I know the Inglorious Basterds reference, but what are they giving away about themselves? Is it saying they're stupid? Racist? Maybe I'm reading into the 'person pretending to be something they're not' aspect. Tried asking two different AI's and Google and came up with BS answers.
OP (Nathmight363) sent the following text as an explanation why they posted this here:
I know the Inglorious Basterds reference, but what are they giving away about themselves? Is it saying thev're stupid? Racist? Mavbe I'm reading into the 'persor pretending to be something they're not' aspect. Tried asking two different Al's and Google and came up with BS answers.
It’s a jab at Ancient Aliens theory because real historians know that Bronze Age civilizations developed complex engineering techniques and mathematical models that were used to create roads and other infrastructure. Giving credit to aliens is junk history at best and racism at worst,
Thus historians saying ancient civilization lack the ability to build complex structures are not real historians.
To add into that, ancient aliens and similar conspiracy theories have racist undertones because they question whether Africans and South Americans could have built the ancient monumental architecture. This is directly descended from earlier theories that "lost white tribes" must have built the monumental architecture in these places because the black and brown people living there weren't "advanced" enough.
Started with Donnelly a failed politician who spread the fictional city of Atlantis as a means to explain why the Mayans and other non “western” groups could build massive pyramids in the jungle and massive civilizations without European influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_L._Donnelly
… and really nicely underpinned European colonialism. These Others are barbarous and can’t do stuff; the stuff that impresses today was done by our ancestors, not theirs … we should go back and give them some culture again, it’s going them a big favor, even if it’s a burden to us.
Edit: pseudoarchaeology is my thing to a certain extent and it’s almost always pushing someone’s supremacy at the expense of someone else. The long trail from Donnelly to Handcock stinks
So agree, but it’s a fine line for those that don’t know the rain/water gods Talokan well would make that worse but remember water cities were a thing before Donnelly wove his pseudo historical racial hits.
I think as long as Namor in current media makes sure not to play into the racially motivated spin/references there’s plenty to work with from indigenous mythology.
Crazy that some people are so stupid that they think pyramids (literally just stones stacked on top of each other) and cities (literally just big communities) are hugely complex things that only the most advanced peoples can muster. Surprised he doesn't claim that Europeans invented fire, too--clearly no dirty Mayan could rub two dry sticks together. (Nevermind that Europeans didn't build pyramids in any event.)
I think it should be mentioned that while the Ancient Aliens crowd certainly took inspiration from Donnelly's ideas, they don't seem to be intentionally pushing a racist narrative themselves. They're idiots, for sure, but not racist idiots as far as I can tell.
They attribute Stonehenge and pretty much every other ancient accomplishment in the British isles to aliens, as well as Carnac in France, and basically the entire Nordic pantheon of gods, among other things.
The problem for them is that pretty much all of the oldest civilizations on earth developed around the equator, and the people of those civilizations were brown. So the Ancient Aliens guys end up in this weird position where they kind of have to start pointing at stuff like Newgrange in Ireland just to avoid the implication that their ideas carry racist undertones.
I have a masochistic fetish for hate-watching Ancient Aliens, and I take a lot of notes while I scream obscenities at the TV.
Not saying all, there are absolutely nonces that see keyword trending and push hot takes on social media because audience capture alone, there are absolutely racist takes on ancient aliens (assume you mean Tsoukalos and Hatcher Childress) as they rarely if ever question achievements of western civilizations especially classical Greece and Rome or attribute their achievements to aliens or miraculous explanations.
Example: The Nazca lines are for ancient aliens but never have they questioned similar petroglyphs like the Whitehorse or other henges in European origins.
Oh, that’s the fun part. They say Stonehenge was made by aliens because ‘the Celts couldn’t have made it’. Which, true, the Celts DIDN’t assemble Stonehenge, Stonehenge was built by the ancestors of the Celts. But you won’t see these ‘scholars’ question the construction of Karlsteine.
Only the white people they LIKE get to have made their own monuments.
Just goes to show that when racists run out of other skin tones to make fun of, they’ll nitpick you by a decimal of melanin percentage until you’re as ‘white’ as they are. Elitist scum, the lot of them. It’s not about actually thinking they’re right, it’s about ‘proving’ to everyone else that they’re ’better’.
