Review of Ancient Aliens S07E15 "Hidden Pyramids"

After seven seasons and six calendar years of Ancient Aliens, it’s a bit hard to get excited about another episode devoted to pyramids. I have a hard time thinking of any pyramids that the show hasn’t yet associated with aliens, and I suppose that’s why this week we’re treated to “Hidden Pyramids,” which tries to freshen a stale subject by proposing that there are thousands of pyramids under the sea, underground, and in other inaccessible places.

Segment 1
We open with the silly story of the imaginary Alaskan pyramid that I debunked last year. The show lies and accepts the false claim that a 1992 TV news report claimed that a pyramid was found under the state and that such a report has been suppressed. David Wilcock even proclaims that there is “no doubt” that an advanced civilization constructed the pyramid and that the U.S. government is covering it up. I outlined all the lies in this story in my May 2014 investigation into the supposed pyramid. The supposed whistleblower, as I noted in 2014, changed his story quite a bit over the years, and the most likely origin for the story is a faulty memory confusing TV coverage of the 1992 earthquake that disturbed the Great Pyramid in Egypt with local Anchorage, Alaska coverage that tied it to memories of the devastating 1964 Alaska quake.

After this we get some of the pyramid classics: The Chinese pyramid-mounds which are off limits to tourists, and the supposed Bosnian pyramids, which are natural formations that fringe researchers have mistaken for artificial constructions. This material has been covered on the show multiple times, and the show offers nothing new this time.

Ancient Aliens then asserts that world governments are conspiring to suppress knowledge of these pyramids (despite somehow letting this program continue), but the show offers no evidence of knowledge suppression. 

Segment 2
After the break, we look at the adobe pyramids of early Peru. Andrew Collins calls ancient Peruvians “obsessed” with pyramids, which is a bit like complaining that the Romans were “obsessed” with pillars and arches. Pyramids are more or less the only form you can use to build large, tall buildings without steel reinforcement. However, because one of the pyramids contains a bird-man shamanic image, Rob Simone, hilariously described as the “author” of the Epic of Gilgamesh (he pasted a translation into an eBook he sells), asserts that the bird-man connects the pyramids to space travelers. The narrator also draws similarities to bird-men depicted at Tiwanaku, on Easter Island, in Japan, and in Mesopotamia. The show again falsely asserts that the Anunnaki are the bird-like demon-griffins of Mesopotamian iconography (they weren’t). All of this has been repeated on this show so many times that even the narrator struggles to find new ways express the same ideas, but is reduced to claiming that the aliens “helped” the Peruvians to build mud-brick pyramids. I’m surprised that the idiots who write this show didn’t try to connect the Anunnaki to the mud bricks using an ancient text. After all, Tablet Six of the Enuma Elish explicitly states that the Anunnaki built ziggurats out of mud bricks and spent their days making mud bricks until they got so bored and mad that they made people to do it for them! I don’t expect anyone on this show to know that.

Segment 3
In this segment we examine the Yonaguni formation, a pyramid-like natural rock formation that many have mistaken for an artificial pyramid. Even fringe geologist Robert Schoch has debunked the “pyramid,” but despite having Schoch on Ancient Aliens will have none of it, letting its talking heads claim that Yonaguni is an artificial pyramid dating back to the last Ice Age. Oddly, they cut and edit Schoch to make him sound like he agrees that the naturally cleaved rocks are manmade.

The show then asserts that the Polynesians have a myth of the lost continent of Mu, and that’s deceptive. There are some myths in Polynesian cultures that claimed that the South Pacific islands were once connected, but Mu itself is the invention of James Churchward, proposed in 1926 from a cocktail of theosophy, Atlantis mythology, and racism.

