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Review of Ancient Aliens S06E01: "The Power of Three"

10/1/2013

35 Comments

 
After more than five months away, Ancient Aliens returns to TV on its original channel, History, where the network seems determined to ensure that the largest possible audience is exposed to its soul-crushing, mind-numbing inanity. I wanted to start off season six (but only its fourth calendar year) with something clever to say, but after this sorry hour about the mystical nature of triangles and the number three, the only thing passing through my head was the old They Might Be Giants song “Particle Man”:

Triangle Man, Triangle Man
Triangle Man hates Particle Man
They have a fight, Triangle wins
Triangle Man

The triangle man in this case is Pythagoras, the ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician who developed the famous theorem about the sides of right triangles and also founded a religion promising immortality through reincarnation. We encountered him on Saturday as a nerdy, needy denizen of the BBC’s Atlantis, and now on Ancient Aliens he’s the recipient of alien wisdom. Poor Pythagoras. He’s had better centuries.

“No matter which ancient culture you look at,” Giorgio Tsoukalos says, “the highest ones always came in threes.” That would, I suppose, be why the ancient Greeks had the Olympian Twelve and the Canaanites the myth of their four great gods El, Baal, Yam, and Mot (among others), and the Maya their Hero Twins. David Childress says that by learning the power of three we can become like the gods.

The show starts out with a list of times in myth when three beings or objects are seen together. But you can do this with any number you want; even the anthropologist Ancient Aliens convinced to appear on their show notes that this is primarily a European (Indo-European, actually) idea, which is not really applicable to traditions beyond the Indo-Europeans and the Near East. If you want to try looking for other numbers, Hamlet’s Mill is chock full of examples of 2, 3, 4, 12, 24, 36, 54, 60, 72, 432, etc. Try remaking this episode of Ancient Aliens with the numbers 7 or 9 and you’ll see how silly this is; you can fill an hour with either number in ancient myth.

The Giza Pyramids are suggested to embody the number three, but while there are three “major” pyramids, there are nine overall. Robert Schoch expresses shock that at Giza there are three pyramids whose sides are (gasp!) triangles, as though pyramids could form any other shape. We then hear that this is a portal to another realm, but what then of Mexican pyramids whose sides are stacked rectangles and whose bases are four-sided?

Pythagoras arrives next so we can hear a truly dumb idea that he invented the Pythagorean theorem by studying the Giza pyramids—impossible since the Giza pyramids are not right triangles (either in the square bases or nearly equilateral sides), nor do their bases form a Pythagorean relationship; the bases of the two smaller do not equal the largest.

David Childress says you can play connect the dots with “thousands” of standing stones at Carnac to form “right” triangles, but the illustration shows us one right triangle, one isosceles triangle, and one equilateral triangle, all formed by cherry-picking specific stones among the many on the ground. For the math impaired: isosceles and equilateral triangles are not subject to the Pythagorean Theorem (except for right isosceles triangles with two 45 degree angles). Similarly, Avebury and Stonehenge right triangles are also illustrated with cherry-picked stones that do not have any natural reason for selecting them. Giorgio Tsoukalos expresses shock that mathematics is applicable across the universe and therefore feels that any mention of math must be proof of cosmic aliens.

Philip Coppens has been dead for nearly a year, and yet he is still here, in the new season of Ancient Aliens, to lie about Pythagoras (c. 570-495 BCE), claiming he derived his knowledge from ancient Egypt and thus aliens, and was the first to spread it beyond Egypt. This is not even true by his own claims, for he also believes that Solon (638-558 BCE) gained the ancient wisdom of the Egyptians in learning of the Atlantis myth fifty years earlier, as Plato wrote in the Timaeus. Let’s clear this up: Pythagoras lived long before his biographers, who knew nothing of his life. They invented myths to explain it, and they did not agree. Some writers said he studies in Egypt, but many more said his training came from Greece. The Egyptian claims come largely from Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras (6):

As to his knowledge, it is said that he learned the mathematical sciences from the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Phoenicians; for of old the Egyptians excelled, in geometry, the Phoenicians in numbers and proportions, and the Chaldeans of astronomical theorems, divine rites, and worship of the Gods; other secrets concerning the course of life he received and learned from the Magi.

