The Ancient Astronaut Hypothesis Is Racist and Harmful

The so-called “ancient astronaut hypothesis” is a popular genre of pseudohistory which centers around the claim that extraterrestrial beings visited earth in pre-modern times, leaving behind supposed evidence of their presence. The supposed “evidence” for this “hypothesis” is based entirely on flagrant misinterpretations and misrepresentations, tendentious reasoning, false assumptions, forged artifacts, and often outright lies. As a result, the “hypothesis” is universally rejected among professional academic scholars, historians, and archaeologists.

I have written about the ancient astronaut hypothesis before. For instance, I wrote an article back in January 2020 about how we actually know that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids as tombs for their pharaohs, in which I debunked claims made on the show Ancient Aliens. I also posted an article a few days ago in which I debunk the popular ancient astronaut theorist claim that Alexander the Great saw flying saucers while on his campaigns. In this article, however, I am not going to try to debunk the ancient astronaut hypothesis. Instead, I want to explain the history of the ancient astronaut hypothesis, why it is not just a “harmless” conspiracy theory, and why it is actually harmful.

The obvious harm the ancient astronaut hypothesis causes

The most obvious harm that the ancient astronaut hypothesis causes is to public understanding of pre-modern history and, consequently, the historical discipline itself. Unfortunately, ancient astronaut proponents who promote laughably inaccurate pseudohistory almost always have far greater audiences and far greater influence than real historians who study real history.

Some of my readers may assume that no one actually believes ancient astronaut theories except for a few crazies, but, if you think that, you are sadly mistaken. Surveys continually find that somewhere around two out of every five people in the United States say that they believe in ancient aliens. For instance, Chapman University conducted a survey in October 2018, which found that 41% of people living in the U.S. agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “aliens have visited Earth in our ancient past.”

I know from personal experience that there are many people who know virtually nothing about ancient history other than what they have learned through authors like Erich von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin and television shows like Ancient Aliens. This is bad, because it means that the vast majority of what they have heard about ancient history is not rooted in solid evidence or historical reasoning and, indeed, cannot rightly be considered anything other than downright factually wrong.

This, of course, makes it harder for people like me who want to educate people about real history, because, in order to educate, we first have to debunk all the misconceptions that people have already been fed about the subject in question. Unfortunately, ancient astronaut proponents and their ilk frequently try to claim that “mainstream historians” (by which they mean real historians) are engaged in some kind of deliberate conspiracy to hide “the truth” from the public. This erodes trust in academics and makes it much harder for real historians and historical educators to get people to listen to us.

The harm that ancient astronaut theories cause to the public understanding of history and the historical discipline, however, is far from the only harm that they cause. In order to understand how the ancient astronaut hypothesis causes harm to the public more generally, we need to examine its history, as well as the ideas and agendas of the people who have been most successful at promoting it.

Some important historical context

Before we delve further into the history of the ancient astronaut hypothesis, I would like to give some historical background that I think is especially important to understanding it. As I previously discussed in this article I wrote in June 2020 about ancient African civilizations, throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, racist white colonialists sought to portray all peoples whom they regarded as not white as inferior and their cultures as uncivilized. They especially sought to portray Black Africans as unintelligent and intellectually incapable of building any kind of great civilization.

The problem is that colonialist archaeologists and explorers were often confronted by undeniably impressive monuments in Africa and all evidence seemed to indicate that Black Africans had built these monuments. Desperate to protect white supremacist ideology, these archaeologists and explorers often tried to insist that these monuments must have been designed by non-Black people from outside the regions where the monuments are located, because they deemed the structures too sophisticated to have been built by Black Africans.

For instance, Great Zimbabwe was a major city in what is now the country of Zimbabwe that flourished from around the eleventh century to the fifteenth century CE. The site is renowned for the magnificent enclosure wall that surrounds it, known as the Great Enclosure, and the towers and other structures associated with it.

