|
Mercury Hat posted:Do you mean the ancient aliens thing? Where the guy used to believe it then gave up? Thanks for posting this, when I was a kid I totally bought into von Daniken's stuff for a while. It's weird to see all that same stuff being peddled on the history channel, and the commentary on this is interesting too. Who is the guy doing it?
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 17:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 14:05 |
|
|
The Ancient Aliens hypothesis and it's persistent popularity since the late 60s is an incredible testament to the cultural influence of H. P. Lovecraft. Despite being a hack pulp author who died in relative obscurity Lovecraft has ascended to a position of incredible cultural influence that goes way beyond horror or science fiction. How many other sci fi ideas from the 1930s are taken seriously today as not just predictions of the future but as a genuine occult history of the past? Obviously most people don't realize that Daniken and his ilk are just ripping off of 'At The Mountains of Madness' but that doesn't make Lovecraft's cultural influence any less impressive.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 17:57
|
|
|
I named my cat after one of his characters. That's an enduring legacy. I got a bunch of very angry phone calls when he got out one night and I had to put up "missing cat" flyers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 18:27
|
|
|
Helsing posted:The Ancient Aliens hypothesis and it's persistent popularity since the late 60s is an incredible testament to the cultural influence of H. P. Lovecraft. Despite being a hack pulp author who died in relative obscurity Lovecraft has ascended to a position of incredible cultural influence that goes way beyond horror or science fiction. Not to mention 'walk-ins' with the short story about the body swapping interdimensional aliens. Of course one reason these things culturally resonate is because they have truth.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 19:26
|
|
|
Shbobdb posted:I named my cat after one of his characters. That's an enduring legacy. ...Rats in the Walls cat name?  That's a poor life decision.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 19:38
|
|
|
Helsing posted:The Ancient Aliens hypothesis and it's persistent popularity since the late 60s is an incredible testament to the cultural influence of H. P. Lovecraft. Despite being a hack pulp author who died in relative obscurity Lovecraft has ascended to a position of incredible cultural influence that goes way beyond horror or science fiction. 20 years later, there's Dianetics and the founding of Scientology. Lovecraft could have been even more famous and wildly wealthy if he had bothered to found a religion
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 20:07
|
|
|
Shbobdb posted:I named my cat after one of his characters. That's an enduring legacy. Black Tom isn't that bad
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 20:37
|
|
|
Ashcans posted:Thanks for posting this, when I was a kid I totally bought into von Daniken's stuff for a while. It's weird to see all that same stuff being peddled on the history channel, and the commentary on this is interesting too. Who is the guy doing it? The thing to remember is that von Daniken didn't really buy into anything besides pumping up his hotel/travel business, which he ended up leaving when his first books sold wildly well. "Conveniently" enough, many of the locations name-checked in the first book were located near hotels he owned or had relations to for travel. Then he kept riding the popularity train to the point of opening a tie-in theme park that ended up closing at some point.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 21:20
|
|
|
I have to say there's something charmingly earnest about someone putting together a youtube documentary that spans more than three hours, cites actual experts, and includes a full sourced website bibliography, all so that he could do a detailed critique of how the TV show 'Ancient Aliens' isn't legitimate scholarship and how, just maybe, the commentators being interviewed are more interested in money than accuracy.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 21:32
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:20 years later, there's Dianetics and the founding of Scientology. Lovecraft could have been even more famous and wildly wealthy if he had bothered to found a religion There's no organizational structure comparable to the Church of Scientology but quite a few 20th century Occultists have either lifted Lovecraft's ideas wholesale or even tried to argue that Lovecraft's stories contain genuine occult truths about the universe. Lovecraftian spiritualism or religion is a real thing that at least a small handful of weirdos take pretty seriously.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 21:35
|
|
|
Thing about Ancient Aliens debunking is it has so much stuff to work with, because basically everything they say is full of poo poo. And there are 10 loving seasons of the show! They're making an 11th I see from wikipedia! The worst thing about the show is they don't go "look at this weird thing, maybe it was Aliens!', no, they go " look at this weird thing, no human could have done that, therefor ALIENS!" or my favorite "Well, all these ancient myths are litearlyl true, just people were too stupid to properly describe them, so they used flowerly language to describe things". I love how they constantly give wrong dates, or just make up ancient myths and translations, or straight up say one thing and show another. Like the video points out that the show has Akkadian Djinn reliefs shown, but then claims they're Annunaki, or the winged sun disk of Zoroastrianism has something to do with them. Though my favorite thing is the clip showing Childress measuring the block ant Puma Punku and saying "its a perfect square! It could have only been cut with lasers!" and you can very clearly see that, no, it is not perfectly square.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 00:47
|
|
|
I haven't seen much of it, but my favorite was when they were asking "What else could explain both Vikings and Egyptians having boats as part of their afterlife rituals besides the boats representing interstellar space travel?". You mean besides boats being extremely important to both cultures in life?
