of this story is the dimensions of the boat is interesting, but when you draw out the dimensions, you have on the one hand the Sumerian boat, being a big cube, and the biblical one being described by naval engineers as nearly perfect for maintaining stability without hull damage in incredibly rough seas.[18]

Another reason not to trust the Sumerian texts where they differ from the others is that, as every Sumerian scholar knows, the Sumerians constantly change the details of their stories to suit the different situations.

For example, texts of the same story found in the temple of Enki will differ from ones found in the temple of Innana, even if they are from the same time period, but especially if they’re from a different time period. To quote one Sumerian scholar:

“Inconsistencies are a regular feature of Sumerian poetry.”

He goes on to say that “integration of different texts [by the Sumerian scribes] often appear somewhat careless.”[19]

Compare that with the ancient Hebrew scribes, who were notorious for taking their job ultra-seriously. They had many rules that governed their coping of their sacred texts. For example, it is said that they would have to speak every letter out loud before committing it to paper.[20][21]

One example of a vindication of this meticulous attention to detail is with the Isaiah scroll found in the Dead Sea scrolls.

The earliest copies of the Hebrew Old Testament before the Dead Sea Scrolls were the Masoretic texts which were copied between the years 600-1000AD. So the Isaiah scroll, one of the best preserved scrolls, would be a way to prove or disprove if their scriptures had been faithfully copied by the scribes during the previous 800 years. As it turned out they did a flawless job and the Hebrew scribes were vindicated.[22][23]

So when deciding which texts are more accurate as it relates to their accounts of ancient events it is far more logical to assume that the group with a tradition of accurate preservation and transmission of their texts should be given more weight than a culture like the Sumerians who seemed to have little interest in the accurate transmission of the details of their stories.

To sum up, almost everything that Ancient Aliens says about the Annunaki is untrue, which is not surprising considering they copy and pasted almost everything in this section from the books of Zecharia Sitchin.

For more information about Sitchin’s errors in his translations of the Sumerians and Arkaddian texts, I will direct you to the excellent website of doctor Michael Heiser ‘Sitchiniswrong.com’.

[1] A. Kienast, “Igigu und Anunnaku: Nach Den Akkadischen Quellen” (Igigu and Anunnaki According to the Akkadian Sources)

[2] W. von Soden, “Babylonische Göttergruppen: Igigu und Anunnaku, Zum Bedeutungswandel theologischer Begriffe” (Babylonian God-Groups: Igigu and Anunnaku: Changes in the Meanings of Theological Terms)

[3] Die Anunna in der Sumerischen Überlieferung The Anunna in the Sumerian Tradition A. Falkenstein, Heidelberg Literal Translation (with some adjustment for clarity) by Kalene E. Barry

[4] Ibid.

[5]http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk

[6] “Shamash.” Windows to the Universe, n.d. http://www.windows2universe.org/mythology/shamash_sun.html

[7] In the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh. When Gilgamesh and Enkidu travel to slay Humbaba, each morning they pray and make libation to shamash in the direction of the rising sun for safe travels.

[8] The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Winged Genie Fertilizing a Date Tree, 884-860 B.C.E.
Assyrian, http://nelson-atkins.org/collections/iscroll-objectview.cfm?id=24456

[9]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_genie

[10] Ada Cohen, Steven E. Kangas. “Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II A Cultural Biography.” In Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II A Cultural Biography, 2010.

[11] Please note before doing this search for gold: that in this search for the word gold you will sometimes see a reference to “Nibru” this is not the same thing as the infamous “Nibiru.” When they bring gold to “Nibru” they are actually taking it to a real Sumerian city: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippur Now here is how to do the “gold” search: http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?simplesearchword=gold&simplesearch=translation&searchword=&charenc=gcirc&lists=

[12] Ibid.

[13] The Epic of Atrahasis, Line 25,26,30: http://www.livius.org/as-at/atrahasis/atrahasis.html

[14] By John H. Walton. Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context: A Survey of Parallels ,P.41, http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=FENzqidE2lsC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=literary+borrowing+Atrahasis+noah&source=bl&ots=jq4gNIPa_J&sig=0WoWbU6wvMJAjo5DJJ-kt3sQ46Y&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mRsJUIbLMtG4hAe1qI3jCQ&ved=0CEwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=literary%20borrowing%20Atrahasis%20noah&f=false.