Many of the early colonial archaeologists who studied the site adamantly insisted that it could not have possibly been built by Black people because the structures were too sophisticated. The English archaeologist James Theodore Bent (lived 1852 – 1897) literally writes in the third edition of his book The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, published in 1902:

“It [i.e., the architectural sophistication of the city] is, however, very valuable confirmatory evidence, when taken with the other points, that the builders were of the Semitic race and of Arabian origin, and quite excludes the possibility of any Negroid race have had more to do with their construction than as slaves of a race of higher cultivation; for it is a well accepted fact that the Negroid brain never could be capable of taking the initiative in work of such intricate nature.”

In stark contrast to this assessment, modern scholars now universally accept that Great Zimbabwe was, in fact, primarily designed and built by the native Shona people of Zimbabwe and that it bears architectural similarities to other monuments built by the Shona people in the region.

ABOVE: Aerial photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a portion of the ruins of the sprawling medieval city of Great Zimbabwe in southeastern Zimbabwe

Early speculation about extraterrestrials visiting earth in ancient times

It was in this context of western colonialism and imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that some people first started to speculate about extraterrestrial beings having possibly visited earth in ancient times. Early speculation about this idea was primarily presented through works of science fiction.

The French brothers Joseph Henri Honoré Boex and Séraphin Justin François Boex, who wrote together under the pen name J.-H. Rosny, published a science fiction novel in 1888 titled Les Xipéhuz, which is about a tribe of primitive prehistoric humans who encounter bizarre beings known as the Xipéhuz, which are implied to be of extraterrestrial origin.

The American science fiction author H. P. Lovecraft (lived 1890 – 1937) wrote many stories about cosmic beings who are supposed to have come from outer space and to have made contact with human beings since ancient times. His most famous work of this nature is, of course, his short story “The Call of Cthulhu,” which was originally published in February 1928 in the pulp magazine Weird Tales.

As anyone who has read basically anything Lovecraft ever wrote can tell you, he was extremely racist, sexist, and classist and his intense fear and loathing of basically anyone who was not an educated white man of upper-class, English-speaking background manifests overtly in his fiction.

Pretty much the main premise of “The Call of Cthulhu” is that Cthulhu is a terrifying, supremely evil, and extraordinarily powerful cosmic being who has been worshipped throughout time and across all continents by various peoples whom Lovecraft portrays as “savage” and uncivilized. The story repeatedly portrays people of color as dangerous, fanatical cultists of Cthulhu and their mere presence in places where they are not expected as a foreboding sign of Cthulhu’s imminent awakening.

Unfortunately, as we shall see, racism is a very consistent theme throughout virtually every part of the history of the ancient astronaut genre.

ABOVE: Illustration of Cthulhu, drawn by H. P. Lovecraft in 1934

Speculation about supposed ancient human contact with extraterrestrials really took off until after World War II. This speculation was at least partly propelled by the events of the war itself. During the war, Allied air force pilots sometimes reported supposed encounters with mysterious unidentified flying objects, which became known as “foo fighters.” These so-called “foo fighter” sightings led to widespread public speculation that the “foo fighters” were actually Nazi secret weapons of some kind.

In the end, the Allies soundly defeated the Nazis and no solid evidence that the supposed “foo fighters” were any kind of Nazi secret weapons ever became public. Nonetheless, speculation about supposed connections between Nazis, secret weapons, and UFOs remained a topic of popular interest.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a diorama on display in the International UFO Museum in Roswell, New Mexico, depicting what the diorama-maker imagined a Nazi “foo fighter” might look like

The birth of the ancient astronaut hypothesis

In 1960, the French writers Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels published a book titled Le Matin des Magiciens or The Morning of the Magicians, which is essentially a poorly organized, thrown-together mishmash of all sorts of bizarre, esoteric, and “occult” theories about all kinds of different subjects.