The narrator tells us that Mu might be real because the megaliths of Gunung Padang in Indonesia may be the oldest pyramid in the world. Andrew Collins and Robert Schoch certainly think so. However, as I have noted in the past, there are many problems with the dating of the site revolving around issues of Indonesian nationalism and fringe beliefs. Archaeological evidence accepted outside of Indonesian government sources suggests that Gunung Padang is medieval in date. As I reported:

Western archaeologists believe that the site is not a pyramid but a natural volcanic mound and that its architecture ties to similar sites built between 500 and 1500 CE (a statue found at the site was inscribed with a date of 1341 CE, though this only indicates it was still in use in that year). Second, the radiocarbon tests were on organic material from within the hill not associated with any artifacts or megaliths. Third, the Indonesian government official ultimately overseeing the investigation is a known believer in fringe theories about Ice Age civilizations, and Indonesia has been actively working to discount Chinese claims to greater antiquity by promoting Indonesia as an older font of civilization.

Of course Ancient Aliens accepts the site without question!

Segment 4
Now we’re in Egypt struggling to find a new way to discuss the pyramids. To do so, we finally get to the “hidden” pyramids. An Egyptologist, Rami Romany, explains that some pyramids are likely buried under the sand, and new techniques can help to locate underground features that aren’t readily visible at ground level. Romany claims to have found 17 pyramids by satellite, but he has yet to excavate any of them. It’s likely that at least some are ruined pyramids from the late Old Kingdom or the Middle Kingdom.

The narrator shares the mainstream view that pyramids share a similar shape due to the functional practicality of its tapered shape, but David Wilcock disagrees because they are too “perfect.” Shortly after that, we see a slideshow of the ruined, imperfect, and just good enough pyramids found around the world, including some that aren’t regular in shape. George Noory and Giorgio Tsoukalos can’t get over the fact that pyramids have a superficial resemblance, and Noory says that there was only one pyramid architect for the whole world. We get a heavily abbreviated form of claims made back in S05E01 “Secrets of the Pyramids,” including the same stock footage. 

Segment 5
Sorry… I dozed off during the commercial break. I think we’re talking about UFOs now and asserting that they recharge their batteries by using earth energy and ley lines. This is claim from S03E13 “Aliens and the Secret Code,” later repeated in other episodes, but I guess we’re not supposed to remember that. The remainder of the segment repeats false claims about how pyramids generate fictional energy fields from S05E01 “Secrets of the Pyramids” and S05E03 “Alien Power Plants.” The repetition is numbing, frankly, but this time we have some new animation, albeit some pretty cheap-looking graphics of pyramids with circuits on their sides and beams shooting out of their apexes. As though admitting their own boredom with the subject matter, the narrator and the talking heads don’t even bother to offer “evidence” for their claims, asking us to simply take David Wilcock at his word that pyramids automatically generate swirling energy vortexes. 

Segment 6
In the last minutes of the show, we return to the pyramids of Giza to look at the stones used to build the pyramids. They contain marine fossils, indicating that the rocks are natural and formed in deep history. David Wilcock and Rabbi Ariel Bar Tzadok deny that the rocks hardened on the sea floor in ages past but rather that the marine fossils ended up embedded in the rocks due to the Great Flood! In 1000 CE al-Biruni reported in the Chronology of Ancient Nations wrote that “People are of opinion, that the traces of the water of the Deluge, and the effects of the waves are still visible on these two pyramids half-way up, above which the water did not rise” (trans. C. Edward Sachau). But that doesn’t make the rocks flood-impacted.

But as we end the hour, I gasped when David Wilcock was allowed to utter the name of former American Nazi party leader Frank Joseph, a convicted child rapist. Ancient Aliens specifically cited Joseph as having “discovered” pyramids in Rock Lake, Wisconsin—pyramids that even H2 host Scott Wolter admits don’t exist. That’s beside the point: Ancient Aliens was willing to give credence and air time to Frank Joseph. Like their sister show In Search of Aliens, they cited a goddamn racist Nazi as a source without disclosing Joseph’s erstwhile affiliation to viewers. 

Good for you, History channel. In fact, next time, go further than just testing the waters with a coy little feint toward Nazi archaeology. Go full Nazi. You know you want to.