Ancient aliens is pseudo bunk

Ancient Aliens is an American television series that premiered on April 20, 2010, on the History channel. Produced by Prometheus Entertainment in a documentary style, the program presents hypotheses of ancient astronauts and proposes that historical texts, archaeology, and legends contain evidence of past human-extraterrestrial contact.  The show has been widely criticized by historians, cosmologists, archaeologists and other scientific circles for presenting and promoting pseudoscience, pseudohistory and pseudoarchaeology.

The series started with a TV special of the same name that aired on March 8, 2009, on the History channel. Seasons 1–3 aired on the same channel until 2011. From season 4 to the middle of season 7, the series aired on H2. On April 10, 2015, episode premieres returned to History.

Season 14 premiered on May 31, 2019 and concluded on November 29, 2019. Season 15 premiered on January 24, 2020.

 "far-fetched," "hugely speculative," and "expound[ing] wildly on theories suggesting that astronauts wandered the Earth freely in ancient times."

 and have been criticized as pseudoscience and pseudohistory.

Forbes.com contributor Brad Lockwood criticized Ancient Aliens as an example of the History Channel's channel drift towards "programs devoted to monsters, aliens, and conspiracies," commenting that, "Ancient Aliens defies all ability to suspend disbelief for the sake of entertainment." Forbes.com staff writer Alex Knapp also criticized the series and cited archaeologist Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews' rebuke of the History Channel for "treating (Ancient Aliens) nonsense as though it were fact."

Smithsonian.com science writer Brian Switek was extremely critical of the series, particularly an episode that suggested "aliens exterminated dinosaurs to make way for our species." He characterized the show as "some of the most noxious sludge in television’s bottomless chum bucket." Switek wrote that the show employs the Gish gallop technique to overwhelm the viewer with many "fictions and distortions."

Others have called attention to a paucity of opposing viewpoints. Kenneth Feder, Professor of Archaeology at Central Connecticut State University and author of Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, has said that he was approached by Ancient Aliens producers regarding his potential participation. "My response was, I'd be happy to be on your show, but you should know that I think that the ancient astronaut hypothesis is execrable bullshit," he said in an interview. "I haven't heard back from them, rather remarkably. So, I guess maybe they're not interested in the other point of view."

The History Channel presents self-appointed challengers of science who take on the idea that aliens caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs

What Archaeologists Really Think About Ancient Aliens, Lost Colonies, And Fingerprints Of The Gods

According to ancient alien theorists, extraterrestrials with superior knowledge of science and engineering landed on Earth thousands of years ago, sharing their expertise with early civilizations and forever changing the course of human history. But how did this concept develop, and is there any evidence to support it?

flint knapping, sharpening relatively straight and strong bits of wood to the point of making spears, etc. The history of stone tools has been traced back for 2.6 million years.

Khormusan industry was a Paleolithic archeological industry in Egypt and Sudan dated at 42,000 to 18,000 BP.

Khormusans developed tools not only from stone but also from animal bones and hematite. They also developed small arrow heads resembling those of Native Americans

Saint-Acheul, is an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture characterized by distinctive oval and pear-shaped "hand-axes" 

 It is thought that Acheulean technologies first developed about 1.76 million years ago, derived from the more primitive Oldowan technology

The Oldowan (or Mode I) was a widespread stone tool archaeological industry (style) in prehistory. These early tools were simple, usually made with one or a few flakes chipped off with another stone. Oldowan tools were used during the Lower Paleolithic period, 2.6 million years ago 

Stone tool industry, any of several assemblages of artifacts displaying humanity’s earliest technology, beginning more than 2 million years ago.

 It's hard to trace the history of wooden tools because they rot and don't fossilize, but chimpanzees have been observed making wooden tools and weapons, so human tool use probably didn't require any sudden mental increase or other revelation.

Oldowan tools were used during the Lower Paleolithic period, 2.6 million years ago up until at least 1.7 million years ago, by ancient Hominins (early humans)

It is thought that Acheulean technologies first developed about 1.76 million years ago, derived from the more primitive Oldowan technology associated with Homo habilis.

 We captured fire, and eventually not only tamed it but learned to produce and control it.

We domesticated plants and animals, simple step by simple step.

We slowly learned basic hygiene

We developed means of written communication, from what was probably the work of braggers on cave walls, through simple pictographs, to abstract symbolic representation of spoken languages, enabling us to share more and more of what we have learned about our planet and our universe, more rapidly and more effectively with every improvement.

from smoke signals, to telegraph lines, 

This episode proposes that extraterrestrials have a mission plan for Earth and mankind, and cites as evidence, Sumerian tablets that allegedly describe the Anunnaki as a race of creatures that came to Earth to mine gold; the purpose of cattle mutilations; the mile-long "band of holes" near Pisco, Peru; Egyptian hieroglyphs that are said to depict hybrid creatures that are part man/part animal; and crystal skulls and crop circles that are said to contain messages from aliens.

clay tablets  were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age.