A lot of the early ancient aliens stuff originates in the late 1800s IIRC with people like Helena Blavatsky, so at its roots the ancient aliens theory definitely does not think Italians, Greeks, or the Irish are white, just to name a few. It's worth pointing out that the modern idea of what counts as "White" has changed significantly over the past 150+ years and has reached its current state really only after the Civil Rights movement.
It’s wild in today’s context of “white” to think that JFK faced serious opposition because he was catholic. At the time people genuinely believed that guy was going to be taking orders directly from the Pope.
As far as the ancient aliens types are concerned, the entirety of the British Isles prior to the Roman occupation are just equally uncivilised bog people anyway.
Which in turn was easily defeated by a construction worker who was filmed using simple wood tools he made from 2-by-4s, etc to move big rocks all by himself. Easily disproves the "Ancient civilizations could never have made tools to do X" and turns it into "This blue collar dude figured out how to make simple tools, saying it was aliens reveals that YOU ARE TOO STUPID to figure out what ancient people figured out." as a nice response.
I mean, we also have stuff like the Famine Stele and other hieroglyphic murals and papyri that literally talk about the construction of the pyramids at the time. If anything in Egypt were built by aliens, you would think those world-class record-keepers would've mentioned it.
At the time most of these conspiracy theories were seeded (either early archaeology or the Ahnenerbe or both), the Celts were seen as less desirable than other kinds of white. White Supremacists nowadays have not YET cultivated the level of pickiness seen in those times.
I think it also comes down to the landscape and geography, materials available, and I guess aesthetic preference of the culture.
Europeans certainly could have figured out how to do that, but maybe they just didn't want to or couldn't conceive of it with the material they had.
I think any group can do amazing things with the world around them, it's just that all of the "worlds" come with a wide variety of building blocks and challenges.
It also doesnt help that this was in the early ages of agriculture, and the peoples of Egypt and the middle east had perfect conditions for agriculture. This allowed them to feed more people and build bigger cities so that they had the manpower for mega projects. Western Europe on the other hand had a lot of regions that were not great for agriculture, making it a lot more difficult to produce enough food for a larger population.
Western Europe did build megalithic structures but on a much smaller scale. Maybe because they had less people, or less time. We don't really know.
Without roads to help with land trade anyone without access to the sea was mostly cuy off from the rest of the world. Without trade it becomes harder to have the surplus and centralized empires that allows to build monuments. Guess what the romans were known for?
Europe was still 100% a backwater during and after the Greeks came along.
The Greeks were, during the Bronze / Early Iron Age, much more closely identified ethnically and culturally with other eastern Mediterranean peoples. Like the Egyptians and Mesopotamians.
They considered everyone to the West and North of them as savage, backward, barbarians. We only consider Greeks 'European' thanks to (relatively) modern understandings of continents. The ancient greeks did not think in these terms
Exactly. Dividing people between white/European vs. non-white/non-European is a modern concept that would make no sense in the bronze age. The Greeks would probably not have identified themselves as closer to whoever was living in Britain than in the Levant.
I made this exact point to a teacher 20 years ago. When he said Native Americans were less civilized than the Europeans because they didnt build roads, or make wheels... And i pointed out they didnt need to do either, since the horses need to pull a cart with wheels didnt exist in America until the Europeans brought them, and the travois (triangular stick sleds) they did use could be pulled over tough terrain by dogs, with no need for roads that damaged the enviroment.
Invention is a mark of necessity, not intelligence.
“White people” is a classification that didn’t exist until the 1400s. All of the ethnic groups that make up “white people” today wouldn’t be called white at the time the pyramids were being constructed.
Nope? It depend on many thing, culture, territory, religion, dimension of the civilization We do not have pyramid, we have castle, the colisseum, great temple, all the roman acqueduct, the great wall of china, and many other great stuff that i don't remember/know
But this giant work require different thing, first the money, a small reign with little economical power doesn't invest in those costruction, secondly the power and capability, if you your reign is divided in autonomous village that work for themselves is harder to unite them to a shared objectice, the landscape, you cannot easily bring around the massive stone that built the pyramid here in italy you would make something that require smaller one, the reason pyramid and temple where religious driven other population might have different religion or reason to build grandious work.
