Aliens or fairies? Depends on whom you ask.

It's interesting how phenomena can be seen or explained differently depending on the time period or culture they are observed in.  An example would be UFOs.

In times past, strange lights and mysterious disappearances were blamed on fairy folk.  The phenomenon of missing time that alien abductees report has similarities with the tales of the fairy realm having a different flow of time than the human realm.  If you look into the fairy lore there are a lot of similarities between fairy activity and UFOs and extraterrestrials.

So, is this the same phenomenon but seen through different eyes?  If it's the same phenomenon then which is it:  fairies or aliens?  Or none of the above?

Something that I find particularly interesting is that now we seem to be looking back over our legends and inserting UFOs and ETs in order to explain the strange occurrences told of in those tales.  This isn't confined to only legends either, but to history as a whole.  Ancient astronaut theorists have long pointed at the strange events of history and blamed extraterrestrial influences when in the past these events would have been blamed on fairies, angels, deities, or spirits.

I suppose what I'm getting at is this:  We view things through the lens of the time period.  How will we look back on such unexplained phenomena in a hundred years?

Merlin's prophecies reveal guidance from UFOs and aliens, state experts

Ancient Astronauts

Ancient astronaut theory brings to the forefront archaeological mysteries and posits an extraterrestrial explanation for them.  These mysteries include the pyramids in Egypt (and elsewhere), the Nazca lines, Stone Henge, as well as ancient devices and artifacts that don't seem to fit with what we think we know about ancient civilization.

Of course, all of this ancient astronaut stuff is controversial because it goes against much of what mainstream archaeology has to say while using archaeology to back up its claims.  There are some pretty convincing arguments in either direction but I haven't been convinced one way or the other.

I think that the primary issue is that we perhaps don't give our ancestors enough credit.  They were just as intelligent as we are; they just didn't have the benefit of thousands of years of knowledge.  Is it really that impossible that they could have built immense pyramids on their own?  Then again, maybe they had some help (in the form of technology, knowledge, or both).  Our ancestors most likely had the same strength of imagination as us; could they not have just dreamed up these strange creatures and objects we see in paintings and carvings?

I do think that it's a possibility that we have been visited by extraterrestrials in the past (so does Carl Sagan), but, while there are a lot of mysteries, I don't think any of them point directly to alien visitors or spacecraft.  Plenty of examples can be interpreted in such a way, but, as with most areas of the paranormal, there is little concrete evidence to be found (or at least any that is widely-known).

I think that ancient astronaut theory asks the right questions and provokes discussion of some of the very weird things that we have discovered through archaeology.  However, I'm not sure that it presents absolute proof that we are an alien experiment, that aliens gave us technology or knowledge, or that there are aliens at all.  I think that only time will tell us the truth about that.

Ancient astronauts on Wikipedia.