A major part of archaeology and history is looking into the past with little to no context. If it is a culture that does not exist anymore, we do not have context or background behind the artifacts that are found. Most of archaeology has a focus on cultures that little is known about. The people whose cultures are being studied probably did not have in mind people thousands of years later. Not every culture focused on documenting the discoveries people were making.
A lot of these ancient cultures focused on very specific interests in mind. This can be due to their religions, or just general curiosity. This means a specific field may have fast increases of knowledge while others did not; the knowledge also easily snowballs. When a discovery is made, there are new opportunities for more discoveries based on the new knowledge. For example, if someone were to look at the modern world, they would see the fast changes in electronics that have taken place in the last 30 or so years. If this is viewed without context of how the economy and scientists, it could easily be seen as knowledge that was formed out of nowhere.
The example given in Chariot of Gods, of the Mayans incredible knowledge of space can seem to come out of nowhere and is credited to other-worldly interventions; however, this could be credited to the fact that the Mayan’s religion had a large focus on astronomy. As we’ve seen in the past 100 years, religion can have a large focus on what science fields get focused on.
In the Chariot of the Gods, Eric Von Daniken often says things like ‘it could easily be believed that…’. As is the case with all of us, Daniken is looking at history from his own biased perspective, and very much out of context. His biased perspective clearly has a large focus on extraterrestrials. He makes it obvious that he does not believe that the ancient cultures he writes of had a lot of their own intelligence. He is not willing to give credit where credit is due.
All throughout history, there have been people that seem far ahead of their time including people like Leonardo Da Vinci and Nikola Tesla. Leonardo Da Vinci had writings on ideas about modern technology like war tanks and helicopters, Nikola Tesla had amazing knowledge on electricity that lead him to creating things that people in 2019 are still unable to create such as a fireball. This is not because some alien gave them the knowledge, they were just humans who could visualize things that most people were unable to envision.
I really like how you used critical thinking to come up for another explanation for the Mayan knowledge of the solar system. I think the idea of using what we know about a culture’s religion to try to anticipate what they might devote resources to studying is particularly interesting. Closely examining a culture’s largest priorities (religion, technological progress, etc.) produces a very interesting lens to look through.
When VonDaniken makes all of his assumptions about the pyramids, the nazca lines, and the mayan carving on the stone lid he completely negates the cultural context in which each of the items was built. With such a wild lack of context it’s possible to make up almost anything you want, especially if you don’t believe in following any particular set of rules.
I also like how you highlighted other examples (mostly coming from people of European descent) that the Ancient Astronaut movement has chosen to gloss over. Da Vinci was especially interesting to me, and I’m glad that you highlighted the similarities between many of his conceptual drawings and machines that only really began to exist around the 20th century. Why not credit these drawings of unbelievably advanced flying machines to aliens instead of Da Vinci’s own genius? Maybe because it doesn’t quite suit the “Our Ancestors, the Idiots” tenant of their theory. All of a sudden it seems much easier to believe in the amazing ingenuity of human beings if those human beings were white, and not threatening to rise up against colonialism.
I found that the importance placed upon historical context when dealing with ancient artifacts and locations in this blog post was an excellent point to make. Context allows us to see the direction that an ancient civilization took during their development. The point that different groups of people place can pursue different areas of study based upon guiding factors such as religion or societal structure helps to fill in the blanks in a more logical sense. Simply reducing down an ancient societies culture and accomplishments to a gift from some unknown extraterrestrial group of interstellar travelers. This point is driven home with when viewing the drastic increase in technology during the past 30 years, which when viewed without taking in certain factors could easily be viewed as being the product of alien intervention.
Shrinking down the focus to the Mayan’s understanding of space in an excellent example. This example as bring about a new perspective on how science is developed in different cultures, usually as a way to investigate more about whatever their religion was focused upon or stated to be true.
Finally, I especially enjoyed the inclusion of advanced thinkers such as Leonardo da Vinci and Nikola Tesla. Often individuals fail to realize that human beings are constantly inventing and innovating different ways to improve their standard of living. Often times these ideas are seen as too impractical for the time in which they are conceived. However, as time passes and new tools are developed these ideas are finally able to be realized, without the need for assistance from our intergalactic neighbors.