To test the hypothesis that the prehistoric record contains evidence of enormous and unexpected leaps forward in science and technology (agriculture, pyramid building writing, and so on) and that these leaps are evidence of the introduction of such innovations by extra terrestrial aliens requires a deductive approach. To do so, we must attempt to test the validity of this statement. First, the idea of extra terrestrial aliens being the earliest contributors to innovations of the past was brought about in fictional stories by authors like Erich von Daniken or originally from H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft took science fiction to another level by adding doom and gloom and using scientific pieces of history like the unique construction of buildings, the stars in the sky, and ancient ruins that are left even today, and combining their existence with the fictional curiosity of aliens and extraterrestrials to create a riveting story. Let us think about what pseudoarcheology is in the first place: “alternative archeology, fringe archeology, spooky archeology–refers to interpretations of the past from outside the archeological science community, which reject the accepted data gathering and analytical methods of the discipline.”¹ That definition aligns best with this hypothesis more than any data or interpretation of history could. Von Daniken took the stories of Lovecraft and attempted to pose the fictional stories as scientific nonfiction. The hypothesis that extraterrestrials made giant leaps in history towards innovations in science and technology is clearly an attempt at spooky archeology without legitimate data gathering or analytical methods. Lovecraft himself remarked about how his works created a convincing background for a whole pseudo-archeological concept and that it was not his intention to mislead readers into truly believing his fictional stories as scientific nonfiction.

Looking at Ancient Astronomers by von Daniken, he starts off the book by giving a huge preface about opening up your mind to question the things that have been accepted to be true. Additionally, he mentions that basically all of the scientific people will call what he is about to say crazy and that they are being close minded. Just let that sink in before we even continue. If evidence towards your point is by calling research gathering, data analyzing, and scientific testing scientists closeminded and naïve, then you probably are stretching it. Let’s take something that has some doubt surrounding it, like religion, even that has overwhelming scientific evidence to prove its validity. It doesn’t have to ignore science to prove its point. Anyways, continuing with Ancient Astronomers. Von Daniken continues on spitting facts about the stars and how there’s so much more out there than we could ever know. Archeologists don’t refute this. During the second week of classes we talked about how everything is discoverable, that just doesn’t guarantee that we will ever end up discovering it, but it does not mean it can’t ever be discovered. I think there are other archaeological or historic explanations for the cases of ancient astronomers and without going into each of those, I think it is evident that von Daniken doesn’t understand the prehistoric things that he is seeing, the cultural content around them, etc. and instead sees what he wants to see and adds fictional fluff to create pseudoarcheology that is interesting enough and challenges the norm that conspiracy theorists eat it up.