First of all, I love the comments. Some of you guys are very interesting and funny. I write to different groups, including introverts, the intelligentsia, political individuals, car people, and others. I’m getting to know you all more closely from the stuff you write.
I even connected with one reader who knew Denny from Grouchy Old Cripple, but neither of us knew it until I started AOTW in Denny’s honor.
I wrote about Stupid Things Smart People Do a long time ago. One of them is arguing on the internet.
I’m likely to post about anything these days. A lot of posts get tumbleweeds for comments. I think I’m all clever, and then crickets.
Occasionally, I’ll be content-free in my head and post something meaningless, and it’s a barrage of comments, like What’s it like to have an extremely high IQ.
Once in a while, I get off the wall comments that are out of left field. I saw this meme and thought about it.
I can write some offensive stuff and know it. Hell, I do it on purpose sometimes. I don’t care if you disagree with me, but keep it civil when you write back. My favorite are people who outthink me and write clever stuff.
I also ask questions that are set up by WordPress and answer them as honestly as I can. I love it when people answer them also (Bocopro is a great writer)
I have it set up to approve all comments, and if it gets too out of hand, I’m not going to let it on the page. It just starts a fight I don’t want to see happen and piss off others. If it’s spicy and will start a discussion, I’ll let it go. I also am not going to let people post their blogs that have nothing to do with my post. They have their own blog, and I read it there.
All I ask is that you be civil. I know that the people on the left hate my ass by now, but I don’t care. They aren’t smart and write childish things. I brush that off and move along, which is what they should have done to begin with.
So keep up the commentary. Many of you are better writers than I am. I enjoy reading your stuff.
Delusions of Adequacy 
Donno your take on Ancient Aliens, but I write on the general topic fairly frequently ‘cuz I find megalithic structures and geoglyphs interesting.
Sent this to Giorgio’s staff today:
For Tsoukalos:
Your Ancient Alien theory is, I must admit, intriguing and at times downright compelling. Just guessing, I reckon to have seen prob’ly 60% or more of its TV episodes and will pay attention to any new ones which show up.
Now that said, I’m not a believer and offer at least one alternative to many of the questions you, von Daniken, Chllders, Pope, et al. like to use in challenging traditional archaeologists’ explanations for such anomalies and mysteries as Easter Island’s Moai, Pumapunku’s H-blocks, Pakal’s sarcophagus lid, and Nan Madol.
Archaeology has always fascinated me, and for many years I considered its scholarly publications gospel, but then came the Piri Reis map, the Antikythera device, and Gobekli Tepi. Suddenly much of what I’d read back in the 50s and 60s was relegated to false teleology, flawed archaeology, and publish-or-perish guesswork by wannabe scholars.
When I taught technical writing at the local university, I cautioned my students never to search for data simply to prove their pre-conceived beliefs but to find out all they can on a topic before generating a viable theory. Gotta say that you guys at Ancient Aliens definitely do your homework, and your arguments are often logical, credible, and persuasive.
Still . . . I view each case you present through the caveat lens of “I’d never have seen that if I didn’t believe” rather than “I’d never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.” What you’re doing is entertaining, and quite well in my opinion, but not really proving anything.
Instead of offering my specific criticisms of your theory, let me instead offer a suggestion — which I’m sure has occurred to each of you. In fact, you’ve touched briefly on the idea in a few of your episodes.
Most of what I see on Ancient Aliens makes me think that a fairly high culture existed prior to and during the last ice age. It could have been advanced enough to develop flight, communications facilities, math advanced enough for architecture and logistics, and control of forms of energy that we haven’t yet developed.
The areas where those cultures would have had to be during an ice age are now under hundreds of feet of mud, debris, and water, so they’re basically lost forever. And even if we go down to see what’s there, we might not recognize the technology when we see it, kinda like uranium being around since Day 1 but we realized how to use it only a coupla decades ago. Or the Antikythera thingy.
One of the unknown technologies they might have developed could be communications between far distant settlements using natural energy available in the earth itself, hence the standing stones and pyramids.
Earth energy has been around since long before people, so who’s to say somebody didn’t recognize and exploit it before the deluge. And could be that they even figured out how to modulate the waves to send visuals. After all, 19th century guys figured out how to send long-distance messages by breaking and making contact on an electric circuit. Didn’t take ‘em long to upgrade that to actual voice, then wireless, and finally television — in only a century or so.
Ancient Alien episodes have speculated that stones with high quartz content can both store and emit energy, and many armchair archaeologists believe that the pyramids were some kind of energy generators. So, it’s not a huge leap to imagine that the ancients somehow harnessed the natural energy of the earth, discovered a way to modulate it technologically, and transmitted it all over the globe via standing stones, including obelisks and temples.
That would demystify the similarity of myths involving sky beings, floods, gods, giants, even dragons. And it would explain why pyramids and mandalas and giant drawings in deserts and on mountainsides are so similar in so many cases.
LikeLike
I never thought about it that way, but it’s an interesting hypothesis. I wish there were a Rosetta stone for the pyramids and the other things you mentioned so we could really understand why they were built. There has to be a common theme, as you point out.
LikeLike