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ALEKSANDR SOKOLOV
MYTHS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
MYTH 6
PALEOCONTACT
Today we'll be talking about interesting, and I'd even say funny, topic of paleocontact.
I think you've all heard this word,
this hypothesis assumes that
every achievement of the mankind is actually the result of generous aliens visiting our planet,
one day they came here, and made a gift to humans:
they taught them to sow wheat, make pottery, build houses, aviate...
And even humans themselves are the product of genetic experiments of aliens, who got into mischief with an ancient monkey.
This idea is extremely popular, I'd say it was nourished by the television.
There are not even standalone TV films, but whole TV shows, and not just Russian, they are worldwide!
What are the roots of this spectacular hypothesis?
Well, actually, it dates way back to the 19th century, to the works of various occultists, like Madame Blavatsky,
and as for the 20th century, many people were infatuated with this idea, including some Soviet authors:
for example, the famous sci-fi writer Aleksandr Kazantsev.
As for the rest of the world, this idea became popular thanks to several authors, and first and foremost,
to the wonderful Swiss writer Erich von Däniken.
Former owner of a hotel network, he is quite a productive writer who wrote over 30 books.
His very first book "Chariots of the Gods?" became a bestseller and had an eponymous film based on it.
By the way, that film was a huge success in USSR in 1972, it was shown in the theaters,
and the tickets were impossible to get, the queues were enormous - Soviet citizens watched it in open-mouthed wonder.
Federal channels did not offer this kind of content back then.
Erich von Däniken himself is extremely gleeful, energetic person, he is a simple-hearted and straightforward man,
for example, he is not ashamed to admit that he is no scientist and never did any research in an interview,
and he is saying the truth - you won't find any of his scientific works,
but he has many humorous books with bright covers. For example, von Däniken writes in his "Die Steinzeit war ganz anders":
"Truly, sometimes one can but marvel at the pseudo-arguments the authors of school and university textbooks use in order to justify their yawn-inducing teachings."
So von Däniken finds normal science yawn-inducing.
That seems why he never pursued it.
But von Däniken invented a simple way of infusing new blood, shaking up, breathing life into that scientific backwater.
He looks into the ancient history and finds something that he can't understand,
(but that's easy for von Däniken and his pounds-shillings-and-pence mental outlook)
he finds something odd, and then he says a magic spell:
"Aliens did it!"
"Look!" - he says - "That's odd."
"Let's imagine for a second that it was aliens"
And that's it, the theorem is proved.
Another star on the paleocontact horizon is Zecharia Sitchin.
He gave us the wonderful, mysterious planet of Nibiru,
the enigmatic planet that is impossible to see with any kind of telescope,
that orbits the sun along the extremely elongated trajectory,
and that flies past Earth every 3600 years.
And that exact moment, something happens on Earth: pottery gets invented, agronomy begins...
"Coincidence?" - Sitchin asks - "I don't think so!"
"It was them, the Anunnaki, that descended from the Nibiru right down to the Earth, and each time they did it, they inflicted benefit upon the mankind."
"And the humans themselves are the biorobots of those Anunnaki."
Unlike the comedian von Däniken, Sitchin is gravelly serious, boring even.
I'm taking the piss, of course, but now, let's have a serious talk.
That is not easy, but I'll try my best.
What is the hypothesis of paleocontact based upon, what facts lie in the foundation of it?
Firstly, it's irregularity of technical and cultural progress,  i.e. we had sudden advancements, breakthroughs in the past.
For example: sudden invention of agriculture,
or sudden spread of arts in the Upper Paleolithic.
How so? A man lead semi-bestial existence for millions of years,
wandered the woods, gathered roots and berries, and then, in a blink of an eye,
BANG! And he is suddenly a great sailor, conqueror of the land, architect, hunter, astronomer...
It's no accident! He couldn't get smarter on his own, could he?
That's where the authors usually get mixed up on historic details (because they don't know history).
For example, when von Däniken talks about some incredible Neanderthal achievements,
he talks about artifacts of The Neolithic Age, during which Neanderthals were long gone.
