Major New Survey Finds 1 in 5 Americans Now Believes in Ancient Astronauts

10/28/2015

Chapman University conducted a survey which asked nearly 1,500 Americans about 88 different fears, and it included their beliefs in the paranormal, the supernatural, and the pseudoscientific. The results were about what you would expect in terms of the 40% of Americans who believe in ghosts and the 18% who feel aliens are currently visiting the earth. I was a bit surprised that only 11% of Americans believe Bigfoot is a real creature, but for our purposes the most depressing finding is that 20.3% of Americans—1 in 5!—professed a belief in ancient astronauts. According to sociologist Christopher Bader of Chapman University, who designed the survey, belief in ancient astronauts and other paranormal phenomena is positively correlated with an overall higher level of fear. Bader added that belief in the paranormal was strongest among those with the least education, and those people were also the most fearful.

I suppose it surprises no one that low education, fearful audiences are also the key demographic for cable TV series focusing on the paranormal, the supernatural, and the pseudoscientific.

But I can’t get over the fact that 1 in 5 Americans now believes in ancient astronauts. Technically, the question, which asked whether respondents believe aliens visited earth in the ancient past, could encompass any belief from a lone alien explorer at the dawn of time to the active involvement of aliens in running gold-mining operations in Sumer. It was a little broad.

If those results are generalizable to the entire population, that would translate to more than 60 million Americans. This is a shocking turnaround from a decade ago and almost certainly due to the influence of cable television, specifically the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens. It is, of course, not alone, and over the past few years ancient astronaut programs have aired for hundreds of hours across nearly a dozen major cable channels. In fact, survey results for a belief in ancient astronauts seem to closely correlate with the amount of media focused on the ancient astronaut theory.

Archaeologist Ken Feder surveyed college archaeology students’ attitudes on pseudo-historical claims in the 1984 and again in the 1994 and the early 2000s. The sample size was about 1,000 students per survey. He found that just after the first wave of ancient astronaut excitement had ended, in the 1980s, one in four college students (27%) professed a belief in ancient astronauts, though only mildly. This is in line with a 1986 survey by Peter G. Stone, which noted that Erich von Däniken was the public’s most cited author on archaeology, and the only one most respondents could remember. Ten years afterward, at the start of the 1990s alternative history revival (spurred by nascent cable TV, the Stargate movie, as well as the X-Files), around a third of students (31%) claimed to believe or suspect aliens had a hand in ancient history, and this time they were more certain in their belief. But when Feder repeated the survey in the early 2000s, during the lowest point for the ancient astronaut theory in the media (when even I had assumed it was dead), fewer than 10% of students believed in ancient astronauts. These results were published in 2006 in Garrett Fagan’s Archaeological Fantasies, at a time when there was relatively little pseudo-history on cable TV. (It was the era of ghost hunting and psychics; Ghost Hunters debuted in 2004.) Ancient Aliens would not debut until 2010, following a well-received 2009 two-hour pilot special.

Another survey, conducted three years after Ancient Aliens to promote a competing show on NatGeo, claimed that 36% of Americans believed the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge were clues to ancient astronaut activity and that 77% of Americans believed aliens visited the ancient earth. But I found this survey to be somewhat unreliable due to its use of online polling and email invitations, which almost certainly overstated belief by encouraging participation from self-selecting respondents who were biased in favor of aliens.

While these surveys are not precisely generalizable the same as the Chapman University survey, they do indicate a rather distressing trend: Belief in ancient astronauts, and the strength of that belief, appears to be correlated to how often the media discuss ancient astronauts. In other words, if we map survey results against media coverage, it would appear that media discussion of ancient astronauts precedes expressions of belief in ancient astronauts, thus suggesting not just a correlation but a direct causation whereby TV creates belief.

53 Comments

Mike Jones

10/28/2015 11:08:11 am

"If you build it, they will come." Sadly, critical thinking is not only in decline, it is often derided.

Nobody Knows

10/28/2015 11:17:32 am

>>Sadly, critical thinking is not only in decline, it is often derided.<<

Hence the reason for the popularity and existence of all religions.

10/28/2015 11:22:36 am

Bobo is back. Yawn...

10/28/2015 11:26:13 am

Here's another Film Quote:

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend"

10/28/2015 11:31:01 am

Yawn...

Only Me

10/28/2015 01:22:08 pm

Nobody Knows, you said:

"Hence the reason for the popularity and existence of all religions."

But, you declared five days ago (as Hermes):

"The world has transformed itself into a sceptical, secular and freethinking society. Mission accomplished."

Here's another famous quote: "One of these things is not like the other."

10/28/2015 01:47:01 pm

Religion survives within a secular society, in a secular parliament twinned with atheistic Freemasonry.

10/28/2015 02:28:41 pm

Then your earlier comment was hyperbole. It would have been correct to say, "The world has transformed itself into a *mostly* sceptical, secular and freethinking society."

vcs3

10/28/2015 12:21:32 pm

"I suppose it surprises no one that low education, fearful audiences are also the key demographic for cable TV series focusing on the paranormal, the supernatural, and the pseudoscientific" -- the same people are also the key demographic for the Republican party, and for the right-wing in general.

There, I said it...

Chris

10/28/2015 01:10:29 pm

Go take a look at the survey synopsis to see the other characteristics associated with paranormal belief: non-white, female, unmarried, living in the Northeast. Those really don't represent key demographics for the Republican party. (Yeah, I know you were making a joke, but still.)

Scotty Roberts' Doppleganger

10/28/2015 01:06:16 pm

Speaking of lunatics- Scott Wolter has been announced as a speaker at the cancelled and rescheduled for next year Paradigm Symposium. The circle of stupid is complete.

Pam

10/28/2015 01:07:39 pm

Well this news is depressing if it means there will be more AA. I hoped it would fade away.

The Chapman Survey makes sense to me and their summation of the results reflects what I see around me.

The survey's summation at the end seems correct to me...Lower socioeconomic levels combined with a faith(Catholicism) that, when its members are not well catechized (low church attendance), has doctrines and dogmas that can lead them down an erroneous path (woo-woo) when those doctrines/dogmas are poorly understood.

The fear is what strikes me most and saddens me.

Clete

10/28/2015 01:20:14 pm

I tend to believe that a part of the problem rests with the educational system in the United States. Students are not taught critical thinking and to question. I am always amazed when I talk to people out in the world about how little knowledge they seem to have about history or science. I was talking recently to someone who had just read Bill O'Reilly's book "Killing Patton" and based on that was convince there had been a plot to kill him in 1945. When I told him that based on the three books I had read about Patton written by real historians he had died because of a freak accident and then, because of his age had then died of a pneumonia in an army hospital. I was informed then, that since the world consists of nothing but plots to hide the truth from us, that I was misinformed.

10/28/2015 01:40:32 pm

I agree about the failure of our education system K-12. The experiments started in the 1970s have left most public schools with a mess. If you are fortunate enough to attend private school you can still find Latin, Logic, and actual history courses (instead of the weird and murky social studies).

The kids are often ill prepared for university level work.

DaveR

10/28/2015 03:02:06 pm

Patton's car was struck by a truck being driven by a soldier who was drunk.

10/28/2015 03:11:20 pm

And if I am remembering correctly, he didn't want the soldier to be persecuted for it. No conspiracy, just a sad and tragic accident.

10/29/2015 11:20:52 am

Pam,
That is correct. I remember reading that Patton didn't want a young man's career and life ruined over a stupid mistake.

