Metro's Mystery Mongering

Wednesday's issue of Metro featured an interview with Giorgio Tsoukalos, described as "the leading expert and co-executive producer of the television series 'Ancient Aliens.'" I've written the following letter in response:

"I am dismayed by your uncritical interview with mystery monger Giorgio Tsoukalos in Wednesday's edition. The only reason he sees mysteries is that he doesn't bother to do any actual research, only reading books by other mystery mongers before visiting places.

"Concerning various ancient structures, he says 'many people do not know how they were built,' but as noted in the Wikipedia article on Puma Punku, 'Current understanding of this complex is limited due to its age, the lack of a written record, and the current deteriorated state of the structures due to treasure hunting, looting, stone mining for building stone and railroad ballast, and natural weathering.' In other words, if there's any mystery about these sites, it's the  result of human misdeeds, not alien intervention. And if 'you don't make sense of anything' when you visit them, it's only because, like Tsoukalos, you haven't bothered to learn what the real researchers -- scientists -- have already figured out.

"His lack of intellectual seriousness is revealed when he calls the Big Dipper 'a constellation that can hardly ever be seen.' Excuse me, but I've seen it countless times; it's one of the easiest ones to see. And he claims that various 'mysterious' sites are 'millions of kilometers apart.' A million kilometers is more than twice the distance from the Earth to the Moon, so enough said about that.

"Fundamentally, this kind of credulousness reflects a lack of faith in humanity and a childish wish for someone bigger to do things for us. That's the kind of attitude we have to overcome, if we as a species are to overcome the crises we face today."

The point about how the "ancient astronauts" quasi-religion is at odds with humanism was made to me by my father when, as an adolescent, I enthusiastically told him about what I'd read in Erich von Daniken's _Chariots of the Gods?_. I was initially put off by his reaction but later realized the truth of it.