The History Channel's Ancient Aliens TV series is now in its nineteenth season. Some may think that the show has been very bold from an explanatory standpoint, willing to stick its neck out by engaging in outlandish-sounding speculation. We do see on the show a discussion of history and folklore that boldly attempts to suggest extraterrestrial intervention throughout human history. An example was an episode that discussed the British legend of Merlin, the teacher of King Arthur, reputed to have magic powers. The show suggested that maybe Merlin's suite of magic powers was some extraterrestrial technology Merlin was using. A similar type of suggestion has occurred a hundred times on the "Ancient Aliens" show, such as a show trying to suggest that the Ark of the Covenant was some machinery built by extraterrestrials, and a show suggesting the Vikings had extraterrestrial help in forging metal, and that Valhalla was an extraterrestrial spaceship. A standard formula of the show is to discuss some ancient or medieval marvel or legend, and to try to suggest that it arose because of some kind of mysterious interaction humans had with extraterrestrials. For example, at the 39:35 mark of the Season 5 Ancient Aliens episode "The Monoliths," we hear David Childress saying this:
"And then we have these ancient obelisks that were at one point apparently, all around the world. It would seem that there was a worldwide system similar to a wireless broadcasting system. These obelisks would broadcast power into the atmosphere, and remote locations around the world could pick up that power, much like a radio today, or a television set, or a satellite phone, or a computer. This seems to be the system that was set up by extraterrestrials thousands of years ago on this planet, and incredibly, they didn't just do it on planet Earth."
The episodes that use this formula may have a certain amount of speculative boldness. But the core explanation offered by the "Ancient Aliens" show is actually an example of explanatory timidity. I have been watching this show for many years, and I have noticed no real progression in its core explanation. For nineteen years the show has been pushing the same central explanation for human beings, one that does not work to explain who we are and how we got here. The core explanation offered by the show is that at one or more points in the past, extraterrestrials altered human DNA.
We had a presentation of this core explanation at the 38:55 mark in the "Alien Operations" episode of Season 6, which you can see on Netflix. At the 38:55 mark we had this presentation:
Klemens Hertel, molecular genetics phD: "What we don't know about humans in terms of evolutionary genetics is based on what we don't know about genetics nowadays. For example, we do not know the genetic basis of the thought process. We don't know memory. We cannot create any ideas of how changes occurred to evolve the human brain to the functional being that it is right now."
Narrator: Could this incredible map [of the human genome] eventually solve the great mystery of human evolution? Might it help explain why humans, unlike any other living species, can think, reason and have the power of speech, or why they can create art, music, and spend time contemplating the reason for their own existence?
Graham Hancock: "It's not until about 40,000 years ago that you get a very radical change in human behavior. Our hunting strategies get better. Our tools and our weapons get better. It's as though some untapped faculty of the human brain and of the human imagination switched on."
Narrator: "Is it possible that the reason humans suddenly evolved from primitive beasts to sentient humans is due to otherworldly intervention? According to ancient astronaut theorists, the answer is a profound yes."
Gorgio A. Tsoukalos: "One of the basic tenets of the ancient astronaut theory suggests that a long time ago, our DNA was artificially changed by extraterrestrials. And we can see that this is exactly what happened, because all of a sudden we made a giant intellectual leap, and all of a sudden we became Home sapiens sapiens. "
David Childress: "This was the time when the very first extraterrestrial genetic engineering took place. And in some ways, this was like phase one in the creation of modern humans beings as we know them."
Narrator: "Did extraterrestrials deliberately alter Homo sapiens DNA?"
You can summarize the typical explanations of today's Darwin-venerating biologist like this: "Evolution explains DNA; DNA explains bodies; bodies explain minds." Every part of that explanation is wrong. Evolution in the form of Darwinian natural selection does not offer a credible explanation of what we see in human DNA: about 20,000 genes that correspond to more than 20,000 human protein molecules. Each a repository of fine-tuned information representing a functional sequence of hundreds or thousands of well-arranged amino acid parts, such genes are too hard-to-achieve through an accumulation of random mutations as imagined by Darwinists. DNA does not explain human bodies. Contrary to the myth so often told by biologists and chemists, DNA is not any specification for how to build a human body or even any of its organs or cell types. DNA does not even specify how to make the main components of cells: organelles and protein complexes. All that DNA specifies is very low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up particular proteins. Very many scientists have confessed this reality, and at the post here you can read a list of more than 25 scientists and doctors who tell us that DNA is not a specification, blueprint or program for making a human.
As for the claim that bodies make minds, it is false. There are very many reasons (discussed in the posts of the blog here) why the human brain fails to be an explanation for the human mind and human memory. Ironically, the molecular geneticist quoted above on the Ancient Aliens show actually pointed us a bit in the right direction by saying this:
"For example, we do not know the genetic basis of the thought process. We don't know memory. We cannot create any ideas of how changes occurred to evolve the human brain to the functional being that it is right now."
Yes, and neuroscientists do not have any substantive idea of how a brain could cause someone to think or remember. A very thorough study of the many physical shortfalls of the brain will lead to the idea that the brain cannot be the cause of human mental phenomena such as very fast thinking and instant recall and the lifetime preservation of memories.
What does the Ancient Alien series offer as a correction to the bungled explanations of typical biologists? You could explain it like this:
Bad old thinking: "Evolution explains DNA; DNA explains bodies; bodies explain minds."
Bad new thinking, "Ancient Aliens" style: "Evolution and gene-tinkering by extraterrestrial visitors explains DNA; DNA explains bodies; bodies explain minds."
