Exobiology: Ancient Astronauts: Evidence from Archaeology

Exobiology was the original term given to the sciences central to the question of life-in-the-Universe. It’s now been largely replaced by Astrobiology, but I’ll stick with the original. Assuming one or more extraterrestrial civilizations with advanced, interstellar spaceflight capability exists; then they know about Planet Earth. If ‘guess who’s coming to dinner’ came to dinner, it’s far more probable they came to dine eons ago relative to the last several, even many, decades ago. If that’s the case, we call the diners, ‘ancient astronauts’. There’s suggestive evidence for ‘ancient astronauts’ that comes to light via traditional archaeology.

We’ve had the overall general concept of the polytheistic gods as actual extraterrestrial (sky) beings; the Star of Bethlehem event as an associated UFO event, and dragons as a possible example of another extraterrestrial creature, in this case a pet of the ‘gods’. All three rely on mythology. Let’s turn to several hard core archaeological examples suggestive of those ‘ancient astronauts’.

We clearly have ancient myths and legends of sky beings, gods who live in and/or come from the sky, and deities associated with various celestial objects. What sort of ‘nuts-and-bolts’ archaeological evidence might complement this?

Example One: The Nazca Lines are world famous. They basically are etchings (representing various animals and other objects) made in the dry desert plains in Southern Peru that, much like crop circles, can only be really appreciated from the air. In fact they were only discovered in the 1930’s from aircraft flying overhead.   There’s no doubt humans constructed the lines, which took a lot of time, effort and energy, but to what purpose? Certainly they were not runways for flying saucers and astronomical alignments and associated explanations fail too. Since they were clearly meant to be seen from the air and since we’re talking about their construction some 400 to 650 years AD – sort of our pre-flight era – then the most logical explanation is that they were art works for the sky gods to see and appreciate. Each culture honours their gods in their own way.

Example Two: Easter Island – Easter Island, a part of Chile, is stuck way out on its lonesome in the southern Pacific. Somewhere between 1250 and 1500 AD, the local Polynesian inhabitants hacked out of solid volcanic rock, carved and transported roughly 900 of the often rather large and heavy Easter Island stone statues, at quite some considerable expenditure in time, effort and energy, but to what purpose? The purpose certainly wasn’t just for the hell of it – something to occupy their spare time. Firstly, the statues could be up to ten metres tall and weigh up to roughly 80 tonnes. That ain’t small change! The statues are humanoid in overall appearance, but one could hardly call them perfectly human in form, so they were not constructed to represent the Easter Islanders themselves. Who then? Well, each culture honours their gods in their own way, but these gods certainly weren’t created in man’s image. 

Example Three: Tassili n’Ajjer is located in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria. It’s famous for its prehistoric art rock paintings, many of which are really, really weird. One archaeologist dubbed one such art work the ‘Great Martian God’. Humans drew the various images of – well what exactly? Many of the images certainly don’t depict anything terrestrial that’s for sure. Just plug in the term ‘Tassili’ into Google Images for examples, and decide for yourself. 

Example Four: Visoki Dečani is a major Serbian Orthodox Christian monastery located in Kosovo. Within are various murals. On the "The Crucifixion" fresco, painted in 1350, objects similar to UFOs can be found. They represent two comets that look like space ships, with two men inside of them, and are often cited by those interested in ‘ancient astronauts’. The images are certainly striking and again, Google Images can bring up the relevant pictures. You have to decide for yourself, but if not representing really real ‘ancient astronauts’, well then I’m pretty well stumped. 

Example Five: Cylinder Seals date from about 3500 BC in Mesopotamia and surrounding regions. They tell ‘picture stories’ and were engraved on cylinders that could be rolled onto a flat surface like wet clay. The interesting bit is that not only are some images clearly mythological, showing dragons and various gods, but some images are clearly astronomical. Celestial objects abound. No less a scientist than the late Dr. Carl Sagan, is on record (in his co-authored book “Intelligent Life in the Universe”) as noting that some cylinder seals clearly show various extra-solar planetary systems, often in association with specific deities.

Example Six: There are many, many ancient figurines or statues showing beings something less than what we’d call ‘human’. Of the lot, I personally found some of the most striking to be male and female clay figurines dating from the archaeological period called the Obed time or Obed horizon in Mesopotamia, roughly fourth millennium BC, with insect-like heads or at least eyes. In fact the eyes are very striking, and certainly representing nothing terrestrial – they remind me of the modern depiction of the eyes of the UFO-related greys.  

Example Seven: Then there are examples of out-of-place (or time) artefacts. One example is the ‘Greek computer’, a system of clockwork-like gears structure found by sponge divers on a sunken ship which floundered sometime in the first century BC in the Mediterranean Sea. Actually the object was just a crusted lump, but on closer examination, that lump turned out to be some sort of highly sophisticated mechanism with all sorts of complex gear drives, probably some sort of astronomical calendar for calculating the positions of various celestial objects. The device is now in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, and was written up in the journal “Natural History” (March 1962).

Example Eight: The Piri Reis Map is another well known case of something that really shouldn’t be, but is. Piri Reis was a Turkish admiral and cartographer who strutted his stuff in the early 1500’s. The famous map in question shows in considerable detail the coastlines of the Americas, greater detail than exploration of that era would have been possible, plus the opposite side of the Atlantic (which, okay, was pretty well known), but most impressive, parts of coastal Antarctica, a continent which hadn’t yet been discovered (though highly speculated about). However, in fairness, there are enough errors that sceptics can easily dismiss this as evidence of ‘ancient astronauts’ – close, but no cigar.

All of this is hardly proof positive – the ‘smoking gun’ – of extraterrestrial visitors or ‘ancient astronauts’. However, the various threads of highly suggestive evidence continue to build. There’ a lot more to come when turning to the modern era and UFOs.