Giorgio Tsoukalos: Dude you need a new hair style!
I admit, geek that I am, I watch History Channel’s “Ancient Aliens” series quite regularly. It is a pretty hokey show and aside from Giorgio Tsoukalos dire need of a new hairdo, and the way he ascribes every single historical anomaly to Ancient Astronaut Theory, I think it’s a pretty good introduction for the mainstream public to acquaint themselves with the alternative historical narrative which researchers have been working on for years.
Hats off to the likes of Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, Jim Marrs, and David Childress. Even if you don’t believe everything in alternative historical research there is no denying of the fact that they often ask better and more penetrating questions than formal academia ever does and look more into historical anomalies as well. I mean, who would have guessed that there were pyramids in Bosnia, that the ancient Phoenicians may have bumped into the Americas long before Columbus or that Japan’s coast hides a massive underwater temple complex?
Yonaguni, Japan
Once upon a time the stories of Troy and the Greek siege of that city were considered to be myths, that Troy only existed in the mythological world of Odysseus, Hector, Priam, Aphrodite, Athena and anyone who might actually believe such a place really existed might as well believe in the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny as well. Along comes a German industrialist, Heinrich Schliemann, an eccentric fellow with a passion for Greek myths. Using only a copy of Homer’s “Iliad” and backed by his own finances, Schliemann pretty much bulldozed and dynamited himself through the upper Turkish Aegean coast until he found Troy. That’s when the academics had to finally eat some humble pie and concede that maybe they’re not always as right as they think they are.
The discoverer of ancient Troy, Heinrich Schliemann
You don’t have to believe that Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria or Hyperborea ever existed or even the Native American myths on the Star Brothers, UFOs and aliens (For the record, I do). I do think however, there is something to igniting the imagination, even on a subconscious level which does everyone some good from time to time. It’s about opening the mind to other possibilities instead of keeping it in the narrow confines of what other people want you to believe.
A little imagination never hurt anyone, in fact, we need more of it and less uniformity.
I also think that controlling that historical narrative is imperative for the Powers That Be. Since the dawn of time, conquerors have always re-written history to suit their own ideological and economic agendas and keep people in line. The idea being, if you repeat something out loud enough times, rob people of their true identity which is often anchored in their historical “stories” and drill it into people’s brains, then people will start to believe you. It’s another form of propaganda under the guise of “education” or “state-building” as one jerky professor once told me. Ancient Egyptians did it to Jews, Romans did it to Greeks, the Mongolians did it to the Central Asians, the British did it to the Indians, France, Spain and England did it to the Americas and now Israelis do it to Palestinians. It doesn’t stop there. Even now, the fight over history is still going on in places like India between Muslims and Hindus over the sites of mosques, temples and the Taj Mahal.
The Registan in Samarkand, Uzbekistan; a triumph of Central Asian Islamic architecture. A few decades earlier Genghis Khan and his hordes had decimated the population here.
My rule of thumb has been to always listen with an open ear and an open mind because the second you shut it, you’ve entered the realm of dogma. Like I have posted elsewhere, the truth, seems to have a strange way of floating its way to the surface given enough time.
“Truth Coming out of her well to Shame Mankind” by Jean-Léon Gérôme
There’s a scene in C.S Lewis’ book, “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” which illustrates this beautifully, where older brother and sister, Peter and Susan Pevensie talk to wise old Professor Kirke privately since they fear for their younger sister’s sanity since all she talks about is an “imaginary” place she visited called Narnia:
“the Professor said “Come in,” and got up and found chairs for them and said he was quite at their disposal. Then he sat listening to them with the tips of his fingers pressed together and never interrupting, till they had finished the whole story. After that he said nothing for quite a long time. Then he cleared his throat and said the last thing either of them expected:
“How do you know,” he asked, “that your sister’s story is not true?”
“Oh, but -” began Susan, and then stopped. Anyone could see from the old man’s face that he was perfectly serious. Then Susan pulled herself together and said, “But Edmund said they had only been pretending.”
“That is a point,” said the Professor, “which certainly deserves consideration; very careful consideration. For instance – if you will excuse me for asking the question – does your experience lead you to regard your brother or your sister as the more reliable? I mean, which is the more truthful?”
“That’s just the funny thing about it, sir,” said Peter. “Up till now, I’d have said Lucy every time.”
“And what do you think, my dear?” said the Professor, turning to Susan.
“Well,” said Susan, “in general, I’d say the same as Peter, but this couldn’t be true – all this about the wood and the Faun.”
“That is more than I know,” said the Professor, “and a charge of lying against someone whom you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed.”
“We were afraid it mightn’t even be lying,” said Susan; “we thought there might be something wrong with Lucy.”
“Madness, you mean?” said the Professor quite coolly. “Oh, you can make your minds easy about that. One has only to look at her and talk to her to see that she is not mad.”
“But then,” said Susan, and stopped. She had never dreamed that a grown-up would talk like the Professor and didn’t know what to think.
“Logic!” said the Professor half to himself. “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.”
Susan looked at him very hard and was quite sure from the expression on his face that he was not making fun of them.
“But how could it be true, sir?” said Peter.
“Why do you say that?” asked the Professor.
“Well, for one thing,” said Peter, “if it was true why doesn’t everyone find this country every time they go to the wardrobe? I mean, there was nothing there when we looked; even Lucy didn’t pretend there was.”
“What has that to do with it?” said the Professor.
“Well, sir, if things are real, they’re there all the time.”
“Are they?” said the Professor; and Peter didn’t know quite what to say.
“But there was no time,” said Susan. “Lucy had no time to have gone anywhere, even if there was such a place. She came running after us the very moment we were out of the room. It was less than minute, and she pretended to have been away for hours.”
“That is the very thing that makes her story so likely to be true,” said the Professor. “If there really is a door in this house that leads to some other world (and I should warn you that this is a very strange house, and even I know very little about it) – if, I say, she had got into another world, I should not be at all surprised to find that the other world had a separate time of its own; so that however long you stay there it would never take up any of our time. On the other hand, I don’t think many girls of her age would invent that idea for themselves. If she had been pretending, she would have hidden for a reasonable time before coming out and telling her story.”
“But do you really mean, sir,” said Peter, “that there could be other worlds – all over the place, just round the corner – like that?”
“Nothing is more probable,” said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, “I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.”
The Pevensie kids returning from Narnia
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