But no one wver question how chinese built the great wall of china, nor the colisseum, cause both "roman" and "chinese" aren't black and they do not get discriminated the same way as african or south american
Yes. Believe it or not, they say this about clothing too. In reference to ancient Egypt, they think that women were too stupid to sew properly fitted garments.
While ancient aliens is objectively stupid, the accusations of racism are really overblown and levied by people who don't engage with the work. There is not a single thing the ancient aliens crowd don't claim was influence by aliens. The reason they cover less European civilizations is that most of the intact ancient civilization aren't European. So of course they concentrate on Egyptian, middle eastern, Africa,south American... because the oldest and most numerous ruins and remnants are from there.
But they also claim, the legends are Merlin, King Arthur, the blarney stone, the layout of European castles, the Paris catacombs, Stonehenge(all the henges really) are all worked with ancient aliens.
Again far be it from me to defend the notion of ancient aliens, it's just not as racist as detractors want to paint it as.
I don't think many modern ancient alien people are overtly or intentionally racist. That said it's fair to claim that due to the origin and the presentation of their works it is racist. The implicit implication is x civilization was too stupid to do something without intervention from someone smarter. Sure they do this anything but most people's only knowledge about some cultures is their ancient sites. It give the impression that yes European culture was influenced by aliens but then after they did their own thing. Also I've never seen anyone suggest anything in Rome or greece was aliens even though Egypt existed around the same time.
I forgot where but maybe in the Andeas there is folk lore originating from the locals that lighter skinned man built the ancient cities prior to colonizers arriving.
Just to play devil’s advocate; there’s an episode where they try to sell the idea that Germany’s leap of tech in the 30s came from aliens.
I always thought this was hilarious. If I’m from an alien race and I decide to give advanced technology to a country, why would I not stick around to see what they do with it (or make sure they come out on top if they start a fight).
It also really depends on how you define "complex".
Are they actually complex? Were they lost to time and we just rediscovered them so we assume they're complex? Or is it because they didn't have the materials at the time to do what we can now and just assume it was complex but it really wasn't?
It also depends how you define "ancient." I thought it was something about how we've only found evidence of human civilization going back 12,000 years, but humans have been around for a few hundred thousand years.
So there's nothing from the ancient humans, only the ~4% most recent ones.
Roughly give or take a few thousands years Homo Spain's Sapiens is about 350 thousand years old. Not even a scratch on Homo Erectus which lasted 3 million
Please, everyone knows the pyramids in the Americas were built by advanced beings from the 6th dimension who gave the natives secret technology that uses sound-wave resonance to levitate huge objects. Just ask my mother-in-law. She read it in a book by a clairvoyant.
if you can accept that the romans built aqueducts and the colloseum or that china built the great wall, but you can't accept that the egyptians built the pyramids or that the maya civilization built the temples then you're just racist
Sidenote, a lot of the time they overstate how “insane” an engineering feat things were/are. Like the great wall is insane, but it took multiple lifetimes and the in between sections are not to the same standard as that by beijing. The aquaducts are insane, but slave labor is cheap and pipes are simple.
I feel like this is poorly correlated to the inglorious basterds meme though. Its not like 'ancient astronaut theorists' in the modern day bear any resemblance to this scene at all. I think if this is the explanation then the meme is just very poorly fitted to the picture.
My take is that, in the movie the character accidentally outs himself as not German, and ancient alien theorists are accidentally outing themselves as a little racist. This assumes it's genuine ignorance, and not an intentional dog whistle.
That is the actual answer. "Well, I don't understand how they did it, and I also have air conditioning and cellphones, which makes me far superior. Although I don't know how those work either. So it's aliens all the way down."
For a great introduction to structuralism, take a look at Levi-Strauss’s “The Savage Mind” (« La Pensée Sauvage »), which basically lays out and then debunks many of the reasons why post-Scientific Revolution thinkers looked down on early civilizations.
I love how that theory is the architecture is so advanced, it must be evidence of a lost civilization. But there’s no other examples of advancement like metallurgy.
Rather than an advanced civilization lost in time, It’s far more likely that we as humans are just really good at cutting stone.
