Monday, October 13, 2014

Ancient Aliens Debunked film review

Posted By on Oct 2, 2012

Just finished watching the entire 3-hour presentation on youtube of Ancient Aliens Debunked. Overall, it was well composed, clearly thought out, and reasonably logical. It will definitely change your opinion of the Ancient Aliens show after watching it, but please read this review before making a hasty damnation of the show. I’ll try to point out some of the things that brought up more questions or were off target, (in my amateur opinion). Let it be known that I am merely an independent researcher with NO knowledge of archaeology, minimal knowledge of ancient history, and I’m armed with only the internet and way too many hours of watching television and listening to radio talk shows to research some of these ideas. I’ve got engineering credentials elsewhere, but they’re mostly irrelevant to this topic.

The film gets off to a great start by covering Pumapunku, one of the more mysterious sites on the Ancient Aliens show. Reference number 34 at 16:25, claims that the stones are in disarray because locals looted for various buildings. Some questions that are raised are: Where are these buildings the looters constructed with the stones? Shouldn’t they be all around the local area still? I mean, since these scholars require so much evidence, surely they’ve found evidence for this?…

Also, some theorists (e.g. Giorgio Tsoukalos) make the statement that the scholars and experts label the ancient cultures as simple and unintelligent, and this gets reinforced when the film makes the claim that the Incans gave the historical tale of the gods building Pumapunku because they wouldn’t acknowledge an older civilization actually existing since the Incans were the first. Giorgio has said in many interviews that the scholars stop their investigation of ancient cultures at the point in which they worship deities. They don’t actually research why or how the cultures came to the conclusion of their gods, and this is somewhat repeated in this claim of the film.

Next, we go to the Egyptian Giza Pyramids section, which is sure to falsify all of the Ancient Aliens theories, but we’re still waiting to hear conclusively why the pyramids were built, and how, so to me this doesn’t lay the Giza pyramids to rest.

In the Incan Sites section, the film asserts that Mike Dunn’s theory of a patterned mold is impossible because none of the stones look alike, but the film shows a frame of several rocks that do in fact look alike, ironically at the same time that Dunn is describing it, at 1:00:10.

Pacal’s rocket sarcophagus is believed to be Pacal’s descent into the underworld by Mayan ‘experts.’ Ancient Aliens actually reveals this fact on their show. On the documentary, they claim the rocket is the World Tree with the branches in the heavens and roots in the underworld, with the celestial bird just above the branches (heavens), and the ‘rocket smoke’ is actually the roots (underworld). Why is Pacal riding the rocket into the underworld, when he is heading into the direction of the heavens, based on how the film describes this? See 1:08:00.

When it comes to the Nazca Lines, the film demonstrates how easy it is to remove the stones to create the lines and images seen from the sky. The ancient Nazca culture believed in nature gods that were animals and even decapitated people for these gods (as the show discusses). So again, as Tsoukalos emphasizes in most of his interviews, what purpose did they serve? The film seems to imply they used them for religious purpose, which circular reasoning brings us right back to worshiping gods! It doesn’t seem to clear anything up on this argument, besides debunking the idea of the cut off mountain tops (plateaus), which was quite humorous and did make a lot of sense. I would like to see a reply on that one though, because some of the images of these ‘plateaus’ do really look a bit odd, but I’m not an expert in that field so what do I know. They might be legitimate plateaus, which makes more sense than this ancient culture chopping off the tops of the mountains.

In the UFOs in ancient art section, the Sputnik-Earth painting doesn’t explain why there are antenna on the globe of the Earth, only that the Earth wasn’t believed to be flat in the Middle Ages.
In the portion of the film that discusses the Vimana and the nuclear explosions, it debunks the term “ten thousand suns” stating that it merely refers to an appearance of Vishnu and that many passages use that line to describe the deity. But why is that? Why would they use that term? Have we ever seen anything in our lives that appeared as bright as “ten thousand suns?” An explosion perhaps. Again, the Ancient Aliens theorists are merely presenting a theory that explains the motivation behind these ancient cultures and there descriptive language.

The video debunks the “UFO” spoken of in Ezekial by saying that he was well versed in writing and using descriptive terms, and there’s no way that he couldn’t describe a UFO. So it’s acceptable for the video to believe that Ezekiel saw these multi-faced cherubims and other supernatural phenomenon? There are several examples of the throne with the odd creatures and cherubims elsewhere in the Bible, but perhaps this is more evidence of the interpretation of the people when they were witnessing these other worldly, other-dimensional structures.

The Anunnaki definition from Giorgio Tsoukalos is debunked and described as the “princely seed” or the offspring of “An,” the god of the heavens. Giorgio says it’s “those who from heaven came,” and he got it from Zecharia Sitchin, who has been himself debunked somewhat, as we can see on Dr. Michael Heiser’s website. I’ve even heard some of those on Ancient Aliens explain that Sitchin isn’t 100% accurate in his books (Jason Martell on Coast to Coast AM and Giorgio Tsoukalos on Joe Rogan’s podcast), so I don’t think all of these Ancient Aliens theorists actually 100% fully subscribe word for word the Sitchin theories. Obviously he is huge inspiration for all of these ideas, but it seems to me that they explore ideas and use the Ancient Astronaut Theory as a springboard for them.

The debunk film discusses how the ancients all had flood myths and similar ‘immaculate conception’ tales and how there is a supernatural link between them and modern Christianity, which I liked. But then the film lays claim to the Christian religion as the most correct of the religious stories, which I’m still not convinced of. I believe in Christianity, but to discount all of the ancient stories seems a bit presumptuous. But again, I’m not a Theologian, so I’ll have to research this some more.

The fact that I only thought of this much questionable material, is quite telling of how enlightening this film is to an amateur like myself. The film is three hours of discussion and I only have a handful of questions, so that is pretty good. The Ancient Aliens show is entertainment and put together by an entertainment channel, not historical scholars. Is it slightly unethical? Sure. But I’m not apt to drop my job, personal life, and everything to worry about the Anunnaki coming back from Planet X just because the channel that airs a show about it says so. Not to mention this is the same channel that airs ‘Cajun Pawn Stars’ and ‘Ice Road Truckers’ more than they do actual historical shows.

The show has a lot of damning evidence and even some humor. For example, the part where the narrator talks about the Sanskrit texts from “6,000 BC” when in reality it is only 1,000 BC and the narrator says that they just arbitrarily added 5,000 years was quite humorous. I mean, the documentary is correct in pointing out the eccentricity of the theorists, they are a bit out there. But we need some evolutionary thinking to push our paradigm of beliefs out of our comfort zone, so I still find these theorists worth listening to. I also enjoy Dr. Michael Heiser’s commentary, I’ve listened to him on Coast to Coast AM and he presents good logical arguments. The narrator also does an eloquent job of defending his explanations with the references and such.

To play along with the film, let’s say that the entire Debunked film is correct, and the show Ancient Aliens is a fraud. Then why did these ancient cultures devote so much time and energy into these symbols of flying serpents? Where would they even get that idea? Why would the earliest form of writing (Sumerian cuneiform) be an exciting myth about star travelers? Are we to believe that the ancient cultures would rather write a make believe tale for their first writings instead of actual history? The debunking of Ancient Aliens begs all of these questions. What do the scholars actually believe? Do they simply think these ancient cultures believed in fairy tales and had over creative imaginations?

The popularity of the show Ancient Aliens partially comes from the respect of entertaining the idea of alien intervention and visitation. There is a growing population that is awakening to the duping of our culture. Some of us feel that the general attitude from ‘scholars,’ Egyptologists and ‘experts’ is that aliens are absurd, which stems from the socially engineered response that is indoctrinated into everybody from the Illuminati types with a secret agenda.  If you don’t believe that, then go ahead and bring up the idea of aliens to your coworkers and see how long it takes to get a smile, laugh, or labeling that you’re insane. Then to take the concept of a programmed society a bit further, go ahead and ask those same coworkers if they believe in Jesus Christ. Statistically, some of them will say yes, which is ironic since Jesus was an extraterrestrial who was immaculately conceived and brought back from the dead before an ascension into another dimension.  So how “absurd” is it really for aliens to have visited our planet in the past?

To shed light on why Ancient Aliens is a valuable show to keep, let’s take a look at the theory of evolution. Evolution is a theory, which indicates it’s not the 100% sure thing for an explanation of the human species. It ties facts together nicely, and has never been proven wrong. It doesn’t answer every question though. For example, if evolution is true, and there is a ‘survival of the fittest’ then why didn’t the Neanderthals out survive the Homo sapien-sapiens? The Neanderthals had larger brain capacity and were much stronger than the Homo sapien-sapiens. They should’ve destroyed us in every way. There are no known explanations for how this all went down and what the Neanderthals were, and if they are related to the modern day humans. And to zoom out a bit further, even if you could prove evolution exists, who is the Grand Creator of all of this? Ancient Aliens merely seeks to push some radical ideas. This is necessary in every way of scientific advancement. If you study the Adaptive-Innovation theory, you’ll see that science will have paradigms that get refined and evolve over time, only to be blown up and completely redefined through a revolutionary idea, which itself will get refined and evolved. Ancient Aliens seeks to be that revolutionary idea by seeding ‘outside of the box’ ideas into peoples’ minds. Also, is it a coincidence that Giorgio Tsoukalos hair is similar hair to another revolutionary fella? Einstein shattered the physical sciences with his Theory of Relativity, which sounded insane at the time to the Newtonian physics subscribers. I’m not saying that Tsoukalos is equivalent to Einstein, but his contributions could eventually be appreciated as much someday if proven correct.

I’m not going to defend everything the Ancient Aliens theorists say, but I feel that they are being perpetually labeled as liars, when in fact they are just proposing theories, even if some of them aren’t the most sound. I could see why the narrator and film maker, Chris White made the film. The show is quite persuasive and if you don’t do some fact checking you might be led to believe some fairly tall tales. My view of the show is that it proposes some ideas that should be investigated further and it is seeking to find that spark that evolutionarily changes our view of our past. Look, I get the Ancient Aliens show; it basically says that something happened in our past that is more significant than what the modern day scholars and archeologists give them credit for. For conspiracy theorists this isn’t a far stretch, because they already don’t buy into the formal education system, and label it as an ‘indoctrination’ that is set up by corporate interests to keep the people ignorant and blind to the actual truth. The history books are written by the victors, or in our modern day case, the rich and powerful. The ‘Debunked’ film seems to give the viewer the idea that scholars have got all of history’s mysteries figured out and there’s nothing supernatural or unexplained available. Surely there is a secret knowledge of our past that the layman isn’t privileged enough to learn about.

For an example, there must be a secret message behind all of Washington D.C.’s Greek, Roman and Egyptian structures and symbolism. The freemasons also have an admiration for these structures, as seen on their temples. Could it be simply because our founding fathers admired those cultures? Or is there something more to it that aren’t meant to understand. I feel that the elitist-Illuminati types have an understanding of the subliminal conscious mind, symbols, and unseen dimensions. There are spirits that exist at other frequency wavelengths that we can’t access with our five sense physical limitations, but perhaps the Illuminati understand how to. The point is, there seems to be something to this world that I can’t exactly put my finger on, but I do feel that I am being manipulated by an unseen force. This unseen force re-emphasizes material, five sense, thinking and breaks down empathy for one another (see David Icke)  for whatever reason. If you don’t believe that you’re being manipulated, pay attention to politics and the way of the world until you get what I’m saying. Everything is a bullshit illusion of prioritizing our lives into material objects and worrying about what others think of us. We are being duped into joining a political gang and campaigning for their beliefs which ultimately only serve the politician who is getting paid off by whichever industry can profit from their decisions. When we all go into this afterlife of collective consciousness and are unlimited in our abilities, we won’t want or need any of the material things, so why do we live our lives for these unrighteous reasons? It’s because there’s a manipulation out there, which some call evil or the Devil.

So perhaps there weren’t aliens visitations in the past. Ancient Aliens actually emphasizes the “theory” aspect of the “Ancient Astronaut Theory.” Watch the series again after viewing this debunking documentary. You’ll see that both the narrator and the theorists use terms like, “possible,” “theory,” and “potential,” but never “law.” It’s merely a theory that explains what happened in the ancient past and the message these cultures were trying to convey. It’s a bit beside the point to ‘debunk’ and say that the alien visitations were impossible. There’s plenty of unknown supernatural things in our world, and if we want to debunk all of them and pretend we’ve got it all figured out, then we truly are losing hope in an afterlife and a grand creator. Ancient Aliens is a bit misleading, I’ll agree to that. But like everything else, you’ve got to vet the information. If Ancient Aliens gets the audience to learn a few things about the past and open up our minds to potential to know that there’s something beyond our five-state physical awareness.

Check out the Ancient Aliens Debunked and Dr. Michael Heiser’s websites for more information:

http://ancientaliensdebunked.com
http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/index.html
http://www.michaelsheiser.com/
http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/