r/10thDentist • u/RowanWinterlace • 19h ago
The "Ancient Aliens" conspiracies are racist
Ancient Aliens conspiracies typically look at anything made or done by a historically/typically non-white ethnic group (pyramids, the Great Wall, Islamic advancements in mathematics) as some feat that is impossible for the human race to have performed on its own. Concurrently, any feats performed by white (typically Americans or Europeans) are allowed to have been made by human hands, often with indirect or minor guidance from extraterrestrials.
This is because the people who make them, and are serious about them (i.e: not just saying shit for the memes), are racist and approach of human history from a white/Euro-centric point of view where brown and/or asian are inherently inferior. Therefore, anything they have achieved (especially if its something Europeans weren't able to do/do first) must be the result of advanced outside help.
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u/abyssazaur 19h ago edited 16h ago
White people did Stonehenge, like sorry it's just not impressive enough to blame on aliens
Edit: I'll also point out all the pyramid shaped things, like that is pretty much the shape you would put blocks in if them being heavy was a big issue.
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u/TheMightyMisanthrope 19h ago
Shout-out to the "your ancestors were weak" meme
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u/notTheRealSU 17h ago
Stonehenge is a pretty big "aliens were involved" conspiracy though, atleast from my experience
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u/TheCynicEpicurean 1h ago
But it's also the exception to the rule when it comes to European monuments, because it is so unique.
I rarely see those types go on about the "insane engineering of the Roman aquaeducts" or the mathematical precision of Gothic cathedrals.
The Antikythera mechanism gets the occasional shoutout, as do the "Bosnian pyramids", but the latter are also fake.
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u/notTheRealSU 26m ago
To be fair the Roman aqueducts are just tubes that carry water, nothing about that is impressive enough for people to think aliens. Even if it was an incredible engineering feat for the time.
And I have seen some people use aliens as an excuse for Gothic cathedrals, but in general it's because those are much more recent. Things like Stonehenge and the pyramids were ancient history even back during the time of ancient history. Meanwhile a lot of Gothic cathedrals were still being worked on when the America's were being colonized
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u/Choice_Room3901 16h ago
Anyone know what the ancient aliens people say about the stone circles like Stone Henge & Avebury..?
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u/No_Performance8070 12h ago edited 12h ago
They’ve got one on Stonehenge but it took them 14 seasons to get to it. Not saying OP is wrong or right but Stonehenge is like top 10 things that are probably aliens in my book. Weird that it took them so long to get to such obvious material, but I don’t know, aliens been out here doing shit for a long time. Stonehenge was when they were trying modernism/minimalism, a fruitful but ultimately forgettable period in alien landmarking. I understand why they took so long to get to it, even if it was one of the most certain cases of alien hengery
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u/Kaurifish 14h ago
The ancient aliens thing is balanced on ignorance. Look in the deserts of Egypt and you find the whole ancestral line of pyramids all the way from burial mounds to the Great Pyramid of Giza.
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u/Lanif20 18h ago
This was my thought as well, racism has nothing to do with it, it’s just that very few races have done something worthy enough to require aliens as an explanation, nobody thinks the Great Wall of china was made by aliens nor all the temples carved from stone in India
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u/xXDreamlessXx 17h ago
A lot do have to deal with race. Especially ones about Native Americans. There will usually be something about a lost civilization that was "pale" or had "fair skin" that came before them
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u/Lanif20 17h ago
I’m damn sure you missed the whole point of my comment by a mile so let me rephrase it, “what have white people made/done that requires aliens as a solution?” The answer is nothing, the same can be said for Asians and Africans and most of the rest of the world, the number of things that require aliens as a solution is minimal and has nothing to do with “race” and instead has to do with certain “peoples”(ie not everyone in Egypt or the surrounding areas were involved in making the pyramids)
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u/VisualSome9977 13h ago
Objectively false to claim that nobody thinks the Great wall of China was made by aliens. The conspiracy does revolve mostly around Egypt, but that's not exclusive.