Hm...it seems to me that perhaps this is a symptom of something deeper. Fear IN GENERAL seems to be more prevalent than it used to be--fear of the economy, fear of climate change, fear of social unrest, etc--in a way that seems to run in cycles. Perhaps this belief in aliens is at least partly a good sign--a sign that the "fear of Other" is no longer acceptably expressed as racism. Or at least that it is significantly less acceptably expressed as racism. Better to have people express fear of something that doesn't exist than it is for them to fear other people that they then cause harm to, right?

10/28/2015 01:29:57 pm

Except most fringe theories, including AAT, still incorporate a lot of the Victorian era racism. Some fringe authors that do this are even defended by others in the fringe community.

It isn't too hard to imagine that someone, having fallen under the spell of such theories, would use those theories to justify any action that *would* cause harm to those they view as the "Other". I keep hoping this won't come to pass, however.

10/28/2015 01:48:51 pm

Only Me,

You criticise Scott Wolter as a Believer in the Bible.
Not as a freethinking rationalist.#

10/28/2015 01:52:44 pm

Please point out the Racist comments in Chariots of the Gods.

10/28/2015 01:55:25 pm

Hey, witness how creationism has been outlawed in American schools, and I believe Religious Education is banned in American schools. And what kind of stipends do American clergy receive?

10/28/2015 02:13:46 pm

1) Actually, I'm able to do so as both.

2) von Däniken’s racist claims are discussed here:
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-astonishing-racial-claims-of-erich-von-daniken

3) And?

10/28/2015 02:25:54 pm

EvD filtered out the Lovecraft stuff found in "Morning of the Magicians"....

10/28/2015 02:31:43 pm

He still made demonstrably racist statements of his own. I think you're dangerously close to defending von Däniken as a believer in AAT, not as a freethinking rationalist.

10/28/2015 02:45:43 pm

So because I cannot see Lovecraft in EvD, I am "defending" him.

Make sure you know that the Bible and Flying Saucers stuff existed before Morning of the Magicians. Before Pauwels and Bergier,

10/28/2015 02:53:18 pm

Yes. You are explicitly trying to imply *only* Lovecraft introduced racism into AAT, while ignoring von Däniken’s own racist remarks, which he included in his book.

As to the Bible and UFO stuff existing prior to /Morning of the Magicians/, no shit Sherlock. Did you completely bypass all of the posts Jason has put up discussing this?

10/28/2015 03:00:51 pm

The Racism argument did not exist in the past and unimportant - "aliens from outer space are superior" constituting racism just doesn't cut.

10/28/2015 03:22:27 pm

>>>The Racism argument did not exist in the past and unimportant<<<

Then why continue to bring up Lovecraft?

>>>"aliens from outer space are superior" constituting racism just doesn't cut.<<<

THIS does:

”Today it is assumed that primitive men had dark skins.”
“Was the black race a failure and did the extraterrestrials change the genetic code by gene surgery and then programme a white or a yellow race?”
“Nearly all negroes are musical: they have rhythm in their blood.”
“Once this basic question is accepted, we cannot and should not avoid the explosive sequel: is there a chosen race?”

And let's not forget this:

[A black family emigrates from its home in the tropical zone of the earth and settles in a cooler region. Pigments change down the generations, dark skins become light, perhaps so light, the negroids become white. Dark skin, say the racial specialists, no longer being necessary as a protection against the sun. OK, but in his new environment the black man would also have to lose his curly hair, his prominent dark eyes and protruding lips, otherwise he could never become a white man. But it’s all quite simple, someone will tell me. The black breeds with a white and there you are...]

All from von Däniken’s /Signs of the Gods/.

10/28/2015 01:48:25 pm

Yes, V. The fear out there really overwhelms some and they're searching for something tangible in which to hope.

I understood this and used to just shrug it off, but it seems (to me) that these beliefs slide so easily into conspiracy and that is troubling.

Nobody KInows

10/28/2015 01:49:39 pm

People cling to religion out of fear.

10/28/2015 01:53:21 pm

Some do, yes, especially when it crosses over into superstition.

10/28/2015 01:56:46 pm

What's the difference between religion and superstition?

