The ancient Greeks considered the Heroes to be giants for three reasons: 1) Mycenaean cities seemed so massively large that only giants—specifically Cyclopes—could have built them. 2) They believed that the world was in gradual decay, so earlier generations were therefore larger and more robust, and 3) they found the bones of prehistoric elephants and assumed they were the skeletons of the Heroes themselves.
Ancient astronaut writers have frequently asserted that ancient descriptions of “giant” skeletons are to be taken as literal proof of alien-human hybrid creatures of giant size. However, Boardman (following Adrienne Mayor[71]) makes very clear that nearly all the ancient descriptions of “giant’s bones” observed in situ have nearly 1-to-1 correlation with locations where modern excavators have discovered the remains of fossil elephants and other megafauna.
Boardman also describes artifacts that the Greeks misinterpreted by filtering them through myth. At the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus there was displayed a Neolithic greenstone axe from 2000 BCE, which was taken to be a thunderbolt from Zeus, a “sacred stone that fell from the sky” as the Biblical writers were well aware.[72] A similar axe head gave rise to an entire cult of Zeus at Labraunda in Libya.[73] Bronze Age armor from the Mycenaeans found its way into the treasury of Alexander the Great, who considered it a relic of the Trojan War.[74] Elsewhere, Bronze Age arms were attributed to Herakles, Diomedes, Agamemnon Aeneas, and Odysseus and great effort was taken to preserve the ancient spears, swords, and shields from disintegration.
The Greek case is somewhat different from those described in the previous chapter because the Greeks retained a vague, shadowy understanding of the Mycenaeans, and although their Heroic identifications were literally incorrect they did correctly attribute such relics to a bygone civilization. We know that some continuity must have existed because Homer discusses a boar’s tusk helmet[75] that was for a long time thought fictional. But archaeologists found several of them in Mycenaean graves and could thus conclude that they ceased to be made at least two centuries before Homer composed the Iliad. Something of the past survived—but note we only know this because archaeology confirmed it.
Here’s the rub: The Greek mythic memory is the exception that proves the rule. The Greeks remembered something of the past, but freely mixed fragments of history with myth, misinterpretation, and imagination. Because we have archaeology to confirm or deny the claims of the Greeks, we can see how the myths and legends were distorted, what they got right and what they got wrong. Martin Nilsson recognized the Mycenaean origins of Greek mythology, but even he admitted that it is only the confirmation of archaeology that allowed such connections to be seen; the stories, on their own, were no substitute for history. As Lord Raglan wrote, if myths require outside confirmation to prove them true, the myth is therefore unnecessary as proof. A myth absent outside confirmation is essentially worthless; it can tell us what people believed at the time of the telling, but not whether their beliefs were correct.
So, when ancient astronaut writers ask us to take myths as truth, we are within our rights to ask for confirmation: Why is this true? Why is this story closer to the Greek memory of Mycenae than the (literally) fairy tales of fairies building the Irish dolmens?
10. How Alternative History Methods Destroy Knowledge
One of the most maddening things about alternative historians and ancient astronaut theorists is the way they insist on literal interpretations of ancient texts. For example, Ezekiel’s vision is seen as a firsthand report of a UFO, Phaeton’s fiery crash of the sun chariot is seen as an eyewitness account of a crashed flying saucer, and of course Plato’s Atlantis is taken for historical fact. Let’s look at an example of how this rejection of textual criticism, superficially an appealing way to make new discoveries, actively destroys knowledge when applied in practice.
Our example comes from a strange incident in the adventures of Jason, the Greek hero who captured the Golden Fleece after making a great journey to the East. In later Greco-Roman religious practice, this hero somehow acquired a series of temples across the East as well as a mountain in Iran, Mt. Jasonium.[76] He was also recognized as the conqueror of Armenia before the Trojan War.[77] Taken at face value, as alternative historians prefer, such tales imply either that Jason was seen as a god (or, heaven help us, an alien) or that the Greeks had conquered much of the Near East long before Alexander.