 These initially very small clay tokens were continually used all the way from the pre-historic Mesopotamia period, 9000 BCE, to the start of the historic period around 3000 BCE, when the use of writing for recording was widely adopted

The earliest record of a Sumerian creation myth, called The Eridu Genesis by historian Thorkild Jacobsen, is found on a single fragmentary tablet excavated in Nippur by the Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania in 1893, and first recognized by Arno Poebel in 1912. It is written in the Sumerian language and dated to around 1600 BCE

Zecharia Sitchin (July 11, 1920 – October 9, 2010) was an author of books proposing an explanation for human origins involving ancient astronauts. Sitchin attributed the creation of the ancient Sumerian culture to the Anunnaki, which he stated was a race of extraterrestrials from a planet beyond Neptune called Nibiru. He asserted that Sumerian mythology suggests that this hypothetical planet of Nibiru is in an elongated, 3,600-year-long elliptical orbit around the sun.

According to Sitchin's interpretation of Mesopotamian iconography and symbolism, outlined in his 1976 book The 12th Planet and its sequels, there is an undiscovered planet beyond Neptune that follows a long, elliptical orbit, reaching the inner solar system roughly every 3,600 years. This planet is called Nibiru 

Anunnaki in Sumerian myth, who Sitchin states are called the Nephilim in Genesis. He wrote that they evolved after Nibiru entered the solar system, and they first arrived on Earth probably 450,000 years ago, looking for minerals, especially gold, 

According to Sitchin, Enki (the Sumerian god of water and human culture) suggested that to relieve the Anunnaki, who had mutinied over their dissatisfaction with their working conditions, that primitive workers (Homo sapiens) be created by genetic engineering as slaves to replace them in the gold mines by crossing extraterrestrial genes with those of Homo erectus.

According to Sitchin, ancient inscriptions report that the human civilization in Sumer, Mesopotamia, was set up under the guidance of these "gods", and human kingship was inaugurated to provide intermediaries between mankind and the Anunnaki

New York Times reporter Corey Kilgannon has noted that despite academic dismissal of his work, Sitchin has "a devoted following of readers".

Criticism of Sitchin's work falls primarily into three categories: translations and interpretations of ancient texts, astronomical and scientific observations, and literalism of myth.

When Sitchin wrote his books, only specialists could read the Sumerian language. However, sources such as the 2006 book Sumerian Lexicon[ have made the language more accessible to non-experts.

author of the book Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-religions, mentions the example of Sitchin's claim that the Sumerian sign DIĜIR means "pure ones of the blazing rockets", adding that "Sitchin's assignment of meanings to ancient words is tendentious and frequently strained." Fritze also commented on Sitchin's methodology, writing that "When critics have checked Sitchin's references, they have found that he frequently quotes out of context or truncates his quotes in a way that distorts evidence in order to prove his contentions. Evidence is presented selectively and contradictory evidence is ignored."

Sitchin bases his arguments on his personal interpretations of pre-Nubian and Sumerian texts, and the seal VA 243. Sitchin wrote that these ancient civilizations knew of a twelfth planet, when in fact they only knew five.

Sitchin's linguistics seems at least as amateurish as his anthropology, biology, and astronomy. On p. 370, for example, he maintains that "all the ancient languages ... including early Chinese ... stemmed from one primeval source -- Sumerian".

He received a degree in economics from the University of London,

While working as an executive for a shipping company, he taught himself Sumerian cuneiform and visited several archaeological sites.

these interplanetary collisions were supposed to have taken place within the span of human existence, whereas for Sitchin these occurred during the early stages of planetary formation,

Sitchin in "the case of Adam's alien genes" states that 223 genes found by the Human Genome Sequencing Consortium are without the required predecessors on the genomic evolutionary tree. Later researchers have argued that the conclusion from the Human Genome Sequencing Consortium cannot be drawn due to a lack of a comprehensive gene database for comparison.

He uses the Epic of Creation Enuma Elish as the foundation for his cosmogony, identifying the young god Marduk, who overthrows the older regime of gods and creates the Earth, as the unknown "Twelfth Planet". In order to do this he interprets the Babylonian theogony as a factual account of the birth of the other "eleven" planets. The Babylonian names for the planets are established beyond a shadow of a doubt—Ishtar was the deity of Venus, Nergal of Mars, and Marduk of Jupiter—and confirmed by hundreds of astronomical/astrological tables and treatises on clay tablets and papyri from the Hellenistic period. Sitchin merrily ignores all this and assigns unwarranted planetary identities to the gods mentioned in the theogony.

What Sitchin sees is what he needs for his hypothesis. So figure 15 on page 40 is radiation therapy, and figure 71 on page 136 is a god inside a rocket-shaped chamber. If these are gods, why are they stuck with our cheap B movie technology of rockets, microphones, space-suits, and radiation therapy? If they are gods, then why can't they have some really divine technology such as intradimensional worm-hole travel, antigravity, starlight propulsion, or black hole bounce rematerializations?