AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Ancient space aliens1/13/2024 ![]() And, of course, Lovecraft frequently suggests that various ancient gods were really aliens, in stories ranging from “ Dagon” to “The Call of Cthulhu” itself. Lovecraft’s “ At the Mountains of Madness” follows explorers who discover prehistoric ruins created by extraterrestrials under the ice of Antarctica the Ancient Aliens episodes “Pyramids of Antarctica” and “Return to Antarctica” hit the same themes. In the short story “ Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” (also known as "Under the Pyramids"), Lovecraft proposes that the Egyptian sphinx represented a real alien creature in the episode “Mysteries of the Sphinx,” Ancient Aliens claims the exact same thing. Von Däniken and The History Channel popularized these concepts for a new audience, and many episodes of Ancient Aliens seem drawn almost directly from Lovecraft’s fiction. “They presented the themes found in Lovecraft as nonfiction,” Colavito writes of their 1960 book, The Morning of the Magicians, “speculating about such alternative history touchstones as the ‘true’ origin of the Egyptian pyramids, ancient maps that appear to have been drawn from outer space, advanced technology incongruously placed in the ancient past.” Indeed, in the English version of Extraterrestrial Visitations from Prehistoric Times to the Present, Bergier writes that although Lovecraft was fiction, he collaborated with a known scholar on the Middle East, so “it is not impossible that at least a part of Lovecraft’s myth may be verified when the Empty Quarter is opened to exploration.” Pauwels and Bergier, though familiar with Lovecraft’s writings, apparently missed the memo. In 1934, he wrote in a letter to a friend, “We never, however, try to put it across as an actual hoax but always carefully explain to enquirers that it is 100 fiction.” He even felt “quite guilty every time I hear of someone’s having spent valuable time looking up the Necronomicon at public libraries.” Lovecraft’s stories of gods from beyond the stars visiting a young Earth are fictional, and although he enjoyed crafting his own mythology, he never meant for anyone to actually fall for it. Von Däniken was heavily inspired by two earlier writers, Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier (who reportedly threatened to sue von Däniken for plagiarism), and, as Colavito writes in The Origin of the Space Gods, Pauwels and Bergier cadged it from none other than H.P. While the modern craze for ancient aliens can be blamed on von Däniken, whose many books have sold tens of millions of copies and promoted the same ideas as Ancient Aliens-on which he is a consulting producer-he didn’t come up with the idea. Lovecraft And Extraterrestrial Pop Culture argues, they trace back to Lovecraft. But these arguments aren’t based on archaeological evidence: As Jason Colavito, author of The Cult of Alien Gods : H.P. It’s not hard to find a meme pointing out how similar the Egyptian and Mesoamerican pyramids are, despite being on separate continents, or a sci-fi movie that claims the Maya calendar contains prophetic knowledge of when the world will end. Since 1968, when Erich von Däniken’s first book Chariots of the Gods? introduced ancient aliens to popular culture, the idea that mysterious prehistoric relics could potentially hide extraterrestrial secrets has wormed its way into the collective consciousness. Perhaps that explains the popularity of Ancient Aliens, which has been on the air for 10 years. The similarities between Lovecraft’s ideas and those of the people who produce Ancient Aliens aren’t a coincidence.Īccording to a 2018 survey, 41 percent of Americans believe aliens have visited Earth in our ancient past. It's not Ancient Aliens, though this summary is actually the plot of “The Call of Cthulhu,” a short story published in 1928 by H.P. The plot sounds eerily similar to those heard on Ancient Aliens, a show that bills itself as a documentary exploring the theory that aliens have been visiting Earth for millennia, leaving behind pyramids, stone circles, and crystal skulls along the way. Hopefully you don’t need to be told that the above account is entirely fictional-but if you watch the History Channel, it might ring some bells. Scientists conclude that the stone can't be found on Earth, and further research proves that the answer is obvious: Aliens brought the statue to Earth long ago. Soon, a third statue appears on a small island near Australia. It’s similar to one presented to the annual meeting of the American Archaeological Society many years earlier experts back then were unable to identify the art style or ancient culture to which it belonged. The writing isn’t a match for any known language-but this statue isn’t the first of its kind the scientific community has seen. Its base is labeled with hieroglyphs, and the figure above it is obviously inhuman. A strange statue turns up in New England.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |