The Ancient Alien Question:
A New Inquiry Into the Existence,
Evidence, and Influence of
Ancient Visitors
by Philip Coppens
Career Press/New Page, 2012
320pp, 8p color insert, b&w illos throughout,
notes, bibliography, index
A Review by Gene Stewart
Featuring an introduction by Erich Von Denizen and a cover with a Mayan pyramid set against a nebula with four glimpses of ancient places and artifacts in circles at the pyramid’s base, the first impression is Uh-oh. This could be one of the those breathless compendia of rhetorical questions matched to wild speculations. It could be an overly-somber volume crammed full of recherché data somehow confabulated into a grand theory that you know boils down to the simplistic assertion: Aliens.
Instead, Coppens confounds both true believers and hardened skeptics by presenting factual information clearly, examining it logically, and dismissing outré notions while never closing his mind to possibilities.
Have we been visited by ET in the past? Did these EBEs influence us culturally or even genetically? Do ancient places and monuments, artifacts and traces tell us anything about such things?
Coppens covers these and other questions systematically. He presents us with both startling facts confirmed by consensus science and alarming demonstrations of flaws among scientists. We learn that academia has done a poor job of investigating evidence it cannot refute, to see what it might mean. Ignoring things until they go away is hardly conducive to advancing human knowledge, yet that is what has most often been done.
Alternative theories, rather than being welcomed and tested, confirmed or demolished by the scientific method, are brusquely dismissed out-of-hand by those holding politically-accepted established views. A good example is the Sphinx on the Giza Plateau in Egypt. It shows water erosion, something that could only have happened over tens of thousands of years, and only tens of thousands of years ago, when the climate there was much wetter. It’s a desert today; no opportunity for vertical water erosion occurs. Yet there are the marks, in front of everyone since the Sphinx’s body was dug up in the 1920s. It being in a desert, no one “saw” this plain fact.
It remains denied to this day as Zawi Hawass, the head of Egyptian Antiquities, defends his own version of history, which places Ancient Egypt at the pinnacle of ancient civilizations, which pleases his political masters.
A glance at the pyramids leads to interesting speculation, too. Are those huge stone blocks quarried? Or were they poured? The latter would make it much easier to have built the huge pyramids, which took only 20 years or so each, as recorded in verified Egyptian records.
Geopolymers may be the answer. A chemical process whereby artificial rock can be created using chips of rock, stones, debris, and various other elements such as potash and plant resins, into a large rock or stone, or block, indistinguishable from natural stone. Indistinguishable but for the shapes we find, which are man-made and fit so perfectly together as to be impossible to shape with copper chisels.
Interestingly, small artifacts such as certain vases and statuettes were produced in Ancient Egypt using the process of geopolymerization. It was obviously known and used. Why not for larger projects?
Dr. Joseph Davidovits, a French chemical engineer with multiple overlapping degrees, first mooted the geopolymer notion about the Great Pyramid in 1974. Davidovits is the father of geopolymers and a giant in is field. His theory would mean the Ancient Egyptian workers would have had no huge blocks to move, no ramps needed, and repairs could be made easily by recasting stones. The amazing accuracy would be relatively easy to achieve without having to deal with tremendous sandstone blocks.
He proved the density of the pyramid stones differed from the stone still in the quarry. They differ chemically, too. Mud from the Nile, shells in the sediment, lime, natron salts, caustic soda… He asserts that Imhotep, the great genius engineer and builder of Ancient Egypt, also the great Alchemist, would have known this method and used it, as is proven by the structures.
Yet, despite proving his theory in geology, chemistry, and engineering, his work remains ignored by Egyptology. This is due to the strict separation among the sciences maintained by academia. Scientists of different fields ignore each other’s work.
This is but one brief, fragmented, poorly-presented example from a clearly-written, fascinating book full of such insights, revelations, and surprises. Coppens never falls into any given belief system. He sticks to facts and does not let the wilder extremes distract from the analysis. He dismisses Sitchin after showing how wrong those translations were, how imaginary in many cases. He does not diver headlong into the ETH either, even as he points out that we are the space aliens, due to panspermia.
Yes, we fell from the stars, amino acids cooked by interstellar radiation, carried by comets and other debris, dropped into an atmosphere grown from volcanic and bacteriological out-gassing. There those building-blocks of life from space found warm tidal pools and began the binary on-off dance that produced ever more complex biochemical devices that eventually took on all the attributes we call life.
This is the best overview to read if you would wade into the Ancient Alien question set without instantly going over your head in speculation and cynical storytelling. The late Philip Coppens has left us a superb guidebook to these topics, and his sensible, pragmatic tone is to be emulated.
Reading The Ancient Alien Question changes one’s view of history for the better, and opens one to possibilities yet to be confirmed, if only we can encourage scientists to get out there and investigate what all the baffling, intriguing, and suggestive evidence adds up to, what it means.
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