this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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Just some context: Ancient Aliens is racist. It's roots are literally Nazi.
You see, it's only achievements in brown countries that need alien help. The Greeks didn't need ET for the Colosseum, heavens no. We just scratch our head at Africans or Americans building pyramids and stuff.
In the 30s, Nazi "researchers" believed in something I'll call "Ancient Aryans" which is exactly the same as Ancient Aliens except it's pure Germans who are visiting these primitive cultures and raising architecture. What happened to the Germans? They were annihilated by in-breeding with locals of course.
Greeks? Colosseum?
Aryan ≠ German. Aryan would be closer to modern day Afghan, Pakistani, or maybe Ukrainian? Aryans were from the grasslands east of the urals.
Just to be pedantic, the Romans built the Colosseum. While they did cosplay as Greeks, they weren't actually Greeks themzelves
To be further pedantic, the Greeks started calling themselves the Romioi in late antiquity, so some Greeks were in fact Romans, but not all Romans were Greek.
I'll take this opportunity to shill for one of my favorite content creators, Miniminuteman, who just so happens to have a video debunking Ancient Aliens (two parter actually)
Googledebunkers unite!
It is both surprising and completely expected that Milo would have fans that not only are active in Lemmy, but also commenting in a science-based community
Another googledebunker chiming in - wonderful content. Gives me hope for my generation.
There are dozens of us!
And another pyramid video coming in a couple hours
Yeah Ancient Aliens has always been real weird, and I'm gonna be honest I've never heard of the Ancient Aryans thing so... yeah the similarities are weird for sure. Few things to note.
The Parthenon is Greek, the Romans built the coliseum — also, the Native Americans didn't have a unified name for the Americas. If it makes you feel better you can say indigenous people of the American continents, or even Indigenous Americans, but calling them strictly American is genuinely awful.
My mom was born in Keams Canyon, and I've visited. If you went there calling the people there Americans they would not appreciate it. They're Hopi, or maybe Navajo.
Amerigo Vespucci was a genocide collaborator, in case anyone's wondering why it would be awful to call the indigenous people of the continents of the western hemisphere "Americans"
it's referring to a people using the language of their oppressor. each indigenous group has their own signifier like "First Nation People," "Indigenous American," "Native American," or "American Indian." you're going to have to make a choice about how to refer to people, but as @Jax@sh.itjust.works said, about the only wrong answer is "American"
Funny, the only reason I didn't choose western hemisphere in my comment is that ultimately the indigenous people here didn't have a unified name for that either. Words are hard, can't win em all.
Even if Nazis believed in Ancient Aliens as some sort of weird ubermensch theory, that doesn't make the idea itself racist at all.
People are fascinated by aliens. Before aliens people tended to attribute giant structures to gods and spirits when they lost the historical records. You don't need racism to believe in crazy fantasy ideas, you just need to be a bit too credulous.
I hate "ubermensch" theory because it puts Nietzsche in a negative light when he wasn't an antisemite.
The Nazis doing something isn't the best argument of it not being racist
I would think it had more to do with time. Pyramids were built thousands of years before the Colosseum.