But taking the texts at face value actively destroys knowledge. The real story is so much more interesting.
The origin of the tale can be found in the Persian religious structures called ayazana or ayadana, the exact nature of which archaeology has yet to clarify. They may be related to (or the same as) the fire altars of the Zoroastrians, as mentioned in 2 Maccabees 1.19-34. There is no doubt, however, that they were religious precincts of some sort, since the Persian king Darius was recorded in a Persian inscription as restoring the “ayazana” the usurper Gaumata the Magus destroyed, while this word is translated in the contemporary Akkadian and Elamite versions of the text as the “temples” or “places of worship.”[78]
When the Greeks first visited areas under the influence of Persian religion, they apparently misheard the Median dialect version of the ayadana, *yazona, as Jasonia (sound it out—it’s close if we remember that in Greek Jason was called “Iason”), and they applied their pre-existing myth of Jason’s great eastward voyage to explain the presence of these sacred sites across the East. Similarly, the effort to apply the myth to the geography of the Medes’ territory (now Iran), identified as a land visited by Jason, led to Mt. Damavand becoming Mt. Jasonion (Greek) or Mt. Jasonium (Latin). Thus, Strabo writes “that the memorials of Jason are, the Jasonian heroa, held in great reverence by the Barbarians, (besides a great mountain above the Caspian Gates on the left hand, called Jasonium).”[79] Lest this connection seem speculative, it should be remembered that the Medes’ empire extended into Cappadocia in Asia Minor, almost to the very site at Cape Jason where the most famous Jasonium stood.
After this, it is a short hop to the strange story found only in Pompeius Trogus (as epitomized by Justin) that Jason “set out on a second voyage for Colchis, accompanied by a numerous train of followers (who, at the fame of his valour, came daily from all parts to join him), by his wife Medea, whom, having previously divorced her, he had now received again from compassion for her exile.”[80] Then, to make amends to Medea’s father for stealing the Golden Fleece and treating his daughter badly, he “carried on great wars with the neighbouring nations; and of the cities which he took, he added part to the kingdom of his father-in-law, to make amends for the injury that he had done him in his former expedition.”[81] This, Trogus and Justin affirm, is the reason that that Jasonia exist across the East, in honor of Jason’s conquest of the entire region. So powerful was this myth that, according to Justin, one of Alexander’s generals destroyed the Jasonia where he found them so the mythic figure could not rival Alexander. Of course this “second voyage” never happened; it was a post-hoc explanation meant to give a mythic background to the confusion of terminology found in Iran and Armenia.
But if we were content to accept the ancient writers at face value, none of this knowledge about early Greek interactions with the East would have come to light. Instead, we would be searching for evidence of pre-Greek temples to Jason that never existed, and evidence of Bronze Age Greek invasions of Armenia and Iran that never happened. This actually happened from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, producing much speculation and few facts. This is how “alternative” readings of ancient texts actively destroy knowledge and retard a real understanding of the past.
11. Ancient Aliens and Atlantis
In an article on the Legendary Times website carrying the official byline of the official ancient astronaut research organization, the Archaeology, Astronautics & SETI Research Association (now the Ancient Alien Society), and therefore representing the official position of the premiere Paleo-SETI research society, Atlantis never existed
!
And there could not have been any Atlantis (i.e. a very advanced civilization comparable to ours) either, or else we would find traces of its infrastructure worldwide—not to mention the untenable theory of a geologically recently sunken continent.[82]
Now, I agree with this statement 100%, but I suspect it comes as news to many ancient astronaut theorists, especially David Hatcher Childress, whose bread and butter has been promoting extreme claims that imaginary civilizations like Lemuria, Mu, Atlantis, and the “Rama Empire” reigned in the deep past, mostly on vanished continents. Additionally, the “alternative archaeologists” who appear on Ancient Aliens, including Fingerprints of the Gods author Graham Hancock, must be shocked to learn that the leading ancient astronaut research organization considers their research moot.
Of course, the ancient astronaut theory, being no theory in the scientific sense, refuses to simply reject findings (however ridiculous) that contradict the theory. Instead, they are incorporated in a completely different form:
Whenever findings, imitations of findings or descriptions thereof [i.e. of an Atlantis-like civilization] appear in old cultures, they seem to come up suddenly as if “dropped from the sky”. But where were the manufacturing sites if not on Earth?[83]
Thus, after rejecting Atlantis for lack of evidence, the AAS RA simply relocates it into the depths of space. The very fact that no evidence for it exists somehow has become evidence that a force not from this earth was responsible! But here’s the really interesting thing. The AAS RA is run by Giorgio Tsoukalos, who is a consulting producer on Ancient Aliens, on which he appears as the primary talking head.
On the Ancient Aliens episode “Underwater Worlds” (November 11, 2010), so-called “ancient astronaut theorists” argued about the existence of Atlantis and its possible connection to aliens. Despite the official position of the ancient astronaut theory’s main organization that Atlantis never existed, AAS RA head Giorgio Tsoukalos appeared on the program to promote his theory that Atlantis was in fact an extraterrestrial spacecraft using what he claimed were genuine Greek myths of bronze islands that fell from the sky—UFOs.
At first blush this theory seems impossible. The Greek philosopher Aristotle doubted the ability of even small rocks—meteors—to fall from the sky and instead believed them to be the tops of exploded volcanoes, but the Roman Pliny did believe in falling space rocks. In neither case, however, did these ancient authors suggest that whole islands were descending from the heavens. This would have been a blatant impossibility, since in the mythological scheme of things the Greek sky was itself a dome made of bronze[84] or iron.[85]
In order to make the case that Atlantis was a UFO, Ancient Aliens provided two pieces of evidence. Let’s take them in order. First, according to the narrator of the program, “One myth tells of the Titan goddess named Asteria who fell from the sky and became an island.” But is this what the myth really says? Surprisingly, the show has it almost right. But not quite.
According to the Greek mythographer Apollodorus, “Of the daughters of Coeus, Asteria in the likeness of a quail flung herself into the sea in order to escape the amorous advances of Zeus, and a city was formerly called after her Asteria, but afterwards it was named Delos.”[86] While Hyginus, the Roman mythographer, gives it slightly differently in his Fabulae: “Though Jove [=Zeus] loved Asterie, daughter of Titan, she scorned him. Therefore she was transformed into the bird ortux, which we call a quail, and he cast her into the sea. From her an island sprang up, which was named Ortygia. This was floating.”[87]
Notice that Ancient Aliens leaves out the part about the bird, lest the real myth seem to stray too far from the idea that the island was an alien spaceship. Nor in myth does Asteria become an island before falling into the sea. Further, other “ancient texts” make clear that the island of Asteria (or Ortygia, or Delos, depending on the source) fell “like a star,” meaning that the ancients were attempting to liken the island to meteors (as the well-known phenomenon of shooting stars), not to aliens, since Asteria was (surprise!) the goddess of falling stars. Thus, the non-extraterrestrial explanation for this myth is both obvious and evident: The goddess of falling stars was associated, poetically but not unnaturally, with an island that was one of the falling stars. No UFOs necessary. And since other islands were said to have grown from such origins as a clump of sod[88] or the union of the sun god and a nymph, we can discount the idea of a widespread sky-island tradition as the origin of Greek islands.
But then things get weird. Immediately following the narrator’s mention of Asteria, Giorgio Tsoukalos says:
In Ancient Greece we have a number of myths which describe islands—bronze, gleaming islands—that fell from the sky and landed in water. I don’t think that Atlantis therefore was an actual, stationary, physical island. Atlantis, according to Plato, disappeared in one night with a lot of fire and a lot of smoke. See, I don’t think that Atlantis sank. I think that Atlantis lifted off.