The author and researcher Jason Colavito, who has extensively researched the history of ancient astronaut hypotheses, argues in his book The Cult of Alien Gods: H.P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture, published in 2005 by Prometheus Books, that many of the ideas presented in The Morning of the Magicians bear undeniably close resemblances to ideas that had earlier appeared H. P. Lovecraft’s fictional stories and Bergier and Pauwels sometimes even mentioned Lovecraft directly. Colavito concludes that Bergier and Pauwels almost certainly drew direct inspiration from Lovecraft.

In addition to being apparently obsessed with Lovecraft, Bergier and Pauwels were also obsessed with the Nazis. They believed that the Nazis had discovered all kinds of amazing “occult” secrets, that they had been in contact with extraterrestrial beings, and that they even built their own saucer-shaped spacecrafts.

The Morning of the Magicians is the book that is largely responsible for promoting the notion later immortalized by films like Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark (a rather problematic film for other reasons, which I wrote about in this post from December 2020) that the Nazis were obsessed with the occult.

In addition to all these things, The Morning of the Magicians also basically invented the entire “ancient astronaut hypothesis” as it is known today, laying out all the basic claims and assumptions of the genre.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the title page of The Morning of the Magicians, written by the Nazi-obsessed writers Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels

In 1963, another French writer named Robert Charroux published a book titled One Hundred Thousand Years of Man’s Unknown History, which presented mostly the same claims and arguments that had earlier appeared in The Morning of the Magicians, only in a more readable, better organized format.

Charroux was also notably a proponent of the idea of Celtic racial supremacy, which he wrote about extensively. He believed that there was once an island known as Hyperborea that was situated between Iceland and Greenland and that this island was the home of the supreme blond-haired, blue-eyed, white-skinned Celtic race, whom he believed dominated the earth in previous eras of history.

ABOVE: Photograph of the French author and Celtic racialist Robert Charroux, who promoted the ancient astronaut hypothesis in his book One Hundred Thousand Years of Man’s Unknown History, published in 1963

Erich von Däniken, Chariots of the Gods?, and mass popularity

Bergier, Pauwels, and Charroux shaped the “ancient astronaut hypothesis” as it is known today, but they were not the ones who popularized it. Instead, the hypothesis was primarily first popularized through the book Chariots of the Gods?: Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, written by the Swiss author Erich von Däniken.

As Jason Colavito discusses in this review of an episode of Ancient Aliens about von Däniken’s life and legacy, von Däniken was born in 1935 into an extremely conservative, traditionalist Catholic home. He spent most of the 1950s as a grifter and con artist, stealing tens of thousands of dollars from hotels through fraud and embezzlement schemes. He was convicted multiple times, a court psychiatrist at one point declared him to be a “pathological liar,” and he spent time in and out of prison.

Von Däniken blatantly plagiarized Bergier, Pauwels, and Charroux’s claims to write an article titled “Hatten unsere Vorfahren Besuch aus dem Weltraum?” (“Did Our Ancestors Have a Visit from Outer Space?”), which the magazine Der Nordwesten published in December 1964. In his article, von Däniken never referenced Bergier, Pauwels, or Charroux and presented their claims as though they were his own. He then began writing a book, which was eventually destined to become Chariots of the Gods?.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Erich von Däniken, author of Chariots of the Gods?, the book that played the most significant role in popularizing the “ancient astronaut hypothesis”

Multiple publishers rejected von Däniken’s manuscript, deeming his theories insane, his writing poor, and his work altogether unfit to publish. The German publisher Econ-Verlag, however, eventually agreed to publish the book, but only if a professional writer thoroughly rewrote it before publication.

Econ-Verlag hired Wilhelm “Utz” Utermann, a former leading editor of and contributor to the Völkischer Beobachter, the official newspaper of the Nazi Party, to edit von Däniken’s manuscript, writing under the pseudonym “Wilhelm Roggersdorf.” Utermann significantly rewrote most of the book, removing many parts which the publisher deemed too offensive, including von Däniken’s claim that Jesus Christ was actually a space alien.

Econ-Verlag published Chariots of the Gods? in 1968 and it almost immediately became a wildly popular bestseller. It made The New York Times bestsellers list and, over the past half century, it has now sold over seventy million copies. This success spawned dozens of imitators and paved the way for what was to become a flourishing and popular genre of “ancient astronaut” speculation.

