Thursday, May 3, 2012

Skepticism

I need to get a rant off my chest:  I used to love the History channel.  I watched it whenever I stayed home sick from school.  Yeah, yeah, I'm a nerd, I know.

Now... the stuff they show on there!  It's sad!

What used to be a channel where I was sure to find something like "The Sinking of the Bismark!" is now a non-stop parade of shit like "Why Aliens Built the Pyramids!!!"

Aliens built the pyramids?  Really?

I am all for considering every viable option, but this one seems to need a bare minimum of consideration before it's up for complete rejection.

The whole argument seems to go as follows:
1. The pyramids are big and huge and awesome.
2. It would have been tricky for ancient people to build things that we think are big and huge and awesome.
3. Therefore, aliens!

The first thing I would like to point out is that the pyramids, and yes, Stonehenge and the Easter Island heads  too, are not that incredible in composition or form.  I mean, the pyramids were made out of mud.  Mud!  And they are nice geometric forms, yes, but pretty simple ones.
Sure, they would have been hard to build, but I think some people underestimate the potential of megalomaniac kings unafraid to bankrupt their kingdoms in order to erect some monument to themselves.

So, if we go with the alien explanation, aliens came and did what?  Decided to impress future generations of humans by building some big monument?
And they decide, instead of building some giant monolith covered in their strange writing, made of space-age ceramics or something of a nature we can't reproduce, hovering 200 feet in the air.... they build some angular piles of dirt?
...a circle of rocks?
...a big, handsome head carved out of a stone?

If these aliens have crossed interstellar distances to get to Earth and build big stuff to mess with our heads, seems like they could have built some more impressive stuff.  We could right now!

Furthermore, it seems like a real slap at our ancestors to say "the rocks from Stonehenge originated really far away from the site!  there's no way our ancestors could have moved them, because they were too dumb!"
Just because we don't have ready solutions of how to move lots of big rocks with bronze-age technology doesn't mean they didn't come up with something.


So basically, I'm angry that the History Channel spends all its time on either reality shows about foul-mouthed people operating heavy machinery or an utter horseshit interpretation of history.

1 comment:

  1. I think this ties in nicely to religion: "I don't know, therefore God!" Using aliens as an explanation is just another way to discount human potential and achievement. Isn't god just an extraterrestrial too?

    Also, no comment on this post would be complete without this: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/158326

    ReplyDelete