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 00:59
|
|
|
What is the idea of a boat or a vessel? Something in human cognition sets us apart from the rest of the animals.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 01:04
|
|
|
McDowell posted:What is the idea of a boat or a vessel? Something in human cognition sets us apart from the rest of the animals. The Maoist gimmick was more entertaining IMO.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 04:48
|
|
|
twistedmentat posted:Though my favorite thing is the clip showing Childress measuring the block ant Puma Punku and saying "its a perfect square! It could have only been cut with lasers!" and you can very clearly see that, no, it is not perfectly square. Even if it was, it's not like mathematics is some new discovery. Pretty sure you can find perfec*t square and circle stonework that's a few thousand years old in places like Greece and the Middle East. * or would've been before eroding over time.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 05:03
|
|
|
Evil Fluffy posted:Even if it was, it's not like mathematics is some new discovery. Pretty sure you can find perfect* square and circle stonework that's a few thousand years old in places like Greece and the Middle East. Clearly, any evidence of 1000+ year old perfect square or circle stonework is evidence of ancient astronauts.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 07:08
|
|
|
To be fair an ancient stone block that's a perfect square down to the attometer would be a really cool thing to find.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 19:33
|
|
|
The dumbest thing about ancient aliens is that they just kind of assume that every ancient person alive was a complete dumbass as well as an unwashed barbarian that was barely capable of making shirts or using words. Humans haven't changed all that much in the past 50,000 years and, as stupid as humans can be, we're actually pretty drat clever. It's impressive how much you can accomplish with a few hundred dudes, a pulley, some levers, and some free time. As for the why, well...who knows? "IT MUST HAVE BEEN ALIENS!!!!" is stupid. It could have been boredom. "Hey dudes we got poo poo all to do all day until harvest time so let's go build a big loving thing." "Yeah Krong, I'm down, let's do this!" It could have been leadership giving people something to do so they didn't cause problems. People with nothing to do all day find things to do and it isn't always good. "Krong, Throk, Dirk...yeah you guys pissed off the gods with your antics last night. You might have hosed up life for everybody! I just got off the horn with Yurki and he says he's right pissed off. If we don't build him a huge monument he says he's going to blow up the world. Yeah, that's right. All of it. You don't want that to happen, do you? No, so build this fucker starting now." Or, you know, just raw vanity. "Hey I'm in charge here so you're building me a huge loving palace. Deal with it."
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 19:44
|
|
|
A series about ancient, shoddily constructed monuments called Ancient Failiens. It can start with the collapsed pyramid at Meidum, then move on to, I don't know, Woodhenge.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 19:55
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:
"Two Stone Age-guys wondering what to do Who just said: "Dude, let's build a henge or two!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbyzgeee2mg First thing that came to mind.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 20:00
|
|
|
Also here have some beer so you plebs don't think about why you are working for a king who pretends he's a god
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2016 15:44
|
|
|
Sharkie posted:A series about ancient, shoddily constructed monuments called Ancient Failiens. It can start with the collapsed pyramid at Meidum, then move on to, I don't know, Woodhenge. There's also the Bent Pyramid, where the aliens apparently changed their minds halfway up.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2016 16:05
|
|
|
It makes a lot of sense that there are so many impressive monuments in Egypt when you realize that with the way the Nile used to flood, entire villages would be underwater for months. You've got all these temporarily homeless farmers standing around, might as well give them something to do. Also that they weren't built by slaves but by people who got paid and were working in teams that presumably competed against each other. You can only imagine the cross town rivalries for moving giant stone blocks up a ramp.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2016 17:31
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:Clearly, any evidence of 1000+ year old perfect square or circle stonework is evidence of ancient astronauts. My favorite is stuff like the crystal skulls, where it had to be aliens, because only modern tools could have made this! And then basic tests show, yep, modern tools did make this, and we also know what quarry it very recently came from. And then, sadly, the ancient aliens types go all "la la la I can't hear you!" instead of doubling down on the crazy.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2016 19:23
|
|
|
Presto posted:There's also the Bent Pyramid, where the aliens apparently changed their minds halfway up. And right near there are a few pyramids that appear to be evolving from the stepped style to the more streamlined version. And the quarry where the obelisks were made have many failed projects laying around. Like the main attraction is a giant obelisk that was nearly completed but they had miscalculated early on so there was a massive crack running through it. I guess the aliens liked to work drunk. Baka-nin fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Apr 28, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2016 20:47
|
|
|
Helsing posted:There's no organizational structure comparable to the Church of Scientology but quite a few 20th century Occultists have either lifted Lovecraft's ideas wholesale or even tried to argue that Lovecraft's stories contain genuine occult truths about the universe. Lovecraftian spiritualism or religion is a real thing that at least a small handful of weirdos take pretty seriously. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7OMNjrP1Gc the guy actually had this legally registered as a religious organization and got a tax exemption
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2016 02:00
|
|
|
