Ancient Astronauts/Aliens Hypothesis

Since the popularization of the "intelligent alien" concept in 20th century, it entered into the modern mythology. Tabloids write about aliens visiting us every day, and people from all the world upload videos of alleged UFO sightings.

Although there is no single conclusive proof of extraterrestrial life in any form, many people are confident that aliens exist. And not without reason. Most people don't truly realize just how huge the universe actually is. In just the part of the universe that we see, the observable universe, there are more than 80 billion galaxies. Each of them has hundreds of billions of stars, and this obviously gives very high chance that life similar to us, or maybe even completely different has developed and evolved elsewere.


But does the possibility exists that those aliens have visited our Earth in the recent past?


Many people believe that they did, and point to different artwork and tools in ancient human societies, which seem to be out of their time.
This view has been popularized recently with the History Channel documentary "Ancient Aliens", which was heavily criticized for bias, unsupported and pseudoscientific claims.
However, it did have some interesting points, that stirred my mind.


Let's start with the numerous examples in religious texts, like the hindu Vedas which describe 'vimana' - flying machines, which the gods use for transportation:


"Dark the descent: the birds are golden-coloured; up to the heaven they fly robed in the waters.
Again descend they from the seat of Order, and all the earth is moistened with their fatness."


"Jumping into space speedily with a craft using fire and water ... containing twelve stamghas (pillars), one wheel, three machines, 300 pivots, and 60 instruments."

Artist imagination or observation?

I don't want to ponder over the details in the description, but it's very troubling for the sceptical mind, that ancient texts write about vehicles used for flying, in a time and a place, where machines were very simple and not broadly used.








The famous Nazca lines are another populary cited site by the proponents of the ancient astronauts theory. Located on one arid plateu in Peru, they can only be seen by high altitude, and were not discovered until the first manned flights over the area.

It's not rare for humans to do something just for the sake of it.
But some argue, that the Nazca Plateu lines had some practical
purpose.

While someone may argue of the nature of the figures drawed with the lines, no one can still give statisfactory explenation about their purpose.
Why were the indigenous people of South America putting thousands and thousands of stones in sometimes completely straight lines, spanning kilometers? Maybe they wanted to be seen by the gods... but wouldn't they need at least some proof that these gods were watching in the first place?




For me, maybe the most interesting of the "proofs" of the hypothesis (I, personally, will not go so far to call them such) is the Puma Punku complex in the Tiwanaku archeological site in what is now Bolivia.

Complex structures build by society that had no need
to invent and use the wheel.

It's build with very percicely cut monolith stone blocks, which fit so accurately into eachother, that even without mortar, they were able to stand the test of time. 
The detail and percision of the cut stones is truly amazing, but when considering it was done by people, who did not have neither writing or the wheel... one can only wonder.
















However intriguing, it's at best not fully explained, but certainly not proved to be with extraterrestrial origin as some claim. Maybe Puma Punku was build by some unknown advanced human civilization (which is interesting and daring concept itself), and perhaps the Nazca Lines were simple tributes to the Gods. The Vedas could be filled not with what seems to be literary descriptions, but rather with metaphores, we can't understand. 


One thing is certain, though - dismissing the ancient astronauts hypothesis as not credible and impossible requires the same amount of prejudice and bias, as accepting it without doubt.