You’ve probably seen the image below, or some version of it, on Facebook or elsewhere. It’s usually accompanied by breathless gee-whiz exclamations or even talk of how brilliant and advanced and ahead of their time the Egyptians were to build the pyramids where they would line up so perfectly with astronomical objects.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to my generally skeptical readers that this is some grade A prime bullshit. Phil Plait explains why. Yes, there will be an interesting configuration of Mercury, Venus, and Saturn in the sky in early December, but it will look nothing even remotely like that and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the precise location of the Giza pyramids. But you can expect the denizens of vaguely mystical woo to flog this horse just like they have all that crap about the Mayan calendar.
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Modusoperandi
August 24, 2012 at 10:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ah ha! The Egyptians were right! Things can be organized to line up with other things! Take that, disbelievers in duplicating patterns of things!
tubi
August 24, 2012 at 10:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Couldn’t you just walk to a point 90 degrees away and the image wouldn’t line up?
blf
August 24, 2012 at 10:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Fortunately, after Dec 21st or whatever the magical mystical malarkey Mayan date is, they’ll all have been beamed to Sirius / fallen off the edge of the universe / transcended into a higher plane of being / stupidity / innumeracy, leaving reality to those who can deal with it.
blindrobin
August 24, 2012 at 10:39 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Stargate WAS TOO A DOCUMENTARY!!!! And you can’t tell me otherwise. La La La La La La La La La
joeina2
August 24, 2012 at 10:43 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And it’s stupid on so many levels. For instance, even if the planetary alignment happened, why would that imply something magical or special in anyway? The pharoah’s believed themselves gods, so why wouldn’t they want themselves (via they’re undeniably large tombs) to be associated with celestial bodies? Occam’s razor here is salt in the wounds the facts did to all this woo.
Trebuchet
August 24, 2012 at 10:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ll believe it (the alignment, disregarding the pyramids) when I see it. Which I won’t, seeing as how it’s in December and I’m in the Pacific Northwest.
No doubt this is a warning for the Mayan Apocalypse a couple of weeks later. Or something.
zippythepinhead
August 24, 2012 at 11:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Will Pink Floyd be playing?
Marcus Ranum
August 24, 2012 at 11:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
There is absolutely no way that could be done in photoshop! Therefore: bast!
vmanis1
August 24, 2012 at 11:11 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m sorry, but the evidence that the Pyramids were built by gods or aliens is too strong to ignore. Consider that, with all the resources of being the #1 nation in the world, the U.S. is unable to repair bridges that are on the verge of falling down. Now try to tell me that a bunch of primitive people who didn’t even have a Republican party can put up something as complicated as a pyramid on their own (`We want to ensure that Rameses is a one-term Pharoah’). Yeah, right.
blf
August 24, 2012 at 11:17 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Actually, they weren’t built as such. They are just scrapheaps leftover from the construction of the Great Wall. The various rooms and corridors and paintings and whatnots are all the work of local vandals / practical jokers.
busterggi
August 24, 2012 at 11:24 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Have you ever noticed that the pointy parts of the pyramids are at the tops?
That can’t be a coincedence, only advanced planning could have accomplished that.
Francisco Bacopa
August 24, 2012 at 11:25 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ever notice the racism in all this ancient alien stuff? The more different a culture is from contemporary western culture, the more likely people are to say they were helped by aliens.
So the Egyptians were helped by aliens. The Nazca people couldn’t have figured out geometrec similarity without being flown in an aircraft r spaceship. Yet somehow the Romans were able maintain constant slopes on their aqueducts and the Greeks could do that reverse-perspective effect on their columns without alien help.
dingojack
August 24, 2012 at 11:26 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
vmanis1 – ah but you’re wrong! These are no ‘primative people’.
After Rameses The Great’s death in July or August 1213 bce he never ruled Egypt again! A single term*.
Ha! Take that! Look upon works ye mighty and despair!
Dingo
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* It’s looking like the Rmoney/Ryan folks won’t even magage that
jimmiraybob
August 24, 2012 at 11:26 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m reserving judgment until Christine O’Donnell and the Troublemakers weigh in.
This could be witches. Or sorcery.
Doug Little
August 24, 2012 at 11:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh please, please make it so. I’ll play make believe on any level if I could just see them in concert one time, just one bloody time.
omnicrom
August 24, 2012 at 11:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s really cool and I feel happy to be alive to see such a striking alignment of planets over Pyramids.
Oh wait, you think this has some deeper meaning? You can’t see something cool happen without looking for the orchestrator? I feel sorry for you.
davem
August 24, 2012 at 12:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Or you could walk forwards, or backwards… And even when they’re aligned, it’s at some strange angle with the pyramids themselves. Proof that the Eygptians built them because they knew about idiots on Facebook in 2012
ajb47
August 24, 2012 at 12:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
dingojack: Tell me that wasn’t a typo in your footnote. With all the talk of tax returns and out-of-touch rich guy, that’s just funny.
Area Man
August 24, 2012 at 12:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They accomplished it with tax cuts for the rich and increased military spending, which caused the deficit to go way down. Then they got rid of all environmental and labor regulations, outlawed unions and stole workers’ pensions and benefits, and this caused small business job creators in the private sector to build the pyramids all by themselves.
Joking aside, the pyramids are a monument to rich and powerful assholes who had more money than they knew what to do with, so they used it to build something useless. Kind of reminds me of this.
jws1
August 24, 2012 at 12:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is just more of the arrogance of modern people – they think only they could have erected such massive and intricate structures. All those living before a century or two ago were just a bunch of benighted fools living in a perpetual dark age. Nietzsche aptly dubs this way of thinking the “last man”: all of history exists just to create me, and of course I am the goal, the finished project.
heddle
August 24, 2012 at 12:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
busterggi ,
Oh brother. That’s not even “as good as” a correlation = causation error. I’ve heard some people claim that aliens built Stonehenge. Is that racist too?*
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* It goes without saying that it is racist to question your claim that attributing the building of ancient wonders to aliens is not just rank stupidity, but racism.
interrobang
August 24, 2012 at 1:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
attributing the building of ancient wonders to aliens is not just rank stupidity, but racism
It can’t be both at the same time, on a case-by-case basis? You have a problem with non-dichotomous thinking or something? I mean, not all racists are stupid, but a lot of stupid people are racist.
Also, to the main point of the post, ancient civilisations aren’t allowed to have had a good working knowledge of astronomy? I’m sure pretty much all of our ancient ancestors, who certainly knew about and observed things like solstices, constellations, star conjunctions, and whatever else, would be very surprised to hear that.
dingojack
August 24, 2012 at 1:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
ajb47 – Sadly(?) I can’t claim credit, the meme is already existant.
Dingo
ottod
August 24, 2012 at 1:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If you want to amaze me, show me where the Mayans predicted the Egyptians (or vice versa).
caseloweraz
August 24, 2012 at 2:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Amazing how the planets in that image possess nearly the same apparent magnitude. Did they adjust their light reflectance for the occasion, or did they move closer to better combine their influences?
/sarc
timberwoof
August 24, 2012 at 3:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
No, they and the pyramids are overexposed in that image.
timberwoof
August 24, 2012 at 3:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, foolish me. I should have RTFA.
[blockquote]Let me be clear: while there will be an event more-or-less like this in December, and it should be pretty and quite cool to see, the claims being made are somewhat exaggerated. The picture itself isn’t real, and the planets won’t really look like that from Giza.[/quote]