There is inherent racism in the Ancient Aliens thing, because it mostly focuses on non-white civilizations. There are things that talk about the Norse and the Greeks, but for some reason most of the focus is on non-whites. I wonder why? Another great part of Ancient Aliens is the taking of the Vimanika Shastra at complete face value, even though its been known to be a hoax since its inception, like the whole Priory of Zion thing (it was revealed not long after it came to light that the guy who claimed to have discovered it was responsible because he had a fantasy of being the lost King of France). It was known to be a channeled document by some proto-new ager in the 1950s for ever, but these guys just accept it was an actual ancient document. Though the worst thing about the whole thing is if you straight up call them liars and bullshitters, they will sue your rear end. So critics always have to say "badly researched" or "mistaken" when its really obvious they are lying their rear end off.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 04:42
|
|
|
And then you have the von Daniken types who straight up say blacks, native Americans, middle easterners and Asians were the aliens' failed prototypes for white people.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 06:07
|
|
|
Its ok. Nation of Islam argues the mad scientist Yakub created all the non black races by loving up humans in various ways because he was evil. White devils are his crowning achievement.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 09:15
|
|
|
All misinformation from the lower forces - who draw on human rivalries and hatred.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 11:38
|
|
|
Shbobdb posted:Its ok. Nation of Islam argues the mad scientist Yakub created all the non black races by loving up humans in various ways because he was evil. White devils are his crowning achievement. Yeah but he was a dinosaur. Makes way more sense when you think about it imo.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 13:59
|
|
|
twistedmentat posted:There is inherent racism in the Ancient Aliens thing, because it mostly focuses on non-white civilizations. There are things that talk about the Norse and the Greeks, but for some reason most of the focus is on non-whites. I wonder why? I don't know, sometimes I think some of them have just replaced God with Aliens as some kind of reason to why humanity is able to do great things without anything special making them or their world important in some sort of cosmic sense. I've seen some casual fans of those types of shows basically say its much more believable that there are aliens doing things than God, although I won't argue that their fixation on certain non white cultures is a little weird now that I think about it. But its still one of the most quasi religious and defeatist ideas of EVERY ACHIEVEMENT OF HUMAN HISTORY WAS CLEARLY THE RESULT OF A GREATER ALIEN INVOLVEMENT BECAUSE. THE EGYPTIANS COULDN'T HAVE THOUGHT UP PYRAMIDS ON THEIR OWN, THAT'S JUST SILLY.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 15:19
|
|
|
I'll go to bat for these dumb fucks and say that they fixate on nonwhite cultures because they seem more "exotic" and "ancient" and "mysterious" than Norway or France, like it's more plausible to them that aliens uplifted Egyptians because they don't know anything about them except that they have pyramids. So it's racism but more noble savage racism than bell curve racism.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 15:26
|
|
|
That and to be honest, there are more well known wonders of the world outside of Europe than in it. However, I've never heard them go after the most logical of technological borrowers, Ancient Aliens being involved with the Romans. I mean how else could they have developed a form of concrete that is vastly superior to "modern" mixes by cost of materials, its cooking method leaves less of an environmental footprint and the end results have been proven to last several thousand years?! But then if Greco-Roman culture, the foundation of Western Civilization itself was the noble savage risen up, what does that make us, the idiots who think this garbage up?
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 16:25
|
|
|
Crabtree posted:That and to be honest, there are more well known wonders of the world outside of Europe than in it. However, I've never heard them go after the most logical of technological borrowers, Ancient Aliens being involved with the Romans. I mean how else could they have developed a form of concrete that is vastly superior to "modern" mixes by cost of materials, its cooking method leaves less of an environmental footprint and the end results have been proven to last several thousand years?! But then if Greco-Roman culture, the foundation of Western Civilization itself was the noble savage risen up, what does that make us, the idiots who think this garbage up? This is wrong; modern mixes include variations on Roman concrete that are basically the same quality (using fly ash instead of volcanic ash). They're all structurally superior to generic concrete, which is weak but also cheap. I know that you're not arguing against this, but concrete really isn't hard to make
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 19:53
|
|
|
Roman concrete is like Damascus steel. There might be some better modern options but the stuff was and still is considered extremely high quality and IIRC is largely believed to have been due in part to where the materials were sourced from. I think Roman concrete also had a lot better resistance to (salt)water erosion than most stuff made today?
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 20:37
|
|
|
Evil Fluffy posted:Roman concrete is like Damascus steel. There might be some better modern options but the stuff was and still is considered extremely high quality and IIRC is largely believed to have been due in part to where the materials were sourced from. Yes, but only because Roman concrete is more expensive to make than most concrete made today, not because it's Magic Concrete. If Roman concrete (and its kin) cost the same then we'd all just use Roman concrete. Cost is usually the big driver behind a construction project, not "let's make this bridge on the coast last 2000 years"
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 20:44
|
|
|
The Romans also used a lot of lovely quality concrete that either didn't survive to today or is only in barely recognizable ruins. Unsurprisingly, we don't talk about that part much.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 20:56
|
|
|
9Mothers9horses9eyes9 is great fun for everyone who reads this thread. Its a modern John Titor.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 20:58
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 14:05 |
|
|
fishmech posted:The Romans also used a lot of lovely quality concrete that either didn't survive to today or is only in barely recognizable ruins. Unsurprisingly, we don't talk about that part much. It's the historical filter. Like how people talk about how art was way better back in the day than modern art, ignoring the fact that all the lovely art from the past didn't survive to today.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2016 21:24
|
|
