Debunking Myths: The Realities Behind Ancient Aliens

Bailey and Ricky delve into Season 20, Episode 7 of Ancient Aliens, "Secrets of the Sumerians". They compare it to another episode from season 3 and discuss differences in CGI quality, budget increases, recycled materials, and recurring themes such as the flood theory and DNA splicing. they critique inaccuracies in the show's claims and highlight the inclusion of notable academics such as Irvine Finkel. 

@thewholeshebangpod
https://discord.gg/s2jPaGrE

Transcript

0:00

Welcome back everyone. I'm Bailey. And I'm ml, and this is the whole Shebang podcast. All right. Welcome back guys. Today is episode 13 woo woo, where we watched another episode of Ancient Aliens, which was almost like a sister episode to the one that we had watched last week, and this one was season 20 episode. Seven. Yeah. so this is, part two of our Ancient Aliens discussion, and it'll be much shorter than our last. Yeah. We had decided we were going to watch this one to just compare, because the last one was season three, something like that. It was way earlier. Yeah. And then this one was season 20, so we just wanted to go in and see if they were using the same. Ideology I guess, and repetition and to see the film quality. I mean, it's kind of fun to see from something that's lasted so long. Yeah. Actually the CGI went hard a lot better and it seemed a lot more clean. Yeah. It was actually a lot more cleaned up. You can tell their budget probably went up a bit. Yeah. 20 seasons in, I think you, you got the budget. Which is fun to compare. And it was also kind of interesting to see what material was recycled and what things they decided to add, or omi, which was pretty similar to the last one. It was, they had a lot of the same concepts. There was the flood myth, the elongated skulls. The elongated skulls, niru. We talked a little bit more about Sitin this time. We did, they also mentioned the DNA splicing again. Yep. And one thing that I found funny about this episode was the guy was speaking about the skull, which we talked about in the last episode, which wasn't even the skull that they found at the site that they were talking about. No, same site, different grave. Oh, okay. Same site, different grave. But they now think that this is a god, not the queen. And so they wanted DNA done on the skeleton to prove that it was an alien, and they think it's a conspiracy theory that they're not testing the DNA because that would just prove whether it's right or wrong. There's a lot of factors to why you wouldn't test the ancient DNA. I mean, my main thought, first thought was. Cost. Well, yeah, cost is, it's very expensive. The other thing is when you test for DNA, you're not just taking a cotton swab, especially for bone. You have to actually take a hunk out of it so it is destructive to the object. Yeah. Which would explain why they're not going to test it. Although it's a conspiracy, guys, they are trying to keep the answers from us. Oh, heaven forbid. Heaven forbid. Mainstream archeology, they're out to get us. They're lying to you. They're telling us all lies. It's not just because they're slow and tired. It is slow and tired and very busy and have no time for anything. So yeah, I guess that starts off this episode about this episode of Ancient Aliens. It was. Pretty put together. They actually had someone in there that you know, that I've familiar about. Yeah. Heard about. Yeah. so that was one of my things. Now I'm just gonna go through my list'cause I Yeah, you go through list. You don't have a list this time. So we talked about more CGI the same thing was happening with the images. They were showing they were not all Sumerian images and they're talking about the Sumerian. In fact, most of it's new Assyrian, which is, as we said last. Two weeks ago. It's much further off. but they did actually have some Sumerian references of art, but not a ton. They introduced the site of Gesu this time, which they did not. Talk about last episode. So they introduced Gusu and the K dea, which is still later than the Acadian Empire. So it's not quite the Sumerian civilization they're trying to refer to, but it's closer, I guess. This time they also invited someone who actually has real credentials to the table, and that is of course, professor Irving Finkel, who is the curator at the British Museum, and somebody who I have read a lot of his books. He's a very good author. He is very much accomplished talking for an academic audience and a non-academic audience in the same book, which is. Really hard, and I don't know how he does it, but he's really good at it. And even his lecture that I watched on his book, the Arc before Noah, he, it was very easy to follow even as a young undergrad student who, you know, doesn't, didn't sit through a lot of lectures at that point. So he's a really good public speaker and I thought it was really interesting that they got him involved in it. But they never have him say anything about aliens or the Anunnaki. He's strictly there to give context to the period. It makes me curious as to whether or not he was given the full scope of what they would be talking about in the show. I'm sure he, he knows. Yeah, but he's there to contextualize a little bit and give some historical background. But he never, ever says anything about aliens. Which I mean, good on them for actually getting someone who knew about the subject matter this time. Yeah. It's a, a start. I mean, they've started now in season 20 as opposed to season three at, at getting credible people. Mm-hmm. Just one though, out of everybody who talked. Yeah. The other one I had looked up, the