Review of Ancient Aliens S16E04: Giants of the Mediterranean

More than two hundred years ago, the naturalist Georges Cuvier published his Memoir Upon Living and Fossil Elephants in which he correctly explained that the skeletons reported around the Mediterranean region as those of a lost race of giants had, in fact, belonged to fossilized elephants. Nearly a century earlier, Sir Hans Sloane had drawn the same conclusion in a paper read before the Royal Society. In 1835, Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville examined the skeleton of the famed giant Teutobochus and discovered that it belonged to a mastodon, a truth that confirmed an assessment by Jean Riolan the Younger a century before. Hell, in 1827 Edmond Temple even watched a “giant” being excavated in Bolivia in the presence of men of science, and he gawked in wonder as they completely refused to believe it an Ice Age elephant, despite having tusks. I could list dozens of similar accounts and analyses. In fact, I have. The truth about “giants” has been known for centuries, but here we are watching Ancient Aliens party like it’s 1699.

More to the point: The episode, following last week’s, serves as another excuse to recycle outtakes from their 2018 episode about Sardinia, which was literally called “Island of the Giants” and covered much of the same material. You can read my review for the background on the long history of trying to apply biblical giant mythology to Sardinia. Another chunk came from the 2014 In Search of Aliens episode “The Mystery of the Cyclops.” My review of that episode is here. I know the pandemic has wreaked havoc with TV production, but the blatant reuse of old material without even the gloss of pretending to be new is especially obvious and outrageous in this hastily fabricated pandemic season.
 
Segment 1

• The first segment discusses the Greek myth of the Gigantomachy and then lists other stories of giants from around the world with clips from previous episodes.
• Giorgio Tsoukalos says there is a “great concentration” of stories of giants in the Mediterranean, so real giants must have lived there. Those stories are most prominent because those are the cultures whose written records survive best. It doesn’t make them real.
• The Cyclopes are discussed for their architecture, the cyclopean style. The show repeats a myth Pausanias reported in ancient times that Mycenaean architecture was thought to be their work. As should be obvious, Mycenaean structures are built to human scale. The giants would have hit their heads every time they stood up.
• Clips from old episodes about Malta—I think it was actually from Tsoukalos’s In Search of Aliens show—are used to claim their massive stones were moved by giants with “technology beyond our capabilities,” as David Childress alleges.

Segment 2

• The second segment is definitely recycling claims and probably b-roll from In Search of Aliens as it explores an ancient Maltese temple and its astronomical alignments.
• The segment describes the cart ruts on Malta, previously seen on both Ancient Aliens and In Search of Aliens, and which I covered in my earlier review. There is no need to repeat again here, especially since the show simply pastes in pieces of the In Search of Aliens episode from 2014, or outtakes therefrom. I didn’t go back to check, but it seems to be previously broadcast material, as it matches my 2014 notes.
• New talking head footage expresses shock that cart ruts can be found in areas where people used carts.
  

Segment 3

• This segment simply repeats material from the Sardinia episode about “giant” tombs, with recycled footage, recycled claims, and excerpts presented without acknowledgement of their previous broadcast. Some new talking head blather is layered over previous footage. I covered it before, and there is no reason to repeat myself as often as this show does.
• Old clips of Nephilim hunter Timothy Alberino are recycled as the show recycles claims that stylized Sardinian statues represent robots. Alberino used to work with Steve Quayle to produce content revolving around heretical, Enochian Christian fan fiction but no longer works with him.
  
• The show confuses various Mesopotamian cultures and misrepresents the Anunnaki as giants. The show does not understand hieratic scale.
• Andrew Collins claims that Sardinia contains a miniature Sumerian ziggurat (it doesn’t—platforms look like platforms the world over) and therefore the Anunnaki are also Sardinian giants.

Segment 4

• This segment repeats footage and interviews, or outtakes thereof, from a segment about Ferentino, Italy from an episode that aired last year. Off the top of my head, I don’t remember which one.

 
Segment 5

• Alberino makes claims that skeletons 9-12 feet tall were dug up, and various talking heads allege that they have been destroyed by “official-looking people.” Even the show recognizes many of these stories are “dubious.”
• An old article from 1890 mistaking megafauna bones for human giants is cited as proof of giants.
• Nephilim are brought up and Erich von Däniken gets excited about the Bible describing alien and human women “having sex” to produce giants.
  
  

Segment 6

• The sixth segment describes Genesis 6:4, the section on giants. The show relates old Jewish lore (preserved in later Abrahamic faiths’ lore) that Adam and Eve were giants and each successive generation was less tall. It was a myth born of degeneration theory. Jason Martell claims that “Darwinism” is wrong and ET-human hybrids were the true lost race.
• Von Däniken claims that science is hiding giant bones to prevent us from proving ET-human mating through DNA testing. The “lost” bones aren’t lost. They’re right where they’ve always been, labeled correctly as megafauna bones.