Imagine, my dear listener, what might happen if the ever fantastic Super Specific Questions Twitter tagged me, yes little old me, in a writing prompt… from the stars!
Well, okay, that might be a bit hyperbolic, but the first bit is true, a writing challenge has appeared for me to have a go at. The prompt itself is…
You’re given exactly two pieces of information.
1. Extraterrestrials exist.
2. Aliens have impacted earth history exactly one time.
What one event did aliens plan a role in?
I’ve been flogging my brains for some unique, unthought-of moment in history that’s a bit different, where maybe some ineffable and unknowable alien force decided to step in and change things up a bit. Watergate? Chernobyl? The Battle of Trafalgar? I mean sure, maybe events in these situations were set up by some space meddlers, but I just cannot help but think back to those big, triangular things in the Egyptian desert. You know….
Yeah, the pyramids, of course! Specifically, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Sphinx (everyone’s favourite man-headed cat statue!). As I am sure we all know, the pyramids and their surrounding causeways and whatnot are all super ancient (Giza was built in 2560BC, that’s older than the ZX Spectrum!) and the Great Pyramid of Giza is the only remaining member of the Seven Wonders of the World, maybe because of it’s excellent build quality. The winds of Egypt’s Western Desert haven’t worn them down yet!
There have been tons of conspiracy theories from Ufologists and alien hunters over the years, ascertaining to the train of thought that maybe the Ancient Egyptians had a bit of a leg up in building these grand structures, perhaps from aliens! This comes about from the musing that the pyramids are both bloody huge and pretty architecturally sound, perhaps a little too sound for the era.
So in come the Ancient Astronauts, ie a group of space faring aliens who, at some point during their journey across the galaxy, visited our blue ball and, perhaps, offered some advice and insight to the Ancient Eygptians about how to build big, impressive and triangular structures in which to inter their dead Pharaohs and all of the cool stuff they’d need in the afterlife. The less fantastical theory was that the Pharaohs had their armies of slaves mine the massive stone blocks, shape them to perfection, ramp them up onto the top of the build, fix it in place, all of that real and boring construction business. Why do that, I ask, when you can just beam it int place using your spaceship?
This train of thought also bleeds into the culture of Ancient Egypt itself. Look at those gods, for goodness sake! Anubis, Set, Ra and the rest of the golden, animal headed gang could certainly be seen as intergalactic travelers, from a certain point of view.
Whilst I don’t tend to go in for this pseudoscience business, if any point in our history was to be indebted to Ancient Astronauts, then this has got to be it! This, or the creation of Facebook… I mean, come on!
I certainly recommend that you jump down the internet rabbit hole on this, there are some absolutely mental theories out there regarding Egypt, aliens and the like. That, or just give Stargate a watch!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my musings on that, here’s hoping that I get another challenge from Super Specific Questions soon, this was good fun to write about!
Craig Rathbone - Writer 
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