While blinders may be extremely useful for horses giving carriage rides, they are not too much use for people who wish to make sound and logical arguments, however this small fact seems to be lost on some of those who wish to push false explanations and theories (of little substance) about human innovation and progress. Pseudoscientists and pseudo-archaeologists must rely majorly on cherry-picking evidence in the method of which (if any) artifacts, cultural practices, and/or any other contextual material is presented to the audience/reader (if any are presented).

Without using critical thinking skills and analysis with an open mind and open eye, it may be easy to become distracted by the variety of “what if’s” thrown out by these pseudoscientists and pseudo-archaeologists. It is also easy to forget that these “leaps in innovation” for mankind were not “leaps” in the sense that it happened quickly and merely overnight. The innovations and progression were decades and centuries in the making, which many pseudo-archaeologists conveniently lean into as a way to distort the view of mankind’s timeline. It suggests humans made miraculously rapid yet complex advancements, however this isn’t the case. The skills associated and needed for these projects and advancements were being improved within a variety of cultural communities over generations, yet in the big picture these smaller advancements are overshadowed by their revolutionary bigger advancements in society.

In the show Ancient Aliens, the premise of aliens coming to Earth and drawing communicative illustrations in the ground as it would be visible to the other aliens in the sky (thinking along the lines of Chicken Little). To put this explanation in cultural senses, the theory completely ignores the fact that many Indigenous communities worshipped gods and goddesses most often residing above these Indigenous communities and so to communicate with their respective cultural deities, the Indigenous communities made large and sprawling illustrations in the ground in a form of honor and worship. The idea that aliens would be solely responsible also insinuates that the Indigenous communities and individuals of the time weren’t “civilized” or “educated” enough to innovate these advancements unless there was an alien-centered explanation.

In addition to the insulting of Indigenous communities of the times, it’s also a general ignorance of humanity’s will to survive in abnormal and extreme environments and conditions while also forming cultural traditions influenced not only by their surroundings but also the other communities they encountered (diffusion of cultural practices also led to the merging of some cultural traditions which pseudo-archaeologists also equate to aliens/outside interference as it’s impossible for ideas to be shared among communities according to pseudo-archaeology logic). As far as the pyramids go, the structures were specifically built to protect the royally deceased. In Egyptian culture, it was popular to guard the deceased with hieroglyphs communicating to respective gods or goddesses. The hieroglyphs were interpreted and distorted by pseudo-archaeologists as something that an outside interference must have engraved to “assist” humanity in the construction of the pyramids. This again ignores the centuries of math and science and astrology and progression that Egyptian society contributed to modern-day advancements in technology.