The Hidden Harm of Pseudoscience

The actual “problems” that are often brought up concerning the building of the pyramids and ancient peoples possessing ancient technology are thoroughly researched and explainable. The pyramids are chiefly made of limestone. Limestone is what is known as a sedimentary rock, a type of rock that forms due to small particles of minerals building up and being forced together at high pressures for long periods of time. Because of this process, sedimentary rocks are relatively soft and are some of the easiest rocks to carve, even with rudimentary tools.

To the left is an example casing block from the Great Pyramid. Though it's since been stripped away, the Great Pyramid was previously covered in a decorative layer of nicer, smoother limestone, which this is a part of. Notice how worn its corners are due to it being a fairly soft rock.

There is no need for alien technology when human technology serves the purpose just fine.

This is especially clear when we look at tools from centuries after this era, which have no significant technological advancement that one would expect after being gifted alien technology. To the right is a mallet excavated within Egypt which dates to about 1950 years BCE (Before the Common Era, so around 3975 years ago). This mallet would have been used in combination with a chisel, like the one it is displayed alongside, to carve into wood or stone.

If aliens gifted the Egyptian civilization with laser engraving tools, as some ancient astronaut theories suggest, why would we only find remnants of these basic tools? It's almost certain that, if we can find material evidence of wooden mallets almost four thousand years after the fact, we would also find material evidence of advanced alien tech.

It also stands to reason that transporting massive blocks of limestone via boat or dragging them across the sand would be much more likely than aliens throwing them around with tractor beams. People are ingenuitive and denying their accomplishments is a disservice to the untold thousands of laborers who worked on these megalithic structures.

The fact that all of these blocks are in no way perfect is another key piece of evidence that they are manmade. The Great Pyramid is filled with a significant amount of mortar, such as this specimen. Like building techniques we still use today, this mortar fills in the spaces between the pyramid's limestone blocks, which can get quite large due to inconsistency, and binds them together. The consistency in size they reach is incredible on its own, but one would imagine that if the Egyptians were provided with alien rock cutting technology, that that quality would go up immensely.

These ideas are also harmful in how they perpetuate racist ideals. Ancient astronauts theories are inherently based on the idea that ancient humans could not accomplish these feats on their own. Many proponents directly support the idea that they could not even have come up with the ideas themselves. They require that we regard these ancient peoples as primitive, incapable, and stupid, in order to assign all of their accomplishments to an outside force.

This line of questioning and doubt is most often reserved for groups who are not seen as white, and especially those who are black and brown. The Greeks and the Romans, who are the pinnacle of society that many western civilizations idolize, existed without heavy machinery either. They carved their marble statues with chisels. They built massive structures, many of which stand today, such as the Parthenon in Greece or the Coliseum in Rome. Yet these accusations of alien technology are not leveled at them at nearly the rate of civilizations who are not perceived as white.

Even when you step away from megalithic structures, this problem persists, and can take on a new form: ancient exceptionalism. Rather than believing that aliens came to Earth, some fringe theorists believe instead that ancient civilizations possessed powerful technology that originated on Earth. The source of this technology varies.

Theories based on a concept called hyperdiffusion believe that this powerful technology originated from a central, incredibly advanced civilization such as Atlantis. Hyperdiffusion presents similar issues to the alien theories: it requires an outside source to bring this technology to the “primitive” nonwhite cultures. This is especially problematic due to modern conceptions of Atlantis being based in Nazi occult propaganda from World War II. In this sense, the Nazis idolized Atlanteans as being the ideal “Aryan master race.” Despite remaining on Earth, we have circled back to non-white cultures needing “superior” white civilizations to bestow upon them technology.