Continuing our theme of the Lovecraftian in old art, I thought I'd offer another selection from Land and Sea by J. W. Breul (1887). Today's selection is the Ya-Te-Veo, a supposedly man-eating plant found in Central America and Africa that bears a distinct resemblance to Lovecraft's tentacle-bearing monsters. Its name translates literally from the Portuguese as "I see you." However, while this plant enjoyed a brief run of popularity, it does not actually exist. It perhaps derives from mangled and exaggerated tales of small, carnivorous plants like the Nepenthes raja, first discovered in 1858. (Or, less likely, encounters with Lovect Old Ones.) The Ya-Te-Veo is perhaps the first entry in the annals of cryptozoology's plant-based cousin, cryptobotany.
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Since it's a holiday today in the United States and Canada, I thought I'd take a day off from deep thoughts and offer a piece of weird old art from my collection.
Playing by the rules of alternative history and the ancient astronaut theory, it becomes possible to make any sort of "discovery" one wishes, even those that aren't true. For example, the Zuni people of New Mexico preserve a peculiar legend that, taken at face value, seems to imply that they believe themselves to be the descendants of H. P. Lovecraft's fictional Deep Ones from The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Let's go to the "ancient texts."
Here is how the Zuni creation myth describes the ancestors of the Zuni people: Men and creatures were more alike then than now. Our fathers were black, like the caves they came from; their skins were cold and scaly like those of mud creatures; their eyes were goggled like an owl’s; their ears were like those of cave bats; their feet were webbed like those of walkers in wet and soft places; they had tails, long or short, as they were old or young. Men crouched when they walked, or crawled along the ground like lizards. They feared to walk straight, but crouched as before time they had in their cave worlds, that they might not stumble or fall in the uncertain light. Source: Katharine Berry Judson (ed.), Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1912), 24. Now, let's look at how Lovecraft describes that Deep Ones in Shadow Over Innsmouth: I think their predominant colour was a greyish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. […] Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked. Aside from the matter of color (a regional variation, perhaps?), these creatures are identical. Of course we all know there is no such thing as Deep Ones. This forces us to ask the question: If we can find fictional creatures in "ancient texts" and myths using the methods of alternative history, what possible basis is there for assuming the aliens and Atlanteans and Muvians alternative historians find in them really exist? Ancient astronaut theorists and alternative historians of all stripes--from Atlantis theorists to Afrocentrists--favor some form or another of hyperdiffusionism, the theory that ancient cultures traveled widely and influenced the development of other ancient cultures. Though there is little to no evidence for widespread communication between the New World and the Old, or direct contact between Europe and Asia or Asia and America, these theories refuse to die.
Here is an interesting set of images from a nineteenth century book about the history of England that attempted an early diffusionist theory, that there was a widespread ancient Druid priesthood stretching from Iran to Ireland responsible for megalithic construction. The book in question, Charles Knight's Old England: A Pictorial Museum (1845) claimed that the rather romantic scenes below, from Darius-gerd in Persia, now Darabgird, Iran, were indistinguishable from the culture that created Stonehenge. (Later research showed Darabgird dates from the third century CE.) This past week History’s Ancient Aliens used not one but two known hoaxes as actual “evidence” for alien intervention in America’s founding. Since the standard of evidence used by television’s so-called “experts” is now complete fabrication, I have a list of some other “evidence” that ancient astronaut theorists should be sure to use in upcoming episodes:
Lucian’s True History The ancient satirist Lucian wrote a treatise describing how a water spout (surely an alien tractor beam) carried his ship to the moon where he was forced to do battle with aliens. This ancient text is a firsthand account of an extraterrestrial moon base. Sure, Lucian claims his True History is merely “fiction,” but when hunting aliens we all know that “historians” and “scientists” use the word “fiction” to keep us from learning the truth! The 1835 discovery of aliens on the moon In 1835, New York Sun reporter Richard Adams Locke “reported” on the discovery of a civilization of bat-winged aliens living on the moon. According to Locke, the evidence was printed in a (non-existent) scientific journal article by John Herschell. There were even drawings. Sure, this hoax was “debunked” shortly after its publication, but that shouldn’t stop ancient astronaut theorists. Obviously, these were the aliens Lucian had written about. Aliens! On the moon! History Channel gold. The Cardiff Giant The Bible says there were “giants in the earth in those days” (Gen. 6:4), and we all know the “giants” were genetically engineered alien spawn. Where better to “prove” their existence than with the 1869 “discovery” of the Cardiff Giant, a petrified stone man? Sure, this hoax was “debunked” by “scientists” shortly after the giant was put on display, but that shouldn’t stop ancient astronaut theorists. Some carnival hucksters continued to proclaim its reality into the twentieth century, so that should be good enough for the History Channel! The canals on Mars Percival Lowell was a famous scientist, so if he saw evidence of aliens it must be true! Lowell claimed to see canals on the surface of Mars, prompting him to speculate about an advanced civilization using canals to water the dry planet’s surface. While later “research” by “scientists” “proved” that the canals were simply an artifact of blurry, low resolution telescopes combined with wishful thinking, how can we reject a respected scientist’s conclusion that Mars has ancient aliens? Who are you going to believe, Ancient Aliens or your own eyes? There was a death in my family this week, so you will forgive me if I am less than enthusiastic about putting up with Ancient Aliens’ bullshit today, including the use of at least two known hoaxes as “evidence.” Last night’s episode, “Aliens and the Founding Fathers,” spent an hour suggesting that America’s founders were the recipients of extraterrestrial wisdom. But it was telling that most of the talking heads were not ancient astronaut theorists (AATs), and it was mostly left to the voiceover narration to launch into speculation about George Washington et al.’s alien encounters.