Hmm… not exactly direct from Egypt. Cicero had him taught by the Greek Pherecydes (On Divination 50), and Iamblichus’ extensive Pythagorean Life (2) outlines his Greek teachers as he believed them to be: Thales, Bias, Pherecydes, and Anaximander; Iamblichus says that on Thales’ advice, Pythagoras went to Egypt and Phoenicia to learn religious mysteries, and in Babylon “reached the summit of arithmetic” (3-4). By contrast, Diogenes Laertius tells us that Pythagoras learned only from the Greeks and that while he did travel to Egypt and Phoenicia and Crete, he did so only to teach them the Mysteries he invented (Lives 8.1). In short, it’s all just myths, and Philip Coppens is both dead and wrong.

From this we rocket to England to think about how Newton’s THREE laws of motion let us talk about the non sequitur of alchemy since Newton like alchemy. The show then introduces the Emerald Tablet of Thoth, which it “shows” without admitting that the green-colored writing is an imaginative illustration; the alleged tablet is known first and primarily from medieval Arabic writings and was later translated into Latin. Robert Schoch tells us that this tablet has “fundamental” secrets of immortality and alchemy, and we hear tell that the tablet explains that all the universe comes from the interplay of the power of “three.” This is a lie. How do I know this? Isaac Newton translated the text, as have many others, and it speaks nothing of the power of three. Line 3, for example, talks of the power of “one”:

And as all things have been & arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.

The only mention of three comes when Thoth, under the name Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice-Great), explains his name in line 13: “Hence I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.” That’s it. (Sigismund Bacstrom interpolated an extra line in the eighteenth century, known as line 0, that claims that the “one” is also “three,” but this is almost certainly a fake since it appears in no other source.)

Coppens tells us that this text offers profound insights into the number three, and it’s doubtful he ever read the text. Several other ignoramuses also tell us about the tablet’s profound discussion of the number three that simply does not exist.

So where did it come from? From the fictitious Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean published in the 1930s and borrowing little more than the name from the original tablet. The 1930s texts were published by a Dr. Doreal and were apparently channeled from the spirit realm. In short, they are not genuinely ancient.

A canned biography of Hermes Trismegistus follows, mistakenly calling him a late version of the Classical Hermes (Cicero points out they were not the same in Nature of the Gods 3.22), but Tsoukalos mucks it up by imagining that Hermes had a flying ship, which has no support in any ancient or medieval text I can find and appears to be simple wishful thinking or the intentional conflation of other stories.

Well, enough of that, we have an Obama clip and some half-formed thoughts about whether aliens invented our brains, and then we are off to India to talk about the three great gods of (recent) Hinduism: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Since they did not hold those roles in the Vedic period, there is really no point in claiming this is somehow an ancient mystery of three. This leds to a discussion of the Third Eye, whose number is dictated by the fact that we have two natural eyes. The all-seeing eye of Freemasonry is called a “third eye” even though it is the only eye depicted between the pillars in Masonic art, just because Ancient Aliens doesn’t care. Somehow this “eye” is supposed to be the pineal gland because the gland is light-sensitive. There is no evidence ancient people knew anything about endocrine function. Kathleen McGowan tells us that the pineal gland is the key to all ancient mystic mysteries, which seems to have taken us far beyond aliens and into the realm of imaginative ancient endocrinology.

The show recognizes this and brings Tsoukalos and Mike Bara in to tell us that the third eye allows for astral travel via aliens—though it’s unclear whether this is by ship or what. David Wilcock tells us that the pineal gland creates a “wormhole inside your head,” a functioning star gate, to allow for travel to the aliens’ home world. And yet all of these people are still here. Why haven’t the aliens raptured up these people yet? What more evidence do we need that they want the aliens to be gods? We now have an alien Rapture waiting inside our minds.