other PhD person, I forget what her name was, Heather, something. Yeah, she studies symbology. And has a PhD in that. Okay. And then, yeah, a lot of the same people we saw in the last episode. Recycled. Yeah. Yeah. There there's tons of those. Zacharia, sit and cult as I like to think of them. Again, we talked about ane my s. And they really pushed the idea of human creation in pneuma s but that's pretty much two lines out of hundreds. So it's really weird to me that they're using a pma s for that. And there are better options like raha is, which they, they do kind of mention, but they never mentioned by name and they kind of jump around it and confuse it with Gilgamesh, which has a very similar story. So I get why, but it just shows they didn't really do their research there. It's also this weird idea that I think came up in the last one that we didn't really touch on, which is Anky and Enli battling and that is the cause of the flood. And you know, they're brothers who can't agree, which seems to be one of their main points of argument, but that's not really ever the case. Yeah, they make actually a very firm point in saying that Anky. Was his name. I think that was the one that quote unquote liked the humans. Mm-hmm. And created them. And then his brother didn't, which is not wrong, but it's also not. Quite what they're trying to get it across. So in these stories, Enlo wants to destroy mankind because they're super noisy, which I mean, we are pretty noisy as a species. And then Enlo. Or sorry. Yeah. So Enlo wants to destroy them. He says to the other Gods, I can't sleep. They won't shut up. Essentially like, let's make the human shut up by killing them. So they're gonna bring the big flood. And Anky realizes this is a terrible thing to do, not because he cares about humans, but because humans are their source of food. So the humans give offerings. That's how the Gods eat. And he realizes rather quickly that if. There are no humans to give offerings. They're gonna starve and near the end, after all the humans are wiped out in the flood Raha or Noah or, you know, this Noah figure he gives an offering and the tale of Raha actually says that all the gods buzz around the offering like flies. Because they're just so excited to get food and then they're like, oh, hey, a human is still alive. But also we kind of need those'cause we kind of need to eat something. So then they see the value of humans. It's not just because an likes humans. Anky is the trickster God. You know about Norse mythology, he's pretty much the Lokey key. So the, this idea that Anky is, you know, this. Great savior of humanity is ridiculous. He uses humans for his own purpose. He, there's a really horrible tale that involves sexual assault with human women and his own daughters over and over again, and like, it's really gross and you don't want to know where cucumbers come from because that's part of it. Now you got me wondering where cucumbers come from. Uh, yeah. Maybe on a different episode. We'll talk about that. You gonna leave me hanging? You are gonna leave me hanging. Maybe we'll talk about gardens in the engineer east and then cucumbers will come up and then you'll go into this sadistic story of sexual assault and ejaculation. Yep. I like cucumbers. No you won't. After we read that book. Anyway, so he's kind of the trickster. God, he is a lot of fun. Maybe we'll talk about him in the future. That could be a fun topic. Let us know if you're interested in knowing more. Yeah, let us know where did cucumbers come from. That's, yep. So anyway, there's this weird. Idea that they disagree and they battle each other, which they disagree, but then, you know, there's no huge battle. So I don't really get that point. There's also this underlining idea, and I can't remember if we talked about it two weeks ago, that ancient people weren't smart enough to come up with technology on their own. I think we touched on it. It really bugs me, and this is the big problem with these, and I know I've definitely talked about it when we did our ancient apocalypse one, and it's just, people are smart, give them some credit, and it's kind of underlining the racist if you think about what and who they're saying can't do these things. Yeah, I mean, I always considered the ancient civilizations to be a little bit smarter than we are. Oh, definitely. For the fact that I don't know about other parts of the world, but here in Canada, in this small town that we're in, potholes are horrible, and they could take out your car, but you can go to Rome, and the rows that they laid and the Roman Empire are still standing. They're still there. Mm-hmm. So where did we lose the, the technology to make things last? I understand with consumer based society how that goes. They want us to buy, so things are gonna break more easily, but things were built to last back then. Yeah. Uh, we mentioned the genetics and the sitin. I, I wrote in my notes, this feels like a commercial for Sitin, which it really did. They were definitely advertising his theory. and of course, Nibiru came up again and they were talking about how there might be that planet found behind Pluto and they explicitly say there's no evidence, but maybe. And I was like, if there's no evidence, why are you presenting it? Because it supports their theory if it does exist. So they're putting it out there, and again, they never say which text and it's just, I just wanna know which text you're referring to. Yeah, that would be nice. Like you said, I did notice more in this one how when they kept on referring to. Oh, these tablets. These tablets, they never did mention which tablets, but then they