10/28/2015 02:31:23 pm

Nobody,

For me, superstition is when you believe or do things because of a fear of the "unknown" or believe that certain things will bring you good/bad luck. That's why I said earlier that certain characteristics of Catholicism can become superstition when they are poorly understood.

I don't know of a "proof" for a supreme being, and I think Aquinas eventually came to that conclusion as well (though I may be wrong).

I think faith, and why some have it and others do not, is a complex thing and people are still debating the topic. I won't do that here.

I understand that you believe "faith" to be a kind of superstition. I'm not out to prove anything to you---I'm not an apologist for any faith.

10/28/2015 02:42:29 pm

Yeah, well, people have been arguing that the Bible has been built out of nothing for centuries. You can even get bibliographies of books on that. Astronomers have even noticed how the stories in Genesis resembled the movement of the constellations (E. W. Maunder, 1908).

And for the record, I consider Freemasonry to be another absurdity.
When I refer to it, it is out of interest in historical context. You just cannot ignore the Freemasonic symbolism on the dollar bill, it's a matter of defining the correct interpretation.

10/28/2015 03:31:16 pm

Nobody,

I've probably read a great many books on your bibliography. The Genesis/zodiac correlation is also something I'm aware of.

You seem to be confusing me with a fundamentalist or young earth creationist. I'm not a "bible only" person. Sorry.

Mason symbols on the US Dollar/ Masonry's place in history:
I deny/ignore nothing. Masonry, as far as I'm concerned, is the latest generation of Gnosticism. I have no fears/worries about it or its symbols on the dollar or on anywhere.

I don't doubt your knowledge of Masonry, but you seem to not understand Christianity and how diverse it truly is. After the Reformation it was every man for himself. Prior to Luther, back in the day of the early Church Fathers, it was a wild and crazy thing...almost from the beginning.

It's never been simple and never will be.

Kathleen Smith

10/28/2015 01:39:41 pm

V, there was a show on PBS last night about the 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast and it also had a discussion on fear and the gullibility of the public. Interesting and timely.

10/28/2015 01:50:32 pm

Lourdes and the belief in miracles is another good example.

Mark link

10/28/2015 02:08:35 pm

I've read - though I've not looked into it myself - that reports of the panic inspired by the broadcast were greatly exaggerated, and based mostly on sensationalistic newspaper headlines...

10/28/2015 03:05:15 pm

I wonder how much of that exaggeration was fanned by Mr. Wells, considering this broadcast pretty much made his career.

10/28/2015 02:34:10 pm

Hi, Jason. I'm a new reader of your blog and I've been enjoying it immensely.

After looking over your links, I just wanted to make a quick comment:

I'm not sure that the difference between the results of Feder's last study and the current Chapman study represent a shocking turnaround. The Feder study collected data from students at a handful of four-year colleges, while the Chapman study cast a much wider net and collected data from the general population. There are going to be differences between those sample populations with respect to class, race, educational opportunity, and more. It wouldn't be that shocking at all to discover that 20% of the general population believe in ancient aliens, while only 10% of four-year college students (i.e. mostly middle class high-school graduates with college-educated parents) believe the same.

Jason Colavito link

10/28/2015 06:18:57 pm

You're quite right, but the trends in college students tend to reflect the overall population when we have data from the same periods to compare (and here other topics Feder surveyed can give us other data points that are easier to compare), so I'd say it's probably a safe bet that there were fewer ancient astronaut believers in the general population 10 years ago than there are today.

10/28/2015 09:57:17 pm

Other data points, even those concerning paranormal beliefs, may or may not be relevant to this discussion.

In this case, it's very difficult to find proper comparisons between college students and the general public, and it's also very difficult to find periodic surveys that ask the questions we need them to ask. The closest direct comparison I've been able to find asks people if they believe that aliens have visited the earth "at some point in the past." Gallup did a poll in 2005 that found 24% of Americans held that belief, while Skeptical Inquirer asked the same question for a poll published in their January/February 2006 issue that found 17% of college students believed the same thing.