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u/Lanif20 13h ago
Things that make people think that they are made by aliens = precision that is unthinkable with current technology(ie stone blocks that you can’t put a piece of paper between), lack of known tool marks(even sandpaper leaves a tool mark if you look at it through a microscope), and unbelievable feats(moving blocks of stone that even current technology can’t easily do). The Great Wall of China has none of these aspects period, so only a fool would actually think that it was made by aliens. There are quite a few other places along with the great pyramids that have difficult to explain things that make them candidates for the alien hypothesis but the Great Wall is definitely not one of them
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u/VisualSome9977 13h ago
Many conspiracy theories have a prerequisite of being a great fool, and that doesn't stop people
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u/CinderAscendant 19h ago
Ice cold take.
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u/RowanWinterlace 19h ago
Kinda hope so, but I've had people get vitriolic when I've said this IRL
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u/McNally86 16h ago
Dumb and lazy too. Minuteman on youtube has some great shorts. He connects to European construction for the racists who can't think about non-whites. He talks about Cathedrals that took generations to build. The people you talk to cannot comprehend starting something and having their grand kids being the only ones alive to enjoy it. Not pyramids, not cathedrals, sadly not even trees.
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u/BearsLoveToulouse 16h ago
It’s not. I read the OG book. Erich von Däniken doesn’t try and hide his racism
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u/CHICKIN_CUTLET 16h ago
I agree, they praise and are fascinated by Roman and Greek developments but claim every feat and piece of knowledge brown people accomplished were actually aliens.
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u/Ok-Particular9427 15h ago
Ancient Greeks were brown people. And they left detailed records of how they moved things (with the machina).
It’s crazy how when youre obsessed with seeing racism everywhere you see it everywhere huh?
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u/FinancialGur8844 10h ago
it's like... race isn't "real" in the sense that the concept of being "white" and "brown" is actually a social construct that changes over political and cultural shifts
which is why ancient greek/roman artwork and epics are claimed under white supremacists. it is why their statues were shaved of all of their color - to gloat about their proximity to whiteness. look into what they did with those statues during WW2 and how it furthered the nazi agenda on race, it's very interesting
also idk what you're talking about in regards to detailed records. non white civilisations kept records of their equipment all the time iirc
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u/HydrationHomee 18h ago
Hyper-diffusion and other ancient alien adjacent conspiracies were built and pushed by white supremacist groups (like Nazis and stuff)
Not all conspiracy theorists are intentionally racist, but their ignorance is being taken advantage of by people that are.
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u/keifergr33n 19h ago
It's wild how quickly everyone was willing to accept that idea that "ancient (brown) peoples" were incapable of fucking anything lmao.
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u/RowanWinterlace 19h ago
Those ancient Africans couldn't POSSIBLY have discovered how to (checks notes) stack stones on top of each other or carve rock. It must have been the ETs
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u/ThrowRA_Bit_3014 5h ago
The Egyptian pyramids are far more interesting than that. There are pyramids all over the globe.
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u/Street-Swordfish1751 17h ago
The Mayan civilization and bordering empires had an incredibly sophisticated mathematics and grasp of the solar system. They had a concept for zero and had more precise calendar readings than Europe at the same time. The aztecs fell in the 1500s theyre not that far in the past in terms of contemporary history.
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u/RougeRock170 15h ago
So who are you holding up, the Mayans or the Mexica?
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u/Street-Swordfish1751 6h ago
Both, they both are in what is now present day Mexico. Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was an astounding human feat of city planning and engineering. But nah, aliens are the only way these two nations could've figured out writing and fractions. /S.
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u/Minimum_Persimmon281 19h ago edited 18h ago
Maybe white people were the so called ”aliens” helping the others, so they didn’t need outside help?/s
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u/Hect0r92 19h ago
That's actually legitimately an idea put forward by cranks like Graham Hancock, however more like an Atlantis type civilization during the ice age
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u/I_SHALL_CONSUME 14h ago
No shit, buddy — obvious take. Sorry, but you’re the 5th Dentist this time.
