The fallacy of thinking ancient people never created fiction

And how it's used as an argument to prove ancient aliens existed

Not too bad for an AI-generated image.

Have you ever heard Joe Rogan roll out the old question: “Why would these hunter-gatherers who are fighting for food scraps take the time out of their day to document [insert crazy alien sighting here]?”

It’s in virtually every video in which Joe Rogan interviews some “ancient aliens” type of guest.

Now, don’t get me wrong - I’m a sucker for wild and wacky theories. I love listening to Graham Hancock on the Joe Rogan show talk about his ideas. Some of them sound plausible, others don’t. Nobody is right 100% of the time.

Am I saying ancient aliens didn’t exist? Nope. I think there’s a decent likelihood that on the scale of millions of years of human evolution, or even billions of years of the Earth existing, aliens probably visited at some point. The idea that we’re the only life in the universe is highly unlikely, given how big the universe is.

But are all these ancient tablets, scrolls, and texts describing real events? Were the ancient gods just ancient aliens?

Think about this: Harry Potter is probably one of the most popular fiction franchises in the world. There are millions of copies of this book. People have spent billions of dollars making blockbuster movies, merchandise such as t-shirts, little statues and toys, etc.

Is Harry Potter real? No.

If our civilization collapses under the weight of [insert disaster of your choice here], and some future humans dig up some old “relics” or “artifacts” from the Harry Potter stories, would they automatically know that it wasn’t real?

Would some of them look back and think - “Man, these Harry Potter artifacts are all over the world. Why would these people go to such great lengths to document these stories if they weren’t at least morally important, if not literally real?!”

It might sound far-fetched, but that’s exactly how some people interpret ancient myths and stories.

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Let’s go back in time 10,000 years…

Imagine you’re a hunter-gatherer. You and your buddies went out and had a good hunt, you got a mammoth. You have so much meat you’re not sure if you can eat and preserve it all before it spoils. You celebrate by holding a feast and invite the neighboring tribe, too.

Then, at night, under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms, you and your buddies fantasize about where people are really from, how they got here, and what it all means.

Or maybe you come up with stories you tell each other to deal with the boredom.

One guy, let’s call him SpearShake, turns out to be a great storyteller, and his stories resonate so much with people that they decide to write them down with cuneiform on tablets. The whole thing is just for fun.

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Back to the present…

10,000 years later some guys discover it and start thinking all the stuff they made up is literally real. The idea that magical weapons were actually alien or ancient tech that people really did possess gets airtime on the most popular podcast in the world, and people forget that humanity spends an inordinate amount of time telling each other completely made up stories. We have monthly recurring subscriptions to services that fund multi-million dollar productions of every flavor of TV entertainment imaginable.

And have you ever talked to a little kid? Kids make stories up all the time. I watch my toddler play with dolls and come up with all kinds of goofy tales.

I think maybe we need to take ancient people a little less seriously. They had time for entertainment (especially during hunter-gatherer times), and if they’re anything like us, they had wild imaginations too. Plus, hallucinogenic mushrooms were all the rage back then.