Review of Ancient Aliens S16E01 "The Divine Number"

Forgive me if the thought of doing this all again is more than I can quite take. Ancient Aliens has been off the air since the pandemic struck, and this is the first episode back since executive producer Kevin Burns died. It’s not a terribly auspicious start. Hell, this episode even features a commercial for penis-straightening, so ugh. Their audience is pretty obvious. The theme of this episode is the “divine” number twelve, and the whole episode is devoted to finding instances of twelves in mythology, architecture, and nature. There is nothing mystical about twelve. It’s special only because it contains a large number of factors—1, 2, 3, 4, and 6—and many significant multiples—24, 60, 72, etc.—making it a fairly obvious candidate for a “special” that can be used to join any number of natural or mystically significant digits. There are twelve months in the lunar year, which is all the explanation you really need.

The first segment of the show simply lists times that twelve appears in Christian mythology. That’s it. Nothing about significance. Just numbers. For a show that already did a similar but more engaging episode about the number three back in season six and another about the number nine in season eleven, it’s a rather depressing letdown. Which is it, Ancient Aliens? Is every number a secret alien code? Are numbers themselves an alien secret? I know pseudohistorians don’t like math, but making it an unknowable extraterrestrial conspiracy seems a bit of an extreme reaction to your unpleasant school years.
 
The second segment goes to Göbekli Tepe in Turkey to complain that hunter-gatherers weren’t smart enough to build large stone structures and then to ask why the enclosures have twelve pillars. Similarly, they ask why other stone structures have twelve standing stones, and why the Israelites erected twelve standing stones. Although the lunar calendar offers enough explanation, the show instead insists the it represents the dodecahedral shape of space-time recently proposed. They claim Plato had knowledge of this because he imagined the cosmos as a dodecahedron. Cool story, bro. He chose that shape because a dodecahedron has pentagonal sides, so each face had five sides, representing the quintessence, and therefore the dodecahedron was the quintessence inflated from two dimensions to three—i.e., perfect.
 
And so, nearly halfway through the show, they have said virtually nothing at all. They are barely half-assing this, and they seem to be having difficulty going back to their earlier talking-head and stock footage b-roll style after several seasons of field segments and personal journeys.
 
In the third segment, the show asks why Mesopotamians counted by twelves instead of tens and why “giants” are depicted as having six fingers or toes. The show asks if aliens have six digits and liked to fuck human women, but the better answer is that if we humans have five fingers, then the higher creatures must be more perfect and have six. The show isn’t interested in this reasoning, however. Instead, it suggests that genetic polydactyly produces health benefits. I am a little disturbed by the way that the show talks about “lineages” that are more likely to have polydactyl members, with a strong implication that some bloodlines are genetically superior for having been fucked by aliens. The talking heads suggest that polydactyly is an intentional action of space aliens to “call our attention” to the number twelve.
 
The fourth segment is a waste of air time alleging that the so-called Majestic-12, a 1980s hoax claiming to reveal a 1950s government committee that worked with space aliens, is real. The MJ-12 documents bear no relationship to or connection with actual authentic CIA, FBI, and Air Force documents from the 1940s and 1950s, and being so different, there is no reason to suppose all other documents are wrong and only those have the “truth.” The show asks why MJ-12 used twelve people, but since it never existed, there is no point in asking. The hoaxer chose a number that resonated with mythology and history and sounded good to the ear. But the show prefers to suggest that MJ-12 is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Book of Revelation. They ask if the book’s New Jerusalem is an alien mothership. Even the show doesn’t believe this and goes on to argue that Revelation isn’t about a physical city from the sky but rather preparation for a spiritual enlightenment. They might as well just admit to being Unitarian Universalists and give up the farce that this show has anything to do with space aliens.
 
The fifth segment discusses the Maya Apocalypse panic from 2012, when the Maya calendar came to the end of its long count. Without evidence, the show alleges that the year was a “turning point in history.” Unable to find evidence to support that claim, they allege that the cosmic significance of that year was discovery of the Higgs Boson, the twelfth fundamental particle of the standard model of physics. I’m guessing that the Maya didn’t really have that in mind. They also try to relate it to an energy pulse from space detected by scientists that year. Although it was seemingly random, the show alleges it was an alien signal. If 2012 truly was a turning point in human history and evolution, you’d think we’d have seen some kind of benefit after nearly a decade. After the chaos of 2016-2020, it’s kind of hard to argue that 2012 was the real world-changing year.
 
The final segment relates the number twelve to music and astrology, particularly Pythagoras’ idea that the music of the spheres moving the wandering stars were equal to the twelve tones of music. The show concludes with the idea that our consciousness, when hopped up on twelve, can influence the vibration of the strings underlying reality and then give us control over reality. I guess it requires two six-packs to make this show palatable. I knew I had to be doing something wrong.