The majority of the episode featured warmed-over conspiracy theories about the Freemasons, long debunked, and occult theorizing about the Masonic symbolism of Washington, D.C.’s architecture leftover from other, sturdier History Channel programs. As the “experts” interviewed on Ancient Aliens strained to force E.T. into their prefabricated conspiracies—one talking head actually said that one could call a “heavenly being” seen by George Washington an extraterrestrial but it was a “heavenly being”—it was quite obvious that the program existed primarily as thematic lead-in and cross-promotional opportunity for Brad Meltzer’s Decoded, which does cryptographic fantasies much better. As with Ancient Aliens’ earlier episode devoted to promoting the movie Cowboys & Aliens, an alleged “truth” came a distant second to the commercial necessities of corporate synergy. The main lines of “evidence” were laughably bad—not to mention fraudulent. One piece of evidence was an alleged vision George Washington had of a “heavenly being” that showed him “the birth, progress, and destiny of the Republic of the United States” while at Valley Forge. AAT Giorgio Tsoukalos and Ancient Aliens took this as a genuine vision (albeit of an "alien" and not an angel) reported by the 99-year-old Anthony Sherman, a (non-existent) former aid to Washington, in 1859, as told to Wesley Bradshaw. In fact, this is a well-known hoax concocted by Charles W. Alexander, the actual author of the piece, in 1861, at the start of the Civil War. It was intended as fiction, hence the anachronistic references to the “Union” projected back to 1777-1778. Another claim made by Ancient Aliens, that Washington was visited by “Greenskins,” or alien beings, derives entirely from hoax diaries allegedly found in a Scottish castle in the 1990s and later reported on by a British tabloid reporter in the Sun. As far as I can tell, such diaries have never been published and in all likelihood do not exist. After seeing credence given to a hoax exposed at least as early as 1917 and another with no supporting evidence whatsoever, what purpose is there in bothering to examine the AATs' other “evidence”? Whopper of the week: The dumbest claim has to be that the streets of Washington, D.C. were laid out in the shape of a five-pointed star to communicate to the aliens that we “respect” them. Do I even have to mention that real stars do not have points, and the convention of five points on a star would have no relevance whatsoever to beings unfamiliar with the convention? Heck, even in Western civilization we don’t always use five points on a star. Sometimes we have four (like many depictions of the star of Bethlehem), six (the asterisk—literally, star), or seven (a sheriff’s badge). One of the repeated tenets of the Ancient Astronaut Theory is that art depicts whatever the ancient astronaut theorist feels it should depict, regardless of the historical context or the intentions of the artist. Thus, anything that is vaguely disc-shaped and in the sky must be a UFO; anything that surrounds a figure's head must be a space helmet. But context matters. The following image courtesy of NOAA could have many interpretations. Let's think about a few.
Yesterday I shared some rough drafts of historical images of Cthulhu that I've drawn. Today, I'd like to share an actual piece of weird illustration I found in my research. Ancient astronaut theorists often claim that ancient art depicts flying saucers, extraterrestrials, and other nonsense. But how about trans-dimensional portals to the outer gulfs of the cosmos?
I thought I would share some rough drafts of illustrations I'm working on for an upcoming potential project on the mythology behind the Cthulhu Mythos. The following images represent "historical" images of Cthulhu's cult statue, as interpreted by various cultures, with scholarly "descriptions" of the pieces of (fake) ancient art.
Since many people on the internet have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction, let me offer this disclaimer: The following images are 100% fake. I drew them myself, and they in no way, shape, or form represent genuine historical images of Great Cthulhu or anyone else. One of the tenets of the ancient astronaut theory is that the extraterrestrials gave ancient humans detailed knowledge about outer space. According to most ancient astronaut theorists (AATs) this is evident in the Book of Enoch, where Enoch is taken up into the sky and instructed on the geography and movements of the heavens (1 Enoch 72-82), which they interpret as an actual trip to outer space. Additionally, in The Sirius Mystery (1976, rev. ed. 1998), Robert Temple argued that the aliens provided the Sumerians with detailed knowledge of the Sirius star system, including its binary (or even triune) nature, and the planet in that system from which the extraterrestrials had ventured to earth. This knowledge, he said (building on a reference in Appendix 1 of Santillana and von Dechend’s Hamlet’s Mill), was retained by the African Dogon tribe down to the present day.
Therefore, in examining ancient Near East mythology, we should expect to see an understanding of outer space from the extensive knowledge the aliens supposedly gave the Sumerians and others. At the most basic level, this should mean that the ancients understood that space was a vast empty territory beyond the earth which could be reached by traveling high enough into the sky, with no barriers between the earth, the planets, the stars, and the galaxies beyond. So what do the Sumerians say about the sky? |
AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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