Facepalms of the gods

While snooping around looking for topics for Skeptophilia, I stumbled upon a page over on Quora that made me utter a string of really bad words and then say, "that nonsense again?"

It will come as no surprise to regular readers that the aforementioned nonsense was the contention that mythological accounts of powerful deities living in the skies are evidence of visitations by aliens with advanced technology.  The original poster on Quora called it "the Ancient Alien Theory," which made me grind my teeth even harder, because the use of the word theory to mean "this crazy idea I just now pulled out of my ass" makes me absolutely livid.

But I shouldn't be surprised that they use it this way, because (1) they also misinterpret just about every piece of archaeological or anthropological evidence in existence, and (2) calling it a "theory" gives an undeserved sheen of seriousness to their claim.  What gets me, though, is that this stuff has been around for decades, has been debunked every which way from Sunday, and it's still got traction.

The whole goofy story starts with the book Chariots of the Gods, written by Erich von Däniken in 1968, but more's the pity, it doesn't end there.  Chariots of the Gods is the Creature That Won't Die.  Like the Hydra, it just keeps regrowing heads and coming back at you again.  In fact, Chariots of the Gods was only the first of a series of books by von Däniken, each ringing the changes on the Ancient Astronauts theme.  When Chariots of the Gods hit the bestseller list, he followed it up with: Gods from Outer Space; The Gold of the Gods; In Search of Ancient Gods; Miracles of the Gods; Signs of the Gods; Pathways to the Gods; and Enough About The Gods, Already, Let's Talk About Something Else.

Obviously, I made the last one up, because von Däniken at age 89 is still blathering on about The Gods.  His books have sold 62 million copies, have been translated into 32 languages, and his ideas formed the basis of a theme park in Switzerland, thus further reinforcing my belief that skepticism will never be the lucrative profession that woo-wooism is.

A statue from the late Jomon period of Japan (1000-400 B.C.E.), which Erich von Däniken thinks can only be explained as a space-suited alien, since humans obviously never include weird imaginary creatures in their mythological art. [Image is in the Public Domain]

You might ask what von Däniken's evidence is, other than the argument from incredulity ("wow! The pyramids are really big!  I can't imagine making a pyramid, myself.  Therefore they must have been designed and constructed by aliens!").  Here are a few pieces of evidence that von Däniken claims support the Ancient Astronaut hypothesis:

• The Antikythera mechanism.  This complex "mechanical computer," found in a shipwreck dated to about 150 BCE, contains a series of nested gears and was used to calculate astronomical positions.  Von Däniken says it's of alien manufacture, despite the fact that similar devices are mentioned in Greek and Roman literature, including Cicero's De Re Publica, in which its invention is credited to Archimedes.  (To be fair to von Däniken, I used Antikythera myself as the central MacGuffin in my novel Gears.  However, unlike von Däniken's work, Gears is clearly labeled "fiction.")
• The Piri Reis map.  This map, dating to 1513, "could only have been drawn using an aerial perspective," von Däniken claims.  In other words, it was drawn looking down from a spacecraft.  Unfortunately for von Däniken, the truth is that human sailors have been quite good at drawing maps for a very long time, because those who weren't quickly became fish bait.  The antecedents of the Piri Reis map have been identified, and include ten maps of Arab origin, four of Portuguese origin, and one map drawn by Christopher Columbus himself.
• The sarcophagus of Mayan ruler K'inich Janaab' Pakal, which allegedly shows him riding in a spacecraft.  The claim has been denounced loudly by every known expert in Mayan culture, language, and history.  The sarcophagus depicts the Mayan religious concept of the "world tree," not a rocket ship with a plume of exhaust, says archaeologist Sarah Kurnick -- von Däniken's claims to the contrary show that he can't be bothered to learn the first thing about Mayan culture before making pronouncements about what their art and inscriptions mean.  An objection which, of course, could be made about every other cultural artifact he mentions.
• The Moai, or Easter Island statues.  These are pretty cool, but in my mind only demonstrate what a lot of single-minded people working together can accomplish.
• A "non-rusting" iron pillar in India, that supposedly didn't rust because it was some kind of alien alloy.  When von Däniken's books became popular, naturally skeptics wanted to go to India to check out this story.  They found the pillar, and you'll never guess what it had on it?  Rust.  If you can imagine.  Being that this was kind of conclusive, von Däniken backed off from this claim, and said in an interview with Playboy, "We can forget about this iron thing."