What the Ancient Aliens series gives us is just a rather timid tweak on the old nonsensical explanations of 1960's biologists. So instead of the idea that we got the wonders of DNA by only blind unguided processes, we now have the idea that some of human DNA is the result of purposeful interventions by visiting extraterrestrials. That might be a move in the right direction towards a more credible theory of how we got human DNA. But a huge problem is the show's continual speaking as if some suitable DNA explains how we got humans. You cannot explain humans by the arising of suitable DNA. DNA does not explain the origin of the human body. And neither DNA nor human bodies explain the origin of the human mind.
DNA does not explain the origin of any human body because DNA merely specifies very low-level chemical information such as which amino acids constitute a protein. So we are left with the gigantic unanswered question: how is it that a speck-sized zygote in a newly impregnated woman is able to progress to become the vastly more organized state of hierarchical dynamical organization that is a full-sized human being? There is nothing in DNA and nothing known to biology that explains this progression, which is a miracle of organization a million times more impressive than a hotel-sized sandcastle with 100 ramparts and 20 turrets arising only from the wind and water at the edge of a beach. There is no hypothesis about visiting extraterrestrials that can do anything to explain this marvel of hierarchical organization that is at the center of biology.
Neither DNA nor anything in the brain explains the wonders of human memory and the wonders of the human mind. DNA does not explain the arising of any human body, any human organ or any type of human cell, none of which is specified in DNA. So it does not work to claim that we got the marvels of our minds and memories because visiting extraterrestrials did something to alter our DNA. There is nothing in either our DNA or our brains that explains the main wonders of our minds.
To explain the wonders of the human body and the wonders of the human mind, we need ideas far bolder than the rather timid idea that visiting extraterrestrials tinkered with human DNA. It is very strange that we seem to never get from the Ancient Aliens series the kind of reasoning that would best support its main explanatory claim. Such reasoning would require educating TV viewers about the stratospheric levels of fine-tuning and functional complexity of genes and protein molecules, and the mountainous heights of dynamic hierarchical organization in the human body. TV viewers would get an explanation of why the average gene is something as unlikely to arise by unguided processes as a well-written useful grammatical paragraph of 100 or 200 words. TV viewers would get an explanation of why you cannot credibly explain the origin of such repositories of functional information by imagining an accumulation of random mutations. TV viewers would be educated in the relevant probability mathematics, and fundamental principles such as that the chance of the accidental origin of a functional structure skyrockets in a geometric and exponential fashion whenever there is a simple linear increase in the number of well-arranged parts needed for such a structure. After such an education, the viewers could be told that it is just too improbable that unguided Darwinian evolution could have produced such wonders of functional complexity, and that we must postulate some guided assistance, which could have occurred by extraterrestrial intervention.
But such a presentation seems to never occur on the Ancient Aliens show. Instead the show seems to spend the vast majority of its time trying to persuade us that various wonderful-seeming things (in history or in legend) are things suggesting extraterrestrial visitors in the past. The results rarely sound convincing, although the show does serve as an entertaining vehicle for educating us about facts and aspects of human history and bygone human culture.
You may realize there's a kind of explanatory timidity of the Ancient Aliens series when you consider that the main idea advanced by the show is the idea that extraterrestrials engaged in gene splicing long ago; and gene splicing is a technology that humans already possess. Knowing that intelligence could have arisen on other planets any time in the past billion years, and could easily be many millions of years older than mankind, astronomers have assumed that any extraterrestrial civilization reaching our planet would have god-like powers dwarfing our own. But you're not imagining any god-like power if you imagine visiting extraterrestrials doing some fiddling with human DNA. Humans already know how to fiddle with DNA.
Part of the problem is the show's title. The show should have had some title that did not chain it to one particular explanation. With a title such as "Human Origins: Contrarian Ideas" the series would have been free to move beyond its "von Daniken straightjacket." But with the title "Ancient Aliens" the TV series is chained to the same old explanation, year after year. It's rather like how the typical biology professor stays chained to the same old bad explanations decade after decade, parroting a "same old same-old" origins storyline reminding us of the 19-year run of the Ancient Aliens series. Just as the Ancient Aliens series clings religiously to the same old conventions year after year (such as lamely trying to validate speculations by claiming that "ancient astronaut theorists" believe them, and by pronouncing the word "extraterrestrial" in a way emphasizing the "res" syllable), our biologists cling to the same old dubious conventions year after year, such as promulgating the legend that vast wonders of biological organization not yet discovered in the 19th century were explained by someone who died in that century (which is kind of like claiming that smartphones or tablet computers are explained by something in the writings of Plato).
Imagining gene-splicing ancient extraterrestrial visitors does not really help in origins problems. Each a very complex functional invention requiring hundreds or thousands of well-arranged parts, the fine-tuned genes and protein molecules in the human body are so mathematically improbable to arise by unguided processes that we should expect none of them to arise by unguided processes in the history of the observable universe, even if there are a billion trillion planets in such a universe. You don't help that problem by imagining that such miracles of luck occurred on a nearby solar system, helping to give rise to extraterrestrials who came to Earth to tinker with human genes. That's kind of like "robbing Peter to pay Paul," just moving the "unbelievable 20,000 miracles of luck" from one solar system to another one. It's kind of like someone answering the objection "a house of 52 well-arranged cards could never arise by someone throwing a deck of cards into the air with his left hand" by saying "I didn't use my left hand to throw the deck of cards into the air; I threw the deck of cards with my right hand."
For the truth about the bad old thinking discussed above, see my long post "Evolution Does Not Explain DNA, DNA Does Not Explain Bodies, and Bodies Do Not Explain Minds."
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