Review of Ancient Aliens S19E11 “The Top Ten Pyramid Sites”

​After a three-month hiatus, Ancient Aliens resumed its nineteenth season with a clip show last night. I wasn’t aware that the show had returned. Most of my TV viewing has switched to streaming, and with A+E Networks not affiliated with one of the big streaming services, I am blissfully ignorant of the History channel’s advertisements. The show only made a couple of tweets about the episode, which I missed. Oh, well. With the real energy in the space alien media space devoted to potential congressional hearings about David Grusch’s allegations that the United States government made a secret treaty with murderous space monsters while battling the Russians to “master” crashed UFO technology, and Sen. Marco Rubio walking back claims that he heard from “firsthand” crashed saucer witnesses while Rep. Mike Gallagher speculated UFOs are either future human time travelers or a lost parallel civilization from the Hollow Earth, the intense stupidity of real life has far outstripped its origins in the fever swamps of a cable TV industry in terminal decline. 

​Indeed, who could top the comedy of the House of Representatives having to delay their crashed saucer hunt because most of their witnesses couldn’t pass a background check? Duh! It’s ufology—what did you expect? So, onward to what Ancient Aliens does best: reminding viewers of the “fun” they used to have back when cable TV was still a going concern.
 
Our topic this week is the “top ten pyramid sites,” which the show discusses in a series of clips from previous episodes loosely linked with introductions from Giorgio Tsoukalos, standing this time in a room dressed to look like a Victorian treasure-hunter’s trophy room.
 
10. El Castillo. The rerun segment claims Kukulkan is a space alien and his serpent form a flying saucer. I can’t tell which old episode this segment is taken from—even my prodigious memory for TV garbage can’t recall every episode from nineteen seasons!—but it was long enough ago that Philip Coppens appears in it, and he’s been dead for more than a decade.
 
9. Teotihuacan. This segment claiming the Mexican pyramid city as Orion’s belt comes from a 2013 episode.
 
8. The Sican Pyramids. This segment on Peruvian adobe pyramids comes from a 2015 episode.
 
7. El Mirador. I can’t remember which episode this came from since they have covered Maya pyramids so many times. The segment discusses the Hero Twins of the Popul Vuh but doesn’t say much. We can usually judge the age of a recycled segment from the fairly dramatic change in Giorgio Tsoukalos’s appearance over the past decade, and his clothing and hair in this segment suggests it is quite recent. It’s short enough that I probably fell asleep and missed it during whichever episode it was on.

Drawing of the Pyramid of Hellinikon in 1887.

6. The Pyramid of Hellinikon. I don’t have any notes about this from a past episode, though a date on screen suggests it occurred in 2021 or 2022. I suppose it is possible that the show filmed a couple of original segments to justify labeling the episode “all new.” The narrator says that the pyramid, in Hellinikon on the plain of Argos in Greece, is “the only one in Europe recognized by mainstream archaeologists.” I don’t know what that is supposed to mean. The Pyramid of Cestius, from the Roman era, is open to the public in Rome, and I’m pretty sure archaeologists know it’s real. The Hellinikon pyramid’s date is controversial, with different methodologies suggesting a date anywhere from 2500 BCE to 400 BCE; the best guess is that a pyramid from c. 400 BCE sits atop foundations from a much more ancient structure. It’s one of more than a dozen such structures in Greece. While Pausanias suggested they were tombs, no one is quite sure of their original purpose. Many archaeologists suggest they may have been temples to fallen warriors, as they sit on military encampments. At any rate, Ancient Aliens says that since their purpose and age are somewhat uncertain, “we have to question who built them.” Aliens apparently build crumbly buildings. Quite the letdown after their masterpiece, the Great Pyramid.
 
5. The Step Pyramid of Djoser. Tsoukalos says this segment is from a 2018 episode. If I recall correctly, it’s a bit from the multi-hour “Earth Station Egypt” special episode that I passed over when reviewing it due to the episode’s length. Here, the show claims the architect Imhotep (later conflated with Hermes Trismegistus, who assumed his iconography) was himself an alien because he “looks” otherworldly and KNEW TOO MUCH.
 
4. The Hidden Pyramids of China. The segment, from a 2016 episode, claimed that China’s “Altar of Heaven” platform structure was a “landing pad” for flying saucers, or which cited faulty Chinese reporting about ancient “pipes” that I discussed back in 2014. I didn’t review the segment in full at the time because I had already covered its claims elsewhere.
 
3. Gunung Padang. A recycled segment from a 2015 episode, echoing Graham Hancock’s claims about the Indonesia site.
 
2. The Temple of Borobudur. The segment is from a 2012 episode.
 
1. The Giza Plateau. Your guess is as good as mine. Ancient Aliens has likely devoted more segments to the Giza pyramids than any other topic. The segment selected for this clip show covers Chris Dunn’s claim that the pyramids served as an ancient power plant. It doesn’t seem to be exactly the segment from a 2013 episode, but they have covered the same material so many times (at least four, by my notes, though I’m sure I ignored or skimmed over others), it doesn’t really matter.