What is paleocontact and is it true that aliens have already visited Earth

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Some believe in paleocontact and that we owe all our achievements to alien guests.

Paleocontact is a hypothesis that aliens from other planets visited the Earth in ancient times. Aliens allegedly passed on some knowledge to our ancestors, which accelerated progress.

For the first time they started talking about paleocontact at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries. The writer and researcher of anomalous phenomena Charles Fort suggested that those whom the ancients mistook for demons and other evil spirits were in fact aliens.

This topic was especially popular in the 1960s and 1970s. It was then that the first books of the Swiss hotelier Erich von Daniken were published. Since then, he has written several dozen volumes on ancient aliens and is considered a pillar of this theory. True, Daniken has no historical or philological education, but A. Pervushin was. Space mythology. From the Martian Atlanteans to the lunar conspiracy, we have been convicted of fraud several times. He was also accused of plagiarism.

Today Daniken's theory and others like it have many followers. Paleocontact conferences gather S. Kurutz. Suspicious Minds / The New York Times are full houses, books are selling in millions of copies, and the popular TV series "Ancient Aliens" has been on television for 11 years. The life hacker figured out how scientific this theory is.

Why some people believe that aliens flew to Earth in ancient times

There are several main reasons.

They are sure that there are other civilizations in the Universe, including more advanced ones

Paleocontactors often hide behind the opinion of authoritative researchers. The fact is that many serious scientists assume that life, including intelligent life, should occur in the Universe. Among the millions of star systems, there must be those where there are planets with conditions similar to those on Earth. This idea, for example, was voiced by Stephen Hawking.

One of those who considered it possible for aliens to visit Earth was the "father of Soviet cosmonautics" Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.

Also, the idea of a paleocontact was considered by Karl Sagan and Joseph Shklovsky - American and Soviet astrophysicists. However, they emphasized that there was no evidence for this theory, and Sagan later completely criticized the arguments of its supporters.

They do not believe that the ancients could have achieved a high level of progress themselves

Sagan and Shklovsky were among the first to suggest that in the myths of the ancient peoples, deities are exactly aliens who, for example, could teach people agriculture or mathematics. The work of these scientists made a lot of noise, and after it hundreds of books were written on the topic of Paleovisite.

The intervention of aliens began to explain anything: from the appearance of life on Earth to the miracles of Jesus and Buddha. There is also such an idea: one of the most ancient and progressive civilizations - the Sumerian - was created by the inhabitants of the mysterious planet Nibiru, which supposedly approaches the Earth every 3600 years. A new visit was supposed to take place in 2012, but Nibiru never showed up.

Another "proof" that the aliens contributed to the historical development are the monumental buildings of ancient people. They allegedly could not have erected huge structures on their own. The pyramids of Giza, the buildings of the American Indians (Skasayhuaman), the structures of Baalbek (Lebanon), Stonehenge, the Nazca geoglyphs and idols from Easter Island are all attributed to extraterrestrial origin.

Pyramid of Cheops in Giza. Photo: Nina / Wikimedia Commons

Geoglyph "Astronaut" in the Nazca desert, Peru. Photo: Raymond Ostertag / Wikimedia Commons

Stone idols from Easter Island, Chile. Photo: Ian Sewell / Wikimedia Commons

These buildings were supposedly either cosmodromes or alien observatories.

They find references to extraterrestrial guests in ancient images and texts

According to paleocontacts, in many texts one can find references to technologies uncharacteristic of that time. The ancient people did not understand them, therefore they considered them miracles, magic or divine power.

It turns out that religions are cargo cults that developed after the aliens left. And ancient images and texts of a cult character are the main sources of knowledge about aliens.

In written sources, paleocontacts are looking for descriptions of spaceships, the solar system, and other "evidence". Heavenly fire for them is a nuclear weapon, miraculous healing is advanced medicine, the sky where the gods live is space, and mummification is imitation of suspended animation.