Von Däniken himself went on to publish many more books promoting pretty much exactly the same claims he presented in Chariots of the Gods?. These books have made him into a multi-millionaire.

ABOVE: Front cover of the fiftieth-anniversary edition of Erich von Däniken’s book Chariots of the Gods?: Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, originally published in 1968

How the ancient astronaut hypothesis is based on racist assumptions

A huge portion of the ancient astronaut hypothesis as it has been articulated by Bergier, Pauwels, Charroux, von Däniken, and others rests on the assumption that some ancient and medieval monuments are simply too impressive to have been built by the human beings who are known to have lived in the regions of the world where those monuments are located. Ancient astronaut theorists therefore contend that these monuments can only have been built by extraterrestrial beings or by humans with extraterrestrial aid.

What is interesting is that nearly all the monuments Bergier, Pauwels, Charroux, von Däniken and most other ancient astronaut theorists since them focus on are located outside Europe, in parts of the world that were inhabited in ancient times by people who would today be considered Black, Brown, people of color, or Indigenous.

Indeed, the only major monument in Europe that von Däniken hints in Chariots of the Gods? might have been built by extraterrestrials or with extraterrestrial aid is Stonehenge, which is located in Wiltshire, England. Von Däniken, however, only mentions Stonehenge once very briefly in a sentence that is mostly focused on monuments from outside Europe, which occurs on page 126 of the fiftieth anniversary edition of the book:

“The Egyptians fetched the obelisk from Aswan, the architects of Stonehenge brought their blocks from southwest Wales and Marlborough, the stonemasons of Eastern Island took their ready-made monster statues from a distant quarry to their present sites, and no one can say where some of the monoliths at Tiahuanaco come from.”

At no point in his book does von Däniken suggest that famous monuments in Europe, such as the Akropolis in Athens, the Pantheon or the Colosseum in Rome, the Hagia Sophia in İstanbul, the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, or the Palace of Westminster in London, could not have been built without the assistance of extraterrestrial beings—even though all of these monuments are at least as impressive as the monuments he does attribute to alien intervention.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior of the Roman Pantheon, a building that no one (as far as I am aware) has ever tried to claim could only have been built with extraterrestrial assistance

As the scholar of ancient history Sarah E. Bond discusses in an article published on 13 November 2018 in Hyperallergic, many scholars and historians now generally recognize that the so-called “ancient astronaut hypothesis” is, to a large extent, historically rooted in racist assumptions. Ancient astronaut theorists find it more believable that monuments like the Easter Island heads, Tiahuanaco, and so forth were built by aliens from outer space than what the historical evidence actually indicates, which is that these monuments were built by Indigenous people and people of color.

The ancient astronaut hypothesis, in turn, helps to reinforce the same racist assumptions that spawned it. As I mentioned earlier, European colonialists have historically sought to portray Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color as lacking the intellectual capacity needed to built a “civilization,” often claiming that these people have built no impressive monuments as putative evidence.

One major way Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color have sought to disrupt this portrayal is by pointing out that they have, in fact, built monuments that are impressive even according to Eurocentric standards. The ancient astronaut hypothesis, however, plants unwarranted doubts in people’s minds about the construction of non-European monuments, which can make it harder for Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color to counter white supremacist narratives.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Gateway of the Sun at Tiahuanaco in Bolivia

Erich von Däniken’s explicit racial theorizing

Von Däniken’s racism, however, is not just implicit. He has made his bigoted attitudes toward people of color and Black people in particular very explicit. By 1979, von Däniken had published many bestselling books and had much greater freedom to write what he really believed. In that year, he published a book titled Signs of the Gods? which rehashes many of the same claims made in his earlier works. In this book, however, von Däniken delves deeply into outright and explicit racialism.

