Review of Ancient Aliens S21E07: “Mysteries of the Aztecs”

​After six weeks of clip shows, Ancient Aliens returns with original—well, let’s say “newly filmed”—material this week. Since the show has already done episodes devoted to the Maya, the Tiwanaku people, the early peoples of South America, and Teotihuacan, it’s only natural that they would eventually get around to the Aztecs. I am surprised that it took sixteen years, but I guess there isn’t as much to say about a culture that flourished for only two centuries and overlapped the start of the Renaissance in Europe. They seemed a little too recent and too well-known from the records of the Spanish conquest, which is probably why they were more likely to show up on History’s treasure-hunting shows than on its alien shows.

​Segment 1
We open with a geography lesson on Mesoamerica and the various peoples who lived in it from the Olmecs down to the Aztecs. From the primer, it’s clear that the show doesn’t believe its audience realizes that the “Aztecs” aren’t synonymous with the entire millenniums-long history of Mesoamerica. The show briefly recounts the migration of the Aztecs from the north and the establishment of their empire in the fourteenth century, including the highlights of the Aztec Empire’s culture and infrastructure. The geography of the capital of Tenochtitlan in lake Texcoco is discussed, with claims that the city and its building were aligned to the Pleiades and “other solar systems as well,” as David Childress claims.
 
After this, we receive an account of Aztec human sacrifice, which occurred on a scale almost unfathomable to modern people. Tens of thousands of people were killed atop Tenochtitlan’s pyramids in order to appease the gods and keep the sun from dying.
 
So far, this is mostly a normal, if superficial, account of the Aztecs. But as we go to commercial, narrator Robert Clotworthy tells us that aliens may have taught the Aztecs the art of human sacrifice.
 
Segment 2
The second segment opens with last March’s announcement of the discovery of three new Aztec codices that had been hidden for centuries in a family archive. However, these particular codices are not important to Ancient Aliens. Instead, we focus on a different codex, long known, which tells the Aztec origin story. This, of course, leads the show to rehash a claim they made many years ago that the large knife that descended from the sky in the story was an alien spaceship. The show then alleges that Aztlan, the mythic Aztec homeland, was Atlantis, a claim they made (and I discussed) in 2022. (They also did it, and the knife story, in 2014.) Unable to sustain interest in this claim for more than 30 seconds, the segment immediately veers off to Teotihuacan, which is not an Aztec site, and rehash a claim they made back in 2012 and I debunked at the time. The show repeats its previous discussion from 2017 of mercury and mica found in the city’s Temple of the Feathered Serpent, which the show bizarrely claims, then as now, to be the remains of an “energy device.”
 
Segment 3
At this point, there isn’t even much pretense that we are still talking about the Aztecs. This segment focuses on Quetzalcoatl, a god (in his feathered serpent form) known throughout Mesoamerica and long predating the Aztecs. His role as a civilizing culture hero is compared to gods from around the world, leading to a mixed-up discussion of the “Anunnaki”—who were not culture heroes—whom the show confuses for the Seven Sages of Mesopotamian lore. All of these culture heroes are alleged to be space aliens because Olmec statues of the Feathered Serpent, depicting a man with a serpent’s head hood, look vaguely like spacesuits. The focus is on La Venta’s Monument 19, which shows a man in a serpent-headed suit sitting atop a curled serpent whose head rises above him. As the show has done many times, it claims this is an astronaut in a spaceship. Erich von Däniken is on hand for this segment because he’s been pushing this claim for more than 55 years.

Monument 19 from La Venta (Wikimedia Commons)

​Segment 4
The fourth segment again moves on to the Toltecs, whom the Aztecs claimed as ancestors. The large “Atlantean” statues atop the Toltec pyramid at Tula are, as in past episodes, alleged to be astronauts in spacesuits despite very obviously showing Toltec people in feathered headdresses. With no particular connection to the Toltec statues, the show lurches on to the story of the god Tezcatlipoca, the god of night, obsidian, hurricanes, etc. The ancient astronaut theorists allege that the conflict between the peaceful Quetzalcoatl and the warlike Tezcatlipoca represents two species of aliens fighting for control over humanity. The show points to basically every possible story of conflict between gods to claim they are all distant memories of a war between factions of aliens for control of the Earth. “Conflict” is a rather broad concept—indeed a universal storytelling motif—to claim as a similarity. 

​Segment 5
The fifth segment turns to the story the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the problematic narrative of the alleged prophecy of their coming. Surprisingly, while the show briefly discussed it in 2014 (linked above), they have not covered the story in significant detail before. I wrote about it, however, back in 2014 when America Unearthed covered the story. Many of the legends of the Conquest were only recorded later by the Spanish and appear to have been manipulated by them. The narrator and David Childress claim (with no pretense of evidence) that Quetzalcoatl, who is a space alien, fostered the Conquest in order to end human sacrifice in Mexico. Introducing European diseases that killed up to 95% of the people in the Americas is a funny way to do it. The inability to even suggest lines of evidence to support the claim seems not to trouble Ancient Aliens, for whom a rhetorical question is the best kind of fact—the kind that they can claim never to have asserted should it be proved wrong. They are “just asking questions” after all.

​Segment 6
The final segment discusses some geoglyphs known as the Blythe Intaglios in California, many of which archaeologists date to around 900 to 1200 CE based on radiocarbon dates, though some are believed to possibly be older. The show claims they are 10,000 years old, which is not supported by evidence, and depict Quetzalcoatl and other gods. The show alleges that the Native people living near the site are related to the Aztecs, and the talking heads then repeat the claims they made about “factions” of aliens fighting a battle over whether to make humans peaceful or violent—and you don’t need me to point out how they are literalizing a philosophical argument about violence and theodicy.