To test the hypothesis of the pyramids being introduced into Egypt either by aliens or citizens of Atlantis would be difficult to do with the lack of physical evidence. If pyramid building was introduced by the aliens or Atlanteans more advanced technology should be present within the archaeological record. Through the eyes of a pseudoarcheologist, aliens and Atlanteans would have been a technologically advanced race and they would have had technologies that the Egyptians could only dream of. The issue with this “debate” is the lack of understanding of how the pyramids were actually built. There already is a lack of evidence as to how the stones that make up the pyramids got from their place of origin to where they rest today. Psuedoarchaeologists tend to think the reasoning behind the stones movement is thanks to the levitation technology introduced to them by the aliens or the Atlanteans. With the use of this technology wouldn’t there be physical evidence of the objects used to help build the pyramids?
Testing the hypothesis whether or not Atlantis was a super advanced civilization that existed 10,000 years ago from which the Maya and ancient Egyptian defused from would be just as difficult to test. This hypothesis has absolutely no physical evidence to support it. Other than being mentioned as an abstract concept within an ancient Greek philosopher’s work, Atlantis was not thought to a physically real place. It was only later when psuedoarchaeologists decided that instead of being an abstract concept, they took Atlantis as a true place that represented a “perfect society.” The archaeological record should contain some sort physical evidence of an island that had a technically advanced civilization that would also have access to many ancient civilizations around the world. I also would like the answer as to why (if Atlanteans were such a technologically advanced race) they seem to be able to exist long enough to help create our known ancient civilizations over a course of thousands of years but then they just disappear out of nowhere without any traces as to where they were located to begin with. If the Atlanteans did actually exist, we would not even know enough about them to decide whether or not other civilizations defused from Atlantis. Overall, I believe both of these hypothesis just discredit the abilities of ancient peoples within these civilizations and take away from the years of research archaeologists put into their work.
I really resonate with your concluding statement about pseudoarchaeological ideas discrediting both ancient civilizations and the work of archaeologists. One of the most important things to point out about testing these claims is that it’s hard to do without evidence, and I think you do a good job explaining why that is. Using scientific processes to test unscientific ideas creates an almost circular argument where the supporters of these ideas insist that their evidence is able to be evaluated using scientific processes, when in fact it can’t be because the criteria for what a scientist and a pseudoscientist consider “evidence” are so radically different. This doubled-up definition of evidence causes problems when trying to communicate between groups – pseudoscientists see evidence as something that looks like something else, and archaeologists see it as a piece of data within a larger intersection of many contexts.
A lot of these pseudoarchaeological ideas generate more questions than they do answers, so I like how you were able to logically construct your arguments for both hypotheses and then include the questions that you were led to. Archaeological knowledge processes are based heavily within the contexts of sites/artifacts and the subsequent classification of that data within known taxonomies, and pseudoarchaeologists purposefully disconnect themselves from all relevant context to support their motivations (fame, nationalism, etc). The complete lack of physical evidence in both of these hypotheses makes them impossible to test using established scientific processes, so the argument that we have to make is pretty simple (“if this happened, there would be physical evidence of it”).