Caitlin Green

And that sounds less sci-fi and more like an ancient giant construction project.

Tell me a bit about the project and some things that we've learned.

Now, when we talk about ancient aliens, I feel like it kind of falls into this trap of assuming that ancient humans weren't kind of as smart as us.

They didn't have the technology, they didn't have the mathematics, they didn't have some of our discoveries, but they had the same kind of brains as us, and they were capable, obviously, of incredible things.

There's almost something insulting about saying that ancient peoples couldn't have built this.

It kind of underestimates the ingenuity of ancient civilization.

Talk to me more about that.

Where do we go wrong when we just assume it was aliens and not our ancestors?

Is there any sort of psychological reason why we fall into this trap?

Any sort of psychological reason why, okay, we don't necessarily understand how an ancient civilization did it, so we think it was maybe not an ancient civilization, or some sort of bias that exists when we look at ancient artifacts or buildings and just assume it couldn't have been done?

I'm curious about the storytelling side.

Like, if aliens, for some people, are winning the narrative battle, how can people like you, an Egyptologist, archaeologist, tell the human story in a way that is just as exciting as the sort of science fiction one?

It's sort of a shame that people believe things past as certainty that have no evidence for them versus believing experts who say, okay, we just don't know yet.

And there's something about the unknown that we're unwilling to accept, which to me is maybe a little sad, but so be it.

Well, thank you so much for joining me on the show, Stefan.

I appreciate talking to you about all of this.

It's been a pleasure.

Stefan Bowman is an Egyptology professor at KU Leuven and a researcher at the Art and History Museum in Brussels.

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