Were our historical ancestors visited by extraterrestrial beings who provided us with knowledge and technology?  Is The Bible nothing more than a description of human encounters with ancient aliens?  Were the Egyptian pyramids constructed with the help of flying saucers?  And what about those strange statues on Easter Island?  Surely, they could not be the work of primitive humans.  On our special Halloween Week episode of Research on Religion, we look at these age old mysteries and more with Chris White, an independent filmmaker who produced a feature length film called “Ancient Aliens Debunked.” Chris also runs a website of the same name devoted to calling into question a number of assertions made on Ancient Aliens, the popular History Channel series.

Our journey back in time begins with an examination of Ezekiel’s vision of God on the banks of the Chebar River.  In the Book of Ezekiel (Chapter 1), there appears to be a description of some type of hovering craft with “wheels in wheels” and led by creatures with four faces.  Given that air travel was not common in this era, and imagination severely limited, it would seem only natural that this was a description of an alien spacecraft from a distant galaxy.  But Chris White dissects this claim by noting how Ezekiel’s description of the throne of God was a fairly common one in that age, wheels were known to exist for functional and decorative purposes, and Ezekiel himself was perhaps the most detail-oriented and expressive writer in the Old Testament.

We travel next to ancient Egypt, where Tony challenges Chris to explain how a technologically backward society could build such monumental structures without the help of some futuristic technology.  Tony admits that it might be possible to build the first couple levels of the pyramids merely by dragging large blocks on the ground, but once you get to the very top it would seem impossible to pile those stones unless you had some amazing flying machine.  Chris takes this myth apart as well, pointing to some interesting new theories regarding inner ramps within the pyramids that would explain how the stones were transported to the top, as well as some of the internal chambers within the pyramids.  He also addresses the issue of whether or not the alignment of the pyramids along a north/south axis could have been achieved without modern GPS mapping gizmos, and then explains that contrary to assertions by ancient alien theorists, the Egyptians probably did not have an incandescent light bulb.

Thoroughly disappointed that these two major claims about ancient aliens may not hold water, Tony then challenges Chris with one of his favorite ancient aliens tropes — the Nazca lines of Peru.  These lines and various pictographs, including a drawing of an astronaut that looks like one of Tony’s kindergarten drawings of Neil Armstrong, apparently can only be seen from an aerial flyover.  Moreover, the lines look suspiciously like a modern airport tarmac.  Chris once again puts on his debunking hat and notes a number of problems with the alien interpretation of the Nazca line, including the ease in which they could be built and that it is also possible to see these drawings from a neighboring mountain.  The fact that an alien life form capable of traveling over millions of light years would need a 15 mile long landing strip when they had hovering technology in Ezekiel’s day also makes the story pretty implausible.

But what about Easter Island?!  How could an ancient tribe build statues so massive and why were they looking outward to the sea?  Chris bats away all of the alien myths surrounding this site with relative ease noting how it was relatively easy to carve and transport these monolithic statues.  We also look at Pacal’s rocket, an artistic inscription on a Mayan sarcophargus, that has been claimed to be an accurate drawing of a person in an interstellar space capsule, complete with breathing tubes and propulsion flames.  Again, Chris shows that if you take a broader look at this claim, you can see how all the different artistic representations in this drawing are rather common in Mayan culture in ways that do not look at all like spaceships. And then it is on to the most amazing and implausible claims made by ancient alien scholars, namely that interstellar visitors detonated a nuclear weapon in ancient Pakistan.  Not surprisingly, Chris White isn’t buying it and he explains why.

We finish with Chris’s thoughts on a miscellaneous mixture of topics including why the aliens stopped coming to Earth two thousand years ago, why so many people, including Tony, seem to be mesmerized by these ancient alien theories, and whether or not he has received any blowback from his efforts to debunk these theories.  Overall, this was an interesting and entertaining interview.  Recorded: October 17, 2013.

 

NOTE: This interview was recorded over Skype and there are several points during the recording where we have echoes and skips.  These audio blips were due to interference with the Skype process and not interference by extraterrestial intelligence.

RELATED LINKS

Ancient Aliens Debunked, Chris White’s website where you can find a free download of the movie by the same name.

Jean-Pierre Houdin’s internal ramp theory of pyramid construction on National Geographic (referenced in podcast).

Secrets of the Great Pyramids, by Peter Tompkins (as referenced in podcast).

RELATED PODCASTS

Scott Poole on Monsters

Chris Bader on Ghosts, UFOs, and the Paranormal.

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