MISSTATEMENTS AND MISREPRESENTATIONS IN “ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS” ON THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL
By Lloyd Pye, Nov 27 2006
1) The narrator’s tone throughout is one of
supercilious condescension. On one occasion he says that alien males “knocked
up” human females in order to begin the process of creating humans.
2) The continual use of fifty-year-old
black-and-white “alien” movie clips lend the entire show an air of campy
absurdity. When so many of the images in a show like this appear absurd, it
implies that more substantial images and statements are similarly absurd.
3) The overweening emphasis on sex between humans
and aliens, with the partners nearly always being a bizarre looking alien male
and an overpowered female. Furthermore, a repeated theme is that humans resulted
from a series of unions between inter-species couples.
4) The Ancient Astronaut Theory states that
humans resulted from genetic engineering, with much trial and error before a
“final product” was achieved. Only then did sex begin to occur between humans
and those who created them in their own image, after their own likeness.
5) In the sequence with geneticist Jason Eshleman
of Trace Genetics, the narrator states that several attempts were required to
recover the Starchild skull’s mitochondrial DNA, which proved its mother was
human. That is only half true. The mitochondrial DNA did prove its mother was
human, which was expected all along. A hybridization between a human and an
alien species would require the human egg to be genetically manipulated so it
could properly receive and utilize the alien’s sperm.
6) The Starchild’s mitochondrial DNA was very
easily recovered on the first attempt, with the gel bands appearing bright and
clear, indicating very little degradation of its DNA. Therefore, the nuclear DNA
should have been recovered with equal ease, but it was not. In seven complete
attempts there was no recovery at all. This fact was not mentioned.
7) The “expert” brought in at the end of the show
is Dr. William Rodriguez, a forensic anthropologist for the U.S. Army who works
at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. As was stated in the
show, he did examine the Starchild skull in 1999, and in fact was one of the
first groups of experts to examine it. He and several colleagues met with me to
handle and examine the two skulls in my possession then.
8) At that meeting in 1999, Dr. Rodriguez was of
the firm opinion that the Starchild represented a “cradleboarded hydrocephalic,”
a common response of experts who make little or no attempt to actually
understand the Starchild skull. When I began to point out the myriad reasons why
the Starchild could not have been either cradleboarded or hydrocephalic, the
meeting ground to an uncomfortable conclusion. Experts do not easily accept
being told they are wrong by their own colleagues. Being told that by someone
they view as an “amateur” is totally unacceptable.
9) The skull Dr. Rodriguez used on the show to
compare to the Starchild was utterly normal in every respect except for mild
over-expansion of the parietal bones at the upper rear of the head. This
syndrome is so common that since the year 2000, photographs of just such a skull
have been on the Starchild Project website in direct comparison with the
Starchild skull. These photographs are available now, as they were then.
10) Dr. Rodriguez implies that because he’s found
a skull with parietal “bossing” (expansion) that very vaguely resembles the
Starchild skull, viewers can feel comfortable dismissing the dozens of other
anomalies presented by this incredible relic. It is laughably simplistic, yet in
being presented as the last word regarding the Starchild, it leaves viewers with
the clear impression that, in the end, the Starchild has been explained.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
All Original Material Copyright
1998-2006
© Lloyd Pye
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Please visit:
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