JOIN US A British television series has revived the claim that the huge statues on EasterIsland were either created or influenced by the UFOs.
The idea that extraterrestrials visited ancient civilizations has been around for decades, a theory most prominently promoted by writer Erich von Daniken, author of the best-selling classic work of pseudoscience Chariots of the Gods?: Unsolved Mysteries of the Past.
Daniken believes that ancient Egyptians had neither the intelligence nor the tools to create the pyramids at Giza-thus they must have been made by aliens, the Discovery News reported.
Similar claims have been made about the Mayan pyramids in Central America and the giant drawings in the Nazca desert of Peru.
Archaeologists and other scientists have long since discredited Von Daniken’s theories.
The Wild Pacific programme makes statements such as that “the great stone origins on Easter Island [have] vexed experts for decades: Who built these giant stone statues and how did they get there on this remote Pacific Island?”
The question of how the statues got “there on this remote Pacific Island” misleadingly suggests that the huge carvings were somehow brought vast distances across the ocean for some unknown, mysterious purpose to this remote island.
The stone (actually a substance called tuff, compressed and easily carved volcanic ash) was taken from an extinct volcano called Rano Raraku on the northeastern part of the island and transported using ropes and logs to various sites along the coast, the report said.
There’s no mystery where the Moai came from; in fact hundreds of them can be found still embedded and only partially carved out of the side of Rano Raraku volcano.
The report said that there remains no real mystery to be answered by wild speculation about extraterrestrials or anything else.
Genuine history and cultural traditions of ancient civilizations are often overshadowed by sensational and fictional theories about aliens, it said.