Actually, progress doesn't have to be uniform:
right now, we're in the middle of another technological leap that began a few decades ago,
but this analogy cannot satisfy the advocates of paleocontact.
Secondly: so-called out-of-place artifacts.
An item, a building, a structure that couldn't have appeared at that time, with that level of technology,
with the capabilities that, in author's opinion, existed back then.
"Ancient Egyptians couldn't have drilled granite with copper tools!"
"That's not possible!"
Or something of uncertain purpose:
For example, giant animal figures in the Nazca desert. Why? For what purpose?
"Clearly, it's an ancient space base, landing site for alien spaceships, it's obvious!"
And of course, there are megalithic structures.
"Look at those giant boulders! Their size! The preciseness of their fringes! The distance they were dragged from!"
"Could puny humans, those troglodytes in animal skins, do this? And why would they do it?"
"Why would they gather into crowd of thousands and drag around heavy boulders? There weren't even that many people back then!"
"Who is that mysterious builder, then? Who created those giant structures? Who put the mummies into sarcophagi?"
- Von Däniken winks.
"Who?"
You know who it was.
Thirdly: analysis of various ancient texts.
Religion texts, myths, epic literature, sagas, legends.
And that's where the advocates of paleocontact see evidence of space travel, advanced technology, accurate description of Solar system, etc...
You know: practically in every legend, deity lives in the over-world and descends down the Earth periodically.
What is it? Landing of a spaceship, of course.
A deity becomes angry, destroys people, reduces whole cities to ashes.
Evidently, it's about prehistoric nuclear war, of course!
Or the opposite: gods heal someone, or return them from the dead. This is clearly a cosmic medicine!
This is how aliens appear in the Bible, Sumerian myths, Scandinavian sagas, Chinese chronicles, and other ancient texts.
Zecharia Sitchin reads between the lines like a virtuoso.
He is the king of interpretations.
For example, he takes the Bible and- says: "Look, this word is usually translated as 'Name', but I think you can translate it as 'Sky ship'".
Let's replace 'Name' with 'Sky ship' everywhere in the text, and look at this interesting new meaning!
Well, yeah, it is interesting, no arguing here.
Or, another example, Sumerian myth of creation of a man:
according to it, a man was made from clay mixed with the blood of God.
"But it's not that simple." - Sitchin says. - "I think we should read 'Clay' as 'Egg'."
"But 'Egg' also means 'Ovum'. So look what we have here:"
"They took ovum of an anthropoid primate and fertilized it with God's seed!"
And fourthly, it's ancient imagery.
If you look at them long enough, you'll see unbelievable things!
For example, what do you think this is?
Of course, it's an ancient X-ray test!
We see a person lying on some kind of examination table  with a mask on their face,
and they are exposed to mysterious radiation. Sumerians had tomography - it's a fact!
And what do you think this is?
You think it's a woman with a pitcher? - No! It's an ancient astronaut.
Look, there is a helmet with a headset and a special jumpsuit.
Admittedly, Sitchin doesn't mention the astronaut's bare feet sticking out from under her dress,
but it's such trivial matter.
And what is the meaning of these Sumerian symbols?
Holy moly, it's Apollo-11!
A three-stage spacecraft with a landing section!
All this is very cool, exciting and makes you think, but as we think, we start having questions.
First question:
Why would a super-civilization build structures out of huge boulders on Earth?
Sure, stone working is cool and all, but do you really think it's an alien technology?
Technology of an extraterrestrial super-civilization?
For example, let's imagine that Stonehenge is an alien observatory.
So those boulders point at the particular celestial objects at some days of a year.
So you think aliens didn't have proper astronomical tools?
Another thing: why is "Nazca spaceship landing site" created in a form of images of terrestrial animals?
So, those spiders, hummingbirds, lizards is the best way of marking a spaceship landing area?
Why would a super-civilization need markings for a landing site at all?
And what kind of super-civilization marks up its future landing site with wooden poles?
