Review of Ancient Aliens S08E05 "Alien Evolution"

As we settle in for 63 minutes of ancient astronaut zaniness, I want to call your attention to the happy news that American Antiquity has made its special section of reviews of pseudoarchaeology books from its July 2015 issue available for free, with no membership or subscription fee required. These reviews, by leading scholars, explore topics ranging from lost civilizations to Nephilim-giants through an examination of works by leading fringe theorists like Graham Hancock and Andrew Collins, both of whom have appeared on Ancient Aliens. You can download your own copy here to enjoy, probably much more that you enjoyed tonight’s slipshod, recycled discussion of “Alien Evolution” (S08E05). 

Segment 1
We open with the elongated skulls of Paracas, Peru, (particularly skull 44 at the private, fringe history Paracas History Museum) which conventional science attribute to head-binding. The show repeats claims made last year on In Search of Aliens S01E09 and again on Ancient Aliens S07E10 about the lack of a sagittal suture on one of these skulls, a very rare but not unheard of trait. The show tells us that ancient astronaut theorists think people bound heads to imitate the shape of aliens’ skulls, but Brien Foerster disagrees. He feels that the elongation is the result of natural processes that occurred due to the hybrid nature of the people, who carry what he feels are unknown types of DNA. As discussed last year, the DNA results—conducted at the behest of Foerster and Lloyd Pye—were ambiguous and controversial, and Foerster chose to interpret it as proof of a lost species of human. (In 2013, he first claimed the DNA showed they were Aryans from Europe.) David Wilcock and Giorgio Tsoukalos disagree, though, and believe that the unknown DNA belongs to space aliens, specifically the “Teachers” (i.e. the Watchers).

After this, we discuss the Neanderthals and the Denisovans and other competing species of hominin. David Wilcock calls it a “Lord of the Rings type situation” where many types of human lived on earth simultaneously, and he claims Denisovan DNA has no clear antecedent to show us where they came from. In a roundabout way, he’s referring to the fact that Denisovan mitochondrial DNA (which is not the same as their nuclear DNA) is different from humans or Neanderthals (their closest relatives), indicating their matrilineal line comes from a different branch of the human family tree. Instead, he implies a deeper mystery than exists.

Segment 2
In this segment, an artist reconstructs Paracas Skull 44 with the help of computer technology while Brien Foerster looks on in awe. Foerster declares the face to be “atypical” of native Peruvians seen in the region today, though that doesn’t mean much since modern Peruvians are a mixture of ancient Peruvians and Spaniards. Foerster declares the skull a “subspecies,” while the narrator speculates whether it was an alien hybrid or a real alien. The show replays footage from In Search of Aliens S01E09 as Tsoukalos goes beyond his comments in that episode to declare Paracas Skull 44 a genuine extraterrestrial skull. The narrator tells us that the reconstructed face of the Paracas skull bears a close resemblance to Akhenaten, the Egyptian pharaoh ancient astronaut theorists have long suspected (and endlessly proclaim) to be a space alien hybrid. David Childress adds that the Aten sun disk Akhenaten worshiped was a UFO, and Akhenaten was perhaps a Grey alien hybrid. David Wilcock claims to be able to deduce alien features from Akhenaten’s statues, which he considers perfect representations of reality, claiming that even busts of Tutankhamun show an elongated skull. He seems unaware that the actual skull of Tutankhamun does not match the artistic representation, which was a weird but largely fictional convention of the Amarna court. Apparently, in life Tutankhamun did not have a skull anywhere near as elongated as his bust.

Bust of Tut with elongated skull.

Actual head of King Tut

Segment 3
A man was born with a reptilian heart, a rare birth defect due to atavism, and the narrator marvels that humans with birth defects show a “link” to the “reptiles”; however, since this is Ancient Aliens, the show doubts that Darwinian evolution is real. Instead, they claim that these atavistic traits are actually Reptilian alien DNA. Evidence of this, they say, can be found in the story of China’s first emperor, Fu Xi, who had a snake tail, and other myths of beings with serpentine tails instead of legs. (Fu Xi was the first of the Three Sovereigns, and one of the creator demigods of Chinese myth.) David Childress calls them extraterrestrials but does not explain how they traversed space and time without legs or hips, which would seemingly make it difficult to stand up to perform tasks. Naturally, this brings us back to the Watchers, because the Bible is the key to history, and therefore the Sons of God sexing up the daughters of men in Genesis 6:4 proves that aliens hybridized us. Jason Martell agrees, and it’s interesting that he has new, puffed-out brown hair this season, perhaps because he got tired of being mistaken for Rick Santorum with his old short, black haircut.

Segment 4
This segment starts with a 1952 UFO report from West Virginia—the Flatwoods Monster, a creature very similar to the legendary Mothman encounter, which as most readers of this review already know, Joe Nickell long ago demonstrated convincingly was an owl, probably sitting on a stump. This fellow may well have been, too. Other bird-monsters of folklore such as the Apache Owl Man are discussed, and the show compares these to Thoth, the ibis-headed god of the Egyptians. All shamanic animal-human hybrid stories are taken to be literal depictions of animalistic aliens or some combination of animal, human, and alien hybrids. Earth was apparently lousy with these monsters, which nevertheless miraculously left nary a bone much less a sample of DNA for all their thousands upon thousands of bodies.

To make this seem plausible, the shows suggest that other stars follow other evolutionary rules, which might create monsters that we cannot recognize and can only compare to parts of know animals. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the way H. P. Lovecraft conceptualized his aliens, including Cthulhu, whose unfamiliar form conjured “simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature.” Oops… I guess Ancient Aliens just “proved” that Cthulhu is real, or at least as real as Thoth.

Segment 5
As the segment begins, we hear that the UFO Congress held this year included a forum where various people talked about their alien abductions. Nick Redfern classifies the abductors as Reptilians, Insectoids, Batmen, and other fictitious projections of animals into human fantasy, though of course he thinks they’re all real. Wilcock says there is a 1:1 correlation between modern sightings and ancient depictions of the gods. Wilcock says this proves all the creatures are real, though it equally well (and more likely) proves that the human brain produces the same hallucinations the world over, across time and space, when in altered states of consciousness. Thus, the shamanic ancestors, the animal-headed gods, and space aliens are humanoids with animal characteristics (therianthropy). David Childress, though, believes humans are very special, and our form is “universal.” Redfern says that this isn’t the case but instead humanoids were the oldest aliens, a culture that seeded the universe with humanoid DNA. This is a version of panspermia, and it suggests a teleological view that our DNA is striving toward a type of Platonic perfection rather than responding to natural selection. It allows its believers to accept (some of) modern science while still believing in a quasi-divine creation and purpose.

Segment 6
The final segment begins by discussing speculation in Forbes magazine that over the next 100,000 years human heads may grow larger, with bigger eyes and darker skin. They also note reports that over the past century the human skull has, on average, gotten a bit larger, resulting in a bigger brain. (The cause is unknown and may be related to nutrition and lifestyle.) I suppose it’s progress that the show seems to accept that human beings have evolved and that natural and cultural selection pressures were responsible for these changes. But then we take a step back when Wilcock tells us we’re becoming naturally elongated (the real change is 8 mm—resulting in an increase in brain size of about the size of a tennis ball, an analogy Wilcock reads verbatim from here or a similar article as though it were his own thought), while others say that the Greys got their big skulls because microgravity let their heads blow up like balloons since evolution wouldn’t need to worry about supporting bigger brains. The show then undermines the beginning of the segment, and most of its logic, by having the narrator ask us if all of this suggests we are in fact descendants of the Grey aliens.