Sarah Kurnick Aliens built the pyramids and other absurdities of pseudoarchaeology TED
Transcriber:
A few years ago, a stranger
sitting next to me on a plane,
asked what I did for a living.
I told him that I’m an archeologist
and I study the ancient Maya.
He said, “Wow, I love archeology,”
and told me how excited he gets
when hearing about new finds.
Then he told me how amazing it is
that aliens from the planet Nibiru
had come to Earth
and established the ancient Sumerian
culture in Mesopotamia.
I have these conversations
a lot on planes,
in bookstores and in bars.
People want to talk with me
about pseudoarcheology,
something that seems
like archeology, but isn’t.
It involves making wild
and unproven claims about the human past,
things like aliens built the pyramids
or survivors from
the lost continent of Atlantis
invented hieroglyphic writing.
Now, most of us know
that claims like these are unfounded
and frankly absurd.
Yet they’re everywhere.
They’re on TV shows,
in movies and in books.
Think of the History Channel series
“Ancient Aliens,”
currently in its 15th season,
or of the most recent Indiana Jones movie
about the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,
or Erich von Däniken’s classic book
“Chariots of the Gods?”
Here’s the crucial question. Who cares?
It’s just entertainment, right?
Isn’t it a nice escape from reality
and a fun way to think about the world?
It’s not.
Most pseudoarcheology
is racist and xenophobic
and like other forms of entertainment,
it influences our culture in real ways.
Let me give you an example.
It’s common to hear
pseudoarcheologists claim
that groups like the ancient Egyptians
or the ancient Maya
accomplished incredible things,
but only with the help of outside groups,
like aliens or people from Atlantis.
What you rarely hear
is pseudoarcheologists claiming
that, say, Romans had help
building the Colosseum
or that Greeks had help
building the Parthenon.
Why is that?
For pseudoarcheologists
Europeans could have accomplished
their feats on their own,
but non-Europeans
must have had outside guidance.
Claims like these are not just outrageous.
They are offensive.
Here and in so many other instances,
pseudoarcheology sustains
myths of white supremacy,
disparages non-Europeans
and discredits
their ancestors' achievements.
I’ve spent the last 12 summers
doing archeological fieldwork
in the Maya area.
Several years back,
I was staying in a small village
along the Belize–Guatemala border.
I spent day after day in the lab,
staring at tiny, brown,
eroded pieces of ceramics.
The Maya man who lived across the street
made slate carvings to sell to tourists.
He’d stop by every once
in a while to chat.
And one day he brought over
a slate carving,
and it was this image.
The image carved into the sarcophagus lid
of the Maya king Pakal
around his death in 683 AD.
This image is incredible and it’s complex.
It shows the deceased king
rising from the jaws of the underworld
to be reborn as a deity.
In the center is a stylized world tree
that extends from the underworld
through the realm of the living
into the upper world.
Around the edges is a sky band
with symbols for the sun, moon and stars.
I was so excited to talk with my neighbor
about ancient Maya religion,
cosmology and iconography.
Instead, he wanted to talk
about an “Ancient Aliens”
episode he had seen.
The one about the Maya.
And he told me that this image
was of an astronaut
at the controls of a rocket ship.
I was shocked.
Instead of marveling at his own ancestors,
he was in awe of a fictional alien.
He even told me that one day,
he hoped to give this carving
to Erich von Däniken,
father of the ancient aliens phenomenon.
Pseudoarcheology
undoubtedly harms its subjects,
often Indigenous people, like the Maya,
but it also harms its viewers.
It harms all of us.
Like other forms of racism,
it exacerbates inequality
and prevents us from appreciating
and benefiting from human diversity.
What’s really scary
is that pseudoarcheology
is a small part of a much bigger problem.
It’s just one example of people
getting history wrong on purpose,
of people knowingly changing
historical and archeological facts.
Why would anybody do that?
Often, the past is knowingly changed
either to justify racism in the present
or to present a nicer version of history,
a version of history
that we can all take pride in.
Six years ago,
Jefferson County, Colorado
became a battleground
over how to teach American history
to high school students.
The Advanced Placement curriculum
had been expanded
to include things like the removal
of Native Americans to reservations
and the rise of extreme
economic inequality.
Members of the local
school board were upset.
They vigorously protested the changes,
arguing that the new curriculum
didn’t do enough to promote
capitalism or American exceptionalism.
Right now we are in the midst
of a heated debate
over public monuments
to controversial figures.
People like Robert E. Lee
and Christopher Columbus.
Should these monuments
be left as they are,
destroyed or put in museums
and what should happen to the protestors
who deface these monuments?
Should they be praised for helping
debunk myths of white supremacy?
Or should they be punished
for vigilantism and lawlessness?
What do we make of scenes like this?
For me,
debates about history curricula
and public monuments
suggest similar messages.
First, the past is political.
What we choose to remember and forget
relates directly
to current political concerns.
Second, we need to consider
who presents the past,
who chooses the content
of history textbooks
and the subject matter
of public monuments.
Imagine how our understanding
of history might be different
if it was told by the marginalized,
rather than the powerful.
We can help combat
racism and xenophobia today
by changing how we think about the past.
Archeologists need to do two things.
First, we need to make
our discipline more inclusive.
We need to work with and for
the descendants of the people we study.
Richard Leventhal’s work
at Tihosuco, Mexico
is groundbreaking, pun intended.
For over a century, foreign archeologists
have traveled to the Maya area
to excavate the things
they thought were interesting.
Mostly temples and pyramids.
Leventhal took a different approach.
Instead he asks
the contemporary Maya of Tihosuco
what they thought was interesting,
and it turns out they didn’t particularly
care about temples or pyramids.
They were interested in the Caste War,
a major but understudied
colonial period Maya rebellion.
Second, we need to make archeology
more accessible.
The last time I walked into a bookstore,
I asked where I could find
the archeology books.
The clerk took me to a section labeled
“Ancient Mysteries and Lost Knowledge.”
It had books with titles
like “Extraplanetary Experiences.”
And what is absolutely absurd about this
is that real archeology,
archeology based in scientific facts
and historical context, is fascinating.
You don’t need aliens
to make it interesting.
It’s up to us archeologists
to find new ways to share
our work with the public.
And this used to be the norm.
In the 1950s, there was a game show on CBS
called “What in the World?”
The host would present
an object, an artifact,
and the archeologist contestants
would try to figure out
what this thing was and where it was from.
The show was funny and interesting
and exposed viewers
to the diversity of human cultures.
Beginning in the mid-to-late 1960s,
archeology changed focus.
Instead of concentrating
on public engagement,
archeologists began working together
to professionalize the discipline.
On the plus side,
we now have things like
Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates
and theoretical approaches,
like the new materialisms.
But in the process,
archeology left the public behind.
Shows like “What in the World?”
became less common
and pseudoarcheology emerged
to fill the void.
But we can all contribute
to changing how we think about the past.
When you see a pseudoarcheological claim,
be skeptical and know
that if you post about Atlantis,
tweet about ancient aliens
or forward a clip
from a pseudoarcheology TV show,
even if it’s not your intention,
you may be promoting racism
and xenophobia.
Also know that the past is alive.
It is political,
it is ever-changing
and it influences our daily lives
in meaningful ways.
So the next time that you
watch the History Channel,
read an archeology book
or view a public monument,
remember that every statement
about the past
is a powerful statement about the present.
Thank you.