The British archaeologist Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews has written a post on his blog Bad Archaeology about the racialism in von Däniken’s Signs of the Gods? in which he quotes a few passages in which von Däniken proposes racialist hypotheses that I think the vast majority of people will find both ignorant and abhorrent:

Many other passages in the book that Fitzpatrick-Matthews does not quote are just as abhorrent as the passages quoted above. For instance, here is one passage in which von Däniken speaks as though Black people belong to an inscrutably different species from white people and wrongly interprets cultural differences as due to innate biological differences:

“What goes on in the heads and ‘hearts’ of members of another race? The different psyches with their mutually incompatible attitudes make understanding so difficult. The European shakes his head hopelessly when he sees coloured people on television accompanying a dead man to his last rest with loud tomtoms—a situation in which ‘one’ should behave quietly, ceremonially and sadly.”

I won’t go to the trouble of explaining in depth why von Däniken’s racialist views are wrong here. Mainly what I want my readers to notice is how von Däniken is using the idea of “ancient alien contact”—which many people believe is just a “fun” and “harmless” conspiracy theory—to justify and promote racialism.

ABOVE: Image of the front cover of the book Signs of the Gods? by Erich von Däniken, in which he promotes racialism under the guise of the ancient astronaut hypothesis

Von Däniken’s right-wing political and social agenda

There are other indications that one of von Däniken’s true goals in writing so many books about “ancient astronauts” has, in fact, been to promote a right-wing political and social agenda. As Jason Colavito discusses in another post he made on his blog, in January 1976, von Däniken wrote an unsolicited letter to Gerald Ford, the Republican president of the United States at the time, along with a copy of his latest book.

In the letter, von Däniken surprisingly says almost nothing about his own speculations about ancient astronauts. Instead, he urges the president to embrace UFO conspiracy theories and make a recommitment to space exploration, claiming that this is how conservatives will convince generations of young people to embrace social conservativism and reject communism. I won’t quote the whole letter, but here is an excerpt:

“Regrettable but true Western Europe seems to be penetrated nowadays by leftist blockheads. The press of the countries surrounding my neutral native country Switzerland is dominated by socialist dreamers. The big masses do not realize the ins and outs of our today’s situation and are blindly falling to the big deception.”

“I have asked myself again and again: what is there that we can set over against the cummunist/socialist ideology? How can we inspire a young generation and at the same time demonstrate to them sense for solidarity and creditable performance leading to success? And this national with an international effect?”

“I firmly believe that restimulation of manned space travel could make this possible. I am sure that you are well acquainted with the statements made on this subject by so many renowned supporters of manned space travel and there is certainly no need for me to quote them here.”

“You must also be aware of the many side effects which a resumtion of manned space travel would mean for the economy and thereby for the workers and taxpayers.”

“You also know very well the national feeling of unity which can be activated by manned space travel.”

“Do you realize the innumerable supporters and believers of ‘flying saucers’. They must, alone in your country, count to a million if not more and no doubt represent an interesting potential of votes which just cannot be neglected in an election year.”

[. . .]

“But what has all this to do with communist/socialist ideologies and dreams?”

“A society which is conversant with interstellar space travel just cannot be communist. Communism, the society without any classes, means stagnation. Man is a creature of habit. Sensations are no longer sensations if they occur over and over again. In human history we always have needed new challenge as stimulus for achievments and results which we could proudly present. A visit of man to Mars would be this next victory, another spectacular turning point in our history.”

“The communists would have to follow – but for technological and social reasons they are just not in a position to do so.”

As Colavito notes in his blog post, President Ford never read von Däniken’s letter. Instead, it was sent to the State Department Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES), which responded months later with a short letter that carefully avoided acknowledging any validity to von Däniken’s assertions.

Copies of von Däniken’s original letter and the OES’s response were archived in accordance with the State Department’s routine policy of archiving its own documents. Colavito, in turn, obtained these documents from the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and published them on his website, including both transcripts and photos of the original documents.

Colavito also mentions in several of his blog posts that von Däniken apparently promised at some point that aliens would return in 2012 for the year in which the Long Count of the Mesoamerican calendar would restart and, when they returned, they would punish “uppity” feminists as well as women who have been sexually unchaste. I am currently, however, unable to find verification of where von Däniken said this.

