Erich von Duniken dried his sweaty palms with granite dust as he clambered up the Great Pyramid of Giza, crawling from block to block by the monument of about 4,000 years old.
It’s 1954, when you can still climb the pyramids. Von D-nniken, a 19-year-old with a Catholic education and a pastime for flying saucers, captivated. Fourteen years later, he published an influential e-book called “Cars of the Gods,” stating that aliens influenced ancient sites, adding pyramids.
The magnificent pyramids of Giza are among the most important ancient sites in the world, a vast UNESCO World Heritage site that attracts travelers from all over the world to Egypt.
Visitors come to explore the hidden burial chambers, practice the mysterious Sphinx and appreciate the scale of Egypt’s largest monuments.
Von D-nniken proposed that aliens offer technology to build them.
Traditional archaeologists disagree with Von Duniken, and counter that the ancient Egyptians developed their remarkable culture of construction without the aliens.
But while scientists unite infrequently to reject the concept of aliens, known as the “ancient astronaut theory,” Von’s concepts have endured.
He then wrote another 32 volumes, promoting more than 63 million copies. Penguin Random House, its publisher, states that Von Donniken is “possibly the ultimate nonfiction widely read and copied in the world.”
And the pyramids are not the only ones that UNESCO introduced in its theories or those of the other people it inspired.
Some of those that the UNESCO site of Teotihuacan, where the Aztec kings once ruled near the fashionable city of Mexico City, may have been a spaceport, indicating that the mica and liquid mercury discovered among the ruins they say are anachronistic.
For travelers, Teotihuacan is a vision of an ancient and mysterious empire. The city’s researchers predate the Aztecs, who lived there when The Europeans arrived in Mexico.
Archaeologists, who have done painstaking excavations here for centuries, see it as the coronation of a little-known but Earth-related civilization.
Instead of going into space, they dig the floor. Archaeologists have spent years digging a tunnel in Teotihuacan, which leads to rooms full of ritual offerings that some say symbolize the underworld.
Nearly 5,000 km away is another enigmatic UNESCO that attracts travelers, researchers and enthusiasts of aliens.
In the geoglyphs of the Nazca lines in Peru, take tourist flights to see the land bureaucracy that is too large to be appreciated from the level of the floor. For decades, some have assumed that bureaucracy was a type of old airport.
Peruvian scientists agree that Nazca lines are mysterious, but are more similar to rituals and water.
In recent years, researchers have used satellite images to observe more than 140 additional geoglyphs, examining knowledge of patterns in the landscape.
“They weren’t attracted to aliens, that’s for sure,” expert Javier Puente told CNN.
Archaeologist Sarah Parcak held a seminar on the demystification of archaeological myths and deceptions at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
In the classroom, he rejects theories about ancient extraterrestrial beings such as those proposed through Von D-nniken. She sees it as a job.
“The belief that aliens built the pyramids, or in fact any ancient monument, is deeply racist,” Parcak says. It’s no coincidence that alien theories focus on places home to black, brown and Indigenous people, she notes.
Not only that, Parcak thinks that extraterrestrial beings are a distraction from the true wonders of archaeology. “It’s not a mystery, it’s a puzzle. And puzzles take time to assemble,” Parcak says.
An example of Parcak’s step-by-step detective paintings is the city of Itjtawy in Egypt. It had been missing for thousands of years, but Parcak discovered it by analyzing satellite photographs and NASA topographic data.
Sometimes, piecing together archaeological puzzles feels personal.
During the first excavation of Parcak, in the Egyptian delta of Mendes, he discovered something new in his brain more than 20 years later.
“I discovered an intact pot that was crushed a little, but we put it back together,” she recalls. In the handle, Parcak can distinguish a transparent fingerprint that remains in the clay once rainy.
“At that point, I can believe the user did it,” she says. “It’s helping us close the hole between the afterlife and provide and create a sense of empathy.”
Parcak’s paintings give a non-public touch to the past, however, he does not want a degree in archaeology to join the ancient world.
On Easter Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, travelers can be informed of how ancient islanders cooked in earth ovens and built stone-walled gardens. (Easter Island is also a favorite of extraterrestrial theorists. Archaeologists characterize the island’s notable stones to Polynesian ingenuity).
In the Denderah Temple, a component of a vast UNESCO in Upper Egypt, visitors adhere to surprising stories and myths about brilliant murals. (Dendera? Also popular among extraterrestrial theorists, they interpret a mural as evidence that the ancient Egyptians had soft bulbs. Researchers say the portrait is of a pillar and a lotus flower.)
Meeting ancient humans is fun, but Parcak says it’s also important. For travelers and researchers, exploring the ancient global world can eliminate the darkness of supply and the future.
In early April, Parcak won a Guggenheim Fellowship to write a cave and resistance in the ancient world. The coronavirus, he says, has given the workplace a new urgency and relevance.
“It’s like everything we study is happening in real time,” she says. Now, she hears echoes of ancient strife whenever she turns on the news. “The headlines we’re seeing, it’s like they could be archaeology articles.”
For Parcak, however, visiting these ancient sites can be a source of hope. An example is Itjtawy, the ancient city discovered through satellite imagery of Parcak.
It is the capital of Egypt after an era of widespread political instability, civil war and drought. The Old Empire, whose rulers built some of the largest pyramids, had fallen.
But with the replacement of strength structures, greater economic equality has emerged. And from the grave to the narrative, Parcak says that the region he studies represents one after the blossoming chaos.
“I’m not saying it’s pink,” he warns. “But the site itself is a true symbol of what can happen after wonderful turbulence.”
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