mentioned the Enum ish tablets. Mm-hmm. And Gilgamesh. And Gilgamesh. And then those are actual tablets, but for the other ones, they're just not there. They're not. It's also funny because Gilgamesh and Enum Elish. Are the two most popular mythological literary texts that we have and Mesopotamia. So of course they're gonna mention those ones. Those are the ones that people know. Those are the ones they know. But if you have Irving Finkel sitting there next to you, why don't you ask him the name of some of these texts? I'm sure he would love to share. It defeats the purpose. And then they kind of divulged from the last one where they started talking about the Thunderbird. Yeah. It wasn't so much an alien spaceship anymore that came to take the Sumerians up. It was now a Thunderbird, and then they did reference it to Native American culture. Mm-hmm. Because totems will have they have bird totems bear. Whichever. And so they were calling that the Thunderbird and there is a Thunderbird in Native American culture. Yeah. But they compared the Thunderbird to airplanes. Yeah. I found that funny. I think it lost you at that point. You were done. I was, yeah, I was done at that part in the episode. Because they started explaining why airplanes would be the Thunderbird, right? Because they wouldn't know what to call it. And it had wings and it made really loud noise. And there is a Thunderbird in Mesopotamian mythology called the Zu Bird. And there's a whole cycle of stories around the Enzo birds stealing the magical fates and being chased around the real world and the mythical world and hunted, and they just completely omit all of that. That would've been more interesting than comparing it to a plane. Well, you know, suit to suit the purpose of the story, I guess, to suit the purpose. And then it jumps. Back to the Royal Cemetery again, and we talk about the Anki and some of the fines, which was odd and again, had very little, but they mentioned her weird shaped skull again. But this time they didn't compare it to other cultures or mention skull binding, which they did before, and they didn't point out the cylindrical. Crowns, which they pointed out in the last time.'cause I remember we left off talking about those horned crowns.'cause they had compared that in art to her skull and said it's a weird shape because they're aliens. You know, I'm wondering if, because this episode was so close to the other one that we had watched from season three, if they got the feedback and that was what people had found most. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And so they were like, okay, well this time production, we're not going to mention that.'cause we want it to seem like we know what we're talking about this time, so just we're not gonna talk about that. And then I had tests for alien genetics at a bunch of laughing phases. Yeah. Yeah, that was good. And then they kind of throw in, go back La Tappe near the end, and they don't really talk about it. They just show it and they're like, there's this marvelous structure from way earlier and that's it. That's always about it. Yeah. Which I had mentioned in the last episode, they introduced these sites. And then they explain nothing about the site. I'm sure they have whole episodes about Go Beckley, Tempe. Oh, guaranteed. It's like their throwaway site. It's just that they put everything to, it's so funny that they felt the need to have to mention it when it has very little to do with what they're talking about. Well, like you were even saying in the beginning, what were they? It was the Assyrian Empire. The Babylonian Empire. And the Sumerian Empire and their dates were really confusing. Yeah. And they don't acknowledge that these empires grow and fall and there's various other dynasties in between. They don't mention the Caite or the Seal Dynasty or the old Babylonian period versus middle Babylonian period versus Neo Babylonian period. Same with the Assyrians. So it is just we're glossing over facts. For the sake probably of time, probably but I noticed they kind of structured both episodes and I haven't watched a ton of ancient aliens. It's been a while, but I imagine they probably have this structure where they throw all of these historical facts at you. And then they suddenly shovel their theories in your face without integrating them together. And I feel like if they wanted to make a more compelling argument, not that they should, because I don't believe in any of this, but I, they wanted to, they need to learn to integrate those things more. Yeah. So when I was watching this episode, I have been thinking a lot about a different podcasting idea that. I wanna do, and it's more along the lines of a drama audio podcast instead of like a talking podcast. And so as I've been thinking about producing this, as I'm watching Ancient Aliens Today, I started realizing it's. Basically a slideshow Yeah. That they put in there. They don't really do much except for the interviews, like it's pictures and everything else. And they had some recreated scenes, but not much. Yeah. But if you've known, they had some images pop up. Mm-hmm. Recreated scenes of like handling, like handing over a bushel of wheat and everything else. They used that several times. Yeah. Throughout. But otherwise it was just. A slideshow of images of these things and then you'd have the people come in to talk and be interviewed. And again, it's just snippets of the interview. And that was it. That's how Ancient Aliens is made. It's just a giant slideshow. We could do that. We could, should we make our own Ancient Aliens episode? Oh, no. We can do the most ridiculous things. I just