[15]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viracocha.htm

[16] Genesis 6:1–14 The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2009 (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version.) (Ge 6). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

[17] “Flood Legends From Around The World.” Flood Legends From Around The World, n.d. http://www.nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html/.

[18] S.W. Hong, S.S. Na, B.S. Hyun, S.Y. Hong, D.S. Gon April 1, 1994 “Safety Investigation of Noah’s Ark in a Seaway” http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tj/v8/n1/noah and Jonathan Sarfati. “Noah’s Flood and the Gilgamesh Epic.” Creation Magazine, March 29, 2004. http://creation.com/noahs-flood-and-the-gilgamesh-epic.

[19] Ian Lawton. “Guide to the Sumerian Texts.” Guide to the Sumerian Texts, 2000. http://www.ianlawton.com/mes4.htm.

[20] Aish HaTorah’s Discovery Seminar. “Accuracy of Torah Text.” Accuracy of Torah Text, n.d. http://www.aish.com/h/sh/tat/48969731.html.

[21]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribe#Ancient_Israel

[22] Evans, Craig. “Guide to the Dead Sea Scrolls.” 2010.

[23] Jeff A. Benner. “Isaiah Scroll and the Masoretic Text.” Ancient Hebrew Research Center, n.d. http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/31_masorite.html.
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Ancient Aliens: “Ancient myths are full of stories of gods descending to Earth to mate with humans.”

AA: “According to many sources, including Norse and Greek mythology and even the Bible, we have the stories of the sons of God or actual gods from mount Olympus or Valhalla, and they’re coming to Earth. They find the daughters of men attractive.”

AA: “According to ancient texts, the fallen angels not only physically mated with the woman of Earth, they produced offspring – the nephilim. [They were] a race of giants similar to those portrayed in the story of David and Goliath.”

I pretty much agree with how they start off here. There are many texts from all around the world that do seem to be speaking of the same thing. I also think that because of the eerily similar themes in these accounts it is not wise to dismiss them altogether as a common idea that you would expect independent cultures to invent. I think this topic is worth looking into in depth.

Ancient Aliens seems to hold two contradictory opinions about this issue. On the one hand, they seem to be clear that they believe that extra-terrestrials came to earth in the ancient past and had sexual relationships with human women because they found them attractive.

AA: “Ancient texts talk about the fact that whoever visited the Earth in the remote past – these gods – thought that Earth woman were quite beautiful. In many occasions we find stories where those visitors essentially mated with Earth woman. It was misinterpreted; misunderstood as something divine that came here. They were flesh and blood extraterrestrials. “

AA: “When you look at Greek mythology and many of the mythologies around the world they have these stories of gods coming down from the sky and [having] sexual intercourse with these humans and [essentially] creating a new breed of human.”

AA: “When all of these encounters happened and when woman slept with those gods, which can be found in multiple texts all around the planet, those woman actually had sex with extraterrestrials, not with gods – because gods do not exist.”

But the view that this event involved lust and sex doesn’t fit too well with the Ancient Astronaut theory. They would prefer the view that what happened was artificial insemination

AA: “Today artificial insemination [is what happens]. You no longer have to have sex to have babies. We have the exact same description 1,000s of years ago where woman, without sleeping with anyone, all of a sudden became pregnant.”

The problem is that these texts are clear that a physical desire for women on the part of the angels was involved. So in order to make artificial insemination appear in the texts, Ancient Aliens stoops to a new low:

AA: “One of [the] Dead Sea Scrolls is called the Lamech scroll. [Who] is Lamech? Lamech was a shepherd. One day Lamech’s woman was pregnant and he said [to her] ‘This is impossible. I wasn’t here for months’. His woman, Bat-Enosh, swears [that no one touched her] but Lamech does not believe her and he goes to his father, Methuselah. Methuselah says to Lamech: ‘I can’t help you. I can’t understand this. I believe [Bat-Enosh in] that nobody touched her and I believe you. So what shall I do?’ [Methuselah then] goes to his father and the grandfather of Lamech, Enoch. Enoch tells Methuselah that the guardians of the sky have made an artificial insemination into the womb of Bat-Enosh, and that he should accept this child because [it shall be a] father of a new human generation – and in the Bible, this is Noah.”

They literally lie here. I suppose that Von Daniken is banking on the fact that not many people know about the text he is quoting from and so they probably won’t check his facts, so I guess he feels like he can lie to people about what it says.

Let me break down some of the deception in this clip.

AA: “And one day lamech’s woman was pregnant and Lamech said ‘This is impossible. I wasn’t here for months.”

