Labour Councillor Announces That He Is An Alien From Outer Space

[fatpie42]

Town councillor Simon Parkes: My mum was a 9ft green alien
Town councillor Simon Parkes has claimed his mother is a green alien and extra-terrestrials abducted him as a child.

Parkes believes a 2.7m (9ft) lifeform stood next to his cot when he was a baby and ‘two green stick things’ appeared.

‘I thought “they’re not mummy’s hands, mummy’s are pink,’

Comments

[browneyedguuurl]

I had a neighbor who truly believes in other worldly beings. One day we got to talking and she explained her point of view to me and it was actually really more fascinating than crazy. I also found it interesting how she talked about aliens being depicted in old cultures like the Egyptians, Mayans, etc. And lbr, we truly can't be the only ones out there.

[seasight]

Noooooo. No. No. No. (Not you neccesarily, just no.)

The pyramids (all of them) were not built by fucking ALIENS.

I'm sick of hearing all that racist bullshit.

:/

[browneyedguuurl]

Lol, no. She wasn't implying that at all bb. It's too long and tedious to write, but yeah, she never said that.

[seasight]

Sorry, whenever someone mentions "aliens" and "pyramids" in the same sentence it pushes my rage button. /bb archaeologist

[browneyedguuurl]

It's ok!

[saintly_heretic]

lol this but from an art history background

[mercat]

High fives all around for this mini ancient art history/archaeology party *woowoo*

[phoenixblaze]

Wait, catch me up? How is believing that aliens influenced ancient cultures racist now? I'm kind of confused and this is the first time I've heard that link.

Edit: not that I believe that aliens built the pyramids or anything, I'm just genuinely confused.

[seasight]

Basically the people who think that aliens taught Egyptians/Mayans/etc. to build the pyramids are saying that there's no way those (brown) people could have possibly been advanced enough to build those monumental structures on their own! Same goes for Atlanteans.

It may not be deliberate, but that's basically what they're implying, and it tends to piss people off. There's a beautiful rant by an Egyptologist on a Nat Geo docu that explains all of this a lot better than I am.

[phoenixblaze]

Wow, I've never heard it put that way. I always heard it that the theory came up as a missing link because there wasn't believed to be contact between the cultures and/or that technology was used that was thought to be more advanced to the rest of the culture. Which I believe some people may still believe without the racism aspect, but I completely see what you're saying. (This is what I get for being studying contemporary history. My school doesn't require us to take time specific history, only location specific history so I'm sorely lacking in things older than a few centuries sadly.)

[seasight]

From what I gather (and I didn't study this specifically, so) basically all they needed was advanced mathematics to figure out how to lay things out. And they had that. It varies depending on which culture you're talking about, but basically that's it. And the Nazca lines, at least to my mind, have a lot in common with other prehistoric (and historical) monuments- the "runways" are probably ceremonial pathways, like ones found all over the world.

/done rambling

(If anything's off base, I apologize. It's been two years since I was reading about this stuff properly.)

[squeeful]

The human brain likes to order and prioritize things. To the Western view, the Egyptian pyramids were "first" so others must be copies of them, either through speculated cultural contact or "aliens". Parallel concepts arrising seperately doesn't sit well so people try and find ways they are connected (other than being human and we're all more alike than they want to think) in a direct, linear fashion. Most of the advanced structures aren't as wildly different from less impressive ones as people think, they're just bigger. I mean, think about houses. The idea of building artifical shelter is pretty boggling to start, but also the math and planning involved. If you have the grasp to build a house, you can build a pyramid. More important is having a large enough population and sufficient central organization to carry out large scale projects.

[fatpie42]

or that technology was used that was thought to be more advanced to the rest of the culture. Which I believe some people may still believe without the racism aspect

They could believe that the poor brown people couldn't possibly have done it by themselves without being racist. Yeah um... whatever.

Perhaps if these ideas were based on something more than BS I'd say it wasn't based on prejudice. But when someone just pulls out of their backside the idea that these cultures could not possibly have achieved great things on their own, the motivating ideas behind that seem pretty clear-cut.

That being said, I'd note that if someone didn't come up with the original theory, but finds it convincing because they think it's based on some kind of facts, then they're probably more gullible than racist.

[mercat]

Hawaiians too! :( Freakin' von Daniken.

Just curious, Atlanteans? I've only just started getting hooked into that mythology so now I'm picking up as much as I can all around. (I'm kind of in love with the Minoans at the moment.)

Also I'd love to see the rant, if you know where to find it. I'm always going off on ancient history rants and my friends just kind of roll their eyes and wait for me to shut up. :P

[seasight]

A lot of people think that survivors from Atlantis came to South America and taught the natives how to build stuff. That's been pretty thoroughly debunked. :p

[mercat]

Wow, whaaaaat :o That's just... wow.