This isn't the question we'd like them to have asked, but the results suggest that, in the middle of the 2000s, college students were less likely to believe in past alien visitation than those not in college.

These numbers are tough to compare with the Chapman University survey and Feder's surveys, because they all ask different questions. (Gallup and Skeptical Inquirer ask about aliens visiting "at some point in the past", while Chapman University and Feder ask about aliens visiting in the "ancient past" and the "prehistoric past," respectively.) However, the questions are similar enough, and my own experience suggests that there is enough overlap between the relevant categories (believers in ancient and more recent alien visitation), so I wouldn't personally be as comfortable betting that there were fewer ancient alien believers in the general population ten years ago than today.

And I definitely wouldn't be comfortable comparing Feder's numbers (not just college students, but college students taking an introduction to archaeology course) and Chapman University's numbers (the general population) and suggesting that the difference represents a "shocking turnaround."

http://www.gallup.com/poll/16915/three-four-americans-believe-paranormal.aspx

The Skeptical Inquirer article is behind a paywall, but a summary of the results is available here (where they compare the 2006 Skeptical Inquirer results to Gallup results from 2001, back when a belief in past alien visitation was apparently even stronger):

http://www.livescience.com/564-higher-education-fuels-stronger-belief-ghosts.html

10/29/2015 10:30:55 am

As you note, one of the problems is that the only time pollsters really ask about ancient astronauts is when they are popular in the media, so the snapshots we get tend to reflect moments of popularity. Another problem is that the questions are rather skewed in that "aliens" visiting earth "sometime" in the past has far too broad a range of possibility to be truly useful. Ideally, we'd want to know how many think that aliens had some kind of impact on human history.

10/29/2015 04:32:31 pm

Hi again, Jason. Thanks for responding.

I don't want to be that crank who comes onto your blog and demands all of your time, so this'll probably be my final comment on this particular topic.

First of all, you said that "trends in college students tend to reflect the overall population when we have data from the same periods to compare," and I have shown that this isn't the case. Fewer college students than members of the general public believed in alien visitation in the mid-2000s. It's true that the question asked wasn't ideal, but that's not just something you can handwave away.

It would be a lot more useful if the Gallup and Skeptical Inquirer surveys asked about ancient aliens in particular. Still, it's not an either/or proposition, and there's plenty of overlap between believers in ancient and more recent visits by aliens. For example, you yourself wrote about journalist Raquel Cepeda and her husband who were inspired by their love for "Ancient Aliens" to go on a tour in the desert to watch for very modern UFOs. You also wrote with dismay that musician Skrillex mentioned his love for "Ancient Aliens", but for years, he has been obsessed with all things alien. My own experience suggests that it's pretty difficult to find people who believe in one and not the other.

In 2005, Gallup found that 24% of Americans believed that aliens had visited earth at some point in the past. In 2015, Chapman University found that 20% of Americans believed aliens have visited earth in the ancient past and 18% believed they'd visited more recently. Those categories aren't mutually exclusive, though. If 70% of today's ancient alien believers believed in more modern alien visits, and a little more than 80% of modern alien believers believed in ancient alien visits, then the 2005 and 2015 numbers would be in perfect agreement.

There are, of course, other ways that data could break down. In 2005, more people might have believed in recent alien visitation than ancient aliens or vice versa. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of ancient alien believers might have grown slightly, declined slightly, or stayed about the same. It would be pretty hard to argue that we've seen a "shocking turnaround" from the early 2000s, though. In the end, I don't think you can use the difference between Feder's 10% (of college students taking introductory archaeology courses at four-year colleges) and Chapman University's 20% (of the general population) as evidence of a "shocking" change in affairs.

Bob Jase (busterggi)

10/28/2015 03:38:26 pm

Remember when the television was called 'the idiot box' as a friendly insult?