We’ve sort of lost the thread of three at this point, so the show starts telling us about gods, heroes, and mystical figures who appear in myth in groups of three. Obviously, one can find counterexamples: Jupiter and Mercury travel together in Roman myth, Apollo and Artemis are paired in Greek myth. Gilgamesh is paired with Enkidu in Akkadian myth, but had fifty companions in early Sumerian stories. Jason had his fifty Argonauts. But this isn’t important because the Buddhists had Three Saints, who—and I did not follow this—somehow transform humans into aliens at death. The word “Aliens” really doesn’t mean anything at this point; it’s just window dressing.

The show asserts that there were Three Wise Men in the Nativity narrative, which folklorist Sabina Magliocco confirms—a shocking assertion given that the biblical narrative (Matthew 2:1-12) specifies no number of magi; the number three is a much later tradition derived from the three gifts they presented. David Childress and the “Rev.” Michael J. S. Carter, who believes aliens are in the Bible, assert that the star of Bethlehem was an alien spaceship, on which be sure to read Aaron Adair’s masterful takedown of this nonsense, The Star of Bethlehem: A Skeptical Inquiry, due out soon. Childress claims that the magi were aliens. Then there is some discussion of the real meaning of the Christian Trinity and whether we as humans are all triune gods, which is vaguely blasphemous and also more evidence that this is really a religious program, not a science or history program in any way. These people really want to touch the face of God.

Now we’re off to DNA because the three gifts of the magi represent DNA (of course). “Essentially,” Tsoukalos says, “the number three is the key to our DNA language.” He is referring to the fact that DNA codes for each of the twenty amino acids by using three base pairs, called a codon, to represent each amino acid. But this is only a small fraction of the work that goes into turning DNA into usable proteins. Tsoukalos, though, says that “the ancient alien theory has always” held that proof would come “not in a crashed saucer” but “from within our own DNA.” Oh really? Tell that to Erich von Däniken, who claimed that the proof would be in gold tablets in an Ecuadorian library, and who thought that aliens and humans could interbreed through some magic power that exempted them from the need to have compatible DNA. Are you willing to believe that codons specifying a single amino acid that is a small fraction of one protein used in the body is the way aliens chose to communicate with us across time and space? Or that the Holy Trinity of Christianity is little more than a symbol of a DNA codon?

And what happened to the star gate in our brains? Why can’t I turn it on to beam myself off of this planet? Did the show just decide to forget about that? Surely it’s worth investigating how to turn on the device you’ve identified inside our heads. But wait: What about the stone false-door “Star Gates” you “investigated” a few years back in Peru and elsewhere? Why did the alien need those if they could just turn on our pineal glands to beam us across the universe?

Truly, ET works in mysterious ways. Thank Alf we have our High Priests to guide us.

Aside from the last five minutes, there were too few aliens in this hour, and the producers could excise the talking heads and have a fairly standard discussion of the number three in myth. This is not a good sign for the strength of the ancient astronaut theory.  

35 Comments
Scott Hamilton
10/1/2013 04:00:22 am

I'd say that Ancient Aliens is scraping the bottom of the barrel, but really at this point they've scraped through the bottom of that barrel to find another barrel with half an ass in it. Numerology? Based on the number three and triangles? Are they ever going to get back to misinterpreting archeological sites so at least there will be pretty images?

Reply
Only Me
10/4/2013 04:14:14 pm

I'm still waiting for "Ancient Aliens: The Musical". In that episode, they can finally reveal that "The Martian Hop" by the Ran Dells is based on the true story of first contact and the initiation our ancestors took to be privy to extraterrestrial knowledge.

In fact, I can see it now....Giorgio sitting at a grand white piano, like a modern day Liberace....

Reply
Undine link
10/1/2013 04:17:33 am

"And yet all of these people are still here. Why haven’t the aliens raptured up these people yet?"

Oh, I dunno. If anyone on TV is a space alien, it's Giorgio.

Reply
Aaron Adair link
10/1/2013 06:21:13 am

The magi were aliens, huh. Boy, I should have considered that possibility in my book. Darn. Then again, the Bible says they are from the East, not the Pleiades.

And thank you for the book plug, Jason!