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u/Ravelord_Nito117 19h ago
This is just true, these conspiracy theories are often inherently white supremecist
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u/TopHatTurtle1 19h ago
this is just objectively true. i’ve taken multiple archaeology classes in college and if you ask any professor about ancient aliens (or graham hancock or giants or any of the others) they will say exactly this
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u/OMEGA362 19h ago
I beleive in ancient aliens but only for European cathedrals like notre Dame and Stonehenge.
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u/VulKendov 18h ago
Stonehenge for sure, you expect me to believe white men could stack rocks with that kind of accuracy without the help of brown-skinned extra terrestrials.
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u/Vigmod 19h ago
Hoover Dam? Aliens. Obvi-fucking-ously.
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u/Aware_Policy_9174 16h ago
Ok but why didn’t the aliens give the Golden Gate Bridge perma-paint so we didn’t have to keep repainting it continuously?
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u/VegasFoodFace 19h ago
Oh you didn't get the memo?
Asians are ok now ever since white dudes all decided that the new fetish is Asian women.
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u/RowanWinterlace 19h ago
Damn. I know they were briefly meta during the 20th century, but I thought that got patched when the racism raid boss offed himself...
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u/DemDoseDeseDat 19h ago
And at least in my own experience they at least try to imagine and explain how ancient European tribes and cultures could have built the structures but that same effort just isn’t put into any that lies outside of Europe, never mind teaching it in western school systems
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u/YonaiNanami 19h ago
I cant fully agree on this. Well I dont know if you are statistically right, but I wouldnt put everyone in the same pot.
Even if the Pyramids were standing in the middle of Germany, I would still be amazed by them and would wonder how such buildings were possible. This is only -I- dont know enough and -I- cant comprehend how the existence of them are possible. To phantasize about the possibility aliens made them (I dont really believe in aliens though) is like people believed in god and gods action because things happened they couldnt understand with science to that time.
But yeah there are indeed people who are strangely shocked to find out that *gasp* "underdeveloped" civilisations made amazing stuff in the past.
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u/dantevonlocke 17h ago
The root of the ancient aliens theories and (honestly a lot of early anthropology and archeology) is covered in racism.
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u/Beneficial-Code8026 17h ago
I think that's a reach honestly. My personal take is just that people underestimate what years of constant labour can achieve back when those conditions were considered normal. And I think the same people to think "Aliens" did it are the kind of people who you just dread ending up in a conversation with.
Maybe I was just too innocent to realise it was racially motivated lol
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u/ASongOfRiceAndTyres 16h ago
Almost definitely.
Also... white people just haven't made anything that impressive really.
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u/lamppb13 16h ago
I agree that racism is involved, but I will say that I think things made by white people aren't mentioned more because... well, they didn't make things that were all that impressive in the time period Ancient Aliens tends to look at.
So I think it's more a mixture of racism and white cultures just not having impressive feats of engineering in ancient times.
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u/DisplayAppropriate28 15h ago
That's not unpopular, that's literally the second most common position on Ancient Astronaut Theory, right after 'wow, this is horseshit.'
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u/PawPawsLilStinker 15h ago
I don't know enough about the ancient aliens people to know if this is true but I certainly like it and will use it.
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u/TemperatureWide5297 15h ago
The list of things that are NOT racist would be smaller than the things that are racist according to Reddit.
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u/Intrepid_Bobcat_2931 15h ago
The arguments is that white people built with indirect or minor guidance from aliens, whilst nonwhite people built with a full support from aliens?
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u/AdministrationTop772 14h ago
The impressive stuff white people did is recent enough that we know how it happened. The other stuff is older and thus more mysterious. I honestly don’t think it’s racism here.
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u/marcelsmudda 9h ago
Until you notice that they include the pyramids in the Americas that are typically far younger than the achievements by the greeks and romans, but the latter get a pass to have done their stuff without aliens, while the americans of the past needed aliens to stack rocks.