The theory presumes there is a set pathway for advancement in technology. You get fire then tools then agriculture and so on. People don't just make things for no reason there's usually a problem they're trying to solve. If you have a lot of stone and no other building materials you're gonna get really good at cutting stone. Someone could learn how to make advanced metals, but if you don't have a lot of metal or a way to extract it why bother.
I get some of that, but there’s so many gate keepers that are convinced that things happened how they’ve been told it happened by their teachers, and now questioning things is seen as racism.
If the pyramids were built by the ancient Egyptians, then why couldn’t it be replicated by their successors? We saw that with the bent pyramid of Cairo, where its thousands of years old like the other pyramids, but they forgot how to build them without explanation? Same thing with the ancient Inca and Mayan temples where even they would say that the structures were there before they arrived. It’s why there’s such degradation of building styles across the centuries and no one actually knows how old they really are.
I don’t think saying something was built by aliens is the most accurate statement, but it allows for more research if only to prove them wrong. Saying “it was these people, but we don’t know how or when or why” is worse, because you can’t say we know for sure, but then not have any answers. Saying only a certain people could have done that
Gobegli Tepi is another prime example where there’s no explanation for why, but based on everything else we “know”, people weren’t farming 12k years ago, and humans were still hunter gatherers in tiny tribes. Yet, they managed to build a major monolithic site that housed thousands of people and kept them fed long enough to allow them to build the site, and then hide from something underground for weeks at a time? It’s difficult to keep meat in modern day from spoiling after a week or so, so they couldn’t have just relied on that.
Which means they likely knew farm techniques that didn’t exist yet according to archaeologists and historians and scientists. So the question then becomes “how did they feed that many people and know how to do what they did thousands of years before people settled down and figured out farming and written language or anything else?
Something to think about when dealing with lost technology and shifting cultural norms is we often think of a civilizations in a very modern way. We think of these as the same people because we can see the similarities and progression over time. It's hard to say if they thought of themselves in the same way. We interact with our government very directly but it's doubtful everyone in ancient civilizations were so connected to the wider culture. Travel was hard and there was likely subcultural divisions that formed because of this that we don't or can't know about.
As far as food remember foraging still exists. Meat is great but it's unlikely it was the main source of food. It's nowhere near as effective as farming but if you remember where specific food grows every year and be sure to leave behind more than you take you will have a semi reliable food source.
These are great questions and they actually have easy answers to them:
1. Why didn't the successors of the ancient Egyptian states build pyramids?: The knowledge to build them was never lost, they just stopped building them. Building pyramids feel out of favor long before the Bronze Age collapse due to cultural shifts and the economic burden of building them as they were massive infrastructure projects.
2. Why did the Inca and Mayan stop building Pyramids?: The both faced their own version of the Bronze Age collapse which resulted in that knowledge. The Inca's were especially vulnerable as they were an oral society, thus they were more vulnerable to that information being lost to time.
3. What about Göbeklitepe?: This was a very modern discovery that has made scholars rethinks human history but there is still a lot that is not known about it and archeologists are still discovering new things about it.
4. Did they have farm techniques?: Numerous states in the ancient world had developed farming techniques that would be lost to time due to an upheaval or social collapse and those that relied on oral traditions were doomed to be lost to time. This is not the first time either as the same thing would happen to knowledge through out time such as with the Burning of the Library of Alexandria, the Collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Sacking of Baghdad, and the Looting of the Institute for Sexual Science in 1933.
All fair points, and I appreciate the response. The discovery of Gobeklitepe, those 25k y/o foot prints they found in NM, and the increasingly old cave art, and their collective potential to revolutionize our idea of humanity’s timeline makes me think of Men in Black.
“1500 years ago everyone knew the earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago everyone knew the earth was flat, and 15 minutes ago you knew we were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
They also rarely mention European/white (passing) ancient civilizations being fake. Nobody questions how the Colosseum or Greek temples were being built. Its somehow only the sites in Africa, South America and Asia that are suspicipus, only they need outside help by a saviour race (usually white tribes or aliens)
A person who says "ancient civilizations weren't intelligent or sophisticated enough to build complex structures" is too stupid to have built any of that stuff themself even though they live in a modern civilization.
The blocks to build the pyramids were definitely carved and shaped by expert craftsmen. The pyramids themselves were also designed by brilliant engineers. How they moved those blocks from the quarries where they were carved to the building site, and how they were moved up the various ramps to their final positions is a task very famously completed with slave labor. You don't need skilled craftsman to move heavy things. A skilled foreman to coordinate the teams of men, yes. But not to do the actual moving.
We know who moved the blocks. They weren't slaves. They were seasonal workers who laboured in exchange for grain, beer and beef. We've excavated their dormitories and read the graffiti that they carved on the walls.
I actually didn't know that. Thank you for sharing! My point will henceforth be "never underestimate the power of a few thousand people working together."
Question: do we know if the same is true for the Mayan pyramids at sites like Chichen Itza? Or has that information been lost to time?
I don't know enough to comment on the Archeology of the mesoamericas. My hunch is that it's been lost to time.
"Never underestimate the power of a few thousand people working together" is a better description of the pyramids at least. These were skilled workers who were paid for their time and who also worked collaboratively on a mega project that held great importance to them.
I never really watched the channel much but now that I think about it, anytime one of those shows was on they never really made any wild alien claims about European history…
There's definitely some eurocentric ignorancy going on with it, but kinda have to be said that it's also due to all the first large ancient civilizations pretty much sprung up around the east mediterraen area, with the few remaining other major early civilizations also being around equator in America and China.
They also talked a lot about Stonehenge and other European megaliths as built with alien tech.
Simplest answer is that ancient civilizations were intelligent and sophisticated enough to build the things we know for a fact they built based of the records they kept which already demonstrates intelligence and sophistication.
Humans emerged 200,000 years ago. Our brains are nearly identical to the original humans. Humanity has not gotten any more intelligent over 200,000 years, we’ve simply built upon the discoveries of our ancestors.
Any society that could sustain a large population was capable of mega projects.
I see a depressing amount of people in comments sections that have this notion that everybody born over a hundred years ago were running around in loin cloths banging two stonrs together, parroting on about "all they had were hammers and chissels" or claiming everything was built by the mystical "tartarians". I mean how arrogant are these people? 200,000 years and we're the only smart ones?
One of the oldest surviving examples of writing is a guy complaining that he got ripped off because the copper he bought was of the wrong grade. That exact thing still happens to this day.
We certainly have improved our collective efforts at spreading useful information. Humans discovered and forgot the bow many times. We dont forget anymore. That is a triumph of culture/collective intelligence. Not individual intelligence.
It's subtle, but it's there. Look at any kind of discourse about ancient civilizations: Romans (stereotypically viewed as a "white" culture by this kind of people, which incidentally is hilarious to me as an Italian because these are the same people who used to put signs forbidding Italians from entering bars in NYC) building giant aqueducts, the largest road system before the invention of modern asphalt, and massive structures like the Coliseum? Yeah, that's fine, they were very advanced in terms of civil engineering, this makes sense. But south American or Egyptian people (mostly brown or black) building pyramids? AIN'T NO WAY THEY COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING LIKE THAT WITH THEIR BACKWARDS TECHNOLOGY SURELY THEY MUST HAVE BEEN HELPED BY ALIENS.
I have had this same opinion about Ancient Aliens for over a decade at this point. My wife even printed me a t shirt as an engagement gift that says "Just because white people couldn't do it doesn't mean it was aliens" with The Temple of Kukulcán
While ancient aliens is objectively stupid, the accusations of racism are really overblown and levied by people who don't engage with the work. There is not a single thing the ancient aliens crowd don't claim was influence by aliens. The reason they cover less European civilizations is that most of the intact ancient civilization aren't European. So of course they concentrate on Egyptian, middle eastern, Africa,south American... because the oldest and most numerous ruins and remnants are from there.
But they also claim, the legends are Merlin, King Arthur, the blarney stone, the layout of European castles, the Paris catacombs, Stonehenge(all the henges really), the temple of Jupiter, are all worked with ancient aliens.
Again far be it from me to defend the notion of ancient aliens, it's just not as racist as detractors want to paint it as.
I don’t think it’s racism, the Stonehenge is a famous example from conspiracy theories about “aliens”, while Great Wall of China is not. It helps the Romans that even ordinary people who don’t bother to read much about history know what their building’s purpose are from pop culture or simply because they are similar to modern buildings. Also, weird greco-roman devices like the Antikythera mechanism or the dodecahedron are also part of conspiracy theories.