Damn but AA, Treasure of Oak Island, Missing in Alaska,etc make Soupy Sales look positively educational in retrospect.

And if anyone out there isn't listening to Ken and Sara's podcast then you're missing a great show.

Richard I. Garber link

10/28/2015 11:14:51 pm

Jason:
Look more carefully at the data. 20.3 % agreed but 42.5% disagreed. See my October 23rd blog post on A Somewhat Haunted World:
http://joyfulpublicspeaking.blogspot.com/2015/10/a-somewhat-haunted-world-paranormal.html

10/29/2015 06:04:25 am

Yes, the reverse of 1 in 5 agreeing is that 4 out of 5 do not agree. All the same, that 1 in 5 is still a very large number of people to agree with a statement that has no evidence to support it. Only 1 in 5 Americans is a registered Republican, for example, yet you wouldn't conclude from that number that party affiliation is meaningless.

10/29/2015 08:45:04 am

No it isn't the reverse, since the other 37.2% said they Don't Know. Look up the detailed results on page 55. JUst 5.4% Strongly Agree, 14.9% Agree, 15.0% Disagree, and the other 27.5% Strongly Disagree.

Uncle Ron

10/29/2015 02:01:09 pm

Mr. Garber-
What is more important than the 20+% who say they believe in the existence of ancient aliens is that, by your statistics, 57.5% of people do not DISAGREE with something that is totally unfounded. That is a shocking percentage of people who are so uneducated, incapable of using reason and logic, and completely un-skeptical, that they accept at least the possibility of this claptrap being true. And that's just ancient aliens. If you factor in the non-overlapping individuals who don't believe in AA but believe in bigfoot, ghosts, etc. the percentage of believers and “have no opinions” will be a lot higher. That's a lot more scary than any of this woo woo itself.

E.P. Grondine

10/31/2015 02:58:04 pm

So now my guide to the theorsophist cult archaeology indsutry becomes required reading at the undergraduate level?

http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He%20Walked%20Among%20Us%20Part%201.pdf

http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He%20Walked%20Among%20Us%20Part%202.pdf

http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He%20Walked%20Among%20Us%20Part%203.pdf

Victoria Warren

11/1/2015 03:28:52 pm

Well, I can certainly attest that not all believers are uneducated. I have taken many science classes and read many science (peer - reviewed information) articles the last 40 years. My sister and her husband are both lawyers, very intelligent, progressive Democrats, yet, they believe this crap. He came into their relationship already a believer and into sort of new age shamans and crystal stuff. Now he has turned her mind onto this stuff.

We were having a disagreement. I didn't think that ancient aliens had anything to do with building ancient Greece and she is sure that, well, they most likely (she isn't completely convinced) that they had help from extraterrestrial beings. I provided a couple of pages from Wikipedia (yes I know, but I check references). She poo-pooed those facts. So I emailed her several paragraphs from a couple of the referenced articles and she still comes back with, "Not enough evidence to convince me." Sigh.

Sadly, she is also coming to the belief that there is no way intelligent people over the earth had discovered similar things over a hundred thousand years - it must be extraterrestrial beings! Sigh.

Historian

11/2/2015 07:22:54 am

Ah, that's nothin...

Never mind the ancient aliens. What about the ones that are still here?!!?

12 million Americans believe reptilian overlords are in control of the US government....

From Public Policy Polling: "Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies, or not?"

http://boingboing.net/2013/04/15/12-mil ... eve-l.html

And there are days when I tend to agree, lol, lol....

That's 4% that believe these nasty reptiles have it in for us.
Ya gotta be able to spot 'em, folks!!
Stay vigilant! Is your neighbor a space reptile?

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arc ... nt/354496/

They came from outer space, people. And they're in the White House even as we speak! "To Serve Mankind". Don't believe it. It's a cookbook, folks, a cookbook!!

Overthrow the reptilian overlords!!