Ancient Aliens Essay
Professor Stacy Taylor
23 January 2012
This essay is written on the Reality TV series, Ancient Aliens. It airs Wednesday nights at 9pm on The History Channel. The series first aired on March 8, 2009 and will begin its fourth season on February 17th, 2011. To date there have been 32 episodes. Generally, this show takes the viewer down a road of hidden treasures, unexplained structures, historical data, etc. in an attempt to prove that earth was visited by aliens thousands of years ago and shared with us their intelligence. This phenomenon has long been a controversial topic for many but the “alien theorists” in this show are fully convinced that this is the case. These “alien theorists” can seem to find no other explanation for the many artifacts and structures that have been scattered across the globe. The intended audience would be anyone from about twelve years old and up. This is by my own judgment due to the fact there were no commercials as I watched the episodes on Netflix. It seems to be an interesting documentary for any age however, especially for anyone interested in history, technology and science…and I guess anyone interested in the whole alien thing. It is rated PG which I believe is appropriate.
The episodes I watched were “The Evidence”, “The Return” and “Unexplained Structures”. According to the researchers on this show there is so-called proof that something or someone visited earth thousands of years ago and left clues to our current technology. How do they find a small hand-carved wooden model of what looks to be an airplane in an ancient Egyptian land, build a full scale model based on that alone and it actually flies and is identical to the planes we fly today? How is it that we have pyramids and huge stone structures weighing tons that are precisely carved and stacked atop one another when there was no equipment available then? How do we have certain artifacts that point directly to the technology we use today? These questions are what this show attempts to answer.
The general theme of the show is to try to persuade the viewer that these clues, this evidence proves that aliens either built these structures or left the artifacts to somehow “help” us in the future. What little music there was had a mysterious tone to it at times and just plain weird at others. Typically the sounds were not matched with any particular character because the music went more with the subject being documented or explained.
It is a good show if you have an interest in these sorts of things. It is very interesting and I guess they could easily sway you into thinking these things were true if you were gullible enough. It does have a certain appeal to it just in the fact there is a lot of history talked about. I find myself actually intrigued by it but still haven’t fallen into believing their conclusions. I’m not sure how it compares to similar shows since I do not watch these types of shows but from what I have seen it seems much like others in the same genre. I would say this show may distract the viewer from the reality that these things could’ve just been done by extremely intelligent and capable humans. I mean after all they actually worked hard back in the day. And I guess overall it does attempt to delude the audience as they most always conclude that it is aliens or some unseen force. It is very possible that much of what we see as new today could have been a reality thousands of years ago, it may just be that the evidence had not been found yet or the ability to make it a reality wasn’t there . Surprisingly, I actually became very interested in it. There was a segment in the episode “unexplained structures” where they were talking about a buried civilization in Sanliurfa, Turkey. This site was discovered in 1994 by a local shepherd who noticed the tip of a stone sticking out of his field. Initially he uncovered a 19 foot pillar with the carving of a strange animal at the center. Through the years many more have been uncovered. This site would later be named “Gobekli Tepe” meaning “belly hill” in Turkish. It was named this due to its rounded top that sits about 50 feet above the landscape that surrounds it. This site is said to be dated back to the end of the last ice age, putting it far earlier than Biblical times. There is much controversy over this as some say it could even mark the site of the Garden of Eden. Upon further web searches I found some contradictory information on this particular site, i.e. who really discovered it, when and how it actually came into existence.
The reality of this show is questionable. By that I mean it’s hard to know what is real and what the producers and writers either misinterpreted or made up to make the show interesting. The narrator sections may be scripted but the “investigators” if you will, seem to be speaking from experience and as a result of their studies on the particular topic. I feel as though these guys are on to something but I’m not sure I buy into the only conclusion being aliens. It was kind of funny watching the intent on the faces and feeling of some of the theorists as they spoke about things that really couldn’t be explained. The viewer really needs to pay attention to the words and phrasing that are used throughout this show. Many times they will say “people believe” or “we believe” and by the end of the show the viewer is believing! It is very interesting how we as humans can be easily influenced or persuaded to believing and acting a certain way just because somebody else says it.
I chose this show to watch because it was suggested to me by my son. I typically do not watch any shows on paranormal, UFO’s aliens etc. I tried to watch some of the fiction-based shows listed but I have a real hard time watching shows about murders and such and really have no desire for them. I figured this was as close as I would get to watching something I could write about for this class. It did have a certain appeal to me since it was mysterious and possibly educational at the same time. I didn’t expect to have my views or beliefs compromised by this particular show but it does leave a lot to be questioned. I really am not sure if it met my expectations however, I was intrigued. And isn’t that what most shows want? They just leave you thirsty for more and give no real answers. If we had all the answers we would have no motivation to do anything or investigate further, right?
“The Evidence” Ancient Aliens. History Channel, 4 July 2010. Netflix 17 Jan. 2012
“Unexplained Structures”. Ancient Aliens.History Channel, 16 December 2010. Netflix 18 Jan. 2012
“Aliens and the Creation of Man”. Ancient Aliens. History Channel, 23 Nov. 2011. Netflix 23 Jan. 2012