Let’s leave aside the inconsistency of taking Plato’s allegorical dialogues literally for the age and description of Atlantis while arguing that Plato’s plain statement of its sinking should be discounted. I must admit that here I am at a complete loss. I cannot find a reference to “bronze, gleaming islands” anywhere in Greek mythology. The closest I can find is the “island of bronze” in the 1963 Ray Harryhausen movie Jason and the Argonauts, but this was not an island made of bronze but rather one that housed bronze statues. There are some myths that are sort of in the ballpark:
- The island of Corfu was said to have been formed from an adamantine sickle that fell from the sky, the sickle Cronus (Kronos) used to castrate his father, Uranus (Ouranos). This wasn’t an island when it fell and it wasn’t bronze, though it is the only myth I could find that was relatively close to Tsoukalos’ claims. The myth derives from the island’s characteristic sickle shape.
- In the Odyssey[89] Aeolus had a floating island surrounded by cliffs and a wall of bronze. But this wasn’t a falling bronze island. It floated because he was the god of wind and therefore lived in the air.
- During the Gigantomachy Athena killed Enkelados by “hurling” the island of Sicily through the air to crush him. But again the island wasn’t made of bronze, nor did it fall from the sky.
- The Aloadi (Aloads) imprisoned the war god Ares in a bronze jar before attacking the gods in the heavens by piling mountains atop one another, but while this myth has the sky and bronze and moving landforms, it lacks an island or falling things.
- Ares also had an island on which lived birds with feathers that shot out like arrows, but this isn’t even close.
- Icarus with his wax wings fell out of the sky, and an island was named for him. But he wasn’t bronze, nor is the island of Icaria.
Now, I am the first to admit that Greek mythology is a sprawling, ramshackle mess in which a few bronze islands might well have hidden from my survey. But I cannot find “a number of myths” of falling bronze islands, or even a single one. They do not exist in the many manuals and handbooks of Greek myth I consulted, nor any of the ancient authors who would have been expected to record such happenings. So, while it is possible that these bronze islands exist in Greek myth, the burden at this point falls on Giorgio Tsoukalos to show that they are more than the product of his admittedly fertile imagination.
12. The Ancients and Outer Space; or, Aliens Are Bad Teachers
One of the tenets of the ancient astronaut theory is that the extraterrestrials gave ancient humans detailed knowledge about outer space. According to most ancient astronaut theorists (AATs) this is evident in the Book of Enoch, where Enoch is taken up into the sky and instructed on the geography and movements of the heavens,[90] which they interpret as an actual trip to outer space. Additionally, in The Sirius Mystery (1976, rev. ed. 1998), Robert Temple argued that the aliens provided the Sumerians with detailed knowledge of the Sirius star system, including its binary (or even triune) nature, and the planet in that system from which the extraterrest
rials had ventured to earth. This knowledge, he said (building on a reference in Santillana and von Dechend’s Hamlet’s Mill[91]), was retained by the African Dogon tribe down to the present day.
Therefore, in examining ancient Near East mythology, we should expect to see an understanding of outer space from the extensive knowledge the aliens supposedly gave the Sumerians and others. At the most basic level, this should mean that the ancients understood that space was a vast empty territory beyond the earth which could be reached by traveling high enough into the sky, with no barriers between the earth, the planets, the stars, and the galaxies beyond.
So what do the Sumerians say about the sky?
The Sumerians believed the sky to be a dome of some sort, since they claimed it had a zenith. They all called tin the “metal of heaven,” and many scholars follow S. N. Kramer[92] in suggesting that the Sumerians viewed the sky as made of tin. Thus, instead of revealing knowledge of deep space, instead the Sumerian belief appears to be that the sky was a tin dome covering the earth. Surrounding this was an ocean, with the dome of heaven suspended within like an air bubble in gelatin.
Well, no matter. Robert Temple’s sources were Babylonian rather than Sumerian (the priest Berossus), so perhaps the Babylonians are the place to look for this knowledge.
According to the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the sky is a solid barrier raised like a roof over the earth[93] in which there were gates through which the sun passed.[94]
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