Reply
Bill
10/1/2013 12:47:40 pm

The East is non specific. It could refer to the East Pleiades - you know - like East St Louis. Maybe some run down space tenements, a few interstellar craft on cement blocks. You have to know how to interpret these things.

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Uncle Ron
10/1/2013 04:33:58 pm

"a few interstellar craft on cement blocks"

I can't stop laughing. Thanks!

spookyparadigm
10/1/2013 07:18:47 am

"even the anthropologist Ancient Aliens convinced to appear on their show"

Did you catch a name on that?

Reply
Jason Colavito link
10/1/2013 01:27:21 pm

Sorry it took me so long to respond... I had to wait until I got back to my DVR. His name is Tok Thompson of the University of Southern California, a specialist in folklore.

Reply
spookyparadigm
10/5/2013 05:44:19 am

Interesting. He's the new editor of Western Folklore.

Shane Sullivan
10/1/2013 07:42:18 am

"Pythagoras arrives next so we can hear a truly dumb idea that he invented the Pythagorean theorem by studying the Giza pyramids—impossible since the Giza pyramids are not right triangles (either in the square bases or nearly equilateral sides) ..."

I'm disappointed that they didn't point out the fact that the base of each pyramid is a square, which is nothing more than a pair of right triangles. That they mentioned in a previous episode that the pyramids (or was it just the Great Pyramid?) really had eight sides doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would stop them.

They also could have talked about the Three Pure Ones, to expand the discussion beyond Europe and the Near-East, but maybe they thought Taoism was too obscure for their target audience.

Reply
Mark L link
10/1/2013 11:00:17 am

This was possibly the most amazingly pointless episode they've ever done. My wife is a Buddhist and the section on the Buddha being an alien had her in fits of laughter, so hopefully the world's other believers will just laugh at this nonsense and not, I don't know, threaten the HIstory Channel with a religious discrimination suit. Absolutely amazing.

Like with the Emerald Tablet, some of the people talking about them must know the shaky ground it rests on and realise they're probably lying. They must. So are they just lying for profit? Or is their belief absolutely in the realm of the religious now, with matters decided on our faith in them and not on evidence?

We also decided that having the poor dead liar Philip Coppens on the show, long after he made the final journey to Orion, just seems a little ghoulish. At least have something in the graphic saying "recorded in 2011".

I think the chance of any of these people stepping outside their little echo chamber of reinforcement of their own ideas is very small. Coppens must have been aware he'd made two completely contradictory claims. It'd have been lovely to ask him and have him answer honestly why he did so. Same with all of them. That Wilcock guy, who made the claim about pineal glands being stargates, had the glint of a true zealot in his eyes though, so I'm not sure it'd work on him.

Reply
Thane
10/1/2013 01:04:18 pm

The Power of Three?

I think they have been watching too many reruns of "Charmed."

Reply
Coridan Miller
10/1/2013 02:20:40 pm

If the Egyptians really loved the number three the pyramids would be tetrahedrons.

Reply
Harry
10/2/2013 01:07:15 am

I recall that Star Trek: The Next Generation had an episode about aliens encoding DNA. It even had an episode that mentioned Gilgamesh and Enkidu. It makes me wonder how much of Ancient Aliens might be borrowed from sci fi plots.

Reply
Clint Knapp
10/2/2013 02:45:34 am

Not a Trekkie by any stretch of the word (I own the complete TNG but have only watched it through a couple times), I can't say much as to which episode might have discussed alien DNA designers, but the episode with the Gilgamesh reference is one of my favorites in the series; "Darmok"

I believe Jason mentioned it in a recent post as well. There's nothing overtly AA about the episode. Picard becomes stranded on a planet with a member of a species which communicates entirely in referential metaphor. He uses the Gilgamesh story in this way to relate something of human friendship and morals.

Of course, in writing this I now wonder if they weren't onto something with the referential metaphor language. How often do we hear "It's like that time in that movie"? Perhaps our language is heading that way already...

Anyway, Jason's done a rather thorough job of outlining just how much of the AA story is hijacked from science-fiction stories, film, and television; particularly the H.P. Lovecraft connection in his book "Cult of the Alien Gods". If you haven't already, poke around some back articles related to the show or Lovecraft and you're likely to find all manner of sci-fi derived claims.

