I would start with Grimms' Fairy Tales.

I'm not anti-ancient alien but I'm anti-bullshit and anti-faith-in-things-without-evidence.

If one is well versed in how things work in the universe, one knows that WE are "aliens." We began life here on earth, but everything we are made of was once a star and came from elsewhere. ("We are stardust.." We are!) In Season 2 of How the Universe Works, planetary scientists, astronomers and astrophysicists explain the "Asteroid Theory" and how asteroids are likely to have brought water, elements, minerals and simple life forms (microbes)to earth. This is NOT ancient aliens but actual science and scientific theory.

I am very skeptical about all of this.
So if aliens landed in S. America and gave them such advance technology, how come they did not know about wheels?
I also heard the one about Stonehenge being impossible to build. Considering the distance the stones had to travel. Then they asked a company of British army engineers to have a go. Using only the tools available at the time,, they shifted the thing 7 miles in one day.

My advice would be to beware of the like of known frauds who have made themselves rich peddling this stuff, ESPECIALLY avoid Erich von Däniken, the "father" of ancient astronauts theories and proven con man.
Instead look in biological studies comparing our DNA to our nearest relatives the bonobo chimpanzee which pretty much undermines the idea ancient spacemen messed with our evolution, and secondly study the various species of hominid that existed before we did, and how they maybe be the source of myths of gods, giants and little people is a more like explanation than aliens.

Ohferpetessake! Every other word in these sleazy "documentaries" is "might" "could it be", "is it possible" aaannnd etc.

The human imagination has no bounds...ancient or modern makes no difference, the sky (the heavens), and space has fed our fertile imagination since the beginning of time. Without a shred of evidence space aliens or mystical gods will remain a constant source of material for humans to speculate and spin fantasies around.

I thought the flying spaghetti monster came from outer space. Here's your proof.

"Documentaries" on ancient gods? On the History channel? Consider the source. And landing strips? So interstellar space travel requires a runway? "There is evidence out there?" Really? Of just what, exactly?

It's likely that there are other life forms out there, mathematically speaking. "Superior" / advanced? Remains to be seen by us.
Many people are saying, "there is no scientific evidence." I agree. However our understanding of science and the cosmos are slight, at best. I don't fall into the egocentric realm that religious people are in.
I don't know, but I hope, there are other intelligent beings out there and we've yet to make contact. As for Superior, just because a species is more advanced than another, does not make them superior.
Oh and as for these alien theorists, they do make some good arguments for evidence, but nothing concrete, as far as I have seen.
Some of you need to stop being so cynical! It's just a conversation. Would you give these eye roll remarks if we were all in person?

I absolutely think there is other intelligent life in the universe. There is absolutely no evidence that we have ever been visited by any of them.

Ancient people thought stars and planets were gods. Asteroids hitting the earth were fallen/falling gods.

There are no ancient landing strips.
Humans built the pyramids.

[ancientaliensdebunked.com]

The theory was most famously put forth by Erich von Däniken. Most of his examples were shown to be misrepresentations or outright frauds. There is no credible evidence that extraterrestrials have ever visited earth.

Gods do not come out of the sky. They come out of human imagination, or human unimaginative following of someone else's imagination.

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To me it all boils down just theory, and speculation, no evidence, no other worldly artifacts or machinary.

In what way do pyramids support the "ancient astronauts" theory? Secondly, where are these landing strips?

There's a ton of material on this subject out there; simply Google "ancient astronauts" and you'll find it. If you want to read actual books, Erich von Däniken's various works, which popularised the theory in the 1960s and 70s, are as good a place to start as any (they're full of errors but hey - this is pseudoscience, so who cares about accuracy?). I also recommend The New Apocrypha by John Sladek, who entirely demolishes the theory and von Däniken in three sentences.

When you take a hard look at human history, it makes you question why a supreme being or even a superior alien species would want to have anything to do with us. Maybe there is a god and maybe there are advanced life forms in the galaxy but they just don't want to hang out with pond scum like us?

I stick with science. Currently there is no evidence of aliens. There is a higher percentage probability of some sort of life in the universe besides the Earth. So, yes, it is possible, however unlikely. I would certainly find the existence of a superior being more likely than a god, especially the bullshit Abrahanic one. That said, until proof comes along, I just keep pounding along.

There are a great many anomalies in ancient history, things we simply do not understand. The problem is these notions are all subjective, that is we try to make sense of them from OUR world view, which includes space aliens and lost civilizations. The ancients themselves knew their import, we do not.

So it is very much what the viewer brings to the art rather than what the art reveals.

Secondarily to that we uniformly underestimate what these ancients did, we downplay it or see it as impossible when the base reality is standing there in stone, and unexplained in may ways, like tool marks, weight ect.
That makes something an unkmnown, and interesting, but an unknown.

Believers in lost civs and ancient aliens make the very same leap of faith religionists do, that is we are faced with a large unexplained anomaly.
Rather than admit we do not know how it all began, religionists postulate and then believe in a religion.
Rather than admit we do not know how it all began, ancient alien and lost civ proponents postulate and then believe in a ancient aliens and lost civs.

They would rather BELIEVE something than accept we don't know.

HERE is a 3 hour interview with Graham Hancock, a lost civs proponent and author.

Visiting aliens? Just possibly. Gods? I don't think so.

It's a possibility.

I think Erich Von Daniken and others started writing about this in the 60s or 70s. I remember reading Chariots of the Gods from my dad books when I was a child. That should be a starting point. I was impressed when I saw ancient maya or aztec pyramid drawings of people using a form of helmet in an apparent spaceship ready to take off. That is a pre columbine culture. Pretty impressive.

Uh.... Stargate??

" Videos, books, Docs" Sorry, but these are all proven sources of human capacity for delusion, fantasy and fake news. Hardly, sometimes, worthy of a title "theory". They are however great sources of entertainment. Please occasionally find and live with reality. I agree with some of the word analysis below. they unfortunately can be misinterpreted and that leads to fantasy etc. But they form a great chunk of effective communication too.

These lines of thought have always seemed, while fun, conspiratorial. It's the same way in which people look for bigfoot or loch ness.

We are an alien science experiment.