They also cite examples from the visual arts to support their words:

Rock carvings in Val Camonica, Italy. Photo: Luca Giarelli / Wikimedia Commons

Image with cylindrical print from Mesopotamia. Photo: IronyWrit / Wikimedia Commons

Japanese figurine dating from 1000-400 BC NS. Tokyo National Museum. Photo: Rc 13 / Wikimedia Commons

Hieroglyphs from an ancient Egyptian temple. Photo: Olek95 / Wikimedia Commons

Proponents of the theory consider this to be strong evidence. Indian paleocontacts even suggested NASA to jointly study ancient rock paintings.

Why the concept of paleocontact is not recognized by science

Most scientists are skeptical about the theory of paleocontact. Its supporters have no direct evidence: only hypotheses and assumptions. Here are a number of points that raise doubts about this concept.

Scientists still have not found convincing evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life

Despite the fact that life outside the Earth may well exist, there was no evidence of this A. Sokolov. Are scientists hiding? Myths of the XXI century discovered. Our telescopes do not allow us to take a good look at potentially habitable planets, and radio observation of space does nothing.

The aliens also seem to be in no hurry to contact us. This situation is known as the "Fermi paradox". It can be formulated as follows: alien civilizations must exist, but why have they not yet made contact?

There are several possible answers to this question. For example, other civilizations could die as a result of wars or epidemics, or they never existed at all.

Researchers believe that aliens are unlikely to reach us

This is another possible explanation for the Fermi paradox. There can be two reasons:

1. Other civilizations, if they exist, are approximately at the same level of development as ours. Humans are not yet able to travel beyond the moon. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine that aliens on jet-powered "fiery chariots" can surf the vastness of the Universe.
2. The universe is too big for aliens to find us at all. The closest star to the Sun, Alpha Centauri, is more than four light years away. This means that the flight to it should last more than four years, even at the speed of light - the largest known to date. But the nearest inhabited planet can be hundreds and thousands of times farther away. The creation of photonic starships capable of approaching the speed of light, which paleocontacts often talk about, is impossible A. Pervushin. Space mythology. From the Martian Atlanteans to the lunar conspiracy in terms of our knowledge of the universe.

It is also unclear why the aliens should fly to us. Resources? Unlikely. Too long, expensive, and impractical. Work force? Even more doubtful. If aliens have starships, then automation is even more so.

Archaeologists prove that ancient "alien" artifacts were created by people

Archaeologists have a very clear idea of the periodization of ancient history and finds that correspond to a particular period. There are no authentic "alien" artifacts among them.

Some "extraterrestrial" things, such as "crystal skulls of the Aztecs", turn out to be fakes.

With monumental buildings, which supposedly cannot be built without help from space, ancient people could also cope on their own. This required rope-lever technology and the labor of thousands of workers. Together, the builders could move even blocks weighing up to 360 tons.

And from a logical point of view, it is not clear why aliens, who can move throughout the universe, build pyramids from poorly hewn boulders? It is also strange that the aliens with all their space technologies for some reason created spaceports in the form of strange animals (as in the Nazca drawings), and the borders were marked with wooden stakes.

Modern engineers are demonstrating how, with the technology available to ancient people, a structure like Stonehenge can be erected.

Scientists interpret ancient texts and drawings differently

Studying ancient art, one must understand that texts filled with metaphors and descriptions of miracles provide a very wide field for interpretation. The aforementioned "heavenly fire" may well be ordinary lightning, not nuclear weapons.

The same is with the drawings - they are schematic, not precise. For example, the size of the figures among the ancient Egyptians spoke of the status of a person. The "astronaut's helmet" on the statuette may represent a part of a ritual costume or a headdress, and not indicate a meeting with an alien. And in general it is not clear: why should ancient alien travelers look like modern astronauts?

Why you should be skeptical about paleocontact ideas

The work of paleocontacts, although based on a completely viable hypothesis, does not properly consider it. In them, the authors select facts that support their concepts, but do not bother to check all the rest. In addition, they often draw on outdated or marginal sources, and as a result, their conclusions have nothing to do with science.

These theories ignore simple explanations in favor of complex heaps of speculation. They look for patterns where there are none, and end up creating a theory that cannot be tested. After all, there is not a single alien civilization near the side of mankind.

Paleocontact can even be attributed to new religions. It takes a firm place in the worldview of people who believe in conspiracies and pseudoscience.

However, theories of paleocontact still have one plus: they have become a source of inspiration for many science fiction writers.