The truth is, piece after piece of von Däniken's "evidence" falls apart if you analyze it, and try not to be swayed by his hyperdramatic statements that always seem to include phrases like "can only be explained by," "scientists are baffled by," and "a mystery beyond human ken."  Von Däniken's books were written because they make money, and are, simply put, pseudoscientific tripe.  The best debunking of his claims was Ronald Story's 1976 book The Space Gods Revealed, which is a page-by-page refutation of all of von Däniken's claims, and remains to this day one of the best skeptical analyses of pseudoscience ever written.

But the frustrating bottom line is that all of that hasn't made a dent in the popularity of von Däniken and his ideas.  Much of the blame lies with shows like Ancient Aliens, of course; the This Is No Longer Even Remotely Related To History Channel keeps pushing it because it's lucrative (it's now on its twentieth season and showing no signs of flagging).  So despite the rationalists and skeptics giving themselves facepalm-induced concussions, it looks like The Gods are still going to be around for a good long while yet.

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Laptops of the ancients

Every once in a while, I run into a crazy claim that is so weird that it's actually kind of charming.

That was my reaction to an article sent to me by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia yesterday, about a guy who thinks that there are images from Ancient Greece that show people using laptop computers.

Those images include this marble sculpture:

And this black-on-red ware vase:

In case that isn't sufficiently convincing, we're told that the sculpture even has cable connection ports:

Once again illustrating that you can't misinterpret it if I tell you what it is ahead of time.

The whole thing is the brainchild (to use the term loosely) of YouTube contributor StillSpeakingOut, who seems pretty convinced. "I can’t help but think," StillSpeakingOut tells us, "that Erich von Däniken had been right all this time and that most of these myths of magical artifacts given by the gods to a very restricted group of individuals in ancient civilizations were high-tech devices similar to what we have today...  I am not saying that this is depicting an ancient laptop computer, but when I look at the sculpture I can’t help but think about the Oracle of Delphi, which was supposed to allow the priests to connect with the gods to retrieve advanced information and various aspects."

No, labeling the diagram with a red arrow and the text "Laptop?" is definitely not saying that the sculpture depicts a laptop, presumably by virtue of adding the question mark.

Of course, those silly old rationalist historians have been quick to squelch the whole idea of the Ancient Greeks inventing wifi.  The "laptop" depicted in both pieces, they say, is actually one of the following:

• a wax tablet, used for writing
• a jewelry box
• a mirror

But I think we can all agree that when it comes to speculating over the identity of an object in a piece of ancient art, one should definitely choose the answer that requires you to believe that the ancients had a piece of technology that they didn't, in fact, have.

Because if you think the Ancient Greeks had laptops, it kind of brings up a few questions, you know?  Like why haven't we found any traces of them in archaeological dig sites?  Where are depictions of all of the other things that you'd need to make a laptop go, like modems, routers, cables, and a mechanism for producing electricity?

And most damning of all, if the Greeks had computers, why is there no mention in their literature of people spending their free time sending each other comical pictures of cats and poorly-spelled memes suggesting that people of the opposite political party are brainless, spineless, heartless, soulless, and depraved?

When you think about it, all you have in both pieces of art are objects made of two flat things hinged together, and it's not like laptops are the only possibility for that configuration.

So I'm not buying it.  And I'm especially not impressed that as support, StillSpeakingOut brought up Erich von Däniken, who kind of sucks as an expert witness, given that he thinks that Odin, Thor, Loki et al. were aliens from another planet.  Sad to say, but the prosaic answer is almost certainly right, and the folks depicted in the art work were almost certainly not checking their Biblos-prosópou, which is as close as I can get to the Ancient Greek equivalent of "Facebook."

The pseudoscience that wouldn't die

I was chatting with a couple of students yesterday, and the subject turned to aliens.  Conversations seem to get steered that way when I'm around.  It's odd.

Anyhow, one of the students said, "Let's say humans developed interstellar space flight.  And we went to another star system.  And let's say that on one of the planets in that star system there was intelligent, but non-technologically advanced, life.  Don't you think that humans would appear like gods to them?"

