Review of Ancient Aliens S19E20: “The Top Ten Alien Petroglyphs”

​Yesterday, NASA released a report about UFOs and made plain that there was no evidence of space aliens. NASA administrator Bill Nelson said that he didn’t know what some UFOs were and that more investigation is necessary; however, the report agreed with the Pentagon’s AARO that nearly all of them are aerial junk, drones, optical illusions, etc. The report added that the sensors that ufologists insist provide the best evidence for alien spaceships simply do not produce the right kind of information to draw effective conclusions, particularly when distance can’t be established. As with so many of these types of reports, funneling everything in the sky into the “UFO” bottle disguises the real issue: We aren’t studying alien spaceships but human perception—why it’s so hard to make sense of blobs on the edge of vision. And speaking of perception, this Ancient Aliens clip show is focused on just that, showing us ten examples of ancient astronaut theorists imagining science fiction stories in ambiguous rock art they lack (or ignore) the information to understand in its cultural context.

​Here are the ten sets of petroglyphs the show claims are pictures of astronauts, aliens, and spaceships. You will note significant overlap with a previous clip show, “Decoding the Alien Glyphs.”
 
10. The Rock Art of Winnemucca Lake. From a 2018 episode, recycling material about Aryan giants from a 2014 episode.
9. Rock Art Ranch. The second segment of an episode from last year.
8. The Birdmen of Easter Island. I’m going to guess this segment comes from this 2018 episode, but they’ve covered Easter Island so many times, I’m not entirely sure.
7. Lava Beds National Monument. I’m guessing this discussion of an ambiguous petroglyph came from this 2021 episode about Mount Shasta. The part about the petroglyph is so brief I didn’t mention it, and the segment moves on to UFOs with no connection to rocks.
6. Charama Rock. This one is a blast from the past, a clip from way back in a 2014 episode. Giorgio Tsoukalos looks so different ten years ago than he does today. Too many late nights on the AlienCon / Ancient Aliens Live party circuit, I suppose.
5. The Tassili Astronauts. This is an even older clip (!), almost back before I started reviewing the show. It comes from a 2012 episode, back before David Childress lost weight and stopped wearing denim-on-denim combos on-air. The long-dead Philip Coppens appears in a recycled 2011 interivew, an appearance so long ago it was posthumous the first time around.
4. Spaceman of Val Camonica. The second segment of a 2019 episode.
3. The Wandjina. I believe this comes from a 2016 episode devoted to Australia.
2. The Rock Art of Utah. I’m not sure which episode this segment came from since the rock art of various shamanic visions and stylized human shapes appeared many times. Possibly it was part of this 2022 episode about Native cultures’ artistic depictions of “aliens” that I glossed over.
1. The Holy Ghost Panel. This segment about Horseshoe Canyon, Utah petroglyphs seems familiar, but I can’t place it. It’s so short that it could have been mentioned in passing in almost any episode about Star People or Native Americans.