ABOVE: Photograph of U.S. Republican President Gerald Ford, to whom Erich von Däniken sent an unsolicited letter in 1976

Zecharia Sitchin’s The Twelfth Planet and its sequels

The most successful author to write about ancient astronauts after Erich von Däniken was the Azerbaijani-born Israeli author Zecharia Sitchin. Sitchin published a book in 1976 titled The Twelfth Planet, in which he argues, based almost solely on extremely literal and misrepresentative interpretations of ancient Mesopotamian myths, that there is a planet in the earth’s solar system that is unknown to modern astronomers but was known to the ancient Sumerians, which he calls Nibiru or Marduk. Sitchin claims that this planet orbits the sun in an irregular elliptical orbit that takes approximately 3,600 years to complete.

He also claims that a race of humanoid extraterrestrial beings with extremely long lifespans known as the Anunnaki (a name he took from a group of deities in Mesopotamian mythology) or Nephilim (a name he took from a group of beings mentioned in the Book of Genesis 6:4) live on the planet Nibiru. He claims that these aliens originally came to earth 450,000 years ago to mine for gold and genetically engineered the first human beings in their own image as an inferior slave race to work in their mines.

According to Sitchin, the Anunnaki began to interbreed with humans indiscriminately, creating human-Anunnaki hybrids with abilities superior to ordinary humans, but still inferior to the Anunnaki. Meanwhile, humans interbred with Homo erectus, creating backwards, regressive hybrids. Seeing the chaos and the threat to Anunnaki supremacy brought on by this mixing of races, the Anunnaki leader Enlil tried to eradicate humans, but another Anunnaki named Enki thwarted his efforts.

Sitchin maintains that, eventually, the Anunnaki realized that a massive global flood was coming, so they retreated into outer space. Enlil, hoping the flood would destroy humanity, commanded that none of the Anunnaki should warn the humans about the flood. Enki, however, disobeyed and warned a human, who became known in various traditions as Ziusudra, Atra-Hasis, Utnapishtim, or Noah, who built a submarine ark to survive the flood. The flood destroyed all the Anunnaki bases and Enlil, realizing that the Anunnaki would need human laborers in order to rebuild, allowing the flood hero to survive and taught humans how to domesticate plants and animals.

The Twelfth Planet was massively successful. Sitchin turned it into a series of seven books called the “Earth Chronicles,” in which he presented further speculations about the Anunnaki. He also wrote four companion volumes, two books in a parallel series, and two novels based on his ancient astronaut theories. In the final book in the Earth Chronicles series The End of Days: Armageddon and Prophecies of the Return, published in 2007 by William Morrow, Sitchin speculates that the Anunnaki could possibly return to earth as soon as 2012. Obviously, this prediction turned out to be false.

ABOVE: Impression from the Adda Seal, an ancient Akkadian cylinder seal dating to c. 2300 BCE, depicting, from left to right, the goddess Inanna, the god Utu, the god Enlil, and the god Isimud, all major deities in the ancient Mesopotamian pantheon whom Sitchin interprets as extraterrestrials

Superficially, Sitchin’s work has a greater appearance of credibility than von Däniken’s work. Sitchin was clearly better educated than von Däniken, he could at least read Hebrew, and he displays apparent familiarity with more ancient sources. Also, unlike von Däniken, who spends most of Chariots of the Gods? speculating about unrelated pieces of “evidence” and doesn’t manage to tell much of a coherent story, Sitchin does at least manage to invent a mildly interesting sci-fi retelling of various stories cobbled together from Mesopotamian mythology.

This appearance of credibility, however, is totally superficial. Sitchin egregiously misinterprets and misconstrues the ancient sources he cites to support his story. When he does quote sources, he almost always quotes them misleadingly out of context and deliberately mistranslates words and phrases to mean things that they do not actually mean. He assumes that ancient myths must have some factual truth behind them without evidence and he makes all kinds of wildly implausible claims.

