Something other than history has co-opted The History Channel. Admittedly, viewers might have tired over the years of yet another documentary on war, but the current scheduling lineup has actually very little to do with “real” history anymore. My biggest concern has been their sneaky replacement of real history with unsupported, sensationalist, and highly questionable pseudohistory, epitomized in their series “Ancient Aliens.” If you’ve never watched, let me briefly summarize the premise: Human developments in architecture, writing, religion, technology, and just about everything else in history can be explained by extra-terrestrials who helped, inspired, or outright did these things. I guess it means money for a cable network, if sophistry can be peddled as history.
Who makes these ancient aliens claims, and how do they support them? Much of the series repeats arguments first made by Erich van Däniken in 1968, and developed by him and a host of his followers since then. Look carefully at the “experts” in the show, and you will quickly discover that hardly any of them are archaeologists or historians.
In the case of “Ancient Aliens,” the roster of enthusiastic “experts” includes a radio host for late-night shows on the paranormal, an ex-body builder and sports communications major in college, and a software engineer with interests in space. But is enthusiasm enough? These “experts” do not seem to have ever consulted even the most basic archaeology textbook on how to make sense of the past from material evidence or on what archaeologists have been interpreting for years. Regardless of one’s formal education, this should be an absolute necessary step to engage the literature.
These documentaries disregard evidence that might be contrary to their perspective, and they rip monuments, artifacts, and ancient writings completely out of their context to make outlandish claims. If anything runs counter to acceptable historical scholarship, this is it. They also lead audiences down the treacherous inkblot trail, identified by Kenneth Feder in his famous textbook Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries as the tendency to see in images or artifacts whatever one wants to see. This might be acceptable for cloud watching, but not for human history and our duty to try to represent it well. And besides misrepresenting humans in the past, they don’t even do a good job of representing these possible ancient aliens. Why sentient space travelers who could transport themselves many light years from their homes would need landing strips in the Nazca highlands of Peru that resembled a 20th-century airport is beyond me. If this is true, show me some lost luggage or a food court!
Do archaeologists know everything there is to possibly know about powerful leaders, pyramids, and civilizations in ancient Mayan or Egyptian worlds? Or about Stonehenge in England, or carved stone moai on Easter Island, or the Nazca Lines in Peru? Of course not, but give us some credit. We do know a tremendous amount about them due to decades of painstaking research, scientific analysis, and careful, critical study of artifacts, architecture, and even texts. (Remember, Egyptians and Mayans both recorded a lot of what they were doing in writing.) We certainly know they were made by humans, for humans, and with human engineering, skill, and labor. The jury is still out on whether life, sentient or otherwise, exists outside of our solar system, and I’m fine with that unknown. However, don’t use that possibility to maliciously compromise an otherwise interesting, exciting, and often very troubling past for humanity over the millennia. Save the discussion for extra-terrestrials for the realms of science, biology, and the future. The past is accessible but gone, and we can thank or criticize humankind for every bit of it.