This weekend, Jimmy Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast, posted a 21-minute YouTube video documenting the 100 hours he spent at the Giza pyramids with the permission of the Egyptian government, which closed the site for his video shoot. Donaldson toured the pyramids, the Sphinx, and the associated temples with the help of Ramy Romany from Ancient Aliens and Zahi Hawass and he repeatedly referenced the ancient astronaut theory and/or a lost civilization in discussing the pyramids.
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Each year, it’s a little more difficult to write a seemingly lighthearted review of the year in weird. This year was both personally and professionally a bit of a struggle as A.I. continues to eat away at my day job and the closure or collapse of a number of media outlets has made it more difficult place stories in paying publications. I lost my gig as a CNN Opinion columnist right when it was starting because CNN shuttered the entire division. As the year came to an end, about one-third of my income for the year remains outstanding from businesses that are dragging their feet on payments and have been since early fall. That has made it difficult to devote too much energy to caring about whatever old claims the usual cadre of kooks and weirdos are recycling on any given day.
Archaeologist Ed Barnhart appeared on Lex Fridman’s podcast this week to spend more than three hours (!) discussing “lost civilizations” and ancient history. During the conversation, Barnhart called Graham Hancock a “great researcher,” agreed with the idea that the Amazon rainforest had been intentionally planted by a lost civilization, and dissembled when asked directly about the ancient astronaut theory. I suppose there isn’t much one can do to respond to questions about aliens when your entire claim to fame rests on your regular appearances as a cast member on Ancient Aliens, but asserting that Hancock is a great researcher is so silly—Hancock’s sources are often wildly outdated, he misrepresents material at will, and he is highly selective in his cherry-picking—that this can only be either an attempt to jump on the Ancient Apocalypse bandwagon or a preview of an appearance on that show later this month. And if you are wondering: Recent research found that parts of the Amazon were altered by ancient agriculture, resulting in a nutrient rich terra preta soil in and around ancient settlements, but this is a far cry from assuming the entire Amazon basin was artificially planned and planted by Atlantis. The best estimates are that terra preta covers less than 3% of the Amazon, and probably closer to 0.3%, though some put the figure as high as 10%.
Since Ancient Aliens is on hiatus to avoid competing with the Olympics, I thought it would be safe to take my on to the local aquarium. Surely a display of tropical fish must be free of the insidious mythology of space invaders. Ah, but I was wrong. Since last we visited, the aquarium opened a hall of animatronics offering, in either promise or threat, dinosaurs and “legendary creatures.” The disappointing attraction featured credulous displays about griffins and Bigfoot before reaching a crescendo in a hall where Ancient Aliens clips played on a big screen beside this janky diorama of extraterrestrials. It was not worth the upcharge.
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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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