His claims about the motions of the planets flagrantly violate the laws of physics, he claims that the Anunnaki possessed all kinds of extraordinary technologies that there is no physical evidence of whatsoever, and he claims that there was a global flood, when there is no physical evidence whatsoever to substantiate this and such a flood would be physically impossible. In the end, Sitchin’s claims are just as ludicrous as von Däniken’s, if not even more ludicrous.

As with all the ancient astronaut hypothesis works I have examined, Sitchin’s works have a pretty explicit racial dimension. Notably, his focus on the supposed harms unleashed by interbreeding between Anunnaki, humans, and Homo erectus is clearly inspired by contemporary 1970s fears about the supposed threat of race-mixing and miscegenation in the wake of civil rights.

ABOVE: Photograph of Zecharia Sitchin posing with an enlarged photograph of an ancient Mesopotamian cylinder seal impression

Racism and anti-Semitism in more recent ancient astronaut theories

Many ancient astronaut theorists who have come after von Däniken and Sitchin have peddled anti-Semitic and racist conspiracy theories. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has an article on their website in their “Hatewatch” blog series titled “Close Encounters of the Racist Kind,” which they published on 2 January 2018, in which they discuss examples of how racist theories and ancient astronaut theories are often intertwined.

Even when ancient astronaut and UFO theorists don’t peddle overtly racist conspiracy theories, they frequently borrow tropes from them. Experts on this subject have observed that ancient astronaut and UFO theorists often portray Grey aliens and/or Reptilians as controlling world events from behind the scenes, often by manipulating world governments, corporations, banks, financial organizations, and the media, in a manner that is disconcertingly similar to how older anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have portrayed Jewish people.

This is especially evident in the case of the British conspiracy theorist and ancient astronaut hypothesis proponent David Icke. Since 1999, Icke has been vocally publicly claiming that a race of interdimensional, shape-shifting Reptilian aliens from the constellation Draco who survive by drinking human blood came to earth hundreds of thousands of years ago. Copying Sitchin, he claims that these Reptilians are the Anunnaki from Mesopotamian mythology and that they are also known as the “Watchers” or the “Brotherhood of Babylon.”

Icke says that the Reptilians have been secretly controlling all major world events from behind the scenes for thousands of years and that they control all the world governments, all the banks, all other financial institutions, and all the mainstream media outlets. He claims that all major world leaders, including Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and the Clintons, are secretly Reptilians and that their true Reptilian natures are revealed by the fact that, in some photographs, they appear to have red eyes. He says that the Reptilians worship Satan, practice pedophilia, and sacrifice human children.

ABOVE: Illustration by Neil Hague printed in David Icke’s 2005 book Infinite Love is the Only Truth showing Queen Elizabeth II, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair as Anunnaki Reptilians wearing red dresses

All of Icke’s claims are, of course, entirely baseless and ridiculous. The reason why political figures sometimes appear to have red eyes in photos is simply because of the red eye effect, which is very common and well understood. The back of the human eye is known as the fundus and is naturally red because of its high concentration of blood. When a photographer takes a photo of someone with a bright flash in an environment with low ambient light, the light of the camera flash can pass through the open pupil, reflect off the fundus, pass back through the pupil, and be captured by the camera. This can make a person’s eyes appear red.

Furthermore, as many experts who study conspiracy theories have noted, nearly all Icke’s theories are really just old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that have been recycled with Reptilians instead of Jewish people. For instance, his claims about Reptilians controlling governments, banks, and the media is virtually identical to what Hitler and the Nazis believed Jewish people were doing. Meanwhile, his claims about Reptilians worshipping Satan, molesting children, and ritually sacrificing children closely resemble old anti-Semitic canards about Jewish blood libel.