Reply
Harry
10/2/2013 06:22:16 am

I appreciate your comment. I only recently found this site, so I am sure I have only scratched the surface of its content. With respect to Star Trek, I actually was making a general point about sci fi and AAT; I referred to "Darmok" only because Jason's discussion reminded me of that particular episode.

Scott Hamilton
10/2/2013 06:03:43 am

If you're talking about that Next Gen episode where they explained that there was an ancestor race that seeded the galaxy with their DNA, thereby explaining why all the Star Trek aliens look like humans with stuff stuck on their faces, that was more an example of sci-fi following the ancient alien theorists. The episode was mostly inspired by Zecharia Sitchin's books, down to the message being encoding in DNA.

The interaction in these kinds of things is rarely one way. David Icke pretty much admits that he was giving the idea of shapeshifting lizards by the TV series V (it just happened to be true, he claims, possibly on purpose), but now plenty of fiction is based on Icke's theories. Lovecraft inspired the first ancient alien theorists, but his ideas are foreshadowed by Charles Fort. Almost all the weird ideas that exist today (UFOs, Loch Ness Monster, Holocaust Denial) are passed back and forth between fiction and non-fiction sources in the process that creates pop culture.

Reply
Harry
10/2/2013 06:28:16 am

I appreciate your comment. I am not surprised that the influence goes both ways. After all, sci fi writers need to get their ideas from somewhere. I must admit that I wasn't aware of (deliberately) fictional Holocaust Denial stories, but, having lost many family members in the Holocaust, I am not sorry I missed that field of "literature."

Narmitaj
10/2/2013 11:23:19 am

According to the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (SFE) entry on "Forerunners" ( http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/forerunners ) the Next Gen episode in question is The Chase, April 1993.

However, from the SFE entry it seems that this notion of forerunners, ie aliens that "prove to have seeded the galaxy with life and thus to be our ancestors" is an idea that predates Von Daniken (1969) and Sitchin (1976) in written sf; there's EE Smith's First Lensman (1950) and Andre Norton's Forerunner series (starting 1960), and the entry also references Lovecraft and Theosophy.

There's also Ursula Le Guin's so-called Hainish Cycle of novels (she says it isn't a cycle, just various levels of connectivity), published from 1966 to 2000, the most famous being The Left Hand Of Darkness (1969) set on Gethen. In these, the back story is the Hainish seeded the galaxy hundreds of thousands of years ago, including Earth, and then Hainish civilisation collapsed and the various colony worlds forgot about each other. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainish_Cycle#Back_Story

The SFE also has an entry on panspermia http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/panspermia, "the speculative notion that life may spread around the universe via drifting seeds or spores that provide a starting-point for Evolution on planets", a notion that apparently goes back to Anaxagoras in the 5thC BCE but has some sf usage too, including EE Smith's Triplanetary in 1934.

Aaron Adair link
10/3/2013 06:11:00 am

If you go back to the original series ("The Paradise Syndrome"), there is mentioned a race known as The Preservers that scattered humanoid life around the galaxy and also built structures to secure the livelihood of the civilizations they spawned.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Preservers

Reply
Narmitaj
10/2/2013 11:25:34 am

Oops, von Daniken (1968)

Reply
senorchompers
10/2/2013 12:12:57 pm

This episode was hilarious! It made the Bigfoot episode look like the work of the most scholarly of men. This is how they kick off a new season? The sad thing is if you go to Tsoukalos' twitter page (where he tweeted live during the show) you will see tons of people congratulating him for his great work and thanking him for opening up their minds to the truth out there. How anyone who was on the fence as to AAT's legitimacy is not now ashamed to be a part of this school of thought is beyond me at this point. What's next the wrinkles on Tsoukalos' ball sack are evidence of the ripples of time it took for aliens to invade is DNA and rancid man-seed? Discuss amongst yourselves. ;)

