Ancient Astronauts or Aliens?

DanDMan7

If you have a flexible imagination and are ready to stretch it beyond your norm, then you'll enjoy this series. I think that overall the Ancient Alien series is a fabulous compilation of religious, mythological, historical, and cultural references, supplemented with archaeological evidence on unexplained events and artifacts of the past and present that fit the mold of the proposed Ancient Astronauts theory very well. However, instead of immediately attributing everything to Ancient Aliens, the show can benefit from some level of debunking and opposing view to give it more weight.

For example to explore a counter-argument, one can argue that the ancient advance technology was achieved by humans alone in thousands of years of human evolutions prior to the last Ice Age of 20,000 years ago. As the series proposes, the underwater archaeological finds of lost civilization suggest advance civilization predating the classical recorded history, much earlier than the Bronze age, Sumerian/Assyrians and the Egyptians, much earlier than 5,500 years ago. As the new archaeological finds reshape the classical civilization time line backed with multitude of sophisticated artifact showing up in places such as Gobekli Tepe, circa ~12,000 years ago, it begs the question: what happened to the period before Sumerians or better yet before Gobekli Tepe? Could it be that humans achieved intelligent supremacy and advance technology let's say sometime in between the earliest Homo Sapien days of ~200,000 years ago (as it is estimated today) up until ~10,000 years ago perhaps once or even multiple times? This view is in line with the Hopi Native American view that this is the 4th era of humans on earth. Could it be that sometime within the last 200,000 years doomsday event(s) wiped prior civilizations out? So far, there are at least three known impact craters associated with meteorites that fall in or close to that period: Lonar Crater Lake, Barringer Crater, or Rio Cuarto craters. Or could it be that another not yet discovered impact from a large meteorite could have impacted earth in an uncharted part of our oceans that we have not yet discovered the impact crater for. This impact could have devastated earth and wiped evidence of this advance prehistoric civilization beyond recognition? After all there are many areas of earth under water and below ground that have not been explored yet. Could it be that the advance ancient humans were wiped in mass extinctions of other kind such as the bacterial/viral plagues the series suggest could have been delivered via meteorites or comets? Or even could it be that they went extinct with multi-punch combination events? By digging deeper or by looking for evidence more carefully we may someday discover undeniable proof that recorded modern human history should go back far before the Sumerians, or even before Gobekli Tepe. Could it be that the ancient aliens being referenced in the series are remnants of the prehistoric modern humans? Could it be possible that some of them were able to escape the doomsday devastation by traveling into space via what in Abrahamic religions we refer to as Noah's Ark? Could it be that their later and even more advanced human generation returned to earth a few hundred (or thousands) years later to re-seed earth and provide technology guidance to the survivors (if any) of those underprivileged humans that were left behind during the devastation? Could it be that these advance humans, not extra-terrestrials, are the gods that all religious books refer to? Did we lose tremendous knowledge or the expertise, and later enlightenment was kept with a chosen few that pass it on from generation to generation to this very day (illuminates and the like)? The series explores lost civilization of Atlantis and Hy-Brasil, but does not attribute it to human ingenuity alone. Hence I like the original source name Ancient Astronaut better than the TV series rename to Ancient Aliens.

That said, being a fan of one of my hero scientist, Carl Sagan, I am certain that in our vast universe there are many other planets that support life (perhaps life not even as we know it today) and others that may have resulted in producing similar features and creatures as earth. Notwithstanding the theory of parallel universe or multi-verse, and looking at time as a linear phenomenon, this universe is about three times older than the age of our earth. Possibility that other planets which support life went through their evolution earlier than us is absolutely conceivable in my mind. Therefore I think that it is possible for these beings to have visited earth in the past and perhaps to this date.

I also love the way all religions have common roots in this theory. I call the ancient astronaut theory the common denominator for all earth's religions, cults, and mythologies. It creates a new paradigm under which we can reexamine our understanding of all the philosophical questions of life, our purpose, and afterlife.

score 9/10

DanDMan7 19 February 2012

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2568767/