The first big lie here is this idea that the reason Lamech doubted that Noah was his son was because he wasn’t there for months. The text clearly explains that the reason he doubted whether Noah was his son was because of the way he looked.[1] Von Daniken just inserts:

AA: “I was not here for months.”

I guess to make it seem like it couldn’t possibly be Lamech’s son, which is very deceptive, especially considering that in the text Bat-Enosh his wife actually reminds Lamech of the day they conceived the child.[2] And if you think that is deceptive on Von Daniken’s part you haven’t seen anything yet.

AA: “Now Enoch tells methuselah that the guardians of the sky have made an artificial insemination into Bat-Enosh.”

This is unbelievable. In the text Enoch says exactly the opposite and clearly confirms that Noah is the genuine son of Lamech.[3]

So not only is he bold face lying here about what Enoch said about Noah, he is inserting the idea of artificial insemination on top of this lie.

So you can see that one of the main founders of the Ancient Astronaut theory has absolutely no problem lying in order to make the crucial link they need between the nephilim and artificial insemination in ancient texts.

Although I sympathize with the Ancient Astronaut theorists in that I think the consistent details in the ancient texts about the nephilim leads us to the conclusion that something weird really did happen in the ancient past. I don’t think that the evidence points to it being extra-terrestrials from another planet.

Heiser: “Well the whole nephilim passage in genesis 6: 1-4 is admittedly weird. It’s one of those go to weird passages in the Bible that seems to come up, especially among people who would resist or not have a supernatural worldview. But, as weird as it is, the key is a supernatural worldview. If we believe that there are intelligent beings outside our own created world; our own material world, why would we limit a supernatural entity from [mating with woman]? What basis would you have to limit that property? If you’re going to allow for that, then this idea of being able to mingle with human flesh on some level or way, proceeds from those assumptions.”

I think we have already seen that they are being deceptive with the evidence they present, but I also think they are being deceptive with the evidence they are not presenting.

For example, in many ancient texts from the ancient near east to the ancient Americas this hybrid or nephilim-related event is spoken of in conjunction with a great flood. [4]

These stories, with slight variations, describe the flood coming because the hybridization was against the creators will.[5]

Heiser: “There are these flood stories in all these ancient cultures, so [it’s likely] some sort of [legitimate] collective memory. The problem is that a lot of those same sources and apologists will forget to include the other details that come along with those flood stories. One these things would be things like cohabitation and some sort of interaction between the divine world and the human world that resulted in strange offspring such as the nephilim.”

It’s complex and pretty strange, but it is consistent, and it is the story that many diverse cultures have passed down to their descendants.

They really believed this unnatural union produced giants, but again because the consistent stories of ancient cultures conflict with the Ancient Astronaut theory, they literally just throw out the evidence.

AA: “Were they giants or is that the wrong word and [should] the correct word be an extraterrestrial?”

But the word Nephilim really does mean giantvi, and the context of the various stories clearly reinforces this idea. Their height is often described, or the dimensions of their weapons are given, things like that.

Heiser: “The term nephilim really most accurately means giants. This is the way the ancient translators themselves understood it – translators of the Septuagint and Aramaic translations of the Bible. It gets pretty complicated to understand why that is the case. If you visit my website sitchiniswrong.com and click on the tab labeled ‘nephilim’, you’ll find an explanation.”

Part of the problem in my opinion, is the differences in the definition of an angel according to ancient texts vs. the definition according to modern pop culture.

If you wanted to determine what an angel was using the bible or other near east texts alone you would conclude that they have fully functional bodies; they can have meals with people; they grab hold of people; they are often mistaken as humans, and in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah the people wanted to rape the angels.

We find in the bible that the angels that decided to rebel and have sex with human women had to leave a certain type of body and exchange it for another one[6]. The type of body they were said to have left is described in this verse as a habitation:[7]

Jud 1:6 And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

The word “habitation” there is a rare Greek word called oike?te?rion which is used only one other time in the New Testament to describe the type of bodies followers of Christ will attain at the resurrection of the dead.[8]

So basically the angels were said to have left one type of body for another type and, according to the Bible, the second type clearly was capable of sex and reproduction

AA: “There is biblical precedent for the idea that their flesh can do things that our flesh does. In other words, if you’re going to assume flesh then it’s going to bring forth its possibilities and, in some sense, it’s limitations too”.

