In a darkly lit room on Mayan culture, next to some ominous looking sacrificial “blood urns”, I noticed some oddly shaped objects labeled “eccentric” flints. The description explained that they were at first believed to be stone tools but because of the context in which they were found (tombs), they were deduced to be burial offerings. The archaeologists studying these flints used the “convergence of evidence” (Feder 40) to identify the purpose of these tools. I also noted that the write-up below the display admitted that the archaeologists do not know what the stones depict, but that “their unusual shapes spark the imagination”.
Many pseudoarchaeologists take this idea to an extreme. Take for example, Erich von Daniken, the author of the book and film Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past. In his film, he makes the extreme claim that aliens visited past civilizations and provided them with many advanced technologies. Much of the evidence that Daniken provided were examples of artwork that he believed depicted aliens or that a particular temple or building simply l ooked like modern rockets, spaceships, or spacemen. Stone engraving that Daniken believes depicts a man operating a spaceship, based on his observations of the imageĭaniken provides known facts about the civilizations to convince the viewer of his knowledge and then share his completely out of the blue opinion that aliens contacted them in the past. I say opinion and not fact because Daniken does not use science or archaeology to test his hypothesis that aliens visited the ancient civilizations. If he had been addressing his hypothesis from a scientific stance, he would be sharing facts he discovered that were directly in support of his claims, because the purpose of collecting facts are to “explain something or test a hypothesis” (Feder 29). Instead, Daniken shares unrelated facts (an example of pseudoscience) to fool the viewer into believing what his is saying is fact, ignoring the truth and substituting his own. If the viewer were paying any attention at all to the film, they would quickly realized that he shares no concrete evidence at all. His methods of research is like cloud watching. You may look up at the same cloud and see a bird. Since their is no evidence that it is not a cat and is in fact a bird, I can still say that I see a cat because there is nothing to prove me wrong. If Daniken were to observe the “eccentrics”, he may interpret them as a representation of alien figures, even if there is no evidence to support him. But science knows not to jump to conclusions without evidence, even if that means leaving something unresolved. This doesn’t mean the truth will forever be unknown- it has just not been discovered yet. This entry was posted in Fall 2012, Uncategorized and tagged Misconceptions by clcardillo.
#Ancient aliens season 1 free stream series
Ancient Aliens is an American television series that explores the ancient astronauts hypothesis, past human- extraterrestrial contact, UFOs, government conspiracies, and related pseudoscientific topics, such as remote viewing and psychic phenomena, in a non-critical, documentary format. Episodes, narrated by Robert Clotworthy, begin and end with rhetorical questions. Produced by Prometheus Entertainment, the series has aired on History and other A&E Networks since 2010. The series has been a target for criticism of History's channel drift, and for promoting unorthodox or unproven hypotheses as fact. The series is based on and inspired by the works of Erich von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin, among other writers. The works of Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, Brinsley Le Poer Trench, Charles Hapgood, and Edgar Cayce, are also referenced in many episodes.
Producer Giorgio Tsoukalos and writer David Childress are featured guests.
The series began as a two-hour documentary special in 2009, and continued for three seasons as a flagship series on History. Seasons 4 to 7 aired on H2, with frequent re-airings of episodes on History and other A&E services. In 2015, the series returned to History after H2 was relaunched as Vice on TV. Due to COVID-19 disrupting production, the season ended after only 12 episodes, however only 10 episodes aired. The series continued with its sixteenth season in November 2020.
0 kommentar(er)
