Review of Ancient Aliens S16E03 "The Galactic Keyhole"

What is there to say about this episode’s topic? Having previously aired episodes about triangles and circles, the show has now combined both into an episode about “keyhole” shapes, or a circle overlapping a triangle. More prosaically, the shape is formed when any two converging lines approach a circle. In a pinch, parallel lines will do. It should take no genius to see how ancient people might strike on the notion of intersecting a circle with a triangle or a rectangle, or why a causeway might lead to a circular enclosure. For Ancient Aliens, however, the very notion of shapes toddlers master at the age of two is a cosmic leap that could only descend from the stars. Whatever would they make of the fact that my three-year-old has mastered dodecahedrons? Oh, right. They did an episode about them, too.

Anyhow, the show’s perverse game of intergalactic Sesame Street is getting old. I am starting to feel that the value of writing up summary reviews of Ancient Aliens is falling into sunk-cost fallacy territory. Given the profoundly silly nature of this week’s topic, I will offer only bullet-points to highlight the major claims. It doesn’t feel worth writing a full review of the flatulence wafting from a half-assed effort.
 
Segment 1

• A random pair of mesas on Mars resembling a circle and a triangle, neither connected nor clear, are claimed to be an alien-built monument in a keyhole shape.
• A moat-surrounded Japanese tomb shaped roughly like a keyhole, seen in previous episodes, is seen again here. The show fabricates an exact keyhole shape by rendering structure’s irregular outline as a perfect vector drawing of a keyhole.
• Japanese gods are asserted to be space aliens on no evidence other than gods live in the sky.
• Stone structures in Saudi Arabia made from circles abutting trapezoids are seen.
• The show alleges keyholes represent heaven meeting Earth, but there is no reason to suspect that the base of the “hole,” alternately a rectangle, trapezoid, or a triangle, is a 2-D representation of a “pyramid” as they suggest.
• Other shapes are seen across ancient cultures, but they are increasingly far removed from keyhole shapes. Some barely contain a circle or a triangle.

 
Segment 2

• A piece of Egyptian jewelry is alleged to be electrical technology.
• A Phoenician depiction of a woman in a dress is claimed to be a keyhole.
• More than five full minutes of footage shot for season 13’s Sardinia episode claims troughs and enclosures made from circles and rectangles are somehow keyholes. Chunks of material from that episode, including previously aired footage, are repeated here and need not be discussed a second time. But no one is trying to hide the cut-and-paste recycling.
  

Segment 3

• A well in India that looks nothing like one in Sardinia is alleged to be “similar.” Their only similarity is that both have staircases that descend in a straight line down to a circular well. The Indian well, built around 1750, is radically redated to thousands of years BCE for no discernible reason other than an ill-defined local legend.
• The usual stories about Vedic gods being space aliens are repeated, and Giorgio Tsoukalos says “who knows” if Sardinia and India had visits from the “same” aliens. I thought he was supposed to know. Well, if not him, then I guess it is unknowable.
• Stupas are discussed again. They were just discussed in the previous episode on Tibet, repeating material from years before, and now the same material is repeated yet again. This time, the shape previously alleged to be a rocket or a flying saucer is now a keyhole.
  

Segment 4

• A medieval legend about the Seal of Solomon, a ring that controls demons, is alleged to be an ancient text. The show conflates a story in the Talmud (Tractate Gittin fol. 68) with largely unrelated elements from later Arabic legends and clearly does not understand that neither is a genuine tradition from the Bronze Age.
  
• The Knights Templar are invoked, repeating previous claims about the Templars discovering a secret chamber with the secret technology of the Djinn. The show does not understand that Arabic stories of the Djinn are neither Jewish nor from the Bronze Age.
• Traditional Christian church architecture, with nave and apse, is mistaken for a keyhole.

Segment 5

• St. Peter’s Square is identified as a keyhole.
• The Holy Grail is identified as a keyhole, though the images used depict a Eucharistic wafer entering a bowl. It has no keyhole shape.
• The show repeats false claims about Wolfram von Eschenbach claiming the Grail was Lucifer’s crown jewel. This story was explained back in 1904 as a scholarly error of the nineteenth century. There was a medieval poem that claimed it, but it was written after Wolfram and is generally regarded as an inferior derivative.
• The show alleges that the Holy Grail is in the Vatican and St. Peter’s Square points the way. The Holy Grail, a medieval legend, does not exist, so the speculation is pointless.

Segment 6

• More Mars conspiracy theories close out the episode, alleging that the “keyhole” is too symmetrical to be natural, though (a) it is not terribly symmetrical as it stands now and (b) symmetrical erosion is not all that rare.
• “Without information, what do you have?” Tsoukalos asks. “You have nothing.” I didn’t expect him to deliver the show’s mission statement, or an argument for disposing of the show forever.