In other words the bible in detail explains what angels are and what their capabilities with their bodies are, which makes the following line from Von Daniken even more deceptive.

AA: “How can angels have sex? This is impossible. In our view, angels were something spiritual not something that has a body and the feeling of sex…but they had sex.”

Von Danilieks idea of an angel is defined more by hallmark cards than ancient texts. Obviously ancient cultures including the writers of the Bible believed that angels could and did have sex with human women.

The various elements of this story are too common in ancient cultures to be chalked up to coincidence in my opinion. But the details of these consistent reports do not benefit the Ancient Astronaut theory.

In fact, if anything it supports the idea that the narrative of the Bible is true, or at the very least that the specific details of that narrative were believed by cultures as geographically diverse as the Americas, the middle east, Asia, Europe and Africa.

The idea of the nephilim is a strange idea, but the idea that the texts which describe them are referring to ancient extraterrestrials does not fit the evidence. This is probably why Ancient Aliens has to misrepresent the evidence in order to make their point.

[1] “TRANSLATION OF 1Q GENESIS APOCRYPHON.” http://religiousstudies.uncc.edu/people/jcreeves/1qapgen.htm.

[2] “Then Bath-Enosh my wife spoke to me with much heat and said, “O my brother, O my lord, remember my pleasure, the lying together and my soul within its body. And I tell you all things truthful.”

[3] Col 5 1Q GENESIS: Enoch…not from the sons of heaven, but from Lamech your son… I now tell you… and I reveal to you… Go tell your son Lamech… When Methuselah heard this… And with his son Lamech, he spoke… Now when I, Lamech, heard these things… Which he got out of me

[4] http://www.teachinghearts.org/dre04legends.html

http://www.livius.org/fa-fn/flood/flood3.html

http://www.mythphile.com/2011/01/world-flood-myths/

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html http://library.thinkquest.org/C005854/text/mythfarworld_f.htm

http://library.thinkquest.org/C005854/text/mythfarworld_f.htm

http://www.languages.uncc.edu/dagrote/courses/rels/pages/world_myths.htm

http://rabbithole2.com/presentation/mythology/over_600_flood_myths_from_around_world.htm

[5] Ibid.

[6] James Montgomery Boice. “Notes on the Nephilim: The Giants of Old.” Notes on the Nephilim: The Giants of Old, 1988. http://www.ldolphin.org/nephilim.html.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.
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There are many more topics that we could have covered throughout this essay – like the claim that this ancient Egyptian relief is depicting a grey alien which, in more high resolution pictures can be seem to be a plant and a vase depicted in many other places in Egyptian art.

Or this this supposed ‘ancient rocket ship’ sculpture which, according to this Turkish article written in 2003[1], is a fake. The article quotes the curator of the Turkish museum saying it’s about 25 years old and made of plaster.

Ancient Aliens makes plenty more claims in their series, but I believe we have covered the best they had to offer. I could go on and debunk all the other claims they make and, to a certain extent, I will on the Ancient Aliens Debunked website. I hope to make this site a hub for this type of information.

The main thing I want to stress is that I’m not trying to suggest that, while Ancient Aliens got a few claims wrong, there’s room for truth in their main theory. That, in light of this information, is not a tenable position. You have just witnessed the unmistakable symptoms of the entire theory being wrong.

I would ask you also to take a long, hard look at the authors, speakers and charismatic personalities that led you to believe some of the things that I hope you can now see are wrong.

I hope that this helps you realize they are not as smart as they have led you to believe, and to consider what other untruths they may have taught you.

We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be taken by this kind of thing. We must be people with higher standards when it comes to verifying what is true.

Heiser: “Do not become enslaved to an authority figure. They should always be willing to direct you to information so that you can do the work and check on them. If they don’t, you should be suspicious. This is something, as a professor and scholar, I try to get my students to consider and think about because, let’s face it, how many of us are really into this stuff? How many of us study ancient languages? How many people have the ability to check on people like Zecharia Sitchin who comes along and starts spouting things about Arcadian and Hebrew? The answer is: not many. It just sounds like a horrible amount of work to gain that knowledge so you can evaluate what they say, and I understand that. But you should not let that allow you to check your brain in at the door. You should ask that source; that person ‘Where can I look? What can I do? What can I access to try to test what you’re saying?’

Please visit the website ancientaliensdebunked.com to see the different sections of this film or to download it for your personal use. Feel free to use this film in any way you see fit – except for charging for it in any way.

Thanks for your time.
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