The article from the Southern Poverty Law Center I mentioned earlier notes concerning Icke:

“More than anyone else, the British conspiracist David Icke has popularized the Alien version of New World Order conspiracy. The former sportscaster’s elaborate theory is the Sgt. Peppers album-cover of the genre, featuring the Masons, the Vatican, the Illuminati, the House of Windsor — everyone is there. At the center of the theory is an alien race of lizard people from the fifth-dimension. Though Icke has always denied trafficking in anti-Semitism, he has endorsed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion — the famous forgery and foundational text of modern anti-Semitism — choosing to call it ‘The Illuminati Protocols.’”

Indeed, for at least the past century, anti-Semites have even sometimes represented Jewish people as having reptilian features, as the anti-Semitic cartoon shown below demonstrates. Many scholars who study conspiracy theories therefore suspect that Icke is, in fact, using “lizard people” as a code for Jewish people so that he can promote his anti-Semitic conspiracy theories without looking overtly like a Nazi.

In any case, Icke’s theories are dangerously popular. In April 2013, Public Policy Polling released the results of a poll, which found that four percent of all people living in the United States (i.e., roughly 12.5 million people) said that they believed that Reptilians control politics. Even if we assume that half of the people who said they believe in Reptilians were just trolling the pollsters for fun, this still means that around six and a quarter million people in U.S. do genuinely believe in Reptilians.

Icke’s theories have even already led directly to real-world violence. According to this article in The Seattle Times, in January 2019, a twenty-six-year-old man named Buckey Wolfe allegedly murdered his brother with a sword in Seattle because he believed that his brother was a Reptilian. He almost certainly got the idea of shape-shifting Reptilians from David Icke.

ABOVE: Anti-Semitic cartoon made in 1898 by the French caricaturist Charles Lucien Léandre, depicting the Jewish financier Alphonse James de Rothschild as a sinister, lizard-like creature with the world in his hands

Meanwhile, many proponents of the ancient astronaut hypothesis and UFO enthusiasts also believe in the existence of a group of benevolent aliens whom they actually call the “Nordics” or “Nordic aliens.” They often describe “Nordic” aliens as exceptionally tall, strong, and beautiful, with very pale white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes—exactly in line with how the Nazis envisioned the so-called Herrenvolk or “master race.”

One of the most influential figures in popularizing stories about “Nordic” aliens was a man named George Adamski, who claimed that he met a friendly “Nordic” alien named Orthon from the planet Venus in the Mojave Desert in 1952. He claimed that Orthon communicated with him using a combination of hand signals and telepathic communication to tell him to warn the world about the threat of nuclear war. Adamski published two wildly popular bestselling books about his alleged experiences with Venusian “Nordic” aliens, the first one in 1953 titled Flying Saucers Have Landed and the second one in 1955 titled Inside the Space Ships.

The benevolent, beautiful, pale-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed “Nordic” alien subsequently became a common stock character in stories about friendly alien contact throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Stories about contact with “Nordic” aliens became less common after the 1970s, as stories about Grey aliens became more popular. Nonetheless, the “Nordics” still feature in many speculative works about ancient astronauts.

ABOVE: Painting by Michael Buhler depicting George Adamski meeting the “Nordic” alien Orthon in the Mojave Desert in 1952

Conclusion

As a direct result of the fact that variations of the ancient astronaut hypothesis nearly always incorporate racist tropes, often follow the model of older anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and are often intertwined with theories that are overtly racist, ancient astronaut theories can very easily lead a person down a path that leads to far more overtly dangerous conspiracy theories. The article from the Southern Poverty Law Center that I referenced earlier quotes Jason Colavito, who puts it quite eloquently:

“These shows [like Ancient Aliens] serve as entry points for discredited nineteenth-century ideas and point viewers toward the sources of extremist pseudo-scholarship and politics. The idea that aliens built the pyramids isn’t so funny when it draws young people to websites that quickly switch out aliens for Jews and start talking about gas chambers.”

To be very clear, I am not saying that every person who believes in ancient aliens is a Nazi, nor am I saying that everyone who believes in ancient aliens is a racist. What I am saying is that racism and connections to Nazism are deeply ingrained aspects of the ancient aliens genre.