In the second half of the 19th century, as white settlers expanded into the American West, a variety of pseudoscientific theories circulated about “lost” ancient peoples. This early interest in the mound builders – a supposed “undiscovered European civilization” thought to have been the true builders of the complex Native American cities of Cakhokia and other localities – paved the way for late 19th c. works of science fiction that posited that a number of ancient sites, from the Pyramids to Stonehenge to the lost city of Atlantis, were the work of Martians or other alien civilizations. Later, the mid 20th c. publication of Erich von Daniken’s "Chariots of the Gods" argued that many ancient sites had “impossible” features or construction techniques that could only have been built by extraterrestrials. More recently, the History Channel’s "Ancient Aliens" has traded directly in such pseudoscientific theories, and Megan Fox’s current program “Legends of the Lost” brings this issue to the fore once again.
While such stories may seem like harmless nonsense, it is notable that such claims are never made for the Parthenon or other works. A growing body of recent scholarship has argued that these pseudoarchaeological theories are problematic because they build on racist thinking that assumes that ancient people (often Native Americans, Africans, or other black and brown people) were incapable of complex feats of engineering in antiquity. Such theories have been used to bolster claims made by white supremacist and white nationalist organizations. The result is that a growing number of people seem uncertain as to the true origins and methods of ancient building technologies, and perhaps more insidiously, we now witness a growing popular mistrust of the “elitist” methods of archaeology and history as authoritative means of interpreting the past.
Join us to hear eight speakers from UT Austin and beyond discuss how heritage has become entangled with false narratives about the past - and about how such entanglements are part of the current revival of white supremacist ideology.