(Remains of wooden poles were found in corners of giant Nazca images)
Second question:
Why should ancient aliens look like astronauts from the 20th century, the beginning of the space exploration era?
They look like people in spacesuits and helmets with antennae.
That's how astronauts are in imagination of a 5-year old who watched too many cartoons, but we are adults here.
And why should an alien spaceship look like Apollo-11?
Is a three-stage spacecraft really a pinnacle of interstellar technology?
Third: how far can you go with interpreting ancient texts?
Obviously, epic literature is going to have some miraculous things happen in it,
there's going be abundance of metaphors,
and it's going to be written in completely unfamiliar language, and with long dead writing system.
There is wide room for interpretation, and
sometimes, even translations of the same text by different specialists can be direct opposite of each other.
Now, let's take a look at Russian folktales.
For example, Kolobok is a spheroid cybernetic organism.
Koshchei the Immortal is a Terminator-like robot.
Baba Yaga is an alien in a flying sauser.
And as for this picture my daughter Alyona drew - this is a spaceship with a tentacled humanoid next to it.
In fact, the authors of books about paleocontact forgot about Occam's razor principle.
Do you remember it? "Entities should not be multiplied without necessity."
And they multiply them constantly.
At every opportunity, they produce a hypothesis of ancient aliens,
which requires a tremendous number of random assumptions,
while ignoring much simpler, even trivial, explanations.
For example, sky chariot may be a metaphor,
it may be a description of psychedelic experience - yes, that can happen,
it may describe atmospheric phenomenon, or a comet flyby,
or even simply an author's fantasy.
But they really want it to be a spaceship.
Fourth: megaliths, the incredible ancient technologies etc.
Paleocontact supporters simply don't know history and archeology very well.
Like their claims about granite drilling with copper tools being impossible.
Actually, it's been proven experimentally a while ago, and shown that
if you take a copper pipe and abrasive material, i.e. quartz sand,
and make a primitive hand-brace out of them, you can drill granite slowly, but surely.
Such experiments were conducted even by enthusiasts at home.
And you can find detailed reports with lots of pictures about it in the Internet.
The builders of the Great Wall of China did just fine without aliens, somehow.
Pay attention, it's 10,000 km long
The aliens didn't help carving out a giant 70 meters tall Buddha statue in the mountains of China in the 8 century A.D.
St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna was built without any help from little green people.
It's over 130 meters tall and was built in 15th century.
And of course, there is the Thunder Stone, the megalith which serves as a pedestal to St. Peterburg Bronze Horseman.
Its weight is 1500 tonnes, and before being carved down, it was 2000 tonnes.
And yet, it was brought from the opposite shore of the Gulf of Finland and installed on the Senate Square. In the 18th century!
Little green men, where are you?
But the paleocontact supporters would rather believe in Annunaki from Nibiru than in what human mind
and combined efforts of multiple ordinary people can do.
What else?
Adepts of paleocontact hypothesis are very proud that it allows to explain many difficult questions of our history,
and plenty other topics, from the origins of life on Earth, to Biblical miracles.
Actually, such super-versatility, i.e. absence of limits to applicability, is typical for all pseudo-scientific fantasies.
Which means, paleocontact adepts act exactly like cultists who see the hand of Creator everywhere.
Except in one case, it's "God does what He wills", and in another, "Aliens did it"!
But it's all the same at its core, one incomprehensible thing replaced with another.
In one case, it's the all-powerful Creator, in another, it's the omnipotent aliens.
What's the difference?
All in all, it's a 21th century religion of sorts.
Today, traditional religions are passe, Darwin is boring, but aliens are cool and funky.
So a teenager raised on certain films and books would love the idea of paleocontact.
That idea is very convenient, very pleasant, easy to accept and easy to believe in for him.
So he literally says, "I want to believe in ancient aliens, it's groovy."
But let's remember Carl Sagan's words:
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
And what do we have here?
Alas, as of now [2015], adepts of paleocontact hypothesis have nothing
but dubious interpretations bordering fantasies and bad knowledge of history.
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