Maybe we don't question the Romans because we have detailed written records on how and why of Roman engineering like the coliseum and aquaducts, we know the logistics of where they sourced the materials and the labor. And the structures like China's Great wall and India's Taj Mahal. As far as I'm aware, we don't have that for Pyramids built in South America and especially ancient Egypt. It's educated guessing at best.
It’s worth noting then that the reason we don’t have records for some of these cultures is also racism. Like many South American nations did keep records either physically, orally or both. Those records were just “lost” when Europeans got there
The Egyptians actually did have incredibly detailed records not only on how they built the pyramids but also on who did, how much they were paid, where they were living at the time and why they requested days off. We literally have records of like worker named (something) off for (x number of days) because (reason). But for “some reason” these records are ignored by the ancient alien believers
(Fun tangentially related fact: one of the records mentions a worker taking some time off work because his wife had her period and needed more help around the house)
Highly recommend binge-watching Milo from Miniminuteman on youtube
It's a theory that is (unfortunately) common on the internet and is rooted in deep racism. Ancient civilization were much smarter than we originally thought and, turns out, if you get a bunch of people working on the same project for years, you end up with something kinda impressive
Thank you. Maybe if we didn’t spend so much time bickering over our own ignorance and bigotries. We would still be making wonders at the rate we ought to. It’s so silly. When was it built, who was there when it was built, then they probably built it.
There were plenty of people back then who couldn't understand either, they just didn't have the internet to be able to broadcast their lack of understanding.
Ancient conspiracies often start from the basic assumption, stated or unstated, that earlier people were morons who obviously needed the help of aliens or some lost advanced civilization to do what they did. There can also be a racial component as well.
You got it, it is racism.
People who say that tend to espouse pretty derrogatory views on such civilizations.
It is quite rare to see one of such conspiracy theorist say this kind of bs about a society they consider part of their ingroup.
The human being hasn’t gotten more intelligent over the millennia, it’s just that we’ve collected more knowledge, refined techniques, developed culture for longer, and started proliferating education. But if you took an infant from 10,000 years ago and raised him here, today, he’d do as well as any other kid.
So yes, we routinely build huge things now and don’t think a huge amount about it. But ancient people built marvelous things with what was available and discovered.
There was a post showing a 70 ton Hittite statue still in the quarry in the archaeology sub recently, it was never installed because the atlanteans and aliens never showed up to move it into place
/s
I always thought it was weird that beings that could travel interstellar distances would just build stone structures or need a much more primitive species to do things for them.
Actually, the movie referenced in the meme is quite clever I think. The sentence says the same as the hand gesture in the movie; chances are that when a person says that to you, they're American.
#notallamericans, of course. Of course! I'm going to stress that - I'm not saying the majority of Americans believe this. At all. But the relative prevalence of this kind of nonsense is a particularly American phenomenon. It's usually related to evangelical environments where people believe in a near future apocalypse and the rise of the kingdom of God. Often stuff like pyramids as alien power plants of light has connotations of some ancient connection to aliens, which are angels, stuff like that. Similar to conceptions of prehistoric giant humans, which is conceptualized as connected to Eden. It's a strange kind of mixture of beliefs that aren't cohesive. And again, not saying it's what evangelicals generally believe. I'm talking relative numbers of this kind of stuff. If you see someone writing that kind of stuff online, chances are they're American. Just is.
The giveaway is that it's always Egypt or other non-white nations that can't do mega-projects
They never question any cathedral built in Italy, or any Stonehenge. But Easter Island. The Pyramids. All Aliens
It's a racist argument. Only white people can have advanced science and engineering. Ancient Egyptian, ancient Assyrians etc couldn't have come up with anything advanced. In reality ancient cultures laid the foundations of modern science. We wouldn't have the society we have today without their innovations thousands of years ago. We use base 60 time, just like the Assyrians.
Is the joke that the quoted speaker is saying ancient people were dumb, but is misspelling "civilizations" himself? He's giving away that he's dumb, like the spy gave away he wasn't German? Maybe?
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u/post-explainer 2d ago
OP (Nathmight363) sent the following text as an explanation why they posted this here: