Review of Ancient Aliens S18E02 "Mystery of the Standing Stones"

​This week’s episode of Ancient Aliens continues the theme of exploiting stuff you half remember from the last year or so as it presents an episode framed around the so-called “monolith” that caused a stir when the metallic art installation was photographed in the Utah desert in November 2020, sparking allegations that the shiny pillar was the work of space aliens, despite its very earthly rivets. The show has covered various standing stones and pillars many times before, so after last week’s relatively coherent episode with a strong narrative arc and somewhat original content, we return to form with the usual recycling. I will be frank. This episode is almost identical to the Season Five episode called “The Monoliths,” which covered almost all of the material we see tonight, mostly in the same order.

​Segment 1
The first segment opens with the Utah “monolith” (which was neither a stone, nor ancient), which the show compares to the monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was—surprise--fiction and therefore of no relevance to real space aliens when hinting at a “connection.” The various talking heads state that standing stones are an archetypical part of the human story, but they do not stop to think that prior to the modern era, monuments that would last thousands of years would, by necessity, have to be made of stone. Wooden pillars long since rotted away, though we know the ancients carved them, too. This segues into a segment on Carnac repeating information--and footage—from a decade-old episode, which was previously recycled a few times before. The long and short of the segment is that the talking heads can’t imagine why prehistoric people would bother making monuments since the talking heads have never known hard work and can’t imagine anyone would voluntarily perform any. Some repeat claims about Carnac representing the Pythagorean Theorem (by which, they mean you can connect the dots among its many stones to draw a right triangle—woohoo) is used to suggest that the standing stones are meant to convey mathematical secrets, all of which are beyond this show’s education level and are therefore ignored in favor of a commercial and a teaser about animal mutilations.
 
Segment 2
The second segment continues with Carnac material, alleging that the stones’ high quartz content makes them piezoelectric. Ancient Aliens has been on a kick about rocks shooting electricity for a decade now, but the claim has little merit. The show alleges that the stones were purposely positioned so that they would shoot electricity into the sky during an earthquake, when the stones are “stimulated” by tectonic forces. Since the stones have never done this in all of recorded history, it’s difficult to take seriously the claim that the stones were part of an “electrical grid,” especially one that allegedly functions once every 40,000 years or so. Afterward, a 25-foot-tall stone in England is profiled. (It’s actually 50 feet, but half is underground.) We hear silly stories that the rock attracts UFOs and fairies. I can’t get on board with the idea that the Rudston Monolith is “impossible” in its size given that some Egyptian obelisks were more than twice the size, and the Egyptians and the Romans moved them, sometimes at great distances.
 
Segment 3
The third segment suggests the Rudston Monolith is an electrical conductor “plugged in” to the “strong earth energies” below the surface. There is, of course, no evidence of the rock doing anything but sitting there. Nevertheless, nonsense about ley lines gets trotted out again, recycled from previous episodes. Ley lines do not exist, so it’s pointless to discuss the claim that the Rudston Monolith “amplifies” ley line energy according to an alien plan. The medieval tale that Merlin carried Stonehenge to England is discussed, but with no acknowledgement that the story is from the Middle Ages, not prehistory. Then the show repeats material from several earlier shows going back a decade about the Tuatha De Danaan, claiming that the heavily euhemerized Irish legends recount alien visitation.
 
Segment 4
The fourth segment simply gives up on the idea of standing stones and instead repeats material (and footage) from past episodes about Nikola Tesla’s electrical experiments, including his large electrical conducting tower in Wadenclyffe, Long Island. The show alleges that standing stones are essential Tesla towers offering wireless electricity. Except, of course, that the stones are still standing and do not provide electricity. Tsoukalos suggests that they are charging stations for UFOs (intergalactic Teslas, I guess), which store electricity to power flying saucers, admitting that the idea “sounds absolutely insane.” That is a selling point on this show. The show isn’t quite clear whether it is claiming that the stones themselves are batteries for charging stones or if they merely point to vortexes for charging with “earth energy”—but I don’t think anyone involved with the show cares. It’s all the same to them.
 
Segment 5
It’s getting monotonous to report on the repetition in the show, but the fifth segment once again recycles material from earlier episodes to claim that Egyptian obelisks also channeled electricity. It’s mostly from the episode called “The Monoliths,” but with a conspiracy theory that Tesla was receiving secret information about the Giza Pyramids’ piezoelectricity from J. P. Morgan’s pyramid expedition. Morgan really did go to Egypt on vacation, but he paid workers to excavate a Christian cemetery, not pyramids. The conspiracy theories derive from E. L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime, which made up a pyramid expedition for Morgan. Morgan’s vacation in Egypt came a decade after Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower experiments, so it’s unlikely Morgan was funneling information to Tesla, with whom he had a falling out, especially since Morgan died shortly after leaving Egypt.
 
Segment 6
The final segment talks about tourists who visit various standing stones around the world. It mentions UFOs appearing around standing stones, which is rather more likely the result of fantasy-prone tourists gathering at these sites in hopes of seeing them. David Childress alleges that you can pick up the energy from standings stones at a distance of “hundreds of miles” with “the right technology,” technology he conveniently doesn’t describe and does not demonstrate. The narrator adds that standing stones show Earth is a “spaceport” and that it is one of many across the universe. Uh-huh