Chariots of the Gods? Not Likely
I remember in high school hearing about who built the pyramids in Egypt, and elsewhere around the globe. My uncle, a rather abrasive and opinionated man, believed the angels or fallen angels had built the pyramids, or very possibly aliens from other planets. He never believed ancient Egyptians, who were advanced, cultured, and worthy of building such wonders, could build something like the pyramids found as husks of their former (glorious) selves in Egypt today. Instead, architectural, and technological, wonders could only be built by white Europeans, not darker-skinned Egyptians, or so the thinking went.
While the Europeans did manage some grand feats themselves, they were not alone. Robbing other civilizations, other peoples, and other geographies of their grand wonders is a crime of Euro-centrism, a virulent form of ethnocentrism.
Around the time I started college, a book published decades before was gaining prominence again in libraries and on people’s bookshelves: von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods. A new T.V. show, hosted by the (in)famous History Channel, Ancient Aliens, made a big splash by propping up absurdities, half-truths, and charlatan magic as gospel truth. The T.V. show’s documentary, or, might we say mockumentary, style made it easy for people to become absorbed in its absurdities, which I believe are still around today. The damage von Däniken and Ancient Aliens have done is far deeper than spinning half-truths, garbage, and myth into plausible realities. Erich von Däniken and Ancient Aliens have stripped members of the past, who exerted influence and agency, of their agency and their very real power to influence events, geography, and history.
While this is certainly nothing new. The Analog Antiquarian by Jimmy Maher discussed a good deal of this dangerous ethnocentrism disguised as a sort of truth based on the conspiracies of old. The Egyptians aren’t the only ones who have fallen victim to this virulent, illogical, and, if we’re totally honest, brutal treatment of ancient, non-white peoples and their history. The same has been applied to civilizations across the globe. Aliens, great beings, and/or greater (i.e., vastly superior) civilizations created the wonders that littered the world rediscovered by European colonizers and imperialists.
The great abandoned city of Angkor Wat was thought to have been created by a non-Asiatic civilization, something vastly superior to the existing Khmer in Cambodia, who were the ones who built the temple city. However, a few pen strokes and the rest is history, so they say. The great wonders of the world are placed upon a pedestal, which could only be reached by grand civilizations, possibly full of white folks, or built by mythical creatures or grand cosmic beings. Why would brown people have such ingenuity? This couldn’t be a possibility until the Euro-centrism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries began to crumble under its façade.
The irony of being awestruck with grand architectural and technological wonders, such as the great pyramids found in Egypt, or the temple city of Angkor Wat, is that these same Europeans refused to believe the very people they were subjugating were ever capable of things only just being realized within their civilization, in many respects. The grand architectural and technological wonders of Europe were built during European ascendancy, so it was easy to see why white Europeans were uncomfortable sharing the stage with those people they subjugated and exploited for their cheap raw materials and labor.
Euro-centrism still pervades academia today. Many schools have refused to teach global histories, histories of the colonized, and so on. Instead, more conservative areas of the United States higher education system have chosen to stick with Western-centric histories and methodologies, ignoring much of what has transpired elsewhere. If we don’t do something about this, what will happen when a new civilization stumbles upon our ruins? Will they be the work of some superior, mythological race? Will they be denied as being the product of our people and cultures? What will history say about us, especially if we don’t make strides to mitigate the toxic Euro-centrism that still pervades our society, our learning, and our thinking?
To Err Is Human is a blog by G. Michael Rapp (and visiting writers and content creators). Copyright 2024. All rights reserved. However, if you're using any content to add to an ongoing conversation, for teaching purposes, and/or for furthering the hobbies of gaming, storytelling, and worldbuilding, feel free to pull what you want from this blog, so long as you give credit to the original website (https://toerrishuman.xyz) and the author(s)/content creators in question.