Ancient Aliens
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This Article by David Wengrow neatly picks up the themes that inspired my talk this year on ancient Aliens:
“First, I think we have to ask how those particular spaces of speculation—into which a figure like Hancock steps—first opened up. Dig deep enough, and you will find that they opened from within the discipline of archaeology itself, not from outside it.”
He looks at the racial hierarchies, and the ideas of a ruling elite dominating a passive mass permeate these ‘alternate’ histories: “a world in which intelligence is not a property of individuals acting in society but rather a quality possessed to varying degrees by specific “peoples.” It gives voice to a theory of human difference that today doesn’t always dare utter the name “race”—but retains all the key ingredients of a racial theory. It asks us to imagine past human societies divided into two tiers: one superior, one inferior; one wise, one ignorant; one comprising noble (or sage-like) rulers, the other servile”
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