remember, okay, so my idea about going through these episodes now that we're kind of past talking about the episode, so I wanted, I proposed this to Bailey as an idea of something for us to do, A, to educate people, because it's really frustrating to me that we don't talk about this a lot. B, to have an excuse to talk about things I like because I don't do that enough. And also because I got the idea during my undergrad when I sat through a class. With Professor Thomas Schneider, who's a really awesome dude. Uh, and it was an Egyptology class and he turned on an episode of Ancient Aliens and he sat there with us and he would pause it every five seconds to talk about their inaccuracies. And it was the greatest class I ever sat through'cause it was just so funny. And he was getting madder and madder and matters. The episode went and the episode was trying to explain there was a sphinx on Mars and he just couldn't handle how hilariously ridiculous it was. And it was a fantastic class. And I thought, you know, how fun would that be if we did something like that with Mesopotamia? And now that I have the knowledge that I can see through, you know, oh, actually this doesn't make any sense. And I think you got some of that today.'cause we actually watched the episode together this time and I could not help myself but go, oh hey look, that tablet is sideways. Or, oh, that's not Sumerian, that's Acadian. And well, I, I just love history in general, so I thought the concepts for these episodes were great.'cause I love learning about history and you know a lot about Samaria that I don't know, obviously that's what you're going for, your PhD. But it's looking at them with a grain of salt and looking at them as not a form of entertainment, but a form of education. Is way different. Yeah. But I do, I do wanna know. Who is the narrator for Ancient aliens?'cause I could fall asleep to that voice. That's very sweet. I'm pretty sure I have, gosh, I've put on ancient aliens to fall asleep to before because the narrator's voice is just, it's very relaxing. It's very relaxing, it's very monotone. But he has just the slightest bit of feeling behind the words that makes you interested. Yeah. So in the future. Once we figure out, recording with video, which will hopefully come up sooner than later. Yeah, we're working on it. I am not tech savvy and I'm trying to be a tech wizard, so that's, we working on it. It's in the process. It's in the process, but eventually we might start doing more reaction videos. Yeah, I do think that these personally, like our ancient aliens, ancient apocalypse, I do wanna throw in some other fun stuff that people might Oh yeah. Like anime and stuff like that. I know we got a great one coming out from Dana Terrace, uh, that I would love to react to. Season two of has been hotel whenever that comes out. Yeah. So starting a reaction channel on YouTube is going to be our main thing we are working on, on that. But you gotta give us some time. Okay. Give us some likes, give us whatever, comment down below. Anything to help. Yeah, so if you like it, if you like this kind of thing, there will be more of it. Um, but we're gonna be starting to move back to our regularly scheduled random and nonsensical content programming, which will be fun. Yeah, I think next episode. Next episode will be really fun because it will be dream interpretations. I've got some good ones. You've got some good ones. I have some good ones. And I have a dream dictionary so we can find out what the heck is wrong with our brains. And we're also gonna use some tarot cards to read each other's fortunes. And the last time I did that, it told us that our friendship was doomed to die. So we'll see what it says. This time still kicking. I mean, we're still around. Yeah. And I will say Ricky Reeds the darkest futures mainly for herself. She did my tarot reading and it was actually pretty good. And then she read it for herself, and then that's when our friendship ended in fire and brimstone. The future's bleak, my friend. It's very bleak. But anyway, this is a bit of a shorter episode since our last one was so long. Yeah. And we kind of wanted to give you guys just a bit of an update, a bit of a rundown on this. Uh, I have heard some feedback from friends and family that do listen to us. Thank you so much. Shout out. Shout out. And they fell off a little bit during the last episode. And I know our ancient apocalypse episode, they fell off with two. But we are planning on making those reactions. Which will I think will be nicer to follow along. Yeah.'cause then you guys can see what we're talking about. Um, I still need to get the copyright laws on YouTube and figure out what I can show you, how much I can show you and go from there. And then the video editing. But this is summer and we are extremely busy, unfortunately, surprisingly busy, surprisingly. It is a busy summer for us, but we're gonna get you guys these episodes, but please, we wanna know if you like them, if we should continue doing them. Yeah, if you wanna hear me ramble more about history, and not only that, but this podcast in general, if you're liking it, you're liking it. If you're not, you're not. But hey. Let us know. Hate comments are still comments, guys, come on. Don't encourage hate comments. Hey, if it brings the traffic, mama will take it. Mama will take it. We're gonna need a much more controversial, uh, topic than h and aliens. Look forward to that in the future. And with that, we'll wrap it up guys, as always. Cheers. That's all for today. Catch us on Instagram where we drop teasers for the next show and our Discord account links are down below.