Monday, November 29, 2010

Of Gods and Gadgets

Micah Hanks explores ancient astronauts, seemingly anachronistic technology, and hybrid beings in this post from Mysterious Universe.  Hanks comes to some surprisingly terrestrial conclusions, but keeps his mind open when it comes to the origins of anomalous technology.

I find it patronizing to the human intellects of only a few thousand years ago when we speculate that these things can only have been accomplished with the aid of alien help. Time and again, archaeologists are learning just how adept and advanced early civilizations were, but the Alien Astronaut theorists hold fast to the belief that we humans were barely capable of walking upright until some gray landed and showed them the light.

This intellectual snobbery is made doubly egregious when commited by the likes of Diffusionists who frequently demonstrate racism and bigotry when they denounce that great stone temples, mounds, and pyramids could have been built by backwards natives.

And don't get me wrong; I'm not accusing Mr. Hanks of this. On the contrary, I think his observations are sound. I especially like how he illustrates the absurdity surrounding the premise that half-man/half-beast illustrations from ancient times have to be based upon something real when our own creative minds today can easily fashion the most fantastatic Star Wars creature.

Read his post and give me your thoughts.

2 comments:

Sharon Day said...

I love the way your mind works. We weren't separated at birth, were we? Yes, I agree about ancient civilizations. We think they didn't take pyramid knowledge across the ocean to share it with South America or Vikings couldn't have found America or they would have stayed. The truth is, man used what he had around him which was nature. He was much more adept at knowing his resources, including medicinal plants and stars than we could have imagined. He wasn't distracted by technology and steel, aluminum and plastic, gadgets and cell phones. What you focus on, you become. Cell phones and computers make us communication fiends, but ancient man was totally adept in his world from construction to cures. Fantastic post! I think if I sat down and talked with you, we'd go through the night and never run out of subjects.

MARILYN A. HUDSON, MLIS said...

A scanning of the late 20th century and the number of times the scientific and cultural communities had to push back the dating of civilization, shows just how narrow minded some can be...that and these pesky early artifacts keep cropping up....