Reply
BigMike
10/2/2013 12:47:32 pm

As as student of psychology and neuroscience an understand many things about the human brain including much of the function of the pineal gland. It is and endocrine gland primarily responsible for the production of melatonin which helps to regulate the sleep cycle. the idea that the gland itself is "light sensitive" is actually a misnomer since light cannot actually reach the gland. It is sensitive to signals that the retina sends to the visual cortex. When these signals are low (i.e. low light exposure to the retina) the pineal gland goes into melatonin production. When these signals are high (i.e. high light exposure to the retina) the pineal gland ceases production of melatonin. The pineal gland is how the brain regulates the bodies "circadian rhythm." In other words it's why people tend to get tired at night and wakeful during the day.

The other thing I know about the brain is that there are not pain receptor neurons in the brain. This is why brain surgery can be performed on patients who are awake. But I swear that after watching this episode my brain actually hurt.

Reply
The Other J.
10/3/2013 09:34:27 am

Isn't the pineal gland a vestigial, primitive eye? I understood that it once was a light-sensing organ that still exists in the tuatara lizard of New Zealand (it's near the surface of the skin on the top-back of the lizard's head, but still under the skin). But as far as anyone knows, that vestigial eye in the tuatara serves the same purpose as you describe the pineal gland.

By the way, this isn't meant to support the claims of the episode; I've not watched it, haven't seen an episode since I think the second season, and don't have plans to tuning in. I just thought there was evidence of the pineal gland being a kind of primitive eye that's now evolved/devolved/changed into something else in mammals.

Reply
anthony
10/2/2013 05:47:43 pm

Ancient aliens is bs, but its an attempt of modern mind to understand how people who lived long ago could have such a deep undertsanding of things we deem to advanced for them.

By the way the Egyptians used the so called Pythagorean theorem long before Pythagoras was born to make right angles for land boundaries and for art. Pythagoras like Plato studied in Egypt. He used a system of initiation just as priests did in Egypt and other lands he visited. This was contrary to other Greeks of his time who would teach anyone who could pay.

THE ALIEN BS IS JUST THAT. HOWEVER THE AUTHOR OF THE ARTICLE HAS A LOT OF HIS OWN BS AS A RESULT OF CULTURAL AND TEMPORAL BIAS!

Reply
Sacqueboutier
10/2/2013 10:33:39 pm

One could say that they've "jumped the shark" on this one..but then one could also say they did that with the first episode.

Reply
Sean
10/2/2013 10:51:28 pm

I'm surprised you didn't mention that the pineal gland/Third Eye connection is drawn from Blavatsky, presumably inspired by the fact that Rene Descartes thought the pineal gland housed the soul.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
10/2/2013 11:38:27 pm

I write these things in the hour it takes me to watch the show; I don't always think of everything that fast!

Reply
senorchompers
10/3/2013 10:03:33 pm

Can we all just agree that Tsoukalos is a turd?

Reply
Richard of Albany
10/8/2013 12:19:00 pm

What happened to David Hatcher Childress? He seemed much quieter than in previous seasons. Is he taking tranquilizers?

Reply
thaum
11/15/2013 10:29:31 am

Could it be some koind of influence ...maybe from... extraterrestrials?

Reply
thaum
11/15/2013 10:28:59 am

Not to mention DNA has four base pairs, and they are base pairs -- two -- in mirror image.

Reply
dro
11/25/2013 11:16:30 am

Seems like only skeptics and haters submit on here.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
11/25/2013 11:52:41 am

Well, since I'm a skeptic I'm not sure what you expect. Believers don't really like their views challenged.

Reply
Liz H
3/18/2014 04:33:47 pm

I must confess, when I saw "The Power of Three" was the title of this episode, I immediately thought of Charmed.

And as to this section: "the “Rev.” Michael J. S. Carter, who believes aliens are in the Bible" I'm surprised they're still not touching the idea of Jesus being a space alien. Does not this belief of Mr. Carter essentially imply the very subject they're not touching?

Now, I would ask what stargates in our brains would have to do with anything, but I see "stargate" and all I really care to think about is that (actually pretty awesome) 1994 movie. They pretty much ripped pop culture for that one.

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