I said that was probably so, and quoted the line from Arthur C. Clarke, that "To the primitive mind, any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic."

"So," the student said, "if advanced aliens had come to Earth, thousands of years ago, wouldn't they have appeared like gods?  And become the focal points of religions?"

A little more hesitantly, I said, "Well, yes, probably."

And then he said, "Don't you think it's hard to believe that a bunch of primitive humans were able to build the pyramids, and Stonehenge, and all?"

And at that point, I said, "Good lord, you haven't been reading Chariots of the Gods, have you?"

This book, written by Erich von Däniken in 1968, is like the Creature That Wouldn't Die.  Like the Hydra, it just keeps regrowing heads and coming back at you again.  In fact, Chariots of the Gods was only the first of a series of books by von Däniken, all claiming that the Earth had been visited by Ancient Astronauts.  When Chariots of the Gods hit the bestseller list, he followed it up with repeated riffs on the same theme, to wit:  Gods from Outer Space; The Gold of the Gods; In Search of Ancient Gods; Miracles of the Gods; Signs of the Gods; Pathways to the Gods; and Enough About The Gods, Already, Let's Talk About Something Else.

Obviously, I made the last one up, because von Däniken at age 80 is still blithering on about the Gods.  His books have sold 62 million copies, have been translated into 32 languages, and his ideas formed the basis of a theme park in Switzerland, thus further reinforcing my belief that skepticism will never be the lucrative profession that woo-wooism is.

A statue from the late Jomon period of Japan (1000-400 B.C.E.), which Erich von Däniken thinks can only be explained as a space-suited alien, since humans obviously never include weird imaginary creatures in their mythological art.  [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

You might ask what von Däniken's evidence is, other than the argument from incredulity ("wow! The pyramids are really big!  I can't imagine making a pyramid, myself.  Therefore they must have been designed and constructed by aliens!").  Here are a few pieces of evidence that von Däniken claims support the Ancient Astronaut hypothesis.

• The Antikythera mechanism.  This complex "mechanical computer," found in a shipwreck dated to about 150 BCE, contains a series of nested gears and was used to calculate astronomical positions.  Von Däniken claims it is of alien manufacture, despite the fact that similar devices are mentioned in Greek and Roman literature, including Cicero's De Re Publica, in which its invention is credited to Archimedes.
• The Piri Reis map.  This map, dating to 1513, "could only have been drawn using an aerial perspective," von Däniken claims.  In other words, it was drawn looking down from a spacecraft.  Unfortunately for von Däniken's theory, human sailors were quite good at drawing maps, because those who weren't quickly became fish bait.  The antecedents of the Piri Reis map have been identified, and include ten maps of Arab origin, four of Portuguese origin, and one map drawn by Christopher Columbus himself.
• The Moai, or Easter Island statues.  These are pretty cool, but in my mind only demonstrate what you can accomplish with a lot of slave labor.
• A "non-rusting" iron pillar in India, that supposedly didn't rust because it was some kind of alien alloy.  When von Däniken's books became popular, naturally skeptics wanted to go to India to check out this story.  They found the pillar, and you'll never guess what it was covered with?  Rust. If you can imagine.  Being that this was kind of conclusive, von Däniken backed off from this claim, and said in an interview with Playboy, "We can forget about this iron thing."

In fact, piece after piece of von Däniken's "evidence" falls apart if you analyze it, and try not to be swayed by his hyperdramatic statements that always seem to include phrases like "can only be explained by," "scientists are baffled by," and "a mystery beyond human ken."  In fact, von Däniken's books were written because they make money, and are, simply put, pseudoscientific tripe.  The best debunking of his claims was Ronald Story's 1976 book The Space Gods Revealed, which is a page-by-page refutation of all of von Däniken's claims, and remains to this day one of the best skeptical analyses of pseudoscience ever written.

So, sad to say, my student's faith in the Ancient Gods is ill-founded.  A shame, really, because I would like nothing better than concrete evidence of alien civilizations.  But if you want me to accept the extraordinary claim of alien visitations in Earth's distant past, you're going to have to give me evidence a little more extraordinary than a rusty post, a map, and some big stone statues.