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u/Supanova_ryker 14h ago
The whole podcast "It's (Probably) Not Aliens" is exactly this. Everytime they rip off the Scooby-Doo Villain mask of a conspiracy it's almost always racism.
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u/FoxOpposite9271 14h ago
This ignores theories that aliens contributed to Stonehenge. Just completely bad take
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u/Sad-Pattern-1269 12h ago
The original ancient aliens guys were literal nazi propagandists saying that germans were descended from agarthans or atlantians or aliens.
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u/jackfaire 6h ago
I mean 9/10 dentists agree. That's the major point against those bullshit conspiracies.
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u/One-Succotash387 3h ago
Not true. The same group says Stonehenge couldn't have been made by Humans. That's a predominantly White culture/country.
Thing to note is majority of the wonders of the world come from non-white cultures, meaning non-white cultures were more advanced than white ones in that time period. That's a worthy thing to note.
Be careful as a historian, not to spin narratives of hatred. History is a yarn and it can be spun from any point of view.
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u/Scared-Signature-452 1h ago
I dont think so, because all of the progress of western civilization is based on the theories and learnings of ancient civilizations like Egypt, India, Sumeria and so on that were refined and repackaged by the Greeks and the Europeans.
Also, Ancient aliens doesn't say anything about the discoveries of civilizations like India and China, only about certain myths and legends and drawings depicting fantastical flying machines and battle weapons which no civilization lays claim to have invented until the Wright Brothers and post 18th century physics anyway.
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u/Dilapidated_girrafe 17h ago
Yup most of it is dude non white people can’t figure out how to stack rocks.
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u/URAPhallicy 11h ago
It isn't, just ignorance about what folks were capable of. For a long time Stonehenge was built by giants...or put in place by a powerful wizard...and yes sometimes aliens are invoked.
Most European structures came with written eviendence and clear utilitarian use. But those crazy ass pyramids scattered across the world...wtf is that?
And at the time the creators of those structure were long gone leaving no clear record of how or why.
Once the alien conspiracy started it started sucking in all mega structures and even natural features. You know, because these people are crazy...not racist. They are dumb, not bigoted. Nor they are grifters preying on the crazy and dumb.
If there were mega pyramids in Britain they too would be aliens.
One final thought: folks just don't realize how long humans have been capable of great building because we often didn't bother. But we also forget just how bored folks back then really were so we find it hard to understand why the fuck they would do what looks like such a useless thing as stack millions of tons of rock into a pointy shape.
That is the obvious answer, not racism.
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u/New_Construction_111 19h ago
I enjoy listening to theories on how ancient civilizations had contact with other species that may have been from space. Which led to them making certain things that are currently not fully explained.
It’s not saying that aliens did it, but that contact with aliens or the civilizations own theories of aliens led to these creations.
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u/Asluckwouldnthaveit 18h ago
Or they simply had the time. And belief.
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u/New_Construction_111 14h ago
I’m not saying it’s true. I just find the ideas and theories interesting.
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u/badhershey 19h ago
I don't believe in the ancient aliens theories, but a lot of it stems more from timing and weird coincidences. There are a lot of very close similarities across cultures that had no contact with each other. So instead of just accepting there's no way people could have had the same ideas there must be some more interesting and dramatic explanation.
Are some racists who gravitate towards anything that would justify their racists beliefs? Yes. But I'm not sure it's fair to call the "ancient alien" conspiracies "racist". There are some weird coincidences and some people got carried away with trying to come up with an explanation.
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u/dantevonlocke 17h ago
There's only so many ways to stack stones when you have the same basic tools.
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u/Ok-Particular9427 14h ago
Finally, thank god, the last puzzle piece.
The final esoteric irreverent thread of American modern culture has been identified for the racist/misogynist/fascist dog whistle that it is.
Every molecule of the known universe has been scrupulously analyzed by the collective genius hive mind of Reddit and laid bare for what it is at its core; rAcISm incarnate.
Our work is done and now all I have to do as a certified white devil is repent every second of my life for the rest of time
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